Who Is the Real Heretic?

Here's a quote from J. Neil Alexander, a bishop in the Episcopal Church. It's from his insightful book entitled "This Far By Grace: A Bishop's Journey Through Questions About Homosexuality," Cowley Publications:

"In the broad sweep of church history, the heretic was often the voice that had no tolerance for ambiguity, the one who believed that the truth of God had been cornered in clear and irrefutable terms. It was not that the heretic's opinion was necessarily wrong or theologically untenable, but rather that the heretic had become something of a johnny-one-note. The heretic was unwilling to allow the truth as he envisioned it to stand alongside the truth as others were discovering it, thereby making it impossible for the community to find the still deeper truth for which all were searching. The heretic was the one who could not live in the tension between, for example, works and grace, and found it necessary to pick one and reject the other. Orthodoxy expelled the heretic, not necessarily because he was wrong, but because of his unwillingness to seek the truth as a shared experience of faith within the community of Christ. The heretic operates from a position of fear. Orthodoxy operates from a position of confidence, truth, and the ultimate truth of God in Jesus Christ."