Where did Chesterton's idea that a heresy was a fixation on a particular virtue within Christianity come from?

Question

In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton describes heresies as virtues gone wild and then attempts to connect a few dots to historical examples.

When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad.

Was this an original idea he had. Most people think of heresies as something incorrect or lacking, but adopting GKC's mindset that the heretical thing isn't what's lacking, it's everything else that is lacking seems to me both a good way to dialogue and a good way to understand orthodoxy in light of classical heresies.

Is this simply one of many of his original musings or does the idea have roots in Christian thought?

Answer 1

The oldest and most persistent heresies are all an extreme focus on something true. Trinitarian heresies (examples: modalism, tritheism) are usually hyper-focused on the oneness of God, or otherwise on the distinctness between the three persons. Christological heresies (examples: arianism docetism) are either hyper-focused on the divinity or hyper-focused on the humanity of Christ. The idea that these are just virtues run wild, or otherwise true beliefs run wild, seems more like something that's just plainly true to those familiar with the history of heresies.

To the particular example in the question, we in the West, post-reformation, are hyper-focused on the poor and the victimized, to the point of echoing Judas' sentiments in John 12:5, as one example. For another, older protestants often took moral virtues (rather than intellectual virtues regarding the nature of God and Christ) to an extreme, making them indeed no longer virtues. For instance, the American Puritans emphasized detachment from worldly pleasure to an unhealthy degree. Some modern day Baptist sects still take this virtue to an extreme with their prohibition against alcohol consumption.

There were/are intellectual virtues taken to an extreme by Protestants, as well. For instance, the doctrine of Sola Fide is a recognition that we cannot be saved except by Christ's sacrifice run wild. It goes so far as to dismiss any works we might do as being not efficacious. It goes further than merely recognizing that we are only saved by Christ, but that true belief, that we cannot save ourselves, is the root of the heresy.