Have you ever heard someone call another Christian a heretic? Maybe it was a teacher who changed his mind about the end times. Perhaps it was a theologian who questioned a popular doctrine. Maybe it was someone in your own church who asked the wrong question out loud. Christians throw the label around a lot, and it lands hard. It can end ministries, split churches, and leave people wondering if they’re even saved.
But what does the word actually mean? And more importantly, who gets to decide?
Who is a Heretic?
A heretic, in the most basic sense, is someone who holds an unbiblical belief that is so egregious it undermines their very salvation. It is not someone who disagrees with your tradition. Not someone who reads a passage differently than your pastor does. It is someone whose belief puts them outside the faith entirely.
That sounds serious. And it is. But here’s the thing, the New Testament gives us a very specific list of what actually qualifies as heresy. And it’s much shorter than people may think.
Is Kirk Cameron a Heretic?
Take a very recent example. In December 2025, Kirk Cameron, a lifelong evangelical, and well-known apologist, said on his podcast that he leans toward annihilationism. That’s the view that the lost are ultimately destroyed rather than consciously tormented forever in hell.
The response was immediate. Prominent leaders called Cameron a heretic. The controversy went viral across Christian social media within days. But here’s what Cameron actually said: “I believe in hell. I believe in judgment. I have not denied the authority of Scripture.”1
He wasn’t questioning whether hell exists. He was asking what the Bible says happens there and for how long. It’s a question Christians have debated for centuries.
Wes Huff Weighs In
Apologist Wes Huff, who personally holds to eternal conscious torment, responded on X with a pointed observation: “To condemn conditionalism/annihilationism as heresy is to say that John Stott, Edward Fudge, F.F. Bruce, potentially even Athanasius of Alexandria, are all heretics. This is, with all due respect, ridiculous. While the position might be unorthodox it is not heresy.”2
Huff is right and the reason he’s right is simple: the New Testament never puts the precise mechanism of hell’s punishment on its list of non-negotiables. Here is that list:
Table 1: Essentials of Saving Faith
Disqualifying Beliefs: Christological & Gospel Essentials
| Category | Description | Key Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Denial of the Incarnation | Claiming Jesus did not come in the flesh identifies one as a deceiver and antichrist. | 2 John 7; 1 John 4:2–3 |
| Denial of Jesus as the Christ / Messiah | Denying that Jesus is the Christ is tantamount to denying the Father as well. | 1 John 2:22–23 |
| Denial of the Resurrection | If Christ was not raised, faith is empty and believers remain in their sins. | 1 Cor 15:14–17; Rom 10:9 |
| Failure to Confess Jesus as Lord | Salvation requires confessing Jesus as Lord, implying genuine submission to his messianic authority. | Rom 10:9–10 |
| Rejection of the Son | Rejecting the Son means one does not have the Father; there is no access to God apart from Christ. | John 14:6; 1 John 2:23; John 3:18; John 8:24 |
| Belief in / Teaching a Different Gospel | Anyone who preaches a distorted gospel, including the addition of Mosaic law observance for justification, is accursed. This includes anyone who knowingly distorts the proper response to the gospel, whether by teaching that repentance is unnecessary, teaching a counterfeit baptism in place of immersion either in mode or purpose, or otherwise corrupting the terms Christ Himself set. | Gal 1:8–9; Gal 5:2–4; 2 Pet 2:1–3; Jude 4; Rom 6:3-4; 1 Pet 3:21 |
| Denial of the Need to Repent | Repentance is an explicit condition of salvation, not merely its fruit. To deny this is to embrace what Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace,’ treating forgiveness as available without demand for change. This is a doctrinal error about the nature of salvation itself, and a different gospel than the one Christ preached. | Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; Luke 13:3 |
| Notes: These items represent explicit christological and gospel content the NT treats as non-negotiable to saving faith. Denial is not merely error; in several cases the text identifies it as the mark of a false teacher or antichrist spirit (2 John 7; 1 John 2:22). ‘Rejection of the Son’ consolidates the unbelief texts (John 3:18; 8:24; 14:6). ‘Belief in / Teaching a Different Gospel’ consolidates the Galatians atonement texts with the false teacher warnings of 2 Peter and Jude and extends to anyone who knowingly distorts the gospel’s required response. This extension is a logical inference from Galatians 1:8–9 rather than a direct citation, resting on the inseparability of the gospel and its required response as presented in Acts 2:38. ‘Denial of the Need to Repent’ is included as a distinct entry because the NT presents repentance alongside faith, confession, and immersion as a unified coordinated response to the gospel, not as optional or subsequent acts. | ||
Notice what’s on that list. It’s all about Jesus – who He is, what He did, and what He requires. The incarnation. The resurrection. His lordship. The gospel itself. These are the lines the New Testament draws. Cross them, and you’ve left the faith. Stay inside them, and you’re a Christian, even if you disagree with your denomination on a dozen other things.
Belief Is Only Half the Picture
Here’s where a lot of modern churches go quiet. The New Testament doesn’t stop at belief. It pairs that christological core with an equally serious set of behavioral expectations. In fact, Titus 1:16 puts it bluntly saying that some people profess to know God but deny Him by the way they live. The New Testament treats persistent, unrepentant behavior as its own form of denial. It’s not just what you believe that matters. It’s what your life shows about who your real lord is.
That gives us a second table and a second word to go with it.
Table 2: Essentials of Saving Faith
Disqualifying Lifestyles: Behavioral & Practical Apostasy
| Category | Description | Key Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Persistent Sexual Immorality | The sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. | 1 Cor 6:9–10; Gal 5:19–21; Rev 21:8 |
| Idolatry / Sorcery / Occult Practice | Idolaters and those who practice sorcery are excluded from the kingdom and face the second death; the NT vice lists treat these as a unified category of false allegiance. | 1 Cor 6:9–10; Rev 21:8; Col 3:5; Gal 5:20 |
| Hatred / Murder | Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. | 1 John 3:15; Gal 5:20–21 |
| Greed / Love of the World / Materialism | Covetousness is equated with idolatry; if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. One cannot serve both God and money. | 1 Cor 6:10; Eph 5:5; Col 3:5; 1 John 2:15–17; Luke 16:13 |
| Practical Denial by Behavior or Lifestyle | Some profess to know God but deny him by their deeds: their actions contradict their confession. | Titus 1:16; Matt 7:21–23 |
| Apostasy / Unfaithfulness to the End / Denial Under Persecution | Willful continued sinning after receiving the truth leaves no sacrifice for sins. Whoever denies Christ before men will be denied before the Father. The letters to the seven churches repeatedly tie final salvation to perseverance. | Heb 10:26–29; Matt 10:33; Rev 2:7, 2:10–11; 3:5 |
| Divisiveness | A divisive person who persists after two warnings is self-condemned. | Titus 3:10–11; Rom 16:17 |
| Unforgiving Spirit | The unforgiving person forfeits forgiveness; God will not forgive those who will not forgive others. | Matt 6:14–15; Matt 18:21–35 |
| Sins of Omission / Failure to Show Mercy | The sheep and goats judgment condemns not for active evil but for failure to act: not feeding the hungry, not visiting prisoners. Faith without works of mercy is dead. | Matt 25:31–46; James 2:14–17 |
| Notes: These items are presented in the NT as incompatible with genuine saving faith and kingdom inheritance. Idolatry and sorcery are merged as the NT vice lists treat them as a unified category of false allegiance. Greed and love of the world are merged as the NT consistently equates covetousness with idolatry. Apostasy, unfaithfulness to the end, and denial under persecution are merged as overlapping expressions of the same failure of perseverance. Sins of omission (Matt 25) are included because the NT does not limit disqualification to active sin; failure to show mercy is treated with equal seriousness. The two most structural texts are 1 Cor 6:9–10 and Gal 5:19–21. | ||
So the New Testament gives us two ways to fall outside saving faith. The heretic departs at the level of belief. The hypocrite affirms the right beliefs but lives in persistent contradiction to them. Jesus saved His sharpest words for the second category. “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom” (Mt 7:21). He wasn’t talking about people with bad theology. He was talking about people whose lives told a different story than their confession.
Two categories. Two tables. Both matter equally.
What Church History Did With This
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. The church took this functional set of non-negotiables and spent fifteen centuries expanding the belief column while quietly neglecting the behavior column.
After Constantine made Christianity the empire’s official religion in the fourth century, heresy stopped being a pastoral concern handled at the community level and became a political and legal category with imperial teeth. Leaders called councils, factions maneuvered for power, and the winning side labeled the losers heretical regardless of whether they violated anything the New Testament considers essential.
The story of Athanasius makes the point well. He is now celebrated as a hero of orthodoxy, the man who defended the full divinity of Christ against Arianism. But he was exiled repeatedly at the whim of various emperors. At several points during his lifetime, his position was the declared heresy and at other times was official orthodoxy.3 His theology didn’t change. The emperor did. That should make us cautious about treating any council declaration as the final word on who’s in and who’s out.
Meanwhile, leaders ignored the behavior column whenever it proved inconvenient. Church councils declared men heretics for using the wrong Greek terminology while those same councils included bishops living in ways Table 2 would disqualify entirely. Medieval papal history makes the point loudly enough that it needs no elaboration. The pattern is consistent: the church policed belief aggressively and behavior selectively, and usually along whatever lines protected the people currently in power.
The Protestant Situation
The Reformation asked exactly the right question: by what authority does anyone define orthodoxy beyond Scripture? But it didn’t take long for Protestant traditions to rebuild the same machine they had just dismantled. Only the weapons changed.
Instead of exile and property seizure, the tools have become deplatforming, lost speaking invitations, coordinated social media pressure, and seminary blacklists. The power to destroy a person’s livelihood and reputation is real power, even without an emperor’s signature. Disagree with the tribe and you may find yourself on the wrong end of a heresy accusation that the New Testament simply does not authorize.
The behavior column stays just as neglected as it was in the medieval church. A pastor can hold all the right tribal positions on secondary issues while living in patterns Table 2 treats as kingdom-disqualifying and attract far less scrutiny than a scholar who reaches the wrong conclusion about the age of the Earth. The selectivity is not random. It follows the same logic it always has: enforce the standards that protect institutional power, quietly set aside the ones that don’t.
The Bottom Line
The New Testament’s standard is both stricter and simpler than what church history has made of it. Stricter because it takes the behavior column seriously in ways the church has repeatedly failed to. Simpler because the belief column is a short, practical list, not a deep dive into philosophical hair-splitting.
Heretic or hypocrite. The New Testament has clear criteria for both. The question worth sitting with is which column your own tradition works hardest to enforce, and whether the New Testament put those issues on the list in the first place.
References
- https://www.christianpost.com/news/i-believe-in-hell-kirk-cameron-clarifies-position.html.
- Huff, Wes (@WesleyLHuff). “With @KirkCameron announcing his position on conditionalism….” X (formerly Twitter). December 8, 2025. https://x.com/WesleyLHuff/status/1998190919539892630.
- González, Justo L. The Story of Christianity: Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 199-208.