WHAT IS A HERESY?
"NEW" HERESIES AND "NEW" CATHOLIC TRUTHS
CHAPTER 9
Student Notwithstanding these [points] the above definition or description of heresy seems suitable to me. Would you deign to indicate, therefore, how reply is made to the above objections.
Master Those who assign the above description try to reply in two ways. For they say firstly that any heresy is said to be new not because in truth of fact it begins newly to be a heresy, but because it is newly asserted, in that way of speaking by which any truths, even those that are necessary, are said to be new not in that they were not truths before but are said to be new because they have been newly propounded in public. In that way too some errors are said to be new not because in truth of fact they were not errors before but they are said to be new because they have been newly asserted. We clearly gather this way of speaking from the words of Pope Gelasius found in 24, q. 1, c. 1 [ col.966]. For he says, "Achatius did not become the inventor of a new error but the imitator of an old one." Pope Felix agrees with this in the same causa and quaestio c. Achatius [col.966] when he says, "Achatius was not the inventor of a new error or of his own error." We are given to understand by these words that if Achatius had been the first to affirm his error he would have been regarded as the inventor of a new error, and yet that error had been considered an error previously. For before they are affirmed by someone many errors are condemned by others who are not in error, and consequently they should be considered errors before they have an assertor or a defender; and yet according to one way of speaking, if someone were to begin to defend them they would be called new errors. In a similar way of speaking too certain Athenians said of blessed Paul, as we find in Acts 17[:18], "He seems to be a proclaimer of new demons", calling them "new demons" not because they thought that they had not been demons before but because they thought that they were old demons newly preached by Paul. In this way some people say that certain heresies are called new because of a new assertion or defence of them, because someone newly asserts or defends those which nevertheless should previously have been regarded in truth of fact as heresies.
Otherwise they reply to the above, as they say, without opposing it, that just as faith is sometimes said to be the credence by which we believe what we do not see, and in another way is said to be a collection of articles of faith, as we find in the gloss on Extra, De summa trinitate et fide catholica, c. 1 [col.5] - although it may also be used in another six ways as we find in the same place - so error as well as heresy can be used in two ways. For in one way an error can be said to be the act or disposition by which someone errs, in another way the very object of such a disposition or act of erring is called an error. A heresy too can be taken in one way for the act or disposition of heresy, in another way it is said to be the object of such a disposition or act. If we take heresy and likewise error in the first way, there can be many new heresies and new errors which were not heresies or errors before. If we take heresy in the second way, heresies are not said to be new unless they have been newly affirmed, as was said in the earlier reply, and a similar thing can be said about many errors.
William of Ockham, Dialogus,
part 1, book 2, chapters 1-17
Text and translation by John Scott.
Copyright © 1999, The British Academy
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