Heresy:

Scourge of Christ Our King

by Fr. Winfrid W. Herbst, S.D.S.

It is the infallible teaching of the Catholic church that Jesus Christ is truly God; that He is truly God because He has one and the same nature with God the Father; that He was always God, begotten of the Father from all eternity; that He is also truly man; that He is truly man because He has the nature of man, having a body and soul like ours; that He was not always man, but has been man only from the time of His Incarnation, when He took to Himself the nature of man; that there are, accordingly, two natures in Jesus Christ, the nature of God and the nature of man; that there is only one Person in Him, which is the Person of the son of God.

Against these eternal truths various heresies, false teachings, have arisen during the centuries since the coming of the Savior. There were heresies on the divinity of Christ.

The Cerinthians, in the first century, held that the Savior was born of Joseph and Mary and that the Son of God came on Him in His baptism. St. John wrote his Gospel, that magnificence vindication of the divinity of Christ, against them. Again, the Arians, in the fourth century, asserted that Christ had not the nature of God but only of man.

They were condemned in the Council of Nicea, A.D.325.

There were heresies on the humanity of Christ. The Docetae, also in the first century, taught that Christ’s body was not real but only a phantasm and that His acts and sufferings were, accordingly, only apparent. These also St. John refutes in his Gospel and in his first Epistle. The Apollinarists, on the other hand, taught that the Savior had a

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Scourge of Christ Our King

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body but not a human soul. They were condemned in the Council of Rome, A.D.377. Again, the Monothelites, in the seventh century, taught that the Savior had only a divine will and not also a human will. They were condemned in the council of Constantinople, A.D.680.

There were heresies on the union of the natures in Christ. Thus the Nestorians, in the fifth century, held that there are two persons in Christ and that, consequently, Mary is not the Mother of God but of Christ only. This heresy was condemned in the Council of Ephesus, A.D.431. Again, the Eutychians, or Monophysites, in the fifth century, taught that Christ had only one nature.

They were condemned by the patriarch Flavian, A.D.448. And, lastly [this was published in 1932], the Jansenists, in the seventeenth century, forbade the worship of the Sacred Heart, the Precious Blood, etc. That heresy was condemned by Pope Urban VIII, A.D.1642.

Thus, during the course of centuries, have various heresies assailed the teaching of the Church regarding the God-Man, Christ, the Savior of the world. Heresy, it may be well to remark, abounds in the various Christian sects outside the Church today; for heresy is error repugnant to the faith, pertinaciously held by one who professes the Christian religion. It may be negative or positive. Negative heresy implies a denial of, or refusal to accept, a truth proposed by the Catholic Church; positive heresy asserts as a revealed truth something which the Church does not teach as such.

We must have charity towards all men and hence towards heretics also; but we must hate and detest formal heresy.

The reason for this, simply stated, we find in the words of St. Jane of Chantal as a child addressed to a Calvinist who said he did not believe in the Real Presence:

"So you don’t believe that Jesus is present in the Blessed Sacrament! Yet, Christ has declared that He is, and the Church teaches He is. So you mean to say that Our Lord is a liar! Well, if you said that to the King in my father’s house, he perhaps would kill you. And will not God punish you for calling His Son a liar, and not believing what He tells you?"

Let us often pray that all may come to a knowledge of the true faith.

(Taken from, The Divine Savior: A Pictorial Life of Christ Originally published by Benziger Brothers in 1932. It is currently out of print.)

St. Jane of Chantal