Heresy

(from the Greek word hairesis — separation, division, sect) (Acts 5:17; 2 Pet. 2:1; Titus 3:10) — according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, consists in this, that people mix with the teaching of the faith opinions contrary to divine truth: such, for example, was the false teaching of Arius, who thought impiously concerning the Son of God; of Macedonius, who thought impiously concerning the Holy Spirit; of Nestorius, of Simon Magus, generally regarded as the patriarch of the Gnostics, of the Iconoclasts, of the Monophysites, and of many other heretics.

The word “heresy,” however, has a broad meaning in general, but is nearly always taken in a bad sense, namely: it denotes religious factions among the Jews, such as the Pharisees and Sadducees (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 26:5); or various religious factions within Christian society (1 Cor. 11:19; Gal. 5:20); or heresies in the proper sense, that is, willful distortions of Christian truth (2 Pet. 2:1). The best-known heresies in the Russian Church have been the following: the Bogomils (10th century), the Sorcerers (12th century), the Strigolniki (13th century), the Judaizers (15th century), Bakshin and Kosoi (16th century), the Old Believers and the Schism with its various branches (17th century), the heresy of Tveritinov, the Beguny, the Khlysty, and others (18th century), the Skoptsy, the Molokans, the Stundists, the Pashkovites, and others (18th–19th centuries).