Always, he boldly tampers with “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Like Jehovah’s Witnesses, he may alter God’s finished word, or like Mormons, he may add to it. He may, like Marcus Borg and other prominent scholars, deny the virgin birth or the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He may reframe the doctrine of the Trinity, as Arius did in the third century and as Oneness Pentecostals do today. He continues his evil work today, sometimes by contradicting the truth and sometimes by adding to it. Yet in denying the faith and celebrating what is false, he leads his followers from the safety of orthodoxy to the peril of heresy.įrom the church’s earliest days, she has been afflicted by the Heretic in his various forms. He is a gregarious figure, a natural leader teaching just enough truth to mask his deadly error. The Heretic is the person who teaches what blatantly contradicts an essential teaching of the Christian faith. “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1). Peter warned against him in his second letter. The Heretic is the most prominent and perhaps the most dangerous of the false teachers.
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