On Heresy

So generally, I assume that there is at least some connection between faith as being salvific and the propositional content of faith. As a friend of mine put it recently, you can't have a relationship with God without knowing certain things about God. I tend to think in the older categories of notitia (factual knowledge), assensus (assent that the factual knowledge is true), and fiducia (trust and reliance). These seem to presuppose one another, i.e., I trust and rely on a God about whom I know certain things and hold those things to be true. For example, I know the fact of God's omnipotence, and I hold to be true that God is omnipotent, but the real faith bit is my reliance on God's omnipotence as sufficient to steer the world, deal with my stuff, etc.

So what happens when one of the first two categories (or propositional knoweldge at all) is untrue?

Here's a simple example that most would accept: Someone who "comes to faith" in a Jesus who is not divine has the wrong object of faith (false propositional content). But does that prevent faith in the sense of relying on and apprehending the promise of God?

Also stirring the pot is that I hold fides apprehensiva: the idea that faith is a created gift of God that then apprehends or takes hold of God's promise, resulting in the application to the subject. So can we have a created gift of faith taking hold of a promise when the promise is greviously misunderstood?


Obviously, we didn't do the easy one first, though. Take another example: Someone hears the Gospel and responds, but shortly thereafter is taught e.g. modalism. It's not at all clear that the initial faith is in the wrong object, but subsequent propositional content (as well as subsequent notitia and assensus) are heterodox. This individual has been taught heresy, but we don't want to place the efficiency of proclamation with the one who proclaims, or we're all in trouble. A possible heresy in a sermon doesn't preclude God's activity in Word as a means of grace. So is the subsequent heterodox belief a fall? Then we have to allow for a lot of back-and-forth. One possible solution here is to have a proleptic grace based on present (correct) faith and yet-future correct doctrine, but I worry that this hamstrings the impulse to correct heresy, either polemically or irenically.

Now we get more complicated: An individual who comes to living, fruit-producing faith, and who after a longer period of time, engages in theological reflection and is intellectually convinced of a heretical position. I'm pretty sure this was me at one point. I'm prepared to accept that this entailed a fall from grace, because of theological reflection (even if mine was naive, I had the obligation to know better). Someone who assumes a heretical position after theological reflection is consciously (or at least culpably) rejecting orthodox faith, so I am pretty sure that this imperils the soul. (By the way, I am talking about actual serious heresy, not adiaphora. My example before was modalism, in my case it was full-on Pelagianism) So there seems to be something about intellectual heresy changing the object of relying faith to move one outside of Christ.

A worry: how in the world can anyone differentiate between individuals of the second type and those of the third type until after the fact? On one hand, we are not a particularly theologically educated society. On the other, in modern societies with such an emphasis on education, we may all be culpable in the "should have known better" sense. And if you are standing on the outside looking at this, how does one correct heretical doctrine in (pastoral) love?

Hey, I don't have any answers, I just come up with problems.