A schismatic
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Hairetikos describes a factious or divisive person, one who persists in choosing and promoting a party-making course. Titus instructs the church to admonish such a person once and twice and then refuse further participation, because the continuing pattern reveals corruption and self-condemnation.
Reader summary
Full entry for αἱρετικός (G141) · Open the biblical lexicon
Hairetikos describes a factious or divisive person, one who persists in choosing and promoting a party-making course. Titus instructs the church to admonish such a person once and twice and then refuse further participation, because the continuing pattern reveals corruption and self-condemnation.
The BSB source-word alignment has 1 aligned row for this entry. Common renderings include a divisive (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Titus 3:10. Its strongest book concentrations include Titus (1).
Hairetikos describes a factious or divisive person, one who persists in choosing and promoting a party-making course. Titus instructs the church to admonish such a person once and twice and then refuse further participation, because the continuing pattern reveals corruption and self-condemnation. The adjective does not mean anyone who asks difficult questions, reports wrongdoing, differs on a secondary matter, or appeals a leader's decision.
Its immediate context concerns foolish controversies and quarrels that are unprofitable, followed by repeated correction and persistent factional conduct. Churches should identify concrete behavior, doctrine, fruit, and response to admonition before applying the label. The process protects unity through truth and boundaries, not through enforced silence or automatic exclusion at the first disagreement.
Hairetikos identifies a persistently factious person whose conduct continues after repeated admonition. Titus pairs patient warning with a real boundary when divisiveness proves settled and self-condemning.
But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, arguments, and quarrels about the law, because these things are pointless and worthless.
Titus 3:9 supplies immediate context by warning against foolish controversies, genealogies, disputes, and legal quarrels that are unprofitable and worthless.
Reject a divisive man after a first and second admonition,
Titus 3:10 contains the direct occurrence: admonish a factious person once and twice, then have nothing further to do with that person. Repeated warning precedes the boundary.
Knowing that such a man is corrupt and sinful; he is self-condemned.
Titus 3:11 explains that such a person is warped, continues sinning, and is self-condemned. The judgment rests on a manifested, persistent trajectory.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. a schismatic
(αἱρέομαι),
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
1 Greek text appearance shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
factious
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 1 case and number pattern. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
αἱρετικός is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Hairetikos does not give leaders a quick label for inconvenient people. Titus envisions a recognizable pattern: disputes that produce no good, correction offered more than once, persistence after clarity, and conduct that condemns itself. The church first admonishes, seeking repentance and restored fellowship. When a person continues organizing identity, loyalty, or conflict around a destructive cause, a boundary protects the body and stops endless consumption of pastoral attention.
Yet truthful disagreement may expose error, and safeguarding reports may disrupt false peace. Therefore the church must distinguish the person who creates faction from the person who names harm, test leaders and members by the same standard, document process, and avoid making institutional agreement the definition of unity.
Titus.3.10
Hairetikos is related to hairesis, a choice, party, or faction. In Titus it characterizes a person whose chosen course is factious, rather than supplying the later technical sense of every doctrinal heretic.
Wisdom condemns those who sow discord, prophets confront false peace, and covenant discipline requires witnesses and impartial judgment. Unity is preserved by truth and justice, not concealment.
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