What is a Cult? A Heretic?

INTRODUCTION

Languages are funny things.  Every human language includes words that convey meaning, forms that indicate relationships between words, and rules that define the proper method for joining words and larger blocks of information together to express a concept or an idea.  To the degree that two (or more) people share the same lexicon (combination of words and meanings) and other aspects of a particular language, the concept or idea that exists in the mind of one person can be communicated more or less intact to others.  However, to the degree that the structural aspects of a language differs between speaker and audience, the idea in the mind of the speaker will not be reconstructed accurately in the mind of the audience.  This is the source for misunderstandings between people.

This fact is complicated by the fact that languages in general are profoundly fragile.  The three aspects of a language mentioned above are all learned by each individual, and they change within each individual over the course of time.  As a young child, one is primarily influenced by parents, then by peers, and finally by a combination of teachers and peers.  Because no two people have exactly the same life history, no two people have exactly the same functional lexicon or grasp of the forms and structure of a common language.  This means that the potential for miscommunication, or more likely incomplete communication, is relatively high.  Added to this fact is the tendency for meaning and/or use of terms to change over time.  One example will suffice:

The term gay had a completely positive meaning and use 100 years ago.  To day this term is almost exclusively used as a reference to homosexuals or the homosexual community.  Use in its original sense has essentially ceased in order to prevent misunderstanding.

The two terms in the title have had a similar fate.  Today both are used as technical terms with a pejorative implication, and both are used popularly with a generally negative sense.  As in the case with gay, the current meaning and use of these terms is very different from those of the terms from which they were developed.

CULT, CULTIC, etc.

This word group has had a long developmental history in English.  As currently used in popular speech, it is invariably pejorative and expresses disapproval of group practice by someone who is not part of that group.   When the term is applied to a religious group or a form of religious expression, the term often implies the following:

·      A group whose practices are controlled or governed by the interpretations of a single individual or small governing body.

·        A group whose practices diverge from those considered normative by the speaker.

·      A group whose accepted religious texts either include additional texts other than those accepted as normative or exclude some of those texts accepted as normative by the speaker.

The author of The Kingdom of the Cults wrote the following: “A cult, as I define it, is any religious group which differs significantly in some one or more significant respects as to belief or practice, from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture.”  Now starting with these ideas, anyone could view any religious group whose forms and practices differ from what he/she approves as a cult with all of the negative implications that now go with that term.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, development of the term in English proceeded as follows:

Cult, which shares an origin with culture and cultivate, comes from the Latin cultus, a noun with meanings ranging from "tilling, cultivation" to "training or education" to "adoration." In English, cult has evolved a number of meanings following a fairly logical path. The earliest known uses of the word, recorded in the 17th century, broadly denoted "worship." From here cult came to refer to a specific branch of a religion or the rites and practices of that branch, as in "the cult of Dionysus." By the early 18th century, cult could refer to a non-religious admiration or devotion, such as to a person, idea, or fad ("the cult of success"). Finally, by the 19th century, the word came to be used of "a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious."

It is worth noting that no single term in either Greek or Hebrew corresponds to the Latin term cultus.

In the broadest sense, any religious expression that I don’t like might be popularly labeled today as the manifestation of a cult.  Now, Rav Shaul (Paul) actually did address this attitude specifically in Romans chapter 14.  There he addressed differing opinions regarding foods and ‘holy’ days.  His ultimate point was that each individual can judge only what is acceptable or unacceptable for himself, but he cannot make a such a judgment for others.  God is the ultimate judge for each individual, so one person judging another on the basis of preferred practices is inappropriate.

HERESY, HERETIC, etc.

As generally used today, these terms refer to an opinion, or one who advocates an opinion, that deviates from the norm accepted by some authoritative body (or the one speaking).  Identification of heresy or a heretic depends critically on the authoritative body that defines the standards.  For example, 100 years ago a radical mastectomy was the only acceptable medical procedure for treating breast cancer.  Any doctor that disagreed was a medical heretic and might lose his license to practice medicine.  Driver, one of the editors of the BDB Hebrew Lexicon, was defrocked and declared a heretic by the Presbyterian Church because he accepted the documentary hypothesis and rejected Calvinism.  Both examples correspond to the meaning and connotations of this word group as used today.  But it was not always so.

The term originated from a Greek root that is represented by three terms in the Greek scriptures:

αίρεσις   This term appears seven times in the Greek text of the New Covenant writings (Ac 5:17, 15:5, 24:5, 24:14, 26:5, 28:22, 1Co 11:19, Gal 5:20, 2 Pet 2:1), but it does not appear in the LXX.  In earlier Greek the term is used for that which is chosen; in the above passages it generally refers to those who have adopted a particular set of opinions associated with a particular sect or faction.  The term itself is not pejorative.

αιρετίζω  This verb for occurs only in Mat 12:18.  Here the usage is completely positive -- … behold this is my son whom I have chosen….  In the LXX this verb is used to translate the Hebrew root בחר, which is the common verbal root for choose.

αιρετικός  This is an adjective form that appears only in Tit 3:10; the term does not appear in the LXX and apparently does not have an exact classical Hebrew equivalent.  The usage in Titus refers to an individual who has chosen an opinion that causes division (i.e., a factions individual).  Delitzsch’s translation uses the participle form חולק, referring to a person whose opinion results in division.  This is the closest to the modern sense of heresy.

מין  The Hebrew Bible has no term corresponding to the modern sense of heresy, but there are a fair number of references to Jewish followers of Yeshua in the Talmud.  The term מין is consistently used in reference to such Jews.  This term literally means specie or kind; the implication is that Jewish followers of Yeshua are a different kind from us (Talmudic Jews), and so the reference is always pejorative.

SUMMARY

The meanings of terms in any language can trend to be very fluid over time.  Terms that were once generally positive may become negative, and vice versa.  A term that once was in common use may drop out of a language entirely and be replaced by a term from a completely different source.  When I was studying linguistics in graduate school, we spent a lot of time dealing with etymologies.  Unfortunately, etymology is often not determinative in the use of a particular term within a particular context or time period.  Any more I resort to etymologies only to evaluate historical development of meaning or when there is no other option available.  If a translator were to transliterate the terms cultus or αίρεσις into the corresponding English word, the meaning communicated today would be completely different from the meaning intended 2000 years ago.