De locis theologicis

SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE DEFINITION OF HERESY

But for this definition to be clearer, it should be examined through some arguments. First, as Philo testifies in his little book De vita theoretica supplicum (apud Euseb. lib. histo. eccles. 2 cap. 17), the Christian doctrine and way of life is a heresy; but it is not an error, but rather Catholic truth itself, and so on. Next, an apostate from the Christian Catholic faith and religion plainly opposes the Catholic truth he once professed, yet he is not a heretic. Moreover, as Hieronymus says, “From words spoken without order, one falls into heresy”; therefore this crime occurs without error and obstinacy. Further, “One who doubts in the faith is an unbeliever” (De haereti. ca. I); if so, then someone who was previously a Christian through such doubt will become

a heretic. For there is nothing in a genus that is not contained in some species of that genus. But if that hesitation is heresy, and one who hesitates remains suspended and uncertain in mind, assenting to nothing at all, it follows that sometimes there is heresy without error. For error, which opposes truth, includes assent. Moreover, Divus Thomas (I p. q. 32 art. 4) teaches that to hold a false opinion about matters chiefly handed down to us from faith itself entails heresy, especially if obstinacy is added. Therefore, heresy can exist without obstinacy. This is confirmed by the Church’s practice: from a single act of worshipping idols or circumcising a child, it judges someone to be virtually a heretic; it would not do so if obstinacy and that excessive persistence in error were required for heresy. Add that unbelief and hardness of heart cannot exist without obstinacy. Therefore, the eleven disciples, whose unbelief and hardness of heart the Lord rebuked, persisted obstinately in their error. But their error concerning the article of the Resurrection, which the Lord himself had plainly foretold, was openly contrary to Catholic faith. Therefore, if that definition is true and complete, the disciples incurred the crime of heresy. If this is quite absurd, let us say instead that something both exceeds and is missing from that definition. We will explain these arguments as briefly as we can. For our purpose here is not to undertake a treatment of heresy, which could not be completed without a very long discourse, but to explain briefly and concisely, as we pass by, what heresy properly is, from which the meaning of “heretic” becomes clear, and what a heretical proposition is, which no educated person can fail to recognize as a spoken or written sign of heretical error. (Ad I arg.) First, then, as Hieronymus testifies (24 q. 3 ca. Haeresis; in 5 ca. epist. ad Gala. et in c. 3 epist. ad Titum), Isidorus (lib. 8 etymolog. c. 3), and D. Thomas (2.2 quaest. 11 artic. 1 et in 3 cap. episto. ad Titum), the Greek word “heresy” comes from “choice.” The Latin translator of the New Testament sometimes preserves this Greek word (1 Cor. 11), and at other times renders it as “sect,” as at Galat. 5, where our edition has “sects” among the works of the flesh, while the Greek reads “heresies”; and at Acto. 28, where the Iudaeans say to Paulus, “For concerning this sect we know that it is everywhere spoken against”—Lucas used the Greek word for “heresy.” “Sect” and “heresy” therefore denote the same thing; but just as sect is named from following, so heresy is named from choosing: από τoυ αιρέoμαι, which means “I choose” (Isidorus 8 Etymol.; Thomas II-II.11.1 ad 3). Next, we should observe that among ancient Greek and Latin authors the word “heresy” is general and designates any sect, such as the Platonic, Stoic, or Peripatetic. But Christian writers use the contracted term “heresy” for a sect and division by which someone separates himself from the common faith of the Church, choosing a private opinion and departing from Catholic teaching. Moreover, although this is obvious and often said, it should still be mentioned that the teaching of the Gospel properly should be called neither heresy nor sect. First, we do not follow it by our own choice, for it is not our invention or discovery; rather, we have it from divine Tradition, so that we are not free to choose one opinion or another, but must follow God wherever he leads and draws us back. Also, the Gospel’s teaching has always been Catholic and universal: it concerned all equally, and all who rightly held the truth about God maintained it at every time. Since “heresy” and “sect” mean a private teaching that each person chooses and follows at will, the Catholic teaching, handed down by God to all people without exception, is surely to be called neither sect nor heresy, although people call philosophers’ doctrines heresies. The authorities are Hieronymus (in tertium caput epist. ad Tit.), Isidorus (8 lib. etymolog. cap. 3), Theophilactus (in 2 cap.

epist. ad Colossen.), Tertulianus (in lib. De praescriptionibus haereticorum). Therefore, when Philo calls our religion a heresy, he does so in the customary manner of his age, not in a bad sense; for that is how people generally called it. (Ad 2 argum.) But whether apostasy is heresy is disputed with great disagreement among the most learned. Sylvester (in ver. Haeresis, I quaest. 2) says that an apostate is not properly a heretic; but in ver. Aposta., 1 et 2, he seems to contradict himself. Caietanus (II-II quaest. 11 artic. 1) teaches that apostates truly are heretics because, although they do not believe in Christ by an elicited act, as he says, they profess him through the Christian character; they therefore fall into heresy when they depart from the Catholic faith they held by profession. But in the Summa, in ver. Apostata, he seems to think otherwise, saying: “Apostasy is worse than heresy, since it surpasses it by taking away the faith entirely.” Cardinal Turrecremata (in lib. 4 part. 2 cap. 13) plainly confirms that an apostate is not a heretic. This is also the view of D. Thomas (II-II q. 11, art. 1 et q. 12 art. 1 ad tertium), where he explicitly says that apostasy does not entail any determinate kind of unbelief, but takes its kind from the end toward which the person who departs from the faith moves. And certainly, according to the usage and manner of speaking of the Saints, a heretic is only someone who, after professing the Christian faith, resists Christ’s teaching under the Christian name, as Augustinus says (18 De Ciui. Dei c. 51); and in 16 lib. cap. 2 he teaches that Cham, the middle son of Noe, who stood apart from both the first fruits of the Israelites and the fullness of the Gentiles, remaining between the two, was a type of heretics. Origenes says (in tertium cap. epist. ad Tit.): “A heretic is someone who professes belief in Christ but believes something about the truth of the Christian faith other than what is contained in the tradition of the Church’s definition.” To avoid being long-winded and tedious in reporting each person’s words, Ambrosius (in 3 cap. epist. ad Tit.), Gregorius (5 mora. ca. 11), and Beda (in Lucae c. 17) agree with Divus Thomas and Augustinus. None of the ancient writers, in their lengthy disputes against Iulianus, called him a heretic; they called him an apostate. The reasoning of Divus Thomas is not at all poor: someone who rejects the whole doctrine of Christ seems to choose nothing, but to depart from the faith completely. Apostasy also entails the movement of someone departing from the faith; but movement takes its kind from its term, not from its starting point. Therefore, when an apostate turns to the superstition and error of the Iudaeans, he incurs Iudaean unbelief; when he turns to paganism, he incurs the guilt of pagan unbelief. It would follow that if apostasy were heresy, it would be placed under two species of the same proximate genus. Divus Thomas therefore reasons more correctly when he says that apostasy has no determinate kind of unbelief in itself, but is reduced to the kind to which the apostate has turned. For by departing from the Christian faith, apostasy does not have a kind of its own, but rather a certain aggravating circumstance, as in the saying: “It would have been better for them not to know the way of justice than, after knowing it, to turn back” (2 Petr. 2). I am all the more amazed by those who twist the words and arguments of D. Thomas to the opposite view. But let us consider their arguments. One is that a person would cease to be a heretic by multiplying heresies. For if he fell daily into one heresy after another until he abandoned the whole Catholic faith, he would then become an apostate, having lost his former name through the growth of heresies. A second argument is that the penalties decreed by law against heretics also include apostates; this would not be so if they were not heretics, since no canon law punishes such apostates unless they are included among heretics. The final argument is much stronger than the others: Bonifatius VIII defined apostates to be heretics in these words:

“Christians who have passed over to the rite of the Iudaeans are to be proceeded against as if they were heretics” (De haereti. in 6). The first argument, however, is not hard to refute. No matter how many heresies a person accumulates, if he generally professes Christ and attacks his faith under the Christian name, he will always be a heretic, not an apostate. But as soon as he sets out to abandon both the name of Christ and the whole religion entirely, he becomes an apostate and loses the name “heresy”—not through a further heresy added to the earlier ones, but through a new apostasy, which is not heresy but something greater than heresy. Who would doubt that lesser things are abolished by greater ones and that, as names change, earlier things pass into later ones? Dispositions are changed into habits, and the name “disposition” ceases. The knowledge of a wayfarer is changed into the knowledge of one who has attained the goal, and that earlier knowledge, faith, and the name of faith are washed away. An incontinent person becomes wicked through repeatedly acting incontinently, and the old name disappears or is changed into another, more serious one. So there is nothing surprising in our saying that a heretic loses the old name and acquires a new one through apostasy, which is a new crime, separate from heresy and much more serious than heresy. Especially since, among the ancient Saints, a heretic is not an open enemy but a false prophet who comes in sheep’s clothing, a leper who mixes crooked things with straight and stains a healthy color with spots, Pharaoh’s magician who presents an image of truth while resisting the truth, and finally a spring and cloud without water, an autumn tree, a wandering star—all things that put forward the appearance of water, fruit, or light. Since, then, the name “heretic” implies a general profession of Christ, it is not absurd that when this implication is absent, the name “heretic” should also be absent. Likewise, if someone prolonged supper into the following day with as many drinks and as much conversation as possible, once the time had changed, supper would turn into breakfast or even lunch, and would no longer properly retain its former name. The second argument is refuted as follows. There is no doubt that apostates incur the penalties for heretics. This has been consistently observed from the beginning of the Church, as is especially clear from the works of Cyprianus. Many people are mistaken in thinking that all the Church’s laws must be sought in the legal compilations, into which Raymundus, Gratianus, or someone else collected very many decrees. Thus Caietanus could scarcely establish the precept of Lenten fasting, since it does not appear in the commonly circulated papal decrees; and he was almost exhausted by the same labor while searching for a law that would bind clerics who professed monastic religion to perform the prescribed divine prayers. Believe me, many laws of the Church have been introduced not by writing but by custom. Nor do the compiled legal volumes contain all the writings of Councils and Pontiffs. Therefore, before Bonifatius VIII, the Church’s custom had prescribed penalties for apostates. But because someone had doubted this, the Pontiff resolved the doubt in that chapter, defining that proceedings against apostates should be conducted in the same way as against heretics. Yet the Pontiff’s words and definition do not establish that apostates are heretics. For the particle tanquam sometimes expresses similarity, but not always the truth of the thing. There is no need to give examples here, since many occur in sacred and secular writings. But enough has been said about this argument, which also involves a dispute over terminology. (Ad 3 arg.) Furthermore, the testimony that Scholastic theologians and legal experts even now repeat under the name of Hieronymus is not Hieronymus’s; D. Thomas and those after him took it from the Magister Sententiarum and used it, as they often do. But if that passage of Hieronymus in his letter to

Damasus, on the term “three hypostases,” is read more carefully, D. Hieronymus is rather of the view that heresy must be judged from meaning, not from words. What else does he mean when he speaks in this way? “The leader of the Arians and the Campenses demand from me, a Roman, the novel term ‘three hypostases’.... We ask what they think ‘three hypostases’ can mean. ‘Three subsisting persons,’ they say. We reply that this is what we believe. The meaning is not enough; they demand the very term, because I do not know what poison lies hidden in its syllables.... And because we do not pronounce the terms, we are judged heretics.” And many other statements of this kind follow, from which you can understand that Hieronymus feared no charge of heresy for a correct and sound understanding, but did fear a new expression in which he suspected poison might lie hidden under honey. Otherwise, Hieronymus had read this statement of Hilarius: “Heresy arose from understanding, not from Scripture, and it is meaning, not wording, that becomes a crime.” Thus, by words spoken without order, we may perhaps incur suspicion of heresy; but if there is no error in faith, we cannot incur heresy itself. Since faith is in the intellect, unbelief—which includes heresy as one of its kinds—must also be in the intellect. Likewise, nothing is contrary to truth except error; therefore, since heresy opposes the truth of faith, it is undoubtedly error. But because legislators and legal judges sometimes prosecute crimes in the external forum by legal fiction and presumption, they call external words and deeds that usually testify to heresy “heresies” and punish them as heresies. Thus they also punish those who outwardly abandon the faith or perform worship to an idol by an external act, even if they do so out of fear, just as if they had inwardly departed from faith and religion. But as for words, I do not care. For just as an outward declaration and profession of faith is sometimes called “faith,” an outward declaration of heresy also receives the same name. Signs and images of things are often called by the names of the things themselves. Thus the old and celebrated proverb to which I have scarcely ever agreed is true in ordinary speech: “From words spoken without order, one falls into heresy.” But properly speaking, as we said, among Christians heresy is the error of someone who professes to have Christ’s faith in general but does not truly have it. I thought I should warn those who judge matters of faith and religion to judge words and deeds differently. In deeds that are in themselves foul and wicked, there is no danger in punishing as heretics those who circumcise in the Iudaean rite or offer sacred rites to an idol or demon. Still, I know that men very learned in theology and law have held—and I do not disagree—that since such people are neither heretics nor apostates except by legal fiction and probable presumption, judges of the faith should carefully and diligently investigate whether such external crimes truly proceed from inward unbelief. If it is established that such crimes were committed and carried out not through an error of the intellect but from desire, fear, or some other disturbance of the mind, then they should be punished less severely, not as heresies. But since words, however disorderly, often escape the crime of heresy and sometimes are entirely free of any crime, a judge should apply the greatest diligence in investigating their meaning and the speaker’s intention. If a sound meaning and pure faith appear in the speaker’s corrupt and polluted words, he should be warned, corrected, and even frightened, but punished with clemency and restraint. Sometimes the whole penalty should instead be discreetly pardoned, for the ignorance and weakness of mortals; yet the freer speech of frivolous people should be firmly restrained, even when it does not contain an error, if it may sometimes bring harm to those who hear it. ¹

But we have offered the foregoing only as a taste, as it were from our fingertips, since it is foreign to our present purpose. What follows is our own and pertains specifically to this time and place. Therefore, to explain it briefly but clearly, I will use as much intelligence as I can and almost more effort than I can manage. (Ad 4 arg.) Legal experts and theologians dispute whether someone doubtful in faith is a heretic; likewise—and it is the same question—whether doubting any Catholic truth is itself heresy. The first argument seems to show that it is. There is also that testimony of Augustinus (In Enchi. c. 17 et 19): “To err is to think true what is false and false what is true, or to regard the certain as uncertain and the uncertain as certain, whether false or true.” But one who doubts any truth of faith regards certain things as uncertain; therefore, he errs against the faith. For, as Bernardus says, faith admits no doubt; if it does, it is not faith. Such hesitation, then, is an error opposed to faith. Therefore, if obstinacy is added, it is undoubtedly heresy. Moreover, the Council of Vienna condemns as erroneous and hostile to the truth of Catholic faith every doctrine either rashly asserting or calling into doubt that the substance of the rational soul is not the form of the human body. Therefore, not only does the person who asserts a heretical proposition err against the faith and oppose it, but so does the person who calls Catholic truth into doubt. Why else would the chapter “Dubius in fide infidelis est” be placed at the head of the title De haereticis, before all the other chapters, unless to make us understand that such people must be regarded as heretics and punished as heretics? Moreover, the person who doubts loses the faith, otherwise he would not be an unbeliever; but faith received in baptism is lost only through heresy. Add that constancy and certain firmness belong to the nature of faith; wavering and obstinate doubt corrupt faith’s firmness. Therefore, doubt is at least indirectly contrary to faith, and so is heresy. For that is why an error opposed to a theological conclusion is heresy: it indirectly corrupts faith. These arguments are used by those who consider someone who doubts in faith to be a heretic if he is obstinate in doubting. For if he wavers and falters through weakness, not obstinacy, everyone agrees that he is not a heretic: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matth. 14). The doubt of a weak person does not therefore destroy faith entirely; the Lord says that the faith of the weak is little, not nonexistent. Other authors, themselves most learned, hold the contrary: doubt in matters of faith is opposed to faith privatively, not contrarily, while heresy is positively contrary to faith, as the Schoolmen put it. Therefore, doubt is not properly heresy, even if a person doubts knowingly and with full awareness. They too try to persuade us of this view with many arguments. The first is the testimony of D. Thomas (prioris ad Corinth. 11 lect. 4), where he teaches that heresy requires someone to adhere obstinately to a private doctrine. For, he says, choice implies firm adherence. Hence he infers that a person is a heretic only if he scorns the divinely handed-down doctrine of faith and obstinately follows his own error. Hieronymus holds the same view in the fifth chapter of his epistle to the Galatians and in the third chapter of his epistle to Titus, saying (24, q. 3, ca. Haeresis): “Heresy is named from choice, since a heretic chooses for himself the doctrine he thinks best.” Augustinus likewise says in lib. de utilita. creden. ad Honora. cap. primo (24, q. 3, ca. Haereticus): “A heretic is one who either generates or follows false opinions.” But one who doubts has no firm adherence, chooses neither side of the question, and neither generates nor follows a false opinion; therefore, he is not a heretic.

Again, heresy is contrary to faith, not opposed to it by negation or privation. But doubt, since it involves neither assent nor dissent, is not contrary to faith, for faith implies assent; therefore, doubt is not heresy. Moreover, heresy is an error contrary to Catholic truth, while error is false assent or dissent. Since hesitation is neither assent nor dissent, it is not heresy. Besides, doubt is a kind of middle position between the two extreme sides of a dispute, whereas faith and heresy are two extremes that conflict with each other most strongly. Therefore, doubt, which lies between heretical dogma and Catholic truth, is not heresy but shares in and is close to it. These are the reasons that quite distinguished authors usually find persuasive for holding this view. Nor do the arguments of their opponents compel them to abandon their position. When they are first challenged with the claim that someone doubtful in faith is an unbeliever, they answer as follows. Unbelief, they say, can be understood in three ways. First, as simple and pure negation: someone is called an unbeliever solely because he lacks faith. In this sense, as Sanctus Thomas says (2.2. q. 10 articu. 1), it is not a matter of guilt in those who have heard nothing about the faith, but rather of punishment. Second, unbelief is understood as contrary to faith: that is, when someone opposes the faith he has heard or even scorns it. In this sense, as Divus Thomas affirms in the same place, the character of unbelief is properly realized. The third kind of unbelief is intermediate between the two preceding kinds: it is a wavering between two sides, adhering to neither. This is the sense in which Pope Stephanus speaks in that first chapter De haereticis. But the three kinds of unbelief are understood to be kinds of that unbelief which is properly contrary to faith—that is, not the first or third kind but the second. They interpret the claim that those who regard certainties as uncertain err in this way: it applies only if they assert that things which are certain are uncertain, or even deny that they are certain. For an error is a false proposition, whether affirmed or denied. One who neither affirms nor denies anything does not properly err—unless, perhaps, we also call someone mistaken who misses the target despite never having shot an arrow, though he would have aimed at it if he had shot. In this sense all sinners generally err, not only those who do evil but also those who fail to do good. But this is an improper use of “err.” Otherwise, returning to the point, if someone is in error simply because faith must be certain and he is uncertain, then someone who opines that Christ is God would also properly err and be a heretic, since he lacks the firmness required by the truth of faith. For just as doubt drives faith out, so does opinion. The fear accompanying opinion is as opposed to the certain assent of faith as is the uncertainty of someone who doubts. But is anyone so mistaken as to think that a true opinion is an error, because it cannot coexist with the certain assent required by faith? Therefore, one who regards certainties as uncertain, neither asserting nor denying anything, but remaining undecided and choosing neither Catholic truth nor the contrary dogma, may be a heretic by a legal fiction, but certainly is not one by the proper meaning of the word, since he is not positively contrary in unbelief, although he is an unbeliever negatively or even privatively, because faith is understood to be true without any error and with all fear and hesitation cast aside; if it has fear or hesitation, it is not faith. The testimony raised from the Council of Vienna is not only no objection to these authors, but strongly confirms their cause and view. For when the synod condemned as erroneous and hostile to Catholic faith every doctrine either asserting or calling into doubt that the substance of the rational soul is not the form of the human body, it did so lest anyone think doubt and assertion should be held at the same degree and in the same place,

The council adds: “We define that whoever from now on presumes to assert, defend, or obstinately hold that the rational soul is not the form of the human body is to be considered a heretic.” These words make it clear that the council did not condemn as heretics those who called the matter into question, but only those who stubbornly asserted the contrary. We should not think the council omitted those who raised the question without reason. The teaching that calls Catholic truths into question is therefore hostile to the Christian faith not completely and absolutely, but imperfectly and incipiently; intermediate colors are in their own way opposed and contrary to white, not only the extreme color, black. From this it is clear enough that mere hesitation, without assent or dissent, is neither properly an error nor in every respect hostile to the faith. The fact that the saying “A doubter in the faith is an unbeliever” is placed before the others under the heading De haereticis does not prove that a doubter in the faith is truly a heretic; it proves that he is so by a legal fiction. The second chapter of that title shows this: “Leo says that whoever does not bring others back from error when he can shows himself to be in error.” But those who favor heretics and connive at their error through an inclination of the affections, not an error of the intellect, are heretics only by a legal presumption, not truly and properly. “An error that is not resisted is approved, and truth, when it is not defended, is suppressed,” says Innocent (83 dist., chapter Error). Why? For a person who fails to oppose an evident crime is not free from suspicion of secret complicity. Gregory also says, “He seems to agree with one in error who fails to correct what ought to be corrected” (same distinction, chapter Consentire). Pope Stephen, whose decree this is said to be, does not interpret himself differently. He wished to teach what kind of witnesses should be believed and, among others, rejects from the trustworthiness of testimony those who either do not know the truth of the faith or are doubtful about it. The Pontiff rightly assumes that such people are unbelievers and liars in giving testimony. Accordingly, that first chapter perhaps does not mean that people should be judged heretics on the basis of its statement, but rather that judges in a case of faith should know which witnesses are legitimate: it would be absurd for unbelievers to testify about faith against Christians, whether they are unbelievers through ignorance or doubt about the truth—or, all the more, through contrary error. I consider it highly probable that a person who doubts out of obstinacy rather than weakness loses the habit of faith. For any act of faith is removed by either a stubborn or a weak doubt. There is no ambiguity in an act of faith; if there is, it is no act of faith. Those who hold this view easily deny that the faith received in baptism can be lost except through heresy. White is driven away not only by black but also by yellow, blue-gray, and all the other intermediate colors. Likewise, faith is excluded not only by unbelief but also by the clear vision of God: “When what is perfect comes, what is partial will be brought to an end.” Nothing therefore prevents faith itself from being removed both by heresy, which is perfectly contrary to it, and by doubt or opinion, which are partly opposed to it. The final argument added is very easy to answer. An error contrary to theology has both false assent and obstinacy in falsehood, and so it is opposed to faith in every way, indirectly, through both intellect and will. Obstinate doubt, however, is perfectly opposed to faith in the will but not in the intellect, since a person who doubts has no error or assent as long as he continues to doubt. Anyone who wonders or doubts how, in this respect, the nature of contraries can be incomplete should admit that he does not know what a learned man is.

Since heresy is contrary to faith not partially but in every way, it follows that doubt is not properly heresy, however obstinate it may be. But is it enough for us to conclude that those who stubbornly doubt the truth of the faith do not seem to be heretics? I do not think so, although I approve one of these opinions according to metaphysical principles and do not reject the other according to moral philosophy. According to the rules of metaphysics and the laws of contraries laid down by dialecticians and natural philosophers, doubt has neither species nor form. It asserts and posits nothing that is either a thing or has the character of a form. Yet it is established that things properly contrary to each other are two forms that are maximally opposed. This sufficiently proves that doubt is neither heresy nor contrary to faith. But if we follow the rules of moral philosophy, which is concerned with what happens most often, it is quite unbelievable that a person who stubbornly doubts Catholic truth has no error at all truly contrary to faith. It is no wonder if someone has doubts about a particular conclusion or even one principle of theology. But it is scarcely plausible that a person should call into question not only certain conclusions in the Church but all the principles of Catholic teaching, assenting to none and dissenting from none—unless we imagine someone always hesitant and wavering about everything, for whom there is an endless question about every matter and no truth remains settled anywhere. Suppose, however, that such a person is found, always wavering between two positions. If he generally professes Christ, he also generally accepts Christ’s teaching. Assume, then, that he accepts the sacred Scriptures, or at least the authority of the Church. When he doubts any one doctrine found in Scripture or defined by the Church, if you show him either the Church’s definition or the plain teaching of Scripture, he must either abandon his doubt or believe that the testimony of the Church and Scripture is uncertain. For if he regards it as certain, he will banish all hesitation. The ecclesiastical judges, therefore, supported by the authority of theologians and jurists, rightly condemn as heretics all who obstinately doubt a Catholic doctrine. (This was sought especially in the fifth argument and its confirmations: what obstinacy is, and whether heresy can exist without it.) But now we must explain as briefly as possible what obstinacy is, since it is what most of all makes a person a heretic. It is not difficult to show that heresy cannot exist without obstinacy—which is the first question—both from the common agreement of all theologians and jurists and from the most weighty testimonies of the ancients. Among these are the famous passages attributed to Augustine (In epistolam ad Glorium et Eleusium; De civitate Dei, book 18, chapter 51; and Contra Manichaeos), as well as 24 quaestio 3, chapters Dixit Apostolus and Qui in ecclesia. The same point follows from chapter Damnamus, De summa Trinitate: no one is condemned as a heretic unless he presumes to defend a doctrine contrary to the faith; presumption—which common speech calls arrogance—is the root of obstinacy. And chapter Unica, De summa Trinitate, in 6: those are judged heretics who presume or rashly assert, and so forth. The Clementine, De summa Trinitate, states it more plainly: “Whoever presumes obstinately to assert,” and so forth. St. Thomas is so far from disagreeing with this view that he not only considers it impossible to find heresy without obstinacy but argues that obstinacy is included in the very nature of heresy (II-II, 2.6 ad 2; II-II, 11.2 ad 3; and In 1 ad Corinthios, lectio 4). He argues this first from the origin of the word: as has been explained, “heresy” comes from the Greek word for choice. A person is a heretic, then, only if he knowingly and deliberately chooses a doctrine contrary to the faith; this cannot happen without obstinacy. He next uses the Apostle’s testimony (1 Tim. 6): “If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness—”

“—he resists the Church’s teaching and is therefore obstinate; only such a person should be considered a heretic.” Moreover, as we have said above, heresy is maximally and utterly opposed to the Catholic faith. Faith is not complete unless the intellect’s true assent is confirmed by the will’s right consent. Heresy, then, is not complete and consummate unless a false intellectual error is confirmed by the will’s perverse choice. Just as constancy in truth is required for faith, so obstinacy in falsehood is present in the contrary heresy. It is fortunate that we have no opponent on this point. Therefore, even if the arguments were neither probable nor adequate to establish the point, the common judgment of all would still confirm this part of the definition. For no one thinks a person is a heretic unless he is also obstinate in his error. But many have questioned what obstinacy is, while few have resolved the matter. Whether it is called obstinate because one clings too tightly, or because one presses on with more force than is proper—these fine distinctions, too finely drawn, I would rather omit—it is nevertheless clear that the person called obstinate persists excessively in error, clings to a false opinion tooth and nail, and defends it fiercely. Some define the term this way: “Obstinate is the person who insists on holding what he ought to abandon.” A definition that is the same or very close is: “Obstinate is the person who persists in an error he is bound to leave.” These definitions are easily stated—who would doubt that? But if this explains the obstinacy attached to error that makes a person a heretic, then many people who are not heretics will be counted among them. First, if an error is contrary to the faith, I must flee and avoid it whether I see that it is contrary to the faith or am unaware of it. Those who think ignorance removes the binding force of precepts are badly mistaken. Believe me, ignorance does not free us from obligation; it prevents a forbidden act from being imputed to us as a fault. Everyone, then, even if he is ignorant, must absolutely avoid errors contrary to the faith if he does not yet hold them, and abandon them if he does. So if he persists in them even in ignorance, he is holding what he was bound to give up. But let us leave aside these subtle arguments, too refined for everyone to grasp, and pursue points that even the unlearned can easily understand. If an unlearned person has been warned by his bishop, by judges of the faith, by theologians of some distinguished university, or even by learned and devout friends, and still does not abandon his error, he plainly persists in what he ought to give up. He is therefore truly obstinate, if the definition of the word contains nothing missing or superfluous. Nothing, then, is lacking that is required to establish heresy: this person has an error contrary to the faith and is obstinate in it. Yet it is beyond doubt that such a person, though certainly at fault, is not a heretic if he does not think his opinion is contrary to the Church, but thinks either the bishop, the inquisitors (as they are commonly called), or the university theologians are mistaken. It therefore does not yet seem that what has been said reveals the kind of obstinacy that constitutes heresy. Nor do the many signs that so many people have needlessly sweated to produce reveal this kind of obstinacy. It is commonly reported that some have offered seven signs for this matter (Gloss on extrau. Cum inter nonnullos), others twelve (John Gerson, part 1 of Alphabetum, 14), and still others twenty (Torquemada, book 4, part 2, chapter 16). Since some of these signs are uncertain, it may happen that a doubtful sign is accepted by the judges of faith as certain; then a person who is not truly a heretic will be judged obstinate and heretical. But since jurists treat these and similar matters differently from theologians—jurists as far as things that can be grasped by the hand, theologians as far as reason and understanding are concerned—let us first explain according to theological rules what kind of obstinacy completes heresy, and then, if possible, give jurists signs and marks of this obstinacy, not many, varied, and ambiguous ones, but a very few that are fixed and constant.

(The first confirmation of the fifth argument is refuted.) The reasoning of theology requires that obstinacy that makes heresy not be measured by length of time—that is, that a person be obstinate only if he persists in error for a long time. Certainly, if it were established that someone had sincerely defended for only one hour the view that God is not triune, the Church would judge him a heretic. The Church customarily judges people to be heretics for a single act, however brief, such as worshiping idols or circumcising a child; it would not do so if the crime of heresy required a long and extended period of time. Again, if someone knowingly and deliberately renounced the whole faith, however brief a pause he made, the Church would rightly judge him a true apostate. So too a person who opposes an evident article of faith will be judged a heretic, even if that opposition did not last a long time. Moreover, just as no long duration is needed for the act of faith to be complete in every respect, the contrary act of heresy does not claim or require that the error persist over time. (What kind of obstinacy heresy requires.) Theology also teaches that a heretic is someone who willingly assents to any dogma even when he understands it to be contrary to the faith of the Church. For example, if someone knows that the thing he believes conflicts with sacred Scripture or a clear definition of the Church, yet still maintains his own opinion and judgment, this is true heresy, complete in its kind. Cajetan demonstrated this with an excellent argument (II-II, question 11, article 2). Faith is completed by the intellect’s assent, together with the will’s consent, in a person who knows that what he believes is Catholic truth. Unbelief, then, is completed by the intellect’s dissent together with the will’s consent, in a person who knows that what he assents to is contrary to the common faith of the Church. For opposites must have opposite definitions. This is confirmed especially by Augustine’s striking testimony (book 4 of Contra Donatistas, chapter 6): “Suppose that someone holds about Christ what Photinus thought … believing it to be the Catholic faith. I do not yet call him a heretic, unless he prefers to resist the manifest teaching of the Catholic faith and chooses to hold what he had previously thought.” Moreover, a person who holds an error contrary to the faith in such a way that he is unwilling to be corrected by the Church is undoubtedly a heretic, as Augustine likewise asserts in his letter to Glorius and Eleusius (24 quaestio 3, chapter Dixit Apostolus). But someone who sees that his opinion is opposed to the Catholic faith and nevertheless persists in it is unwilling to be corrected by the Church, whose authority he rejects and scorns. He therefore commits the true crime of heresy. From this it follows that the obstinacy that makes a person a heretic is always and only found in someone who continues to hold a doctrine that he knows is opposed to the Catholic view. The very meaning of the word shows this. A person is called obstinate when he clings excessively to his own opinion. Someone who knows his opinion opposes the common judgment and faith of the Church, yet persists in it to excess, certainly remains fixed in a private opinion. He is therefore truly obstinate; indeed, this alone is complete obstinacy, the only kind that absolutely conflicts with constancy in the faith and thereby constitutes heresy without qualification. For just as faith is completed by a choice in which a person who wills to assent to the truth understands that it is Catholic truth, so contrary heresy is completed by the choice of someone who knowingly and willingly embraces his own opinion against the Catholic faith. Who could be more obstinate than a person who—

What force of the Church’s authority could drive someone from the opinion he has adopted and proposed? Jerome therefore interprets this well: a heretic has been overturned and condemned by his own judgment because, by his own choice, he departed from the Church’s institution; that departure seems to be a condemnation by his own conscience. From these points follow two consequences. First, if a dogma is not yet clearly and certainly established as pertaining to the Catholic faith, someone who opposes it commits a serious sin—even if most learned men think it has been revealed by God. He is also obstinate if he disregards the authority of many of the most learned men and rejects their opinion with stubborn resolve. But he is not a heretic, because that obstinacy, though shameless and blameworthy, is directed not against the Church but against those learned and devout men whom he arrogantly despises and considers worthless. The second consequence is this: if it is certain and established that some dogma is a truth of the faith, a person who does not know that it pertains to the Catholic faith, and who, despite being warned by a bishop and again by those entrusted with knowledge of the faith—finally, by learned and devout men—defends his own position too stubbornly and obstinately, may be called rash, insolent, reckless, presumptuous, heresy-wise, and by any similar names. Yet even now he does not bear the mark of heresy, because, as we must say repeatedly, his obstinacy is not yet opposed to the truth of the faith and the authority of the Church but to the opinions of people who can both deceive and be deceived. St. Thomas rightly asserted (In Titum, chapter 3, lectio 2) that someone who is ready to be corrected according to the Church’s ruling is not a heretic, because he errs through ignorance, not malice. I take him to mean even gross ignorance. Affected ignorance does not remove the sin; such a sin would be committed as if by someone who knew and saw what he was doing. Affected error arises from choice, and a person is not ready to be corrected if he deliberately avoids the Church’s warning and teaching. But someone who errs from ignorance that is not affected is, in a certain sense, unwilling and resisting, not willing and acting of his own accord. He does not choose the error and will not be reluctant to correct it when the Church corrects him. But this is the first objection raised against our teaching: this error, arising from blameworthy ignorance, is a mortal sin, especially after a warning from a learned bishop, prudent judges, or wise theologians. Mortal sin, however, falls only under the category of unbelief, and St. Thomas defines only three kinds of unbelief. Since this crime is neither paganism nor Judaism, it must surely be heresy. Add that if someone killed another person out of blameworthy and stubborn ignorance, he would truly and properly be a murderer and incur the penalties prescribed by law for murderers. The same applies to those who violently lay hands on clergy and to all other sacrilegious acts. Therefore anyone who, after receiving Christ’s baptism, holds an error contrary to the faith out of gross ignorance is truly a heretic. An act arising from such ignorance is, without qualification, an act of someone willing and consenting. He may be excused from being so gravely at fault, but not from the guilt of heresy; it is altogether the same kind of act as if it proceeded from someone who was not ignorant. Add St. Thomas’s testimony in these words (In 1 ad Corinthios, lectio 4): “Some cannot be excused from error about articles of faith on account of simplicity, so as not to be heretics, especially concerning matters the Church solemnizes and that are commonly on the lips of the faithful. But concerning other things that pertain indirectly to the teaching of faith, such as that Isaac was Abraham’s son, no one is judged a heretic unless he fails to abandon the error even

after seeing what follows from it.” So far St. Thomas. These words seem so plainly to conflict with our teaching that there is no need to argue the point. Chrysostom too seems to oppose us (Homilia 6 in epistolam ad Titum), interpreting Paul’s passage, “correcting those who resist the truth with gentleness,” and so on (2 Tim. 2), as referring to people who resist the truth not from a desire to oppose but from a wish to learn the truth. But Paul was speaking about heretics, whom he elsewhere (Titus 3) ordered to be admonished and corrected once and again, then avoided after a first and second correction. I answer these arguments briefly as follows. We have said above that a sin may be placed in a category and species in two ways: formally and directly, or materially and by reduction—I ask Latin speakers to forgive me if I have used words that are not quite Latin. We have learned from the dialecticians that matter is placed in the category of substance, a point in the genus of quantity, and an embryo in the species of the living thing toward which nature prepares it—not perfectly and properly, but accidentally and in a manner of speaking improperly. Likewise in conduct, some sins are complete in their species: people knowingly and deliberately commit them, and these belong properly, per se, and formally to their species. Other sins are imperfect: people commit them unknowingly and unintentionally, and these are reduced to a species and genus accidentally. An error contrary to Catholic truth, then, when accompanied by the fault of ignorance, is referred to the species of heresy, but it is not perfect heresy or perfect unbelief, which, as we have said, St. Thomas divides into three species. The first objection is easily dismissed. The second is more difficult: why is someone who unknowingly kills a person a true murderer and incurs the penalties for murder if his ignorance is blameworthy, while someone who, after receiving the faith in baptism, errs against the faith neither truly commits the crime of heresy nor incurs the penalties for heretics? The answer is this. Neither theologians nor jurists call a person who falls into imperfect heresy a heretic, and in common, ordinary speech imperfect heresy is not simply and without qualification heresy. Only the one who formally and by deliberate choice fights against the common faith is called a heretic. Therefore, unless we name as a heretic only the person guilty of perfect and complete heresy, we will fail to preserve the common and proper use of the word. Since we showed this a little earlier from the origin and meaning of the word, from the testimonies of the ancients, and from common judgment, there is no need to go over the same ground. Hence the decree says: “We excommunicate every heresy that raises itself against the Catholic faith” (De haereticis, chapter Excommunicamus). It does not say an error that raises itself against a bishop, against inquisitors, or against theologians from Paris, Salamanca, Complutense, or Bologna, but one that raises itself against the Catholic faith. Hence also the words (1 Tim. 6): “He does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness.” It does not say the sound words of his bishop, of those who investigate matters of faith, or even of many theologians, but of our Lord. If someone does not agree with the words of Scripture or the Church’s teaching, he is a heretic even if he has not been warned by friends, theologians, or judges of the faith. Conversely, if, despite rejecting all their warnings and instructions, he does not deliberately reject the words of God and the Church but does so from ignorance, he is not a heretic. The same reasoning does not apply to other faults: when they arise from gross and stubborn ignorance, they do not lose their name and species. A murderer is not only someone who kills another deliberately but also someone who kills unjustly, even if he does so in a fit of passion or unwittingly. The same applies to other crimes. St. Thomas either

prudently warns the judges of the faith and commands them to assume and hold what they should not merely suspect, or else thinks that none of the faithful can be ignorant of the teachings constantly on the lips of all Catholics unless he has embraced error; or he means imperfect heresy, which requires neither obstinacy nor makes a person heretical simply and absolutely, but only in a certain respect. The same answer applies to those words we quoted above from part 1. Chrysostom is on our side, not against us. No one, neither Chrysostom nor anyone else, would properly call a heretic someone who resists a doctrine not from a desire to contend but in order to learn the truth, provided he is ready to be taught. Yet no one can question that the people Paul addressed to Timothy committed a serious sin. Therefore, with Chrysostom as authority, there is an error contrary to the faith which, although blameworthy, is not heresy, because it is an error of ignorance, not malice. If we follow Chrysostom’s interpretation, Paul was not speaking about heretics, who are so obstinately contentious that they should be avoided rather than admonished. The judges of the faith seem to follow this understanding when, as a general rule, they order heretics to be denounced without first giving fraternal correction. This rule, given generally, is full of wisdom, although not all heretics—as some falsely think—are so closed to the truth that they cannot hear it from a friend, especially a learned and wise one. Unlearned people should not commonly entertain this hope for heretical friends. This confidence belongs only to a few, the wisest and most prudent and closest of friends, who wisely recognize whose salvation need not be despaired of and who can wisely and kindly bring their friends back to the faith of the Church. We can understand Paul to Timothy to have been speaking about people who are not greatly hardened (St. Thomas, II-II, question 33, article 7). I do not want any person, however learned and friendly, to use fraternal correction in this most dangerous age, when most or all heretics are extremely hardened, unless he firmly and certainly believes the heretic will be converted sincerely. He must not put so grave a matter at risk on the basis of conjectures that are merely plausible or probable, especially since experience has shown how much harm attempted correction in a charge of heresy has brought to our people. A learned and prudent man should remember that Paul advises a woman to remain with an unbelieving husband because, among the nations to whom he wrote, there was then hope that a wife could draw her husband to the faith. But when the Church learned that among the Jews, especially, wives were more likely to be corrupted by their husbands, she wisely decreed that a wife converted to the faith should not remain with an unbelieving husband. By that law she overturned Paul’s counsel? No, she confirmed it. Likewise, when the judges of the faith, after many and serious experiences, establish a law ordering that a heretic be denounced even if his heresy is concealed, they do not violate but establish the rule of fraternal correction prescribed by Christ. The lawgiver did not oppose the rights of nature when he wisely decreed: “If your brother, your son, or your daughter, or your wife who lies in your bosom, or your friend whom you love as your own soul, secretly tries to persuade you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods, whom neither you nor your fathers have known’ … let your eye not spare him, have no pity or conceal him, but put him to death at once,” and so on (Deut. 13). The people must therefore carefully observe this law in the crime of heresy, lest by indulging a person through false mercy they act cruelly toward the commonwealth of Christ. (On the second confirmation of the fifth argument.) It is not worthwhile to debate here whether the Apostles were heretics. If someone admits this, what reproach—or rather, what abuse—could I use to turn him away from so great an error? Good God, what could be more absurd than to say that all the first ministers of the Gospel, without exception, were not only estranged from the faith but heretics? How much more truthful and modestly do those think who hold

that the Apostles of Christ sinned not from malice or deliberation but from mental disturbance and ignorance. The Lord plainly foretold his death and resurrection to them, yet they did not understand what was being said, as Luke says (Luke 18). Can we believe that after so many and such great disturbances among the disciples they doubted not from confusion of mind but from malice? The Evangelist explains the nature of their unbelief and hardness of heart: “Because they did not believe those who had seen him risen.” Yet those who had seen him were entirely worthy of belief, though they could still be deceived. Some of the Apostles, then, in not believing them, were hard and unbelieving toward many incorruptible witnesses, but toward human beings, not God. They were obstinate against people, not against God and his Christ. It is therefore manifestly foolish to accuse Christ’s disciples of heresy, if what we have said has been rightly set out and established in defining heresy. We have established that several things must come together for a person to be a heretic. First, he must have an error. Second, that error must be contrary to Catholic truth. Third, it must be certain and established that the error contradicts Catholic truth. Fourth, the error must be accompanied by obstinacy—not any obstinacy, but one that conflicts with the Church’s certain rule. Fifth, the error must occur after the profession of faith has been received, in someone who professes belief in Christ. Thus we have carefully and precisely defined for our theologians what heresy is, so that it may immediately be clear to them what a heretical proposition is. For in the mind the two things are exactly the same; in speech or writing, a proposition that expresses an inward heresy and is its sign is called heretical. But God alone knows the hearts and thoughts of human beings. No mortal can clearly know another person’s heresy, firmly conceived and grasped in his mind. Since speech, writing, and all other outward signs can sometimes deceive, it is not easy to express certain, fixed rules for judges of the faith by which they can judge heresies rightly and in proper order. Theologians, when they have established that some proposition is manifestly contrary to Catholic faith, may immediately call it heretical, because they sometimes speak of matters considered in themselves, according to their genus and nature, and sometimes neglect what they call the circumstances, or leave them to the judges’ trustworthiness and care. Thus they think they have done their duty properly if they have established only whether the error under examination plainly opposes the faith. But since, as we have said, other things are necessary for heresy to be complete under the law, it seems that the weakness and innocence of many people has not been adequately considered unless the judges of the faith are repeatedly warned to investigate the judgment, understanding, and mind of those who err with the utmost diligence—above all, whether they have the kind of obstinacy we have carefully and thoroughly defined. For this is the central hinge of ecclesiastical judgment in this matter. It is not enough, in order to pronounce a sentence of heresy rightly and justly, to have touched on heresy by suspicion; one needs a clear grasp of the matter, so that judgment about errors may itself be free from error. Unless a judge, as it were, holds these things in his hands, his judgment will almost always be rash and reckless. If civil laws prescribe, in a capital case, that the evidence be clearer than daylight, what ought Church judges to do when deciding cases in which not only the property, honor, reputation, and life of one person are at risk, but also the lasting and illustrious standing of an entire class and family? Come, then, let us set out rules by which Church judges can safely judge heresy.