The Great Heresies by Hilaire Belloc (1)

The blog Les livres d’Antoine on August 22, 2022, presents this major work in these terms: “For the first time, this remarkable synthesis of the great heresies that have happened through the history of the Church, has been translated into French. We must salute the event as the work of Hilaire Belloc is of rare clarity and intelligence. It is, moreover, of burning topicality.”

“Everything is said in a few dozen pages accessible to everyone. The theological aspects are synthetically described and followed by analysis of the historical and religious consequences of these movements. If he recalls that nothing remained of the Arian and Cathar heresies, which could have destroyed Christian civilization, he gives us fascinating pages on the probable resurgence of Islam (in 1938) and on the lasting influence and calamitous aspect of Protestantism, especially in its moral aspects.”

“The final chapter is prophetic. Entitled The Modern Phase, it alerts us to this ‘pagan devotion’ which will overwhelm our civilization and will result in ‘the destruction of all tradition and the rupture with our heritage.’ He quotes Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) and his remarkable book Lord of the World (1910), fearing the general collapse but recalls that ‘there will always be a resistance, a form of Catholic reaction distinguished by a certain vitality, a certain way of springing forth with unexpected force through new men and new organizations.’”

“A great friend of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) and Maurice Baring (1874-1945), this Franco-Englishman was a tireless fighter for the faith. His taste for controversy earned him many enemies, but his intelligence and immense culture impressed his contemporaries. Author of dozens of books, he is unknown in France where only a few historical biographies were translated in the 1930s.”

In the weekly Valeurs Actuelles of July 20, Philippe Maxence writes: “The Great Heresies of Hilaire Belloc seem to evoke old questions and struggles on points of detail, almost on the sex of angels. And we discover that this book actually describes our inner convulsions and the clouding of our intelligences. Belloc also sets out to show how these questions concern contemporary man, even when he no longer belongs to the great ecclesial body. How, indeed, to understand our history and our literature, painting or music, without knowing the great religious quarrels, at least in background? This is obvious for the author: ‘The study of Christian heresies, their characters and their historical destinies therefore presents a certain interest for anyone belonging to Western culture because, whether we like it or not, this culture remains inseparable from its religious substrate.’”

 “But what exactly is heresy? Belloc logically devotes the introduction to his book to this question. His answer, in two stages, is straightforward. From a general point of view, “heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.” With regard more specifically to the Christian religion, ‘it is about the subversion of its doctrinal body by the exclusion of one of its elements.’”

“’Heresy therefore does not work on large sets, but attacks particular points. The heretic makes his market in the great store of religious ideas. He does not deny the dogma of the Trinity, he sees Jesus as a man identical to the others, simply the bearer of a revolutionary humanism. He does not question the dogma of the indissolubility of marriage. He only believes that in the name of the evolution of morals and the pastoral care of accompaniment, a second chance should be given to love.’ Belloc remarks in his book: deriving from the Greek haireo, which means ‘I catch,’ the term hairetikos has come to mean the one ‘who chooses.’ Basically, the feature common to all heresies, and even more to all heretics, is the recognition of a single and unique dogma, to the exclusion of all the others: to be able to choose. Over and over again!”