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Christian heresy can be simply understood as a departure from Christian orthodoxy. But it can be difficult at times to define precisely what orthodoxy itself is. In his book, A History of Heresy, David Christie-Murray said: “Heresy is often a conservative reaction, brought about by an attempt to turn back the clock to an imagined early ideal.” A cynic (or relativist) might say that heresy is when a majority considers the opinion of a minority to be unacceptable; and it is powerful enough to punish those they see as heretics.

If we are to avoid a cynical sense of heresy, then we have to believe in orthodoxy that remains true, if only in the mind of God. And there must be a norm of Christian belief ‘on earth’ that reflects this idea and can be “the standard by which a man may be judged a true believer or heretic.” This seems to have been the early thinking on what was called the rule of faith or canon of truth. As the canon of Scripture began to crystallize, the early baptismal creeds sought to be a reflection and expression of this rule of faith contained in the Scriptures and taught by the apostles. Along with Pontius Pilate, we want to ask, what is truth?

There are two fundamentally different approaches to Christian truth. One sees it primarily as a living, growing organism that has to continuously adapt itself to new cultures, civilizations and circumstances. This corresponds generally to the Catholic-Orthodox view. When challenged by the question—by what authority do you claim your doctrines are true—Roman Catholics say that God appointed the Church itself as the supreme authority; the church through the ages is infallible in matters doctrine.

The other, Protestant approach, to Christian truth is a call to return to when the faith was pure, free of dogmatic accrual; when it was simple and obvious. Protestants replaced the infallibility of the Church with the infallibility of the Scriptures. The written Word of God is the final court of appeal, and whatever is not found in the Bible is not binding on believers. Heresy then, from a Protestant perspective, is doctrine or belief not found in the Bible.

The Church itself and any of its doctrines must be judged by Scripture. “The authority of the Bible is greater than that of the Church.” Now we could muddy the waters further with regards to defining heresy, but this will do for our examination of the early Christian creeds. And it seems to be the fundamental premise to which the Church fathers turned as they formulated their early creeds.

The heart of orthodoxy and the assessment of heresy centers on Jesus as God and Savior, together with the rejection of any faith which itself rejects or is inconsistent with the divinity of Christ. “Organically connected with the divinity of Christ is the doctrine of the Trinity.” As you look at the creeds and heresies of the early church, you can see how these essential doctrines were at the heart of most, if not all, of the heresies and creedal expressions of orthodoxy. To an extent, there is some legitimacy to view Christian truth as a living, growing organism as the orthodoxy of the Church was developed and articulated in the creeds. But this does not make the Church itself infallible. It recognizes that the “Word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). What is truth? “Thy Word is Truth” (John 17:17). And God’s Word is available to us in Scripture. Then from a Protestant perspective, canonical Scripture plays a determinative role in sifting what is true from is not true in heresy.

As we look at the Bible we see how God used certain people, historical events, even human culture and its accomplishments—such as the invention of writing—in conjunction with his special revelation through Christ and the Holy Spirit, to reveal Himself and to declare His will to the Church. Christians who confess that the Bible is special revelation, “breathed out” by God (2 Timothy 3:16), acknowledge God’s use of ordinary and extraordinary means to reveal Himself to us. Formal confession of this process exists in several forms; the following is from the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manner, to reveal Himself, and to declare His will unto His Church; (Heb. 1:1) and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.

The Protestant Bible is a “library of books,” with 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament; 66 all together. All the books of Scripture were given “By the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.” The authority of Scripture rests on God (“who is truth itself”) as its author and it should be received as the Word of God. “Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority” of Scripture is from the “inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” And ultimately, “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture in the Scripture itself.”

The crystallization of the Protestant biblical canon was a long process, which technically wasn’t entirely completed until the time of the Protestant Reformation, when the Reformers rejected the view of the Roman Catholic Church that the books of the Apocrypha were inspired. The Apocrypha is a collection of manuscripts written between 400 BC and 27 AD. Reasons for the Protestant denial that these writings were inspired by God include that the New Testament never quotes from any of the apocryphal books. The Catholic response to this is to argue that Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon were also never quoted in the New Testament; and yet we accept them as inspired. However, the inclusion of these five books in the Old Testament canon was never in question, thus weakening the Catholic rejoinder.

A better explanation of the difference comes from an understanding of the history of the Hebrew canon. The rabbis in Palestine after 70 AD recognized a canon of twenty-four books (according to their system of enumeration); it was divided into Law (or Torah), Prophets and Writings. This organization reflected the principle that revelation began with Moses, the author of the Torah, and ended with Ezra. The Apocrypha originated after Ezra; additionally, some of the apocryphal books were composed in Greek. Therefore, they should not be included in this definition of Scripture. “The rabbis claim that the person who brings together more than twenty-four books creates confusion (Midras Qohelet. 12:12) and that one who reads in the outside books will have no place in the world to come (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhadrin 100b).” The Hebrew canon organizes the books of the Old Testament differently than the Protestant Bible does. See the following chart.

However, there are several Septuagint (LXX) manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible that mix apocryphal books with the canonical, prompting the theory there was a wider Alexandrian Canon that included the books of the Apocrypha. The Catholic decision seems to accept the Alexandrian Canon. R. T. Beckworth gave the following explanation for accepting the Palestinian Canon:

The Apocrypha were known in the church from the start, but the further back one goes, the more rarely are they treated as inspired. In the NT itself, one finds Christ acknowledging the Jewish Scriptures, by various of their current titles, and accepting the three sections of the Jewish Canon and the traditional order of its books; one finds Revelation perhaps alluding to their number; and throughout the NT one finds most of the books being referred to individually as having divine authority; but none of the Apocrypha. The only apparent exception is the reference to Enoch in Jude 14f, which may be just an argumentum ad hominem to converts from the apocalyptic school of thought. What evidently happened was this. Christ passed on to his followers, as Holy Scripture, the Bible, which he had received, containing the same books as the Heb. Bible today. The first Christians shared with their Jewish contemporaries a full knowledge of the canonical books. However, the Bible was not yet between two covers: it was a memorized list of scrolls. The breach with Jewish oral tradition (in some matters very necessary), the alienation between Jew and Christian, and the general ignorance of Semitic languages in the church outside Palestine and Syria, led to increasing doubt on the OT Canon among Christians, which was accentuated by the drawing up of new lists of the biblical books, arranged on other principles, and the introduction of new lectionaries. Such doubt about the Canon could only be resolved, and can only be resolved today, in the way it was resolved by Jerome and at the Reformation—by returning to the teaching of the NT, and the Jewish background against which it is to be understood.

The canon of the Old Testament, for all intensive purposes, was closed by the time Jesus declared: “It is written,” as he was tempted by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:1-4). In The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce Metzger said that at first, the teachings of Jesus circulated orally, from hearer to hearer. “Then these narratives were compiled recording the remembered words, along with recollections of his deeds of mercy and healing.” The opening verses to the Gospel of Luke refer to these “pre-Gospel” writings: “Insomuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us.”

After many years the limits of the New Testament canon as we know it were set for the first time in a letter written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in 367. Athanasius also had a key role in the formulation of early church creeds (like the Nicene and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creeds); and in challenging the teachings of the array of heresies that sprang up like the weeds as the New Testament canon and the early creeds were being formulated. More on this in Part 2 of “Heresy, Canon and the Early Church.”

Information on the creeds and heresies discussed here was taken primarily from Early Christian Creeds and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly; A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray; and The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”