Apostasy (airoaraaia, revolt), a forsaking or re- nouncing religion, either by an open declaration in words, or a virtual declaration by actions. The Greek term is employed by Paul to designate the "falling away" (// cnrooTarriu), which in his time was held in check by some obstacle (ro KaTt%ov, o Karsx<»v), 2 Thess. ii, 3. It means one of two things : (1) Political defection (Gen. xiv, 4, Sept. ; 2 Chron. xiii, 6, Sept. ; Acts v, 37) ; (2) Religious defection (Acts xxi, 21 ; 1 Tim. iv, 1; Heb. iii, 12). The first is the common classical use of the word. The second is more usual in the N. T. ; so St. Ambrose understands it (Comm. in Luc. xx, 2')). This airooTaoia (apostasy) implies cnroffTarai (apostates). An organized religious body being supposed, some of whose members should fail away from the true faith, the persons so falling away would lie d—oorarai, though still formally unsevered from the religious body; and the body itself, while, in respect to its faithful members, it would retain its character and name, might yet, in respect to its other members, be designated an a7rorrra<Tia. It is such a cor- rupted religious body as this that Paul seems to mean. He elsewhere describes this religious defection by some of its peculiar characteristics. These are seducing spirits, doctrines of daemons, hypocritical lying, a sear- ed conscience, a forbidding of marriage and of meats, a form of godliness without the power thereof (1 Tim. iv, 1; 2 Tim. iii, 5). The antitype may be found in the corrupted Church of Christ in so far as it was cor- rupted. The same body, in so far as it maintained the faith and love, was the bride and the spouse, and in so far as it "fell away" from God, was the ('nrotTra- cia, just as Jerusalem of old was at once Sion the be- loved city, and Sodom the bloody city — the. Church of God and the Synagogue of Satan. It is of the na-
ture of a religious defection to grow up by degrees. We should not, therefore, be able to lay the finger on any special moment at which it commenced. St. Cy- ril of Jerusalem considered that it was already exist- ing in his time. " Now," he says, "is the airoaraoia, for men have fallen awaj' (uTriarijaai'') from the right faith. This, then, is the awoaraaia, and we must be- gin to look out for the enemy ; already he has begun to send his forerunners, that the prey may be ready for him at his coming" (Catech. xv, 9). See Man of Sin. The primitive Christian Church distinguished several kinds of apostasy ; the first, of those who went entirely from Christianity to Judaism ; the second, of those who complied so far with the Jews as to com- municate with them in many of their unlawful prac- tices, without making a formal profession of their re- ligion ; thirdly, of those who mingled Judaism and Christianity together; and, fourthly, of those who vol- untarily relapsed into paganism. See Libellatici ; Sacrificati ; Traditobes (Farrar, s. v.).
At an early period it was held that the church was bound, by the passages of Scripture in which the sin of apostasy is referred to, either entirely to refuse ab- solution to those excommunicated for it, or at least to defer it until the hour of death. Later, however, this rigor against apostates was modified, and they were re- stored to the church on condition of certain prescribed penances. Subsequently ecclesiastical usage distin- guished between apostas;a perjidia-, inobediintiir, and ir- regularitatis. The two latter were reduced in the Ro- man Church to two species of defection, so that apos- tasia inobedientiat was made identical with apostasy from monastic vows (apostasii a monachatu), and apostasia irregidaritat is with apostasy from the priesthood (apos- tasia a clericatu). Both apostasy from monastic vows (when a monk left his monastery without permission of his superior) and apostasy from the priesthood (when a priest returned to the world) were punished by the Council of Chalcedon with the anathema, and later ec- clesiastical legislation threatened them with the loss of the privileges of the order and the clerical rank in addition to excommunication, infamy, and irregularity. It required the bishop to imprison such transgressors ; but apostates from vows he was required to deliver over to their superiors, that they might be punished accord- ing to the laws and customs of their orders. The state governments lent the secular arm to execute these laws. With regard to apostasy from the faith, an ordinance of Boniface III determined that apostates to Judaism should be dealt with as heretics, and this ordinance afterward regulated the treatment not only of such, but of all apostates. Toward apostates to Islamism, or so called renegades, the church exercises this dis- cipline to the present day. Toward the apostates to modern atheism the same discipline could not be ex- ercised, because generally they do not expressly re- nounce church fellowship. The Roman empire, as early as under the first Christian emperors, regarded apostasy as a civil crime, and punished it with confis- cation, inability to give testimony or to bequeath, with infamy, etc. The German empire adopted the pro- visions of the ecclesiastical legislation, and treated apostasy as heresy. The German criminal practice knew, therefore, nothing of a particular penalty for this crime ; and after the criminal code of Charles V abolished the penalty of heresy, the punishment of apostasy generally ceased in the German criminal law. In Protestant Church disciplines no mention is made of apostasy from the Christian religion to Judaism or Islamism, because this kind of apostasy was little to be expected in the provinces for which they were de- signed. The national churches pursued, however, de- fection from their communion through the customary stages of church discipline to excommunication. See Apostate.