In Christian usage, a heretic is someone who opposes the doctrines of the established church. He is still a believer – you would not call an atheist or a Muslim a heretic. But he feels the Church’s teaching are wrong – so wrong that he leaves the church to join (or start) another.
What a heretic believes is called heresy. The opposite is called orthodoxy – Greek for “straight teaching”. Heresy is also Greek, it means “choice” – perhaps because heretics choose what to believe or have chosen sides against the Church. We first see the word in 180 in the writings of Irenaeus against the Gnostics.
A heresy is different than a schism, which is when a church breaks up not over doctrine but for political reasons. As when Henry VIII took over the Church of England from the pope.
The word heretic has fallen way out of fashion. And I mean way. Not even the Catholic Church seems to use it anymore. Have you ever heard it call Billy Graham a heretic, for example? It seems to have become one of those sins the Middle Ages used to take seriously but which no one does now. You know, like usury, sloth and gluttony. The Middle Ages not only named heretics, they burned them.
All that burning has given the word a bad name. But there is more to it than just that. Two other words stand in its way: ecumenism and tolerance.
Ecumenism: the Christian Church is divided up into a few large churches and thousands of smaller ones. For the past sixty years or so some have harboured hopes that the unity of the Church could be restored, at least in part. So there has been talks but no real progress. Yet calling one another heretics would end all that.
Tolerance: We live in an age where many no longer believe in absolute truth. But if it is not absolute, then who am I to tell you what is true? Who am I to tell you that you are wrong?
It is possible to dress in bad taste, but it is no longer possible to be wrong about the deep questions of life: God (or gods), reality, morals, the afterlife, that sort of thing. Everyone chooses what to believe and it is bad manners to tell someone he is wrong. Live and let live.
But this only makes sense if the truth is not absolute or at least unattainable. Otherwise it is cold-hearted and dangerous.
If you saw a child opening a bottle of poison, would you say, “Live and let live”? No, of course not. But if you saw someone heading for hell, what are you supposed to do? Keep your mouth shut. You see?
The same goes for the statement that “heretics are not wrong – they were just on the losing side of history”. If the absolute truth exists, then it is possible to be a heretic for real and not just in the opinion of your enemies.
See also:
Abagond 
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