In recent times, the Roman Catholic Church has made efforts to rehabilitate "heretical" figures. And yet, without taking that bold step, Christianity would hardly be the world religion it is today. Many within the Jewish Christian community regarded with deep suspicion St Paul’s desire to open the Christian movement to Gentiles. Numerous figures before and since Arius have been regarded as heretical. Indeed, when he reportedly died of a massive haemorrhage in a public toilet in Constantinople, his great opponent, the Christian bishop Athanasius, called it a “wondrous” thing. Arius has hardly been given the thanks he deserves for helping to clarify a central doctrine of the Christian faith. It was largely in reaction to Arius's problem that the idea of the Son being equal to the Father crystallised, and was enshrined in the Nicene Creed in 325. Many within the Jewish Christian community regarded with deep suspicion St Paul's desire to open the Christian movement to Gentiles
His problem was with the idea of a subordinate deity, something that was accepted by a great many Christian writers (God the Father being considered greater than the Son, and the Son considered greater than the Spirit). The classic case is that of Arius, a fourth-century preacher who couldn't accept the full divinity of Christ. And so collective theological intellects are sharpened. This then provokes a stream of defenders of a theological point that perhaps hasn’t been fully thought out. They propose an idea that typically stirs an ecclesiastical hornet’s nest. “Heretics” sometimes inadvertently act as midwives of orthodoxy. This is because, at the time, no one could have accurately predicted what the outcome of contemporary theological deliberations would be. Today many scholars suggest we should refer to theological ideas that only later gained official approval as “proto-orthodox”. It was something that Christians had to think themselves into. Yet “orthodoxy” simply wasn’t available as a neat catechetical resource in the early Church.
Just as you might go to an orthodontist today to have your teeth aligned, in the past you consulted an orthodox teacher to have your beliefs straightened out. “Orthodoxy”, at its root, means “correct” opinion or belief. It only later acquired a pejorative sense when contrasted with standard Christian belief: "orthodoxy". Its Greek origin hairesis meant a particular group or school of thought. However, those who are quick to cry “heresy!” might reflect on its chequered history and ask whether “heretics” may even have contributed to Christianity’s growth.
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