Influential Heresies
Like any other basic attitude, Yahwism expresses itself in both conduct and belief, so Christians who are not reborn fall into two groups.
1. Hypocrites express beliefs incompatible with their conduct.
2. Heretics express beliefs incompatible with healthy human development.
A heresy is a Christian belief incompatible with healthy human development, and a heretic is someone who clings to at least one heresy.
Every flavour of contemporary Christianity harbours at least one heresy. As far as I know, no group since the Apostolic age has excluded all heresies, so reborns have been left with no adequate vehicle.
In the context of Christian history, a reformation (small "r") is when healthy human development reformulates Christian belief to highlight its incompatibility with a heresy. Europeans sometimes call the reformulation that launched Protestantism simply "the Reformation" (big "R").
All the influential heresies have been variations on a few basic themes. I call such a theme a metaheresy, and healthy human development's response to it a metareformation.
| Metaheresy | What it says | Who believes it | Metareformation | What it says | Who believes it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atheanthroposialism | God never intended to become a man except to remedy man's defection. | Most heretics believe this, often cloaking it by not admitting either that they welcome the wrongdoing or that they see God's manhood as an "afterthought". | Theanthroposialism | God's original plan involved becoming a man with no human defection. | No contemporary group rejects this metaheresy. |
| Bonhominalism | Humans can do pure good without God's help. | Liberals declare this. Catholics, Orthodox and most Protestants believe it, often cloaking it in various forms in which man cooperates with grace. | Malhominalism | Since man's defection, humans cannot do pure good until realigned by God. | Calvinists and maybe some Augustinian Catholics |
| Magicalism | A human's realignment requires ceremonial initiation. | Catholics, Orthodox and most Protestants believe this, often cloaking it in various forms from "desiring baptism" to "ordinance not sacrament". | Noeticalism | A human's realignment requires only a new attitude. | Quakers and similar |
| Otherworldalism | Detachment from the visible world aids fulfillment. | Most heretics believe this, usually cloaking it (as when asserting relevance while handing over much of life to "the state"). | Developmentalism | Detachment from the visible world hinders fulfillment. | Those Calvinists who retain the original reformational tendency. |
Relation to the Christian Relaunch Stance. Every heresy conflicts with healthy human development, so you might expect every heresy listed here to contradict something in the Stance, but it is not so simple. For instance, Synergistic Bonhominalism is rooted in distortions of the doctrines of Creation and Defection but is usually debated in relation to Restoration (in accordance with Christianity's tendency to focus attention too far downstream) so it is unclear where the conflict lies.
Scope. The definition of heresy used here is in one respect narrower than the one used elsewhere in this site, which would classify Rejectionist Yahwism (affirming Yahweh as god of Israel while denying that Jesus is the Christ) as a heresy. The definition used here is closer to traditional definitions, according to which Rejectionist Judaicism is in its own category: neither Christian, nor heretical, nor heathen. Here, the intention is to describe heresies that have actually arisen within Christianity.
Logic. A metaheresy is the point at which all its constituent heresies agree with one another and against Yahwism. Technically (in information theory), each metaheresy is implied by the disjunction of its constituents. Similarly, each rebuttal of a metaheresy implies the conjunction of the corresponding reformations. (Those implications would be identities if we included all possible heresies of the type along with the actual ones.)
Metaheresies. Heresies (and corresponding reformations) are historical, but metaheresies (and their opposites) are generalisations, not directly corresponding to historical debates (hence usually not illustrated with quotations) but useful as a background to understand the histories. I do not claim that mine is the only way to classify heresies, only that it is one useful way.
Practical Relevance. Some of the reformations may seem abstract and pedantic; for instance among Christians the focus of discussion has often been Christological, as when Docetists deny that Christ is man and Arians deny that he is God, but the underlying issues are always practical. Any heresy tends to hinder selves from reaching a point where God's realigning grace can operate, or from working out the consequences of receiving that grace.
Names. Where I failed to find a traditional name for a heresy or reformation, I invented one.
Choice of Quotations. I illustrate each heresy with at least one pair of quotations, one from a prominent early proponent of the heresy and one from a prominent early opponent. However, some heresies take shape gradually and are only clearly expressed after the corresponding reformation has already been articulated, and in early centuries over-zealous reformationists sometimes destroyed original documents; for these reasons, sometimes the heretical quotation is later than the reformational one.
Double Negatives. I have simplified some quotations by removing double negatives. For instance, I would reduce "We condemn those who deny that P" to just "P".
Reformationists' Motives. Reformationists have often become entangled with the machinations of kings and suchlike gangsters, so that the general historian may be right to treat their history mainly from that point of view. (For instance, we English know how questionable were Henry Tudor's motives for supporting Protestantism, even if we overlook the violence involved.) And some reformations have been promoted largely by souls firmly attached to other heresies; perhaps obstinately attached, in which case they were themselves not reborn. But none of this detracts from the historical significance of these reformations.
Who Deviated from the Status Quo Ante? Sometimes heretics insinuate an alien belief into Christian discourse by reinterpreting an accepted form of words through which the gospel has traditionally been expressed. Such heretics resist clarification, claiming that anyone who explains the original meaning of that form of words is making alien additions to it.
Sequence of Heresies within a Metaheresy. In simple cases a heresy arises at a certain time and is soon rebutted by its reformation, but other cases are less simple. The sequences aim at showing logical relationships, though sometimes these coincide with chronological ones.
Corellations
Magicalism and Bonhominalism tend to go together, as for instance in the very first heretical faction faced by reborns, which led Paul of Tarsus to focus on the Bonhominalism lurking behind the Galatian heretics' insistence on circumcision, rather than directly attacking the Magicalism. Elsewhere Paul does attack Magicalism, as when he says "Christ sent me to proclaim the gospel, not to baptise"; he does so only in passing, but the need to distinguish the two metaheresies is clear in the case of Augustine of Hippo, as forthright in his attack on Bonhominalism as in his defence of Magicalism; indeed in his mind the defence was a key reason for the attack, as in his view Magicalism not only allowed Malhominalism but entailed it.
Otherworldalism tends to beget Atheanthroposialism, for denigrating the body's role suggests that God would achieve nothing worthwhile by becoming flesh. But there have been exceptions.
Otherworldalism and Bonhominalism often go together. Relegation of our true life to an otherworld gives some Christians an excuse to relegate the antithesis between God's friends and his foes, for most practical purposes, to the otherworld also, leaving them free to participate in ungodly society in most practical matters.