With the visitation of a few new posters to this NG, I thought it might
be of value if we discussed, "Why do heresies arise?"   Certainly we
will not exhaust nor resolve this question, but we should at least come
to some agreement as to why and how this happens, especially when it
involves the very knowledgeable and honestly God seeking.

First off, we have a clear testimony in the NT, that heresy of the
Apostolic gospel was a problem even during the time of the apostles
themselves.  Many of Paul's epistles deal specifically with heretical
teaching.  The first 18 verse of John's gospel clearly speak against an
already existing heresy, namely gnosticism and its anti-Trinitarian
teachings.  This immediately calls us to the Arian controversy which
dogged the orthodox position for a great many years.  I can think of at
least 6 reasons why a given heresy might arise and gain a hold, even a
strangle-hold, upon the orthodox community.

The first is obvious. It is the failure to hold to the historic
teachings of the Church.  Contrary to Mr. BasicallyBlue's assumed
position, this not require an explicit doctrine.  That is, there was no
need for a creed such as the Nicene formula for there to arise
heretical, oppositional teachings.  All that is needed is merely a
simple lack of adherence to implicit teachings extracted from the
Bible. The Scriptures alone set (2 Pet 1:19) forth the proper and
necessary information from which one develops a theology.  Quickly we
must state, however, that the text itself is not a theology.  Arius and
his followers were not ignorant of Scriptures yet erred by drawing
wrong inferences from the teachings of the generation of the Son.  They
were unable to accept the idea of a pre-existent Son who was not also
created, contrary to passages that indicated the equality of the Father
and the Son.

[Most, if not all, of the great heresies were attempts to explain, to
come to terms with the sweeping implications of the birth, life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus. The events themselves were seen as real, if
totally unique, occurrences which required an exhaustive explaination.]

This ties in nicely with the second reason for heresy, the
unwillingness to accept and live with tension in Christian theology.
Obviously this does not marry to say that all theology must be in
tension.  However, in understanding divine mysteries of the nature of
God, often one must pronounce the understanding of God's unity and
plurality as not contrary to logic but nonetheless inscrutable.  This
Arius, and heretics before and after him, never seem capable of doing.
The truth about the Trinity the dual natures of Christ, as well as
other doctrines, requires one not to err on the left or the right.
Such action is what has given rise to most of the heresies of the first
several centuries of the church.  Heresies such as Ebionism,
Appollanarianism, Sabellism, Nestorianism, Euthucianism, and Arianism
reside on extremes which the resulting creeds hold the respective
truths in tension. Richard Hooker put it well when he said "Heresy is
more plain than true whereas right belief is more true than plain."

[Harold O. J. Brown, "Heresies."]

Thirdly, there is the question of why some heresies never seem to go
away.  Wayne House comments on this, writing:  "the lack of proper
ecclesiastical structure for the confrontation of heretics. With the
passing of the apostles, heresy was allowed to arise with little check
at times because of division in the church, generally east and west, or
because of extra-church imposition. Concerning the latter I speak of
the power of Rome under Constantine, in which he forced a resolution on
the church at Nicea. One might retort that actually Constantine proved
to be the benefactor of the church by calling the council and
introducing the term homoousios into the discussion. I would agree that
he certainly hastened the discussion, but hardly had the ink dried on
the Creed than Constantine and his successor son in the east ended up
supporting the Arian cause."  [Apologetics, p. 36]  So heresies were
brought under greater control in the first millennium church due to
greater unification of the church around the articulated faith of the
fathers and the councils.

Now we come to often discussed 4th reason -the deliverate misuse of
terms or confusion due to honest disagreement over which terms best
expressed the doctrine.  And excellent example in some parts of the
Arian controversy seem to be due to differences between the meaning of
terms used by the western church, which spoke Latin, with the eastern
church, who spoke Greek. Western terminology seemed to be modalistic to
Greeks; though this was disputed in the arguments of Athanasius and
Alexander, his teacher. Brown explains the results of the terminology:

In the effort to make this linguistic tangle intelligible, let us note
that when the Greeks described the Trinity as mia ousia en trisin
hypostasesi, 'one substance (essence) in three subsistences
(persons),' they could be misunderstood as saying, 'one essence in
three substances,' in other words, three gods.  When the Latins, on
the other hand, said, una substantia in tribus personis, 'one
substance in three persons,' they could be understood as saying one
hypostasis ('person') in three roles, in other words, of teaching
Sabellian modalism.  As frustrating as this linguistic tangle is to
examine at a distance of sixteen centuries, it is hard for us to
imagine the indignation and horror provoked among the orthodox by
dialogue partners whom they perceived as propounding tritheism or
modalism. Nevertheless, we may say in retrospect that the long
linguistic confrontation was useful both theologically and
psychologically. The distinction between ousia and hypostasis,
substantia, and persona, 'essence' and 'person,' had to be
clarified in order to permit us even to grasp what is meant by saying
that Three-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-are God, yet God is not three,
but One. The effort to gain a clear concept of what is meant by a
person as an individual, as applied to the Persons of the Trinity,
produced a better understanding of the nature of the human person as
something more than a mere temporary constellation of atoms, impulses,
and emotions.  ***

A 5th reason of heresy is that often orthodox Christians, even teachers
of the church, are willing to compromise on doctrine.  Continuing on
with this as related to Trinitarianism, it should be noted that 3
parties existed at Nicea.  These where the Arians, Athanasius and his
supporters (the smallest group), and a large group of bishops, many of
whom were neither skilled in theology nor interested in the controversy
per se.  Actually, it was this middle group which was the largest
contingent and they adopted the homoiousios perspective.  Constantine
desire was simply to the dispute thus serving his purpose by uniting
the empire.  At the counsel of his theological advisor, proposed
homoousios, which was readily accepted.  After Nicea and its
condemnation of Arianism, this large contingent merely set aside the
decision of Nicea by understanding the same essence as similar essence.

[I can't find the website at present which gives a great detailing of
Athanasius' historical role in the historical jockeying, power play.]

Last but certainly not least, the 6th reason for heresy is when the
sole authority of canonical Scriptures is rejected.  People who reject
the authority of Scripture do not have the apostolic word from which to
develop sound doctrine. For example, "Marcion was in a sense a
"fundamentalist," in that he believed that he was correctly
interpreting an authoritative, written revelation.  Montanus was a
"charismatic," who maintained that he received direct revelation
from the Holy Spirit.

______________
*** Brown, page 129-130, he further notes:

"The Greek term ousia is a noun derived from the verb 'to be';
the direct Latin equivalent is essentia, from esse, 'to be'; the
English equivalents are 'essence,' from the Latin, and 'being,'
from the Germanic root 'be.' Unfortunately the usual Latin term
used to translate ousia is not essentia, but substantia, from substo,
'to stand beneath.' Thus consubstantialis is the Latin translation
of homoousios. This is the source of numerous difficulties, especially
in view of the fact that for decades the Greeks used ousia
interchangeably with hypostasis. Hypostasis is derived from
hyphistamai, 'to exist' or 'to subsist, and hence has the Latin
equivalent subsistentia, from the verb subsisto. Subsisto, which
resembles substo, from which it is derived, is close to substo in
meaning, but while substo and its derivatives imply the
undifferentiated, underlying reality or substance, subsisto and its
derivatives imply a determined, particular reality, not the underlying
substance of which the reality partakes. Hence the Greek term
hypostasis, and to a lesser degree its Latin cognate subsistentia,
ultimately came to be used to mean what we know as a person: an
individual, determined, sentient, personal reality that partakes of a
general essence: the hypostasis, or subsistentia, of Mr. Jones is his
person, which is his alone; his ousia, or substantia, which he shares
with all other humans, is his human nature. Unfortunately this already
somewhat perplexing situation is made worse by the false friendship
between hypostastis and substantia; in fact, substantia is a Latin
technical term coined in the imperial period by analogy with the Greek
hypostasis generally was used to mean 'underlying substance' rather
than 'individual, determined reality,' i.e. 'person.' The
development of Greek theological language eventually used hypostasis in
contradistinction to ousia to designate 'individual, personal
reality, while the apparently similar Latin word substantia was used to
translate the Greek ousia and to mean 'underlying reality,' i.e.
'essence.' Latin borrowed the word persona, the 'person,' from
res, the 'thing,' to translate hypostasis. Unfortunately persona
has a direct Greek equivalent in prosopon. Prosopon was used like
persona to mean a (theatrical) 'mask,' and also 'face,' but
seldom to mean 'person' in the newly developed sense of an
individual, sentient representative of a particular reality."

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