We have not exhausted the teaching of the Apostles respecting this plague of self-assertion and independent teaching, which even in their time began to afflict the infant Church, when we have considered all the passages in which the words "heresy" and "heretical" occur. There are other passages, in which the thing is plainly mentioned, although this name for it is not used. It has been said that "the Apostles, though they claimed disciplinary authority, had evidently no thought of claiming infallibility for any utterances of theirs."[86] But they certainly treated opposition to their teaching, or deviations from it, as a very serious matter. St. Paul speaks of those who opposed him in the Church of Corinth as "false apostles, deceitful workers" and "ministers of Satan" (2 Cor. xi. 13-15). He speaks of the Galatians as "bewitched" by those who would pervert the Gospel of Christ, and pronounces an anathema on those who should "preach any gospel other than that which he preached" (Gal. i. 7, 8; iii. 1). Of the same class of teachers at Philippi he writes: "Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision" (iii. 2). He warns the Colossians against any one who may "make spoil of them through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (ii. 8); just as he warned the elders of the Church at Ephesus that after his departure "grievous wolves would enter in among them, not sparing the flock; and that from among themselves men would arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts xx. 29, 30). And in the Pastoral Epistles we have several utterances of the same kind, including the one before us (1 Tim. i. 3-7, 19, 20; iv. 1-3; vi. 3, 4, 20, 21; Tit. i. 10-16; iii. 8-11; 2 Tim. ii. 16-18; iii. 8, 13).
Nor is St. Paul the only writer in the New Testament who feels bound to write in this strain. The same kind of language fills no inconsiderable portion of the Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude (2 Pet. ii.; Jude 8-16). More remarkable still, we find even the Apostle of Love speaking in tones not less severe. The Epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia abound in such things (Rev. ii.; iii). In his General Epistle he asks, "Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, even he that denieth the Father and the Son" (1 John ii. 22: comp. ii. 26; iv. 1, 3). In his letter to "the elect lady and her children" he speaks of the "many deceivers" who "confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh." And, in a passage not unlike the direction to Titus which we are now considering, he says: "If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting: for he that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil works."
The impression which these passages produce on our minds is at least this;--that, whether or no the Apostles were conscious of being protected by the Holy Spirit from teaching anything that was doctrinally false, they were at any rate very stern in their condemnation of those Christians who deliberately contravened what an Apostle had taught. And this sternness is not confined to those who resisted the instructions of Apostles in matters of discipline. It is quite as clearly manifested against those who contradicted Apostolic teaching in matters of faith. The context of the passage before us shows that by "a man that is heretical" is meant one who wilfully takes his own line and thereby causes divisions in doctrine quite as much as one who does so as regards the order and discipline of the Church.