Quotes about Heresy

Heresy is the foe of countenance

O God and Lord, now the council condemns even Your own act and Your own law as heresy, since You Yourself did lay Your cause before Your Father as the just judge, as an example for us, whenever we are sorely oppressed.

Once a priest told us that no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy. He was joking, of course, but what I suppose he meant was the truth was so pure, so holy, that it was hard to emphasize one aspect of the truth without underestimating another, that we did not see things as a whole, but through a glass darkly, as St. Paul said.

The message of the cross will always be foolishness to some, a stumbling block to others. But if our attention is on the market reaction, we move away from the power of the gospel. This fearfulness to talk about the blood of Christ is an overreaction. Worse than that, it borders on heresy, distorting and deflating the power of the Good News.

You can preach heresy at a lot of churches, and people will not object. Leaders can lead double lives, and people will let it be. But, change the order of service, and it's time for a fight.

If you look at the history of heretics who are condemned, their transgression is normally about issues of authority, priesthood, administration of sacraments, and "Who's got the power?" I cannot think of anyone who was ever burned at the stake for not taking care of the widows and orphans, or for any issues of orthopraxy.

The major heresy of the Western churches is that they have largely turned around the very meaning of faith—not knowing and not needing to know—into its exact opposite: demanding to know and insisting that we do know!

Perhaps the True Self—and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)—will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion. Some will think I am arrogantly talking about being "personally divine" and eagerly dismiss this way of talking about resurrection as heresy, arrogance, or pantheism.

The great German scholar Helmut Thielicke once said that a person who speaks to this hour's need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth.

a person who speaks to this hour's need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth.

Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.

[E]very heresy is due to an overemphasis upon some truth, without allowing other truths to qualify and balance it.