Have you ever heard someone call another Christian a heretic? Maybe a teacher changed his mind about the end times. Perhaps a theologian questioned a popular doctrine. Maybe someone in your own church 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? The wordy heresy comes from a New Testament Greek term, hairesis, and it doesn’t mean what most of us assume.
What the Word Actually Means
Hairesis means “a chosen thing,” and in the New Testament it most often names a distinguishable party or faction.1 2 Luke uses it that way largely in a neutral sense: the sect of the Sadducees, the sect of the Pharisees (Acts 5:17; 15:5), the “strictest sect of our religion,” as Paul describes the Pharisees before Agrippa (Acts 26:5). When outsiders apply the same word to the early Christians, though, the neutral edge starts to slip. Tertullus calls Paul a ringleader of “the sect of the Nazarenes” before Felix (Acts 24:5), and Paul reports the same crowd calling the Way itself a hairesis, “which they call a sect” (Acts 24:14; cp. 28:22). Lexicographers note that these three uses already lean toward reproach, even though the word hadn’t yet hardened into a fixed doctrinal meaning.3
So the word carries no built-in accusation, but it isn’t perfectly neutral either. It names a group, and depending on who’s speaking, it can carry anywhere from plain description to a raised eyebrow. What turns a hairesis into something the New Testament actually condemns is one of two things it names outright, and they aren’t the same thing.
Destructive Heresies
The first is teaching content. Peter warns of false teachers who will secretly bring in “destructive haireseis,” and he defines the danger precisely: they deny the Master who bought them (2 Pet 2:1). Lexicons classify this use under a distinct sense of the word, not mere group-membership, but the content of a group’s teaching, its opinion or dogma.4 5 6 This is the sense most people mean when they say “heresy,” and it’s a real, narrow, textually-defined category.
Destructive Attitudes
The second is posture. Paul lists hairesis itself among the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:20, standing beside jealousy, rivalry, and dissension. He makes essentially the same judgment in 1 Corinthians 11:19, where he says factions must exist so that the genuine believers may be recognized. Read in isolation, that line sounds like approval, but lexicographers classify it under the same negative sense as Galatians 5:20, not with the neutral Acts examples.7 8 Paul isn’t endorsing factions there. He’s naming them as a fault the Corinthian church can expect out of the flesh, the same fault Galatians condemns outright. He drives the point home directly a chapter later: “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” even “I follow Christ,” and he calls all four factions fleshly and merely human (1 Cor 1:12; 3:3-4). Notice that last one: “I follow Christ.” The group rallying around the correct name didn’t get a pass. Paul condemns the act of forming an exclusive, competing camp, not the banner they formed around.
That means the New Testament gives heresy two faces, not one. A destructive hairesis can be a false teaching that denies Christ, or it can be a faction born of jealousy and strife regardless of what it teaches. Both wear the same name. Neither one is the meaning people attach today which is “a belief that differs from the majority.”
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.”9 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.”10
Huff is right, and the reason he’s right now has a precise textual answer. Annihilationism doesn’t deny the Master (2 Peter’s test), and holding it doesn’t require rallying a rival camp against fellow believers out of jealousy or strife (Galatians’ test). It fails both of the New Testament’s actual tests for a destructive hairesis. That doesn’t mean annihilationism is correct; it means the specific charge of heresy against Cameron doesn’t meet the biblical bar.
Table 1: What the New Testament Calls Hairesis
| Category | Description | Key Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Content: teaching that denies the Master | ||
| 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, stands accursed. This extends to anyone who knowingly distorts the terms of the gospel’s required response. | 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 stands as an explicit condition of salvation, not merely its fruit. Denying this treats forgiveness as available without any demand for change, and amounts to a different gospel. | Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; Luke 13:3 |
| Posture: faction driven by strife, not by content | ||
| Divisive Faction-Forming | Paul names hairesis itself among the works of the flesh, describing rival camps built on jealousy and rivalry rather than devotion to Christ. Even a faction rallying around Christ’s own name draws the same rebuke when it competes against fellow believers. A divisive person who persists after two warnings is self-condemned. | Gal 5:19–21; 1 Cor 1:11-13; 1 Cor 3:3-4; Titus 3:10–11; Rom 16:17 |
| Notes: These two categories share one Greek word, but they aren’t the same sin. The content column asks what a teaching says about Christ. The posture column asks how a group treats fellow believers who differ. Neither one depends on how many people agree with a given position. Romans 14 explicitly protects the opposite case: sincere disagreement over disputed matters, held without contempt toward the other side, isn’t heresy in either sense. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5), and “who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?” (Rom 14:4). | ||
Notice what unites both kinds of heresy. Every entry involves either denying who Christ is and what He did, or treating fellow believers with the jealousy and contempt Paul names as fleshly. Cross either line and the New Testament has a word for it. Disagree with your denomination on a dozen secondary matters, in good conscience and without contempt for those who differ, and you’re still standing inside the faith, whatever the label-throwers say.
The Sin the Church Doesn’t Call Heresy
The New Testament pairs its warnings about false teaching with an equally serious set of warnings about persistent, contradictory living. The church has never called this second category heresy, even though it disqualifies just as surely.
Titus 1:16 puts it bluntly: some people profess to know God but deny him by the way they live. Jesus reserved his sharpest words for exactly this. “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 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.
Table 2: Practical Denial by Persistent, Unrepentant Living
| Category | Description | Key Verses |
|---|---|---|
| The sin the church doesn’t call heresy | ||
| 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 | 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 |
| 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: None of these entries involve forming or joining a party, so none of them are hairesis in any sense the New Testament gives the word. That’s precisely the point. The church has a long history of aggressively policing the content and posture columns of Table 1 while giving Table 2 far more room to operate quietly, especially when the person violating it holds institutional power. | ||
What Church History Did With This
The church took this functional set of non-negotiables and spent fifteen centuries expanding the content column while neglecting the posture column, the very column Galatians and 1 Corinthians treat as seriously as any doctrinal error.
After Christianity became the Roman 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 had denied Christ or simply lost a political fight.
The story of Athanasius makes the point well. The church now celebrates him as a hero of orthodoxy, the man who defended the full divinity of Christ against Arianism. But various emperors exiled him repeatedly, and at several points during his lifetime his position was the declared heresy while at other times it was official orthodoxy.11 His theology didn’t change. The politics did. That should make us cautious about treating any council declaration as the final word on who’s in and who’s out, and it should make us notice how often the councils themselves ran on exactly the fleshly rivalry Galatians condemns.
This drift toward a fixed, technical “heretical sect” meaning didn’t start at Nicaea, either. It’s already visible in Ignatius, writing in the very early second century, who uses hairesis for a heretical sect in a sense the New Testament itself never quite reaches.12 The word was hardening into a doctrinal weapon within a generation of the apostles, well before the church had any imperial power to back it with.
Meanwhile, leaders ignored the posture category and Table 2 alike whenever convenient. Councils declared men heretics for using the wrong Greek terminology while seating bishops who lived in ways Table 2 disqualifies entirely, and while building the very factional power struggles Galatians 5:20 already names as sin. Medieval papal history makes the point loudly enough that it needs no elaboration.
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 a person may find himself on the wrong end of a heresy accusation the New Testament simply does not authorize, while the actual sin Galatians 5:20 names, the jealousy and rivalry driving the accusation itself, goes unnamed.
Table 2 fares no better. A pastor can hold every correct position on secondary issues while living in patterns Table 2 treats as kingdom-disqualifying, and he’ll attract far less scrutiny than a scholar who reaches the wrong conclusion about a disputed doctrine. The selectivity follows the same logic it always has: enforce the categories that protect institutional power, and quietly set aside the ones that don’t, whether that’s Table 2’s behavioral warnings or Galatians’ warning against the very factionalism doing the accusing.
The Bottom Line
The New Testament’s standard for heresy is narrower than church history has made of it, and it includes something most heresy-hunters conveniently exclude: the jealousy-and-strife-driven faction, wearing whatever banner it likes. Meanwhile the New Testament’s warnings about persistent hypocrisy carry equal weight to its warnings about false teaching, without ever borrowing the word “heresy” to say so.
Heretic or hypocrite. The New Testament has clear criteria for both. The question worth thinking about 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
- BDAG, s.v. “αἵρεσις,” 27.
- Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, corrected ed. (New York: American Book Company, 1889), s.v. “αἵρεσις.”
- BDAG, s.v. “αἵρεσις,” 27.
- BDAG, s.v. “αἵρεσις,” 27.
- Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. “αἵρεσις.”
- Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), s.v. “αἵρεσις,” 129.
- BDAG, s.v. “αἵρεσις,” 27.
- Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. “αἵρεσις.”
- 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.
- BDAG, s.v. “αἵρεσις,” 27, citing Ignatius, To the Ephesians 6:2 and To the Trallians 6:1.