Note 719 — Lecture XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION: DOCTRINE IN THE PLACE OF CONDUCT.
Reading edition
The very terms heresy and heterodox bear witness to the action of the Greek philosophical schools on the Christian Church: αἵρεσις is used in Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. p. 13, of any system of dogmas, or the principle which is distinctive of a philosophical school: cf. Diels, Doxogr. Gr. pp. 276, 573, 388. In Clem. Alex. Strom. 7. 15, it is used to denote the orthodox system. Ἑτεροδόξους is used of the dogmatics from point of view of a sceptic: Sext. Empir. adv. Math. p. 771, § 40. Josephus uses it of the men of the other schools or parties as distinguished from the Essenes, de Bell. Jud. 2. 8. 5. For the place of opinion in Gnostic societies, with its curious counterpart in laxity of discipline, see Tert. de præsc. 42-44. He speaks of the Valentinians, adv. Val., as “frequentissimum plane collegium inter hæreticos.” Cf. Harnack, 190 ff., also 211. The very cultivation of the Gnosis means the supremacy of the intellect.