Heresies

Heresies
Heresies, literally means, a different opinion. Geevarghese Mar Osthathios, Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church and Professor at Orthodox theological Seminary Kottayam, India writes: "Heresies are half-truths which claim to be the whole truth. Orthodoxy is the whole truth of the whole church and not the part truth of a part church. Most of the heresies emphasized the opposite half truths and canceled each other." He summarizes the various heresies thus: "

...while Gnosticism and Docetism stressed the divinity of Christ to the detriment of His humanity, Adoptionism taught that Jesus Christ was a perfect man whom God adopted as His Son at the time of Baptism or after the Resurrection. Again, the Antiochene school has produced heresies like Nestorianism which emphasised humanity of Christ over his Divinity and the Alexandrian school exaggerated His Divinity over his humanity in the so-called Eutychian heresy. Apollinarianism taught that in Jesus Christ the Logos substituted the human spirit (nous) and so christ was not in need of real moral growth as other human beings while Arius believed that Jesus Christ was a demi-god and a semi-man, who was not co-eternal with the father, nor of the same ousia as the Father. In other wordsa\, in Apollinarianism the humanity of Christ was incomplete and in Arianism, the divinity of Christ was imperfect. The Ebionites of the second century had rejected the virgin birth and regarded Christ as a unique prophet of moral purity as many in the west regard Him today; but Paul of Samosata (third cent., the forerunner of Arianism and Nestorianism accepted the virgin birth and taught a type of dynamic Monarchianism. The Modalistic Monarchianism of Sabbellius taught a false type of Trinity according to which God is one Who appeared as the Father in the Old Testament, as the Son in the Incarnation and as the Holy Spirit since Pentecost. This is also nick-named Patripassianism because it makes the Father suffer instead of the Son. Tertullian rightly points out that Praxeus (the Patripassian Monarchian, "put to flight the Paraclete and crucified the father."

(Geevarghese Mar Osthathios Metropolitan, My Lord and My God:An Outline of Christology Tiruvalla: Christava Sahitya Samithi [1971] 2005.

Metropoltian summarizes the traditional Orthodox views of heresies. However, modern theologians like Jurgen Moltmann rejects the view that patripassianism is a heresy. There cannot be any heresy in saying that a loving God suffers; without suffering love has no meaning. Perhaps we may have to rethink our view of heresy, in the post modern context, where the right of people to hold differing view points are acknowledged and no one has got absolute knowledge or right to declare what is absolute truth. All our knowledge of truth is partial and limited. And all of us are in search of truth. Many of the absolutes of the Old Testament were rejected or revised by Jesus. Many absolute positions of the New Testament writers need to be challenged from our current knowledge of world, social organizations and cultural anthropology. We need to rethink our attitude towards race, caste, gender and culture in the light of our contemporary knowledge with a readiness to revise them as new information and knowledge become available. Churches and individuals in all ages have the right and responsibility to say what is right and what is wrong and take particular positions and perspectives, but only in humility, accepting that we are sinful beings in need of correction and forgiveness.