"'Heresy' originally meant choice, and there was nothing pejorative about it. Only gradually did theologians turn disputations into condemnations. Only slowly was disagreement seen not as an opportunity for intellectual and spiritual vitality but as a threat to harmony, and it was then that churches became increasingly censorious, often proclaiming new doctrines not because they had discovered a new truth, but to repress dissonant voices within their fold. Sometimes, in imitation of absolute monarchs intent on eliminating all rival warlords, they tried to impose absolute obedience to their orthodoxy, on pain of excommunication. Sometimes, in response to the questioning of science, they tried to match its precision by envisaging God differently, no longer as indescribable and unfathomable, about whom nothing certain could be said, but as a leader larger than life speaking with precise commands." Theodore Zeldin