By Roy B. Blizzard
Why do Christians believe what they believe? From whence came the ideas that are prevalent today in Christianity? Where did they originate and how did they develop? In this article we want to trace the development of Church doctrine. For those unfamiliar with Church history, some of the words, topics, and discussions will seem strange, if not ridiculous. Read the material very carefully. Terms are very important. Why? Because they give you an insight into the Western, or Greek, mind from which most Church doctrine developed. As you read, I think you will find it interesting to see how these ideas developed and to realize how much present-day Church doctrine developed from these early controversies or discussions, resultant from an attempt on the part of the Western Church to understand Jewish, or Eastern/Oriental, ideas and concepts. I think the information will provoke some thought and, hopefully, you will find it helpful. I have titled the information, "Heresies, Controversies, and Schisms in the Early Church."
The term, "heresy," is derived from the Greek word, 'hairesis', which meant "capture" (from 'haireo', or "election"; or "choice" from 'haieom') and assumed the idea of opposition to prevailing opinion or authority. In the New Testament, it signifies a way of life, a school, sect, or a party, not necessarily in a negative sense. It also signified discord and, finally, error. The term, "heretic" ('hairetikos anthropos'), occurs only once in the New Testament (Titus 3:10) and means a "sectarian" rather than one who was in error.
From the time of Constantine, the word, heresy, is used of false teaching. Philastrius, Bishop of Brixia (died C.E.. 387), in his Book of Heresies, numbered twenty-eight Jewish and 128 Christian heresies. Epiphanius (died AD. 403) listed eighty heresies, twenty before and sixty after Jesus. Augustine (died C.E.. 430) listed eighty-eight Christian heresies. Augustine said that it was altogether impossible or, at any rate, most difficult to define heresies, that the spirit in which error is held, rather than the error itself, constitutes the heresy. There are innocent as well as guilty errors. In the course of time, heresy was defined as "religious error held in willful and persistent opposition to the truth after it has been defined and declared by the Church in an authoritative manner."
Sectarian Movements Within Jewish-Christian Orthodoxy
The Nazarenes kept the law of Moses but did not reject fellowship with gentile Christians. They believed that Jesus was the Messiah, that his teachings were superior to Moses and the Prophets, that Jewish believers should observe Jewish laws, circumcision, the Sabbath, and dietary laws; but, these teachings were not imposed on non-Jewish believers.
Ebionites (from the Hebrew word which means poor, or humble) regarded themselves as the true followers of Christ and his poor disciples. They believed that Jesus was merely a man, a prophet, a spokesman for God. Some believed in the virgin birth. Ebionites considered Paul a heretic, because he did not require non-Jews to observe the Law, the law of Moses binding on all believers, observance of the law essential for salvation. These were the Judaizers.
Ebionites always used the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. (From them we have unmistakeable evidence that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew). Two principal branches, Pharisaic Ebionites and Essene (ascetic) Ebionites continued till well into the 5th century C.E. and beyond (as late as the 10th century).
Elkasaites: About C.E. 220, a Syrian named Alcibiades, of Apamea, brought to Rome the Book of Elcheasai (or hidden power). Elxai declared this book to have fallen from heaven about C.E. 101. Christ is described as an angel incarnated in human body. They mingled pagan religious elements with Jewish-Christian ideas and focused on astronomy and magic.
The Greek Menace
After the Church spread west, off Jewish soil, Christianity was embraced by the non-Jewish world, and the Church was confronted with a subtle and formidable force that would shake the foundations of Christianity to the very core.
This threat appeared in the philosophy and attitude of the Hellenistic mind. The danger manifested itself in an attempt to think through and present the Gospel in the categories of Greek philosophy. One distinctive feature of Hellenism was the sharp distinction between spirit and matter.
This philosophy seems to have entered Greek thought through the Orphic movement centuries before Christ and was perpetuated through Platonism and Neoplatonism. This marked the beginning of the trichotomy of man (Plato), physical-body, psyche-mind, and pneumo-spirit. (However, this is different from whatlater develops religiously regarding body, soul, and spirit).
In Greek Legend, Orpheus was the chief representative of the art of song and playing the lyre. He might originally have been the God of Darkness. From the 6th century B.C.E., he is looked upon as one of the chief poets and musicians. Using music, he was able to charm wild beasts and draw trees and rocks from their places. He was a seer, practiced magical arts, astrology, instituted mystic rites, and prescribed initiatory and purifactory ritual.
The doctrines of the Orphic school are founded on two elements: (1) the religion of Dionysius, with its orgies, mysteries, and purifications, and (2) philosophical speculation on nature and gods. They prescribed abstinence from certain kinds of foods and the wearing of certain kinds of clothes. They believed in original sin, transmigration of souls, and that the soul is entombed in the body. When completely purified, they believed the soul would become divine. Orpheus came to be looked upon as the founder of Mysticism.
Platonism: Plato, born in Athens, 427 B.C.E., was a friend of Socrates. Plato's philosophy embodies both the intellectual and the mystical, dominated by a pervading ethical motive. Dialogues are pervaded by two dissonant motives, a passion for human improvement and a persistent faith in the power and supremacy of the mind. These two great forces are persistent in Platonism: the love for truth and the zeal for human improvement. This was the beginning of philosophy – the search for truth.
Neoplatonism arose mainly among the Greeks of Alexandria. Its sole interest was religious (exercise of mind was considered of little value.). This introduced a new first principle into philosophy, the suprarational – that which lies beyond reason and beyond reality since neither perception nor rational cognition is a sufficient basis for justification or religious ethics. The higher sphere of knowledge, the suprarational, must depend upon divine communication, i.e., "revelation knowledge."
It adopted the ethics of Stoicism and considered Epicureanism its mortal enemy. It changed thought into an emotional dream and plunged into the ocean of sentiment. Stoics were ascetic – no emotion, a "stiff upper lip," practiced self-denial, rejected better things in life, were almost fatalistic. The philosophy of the Epicureans was, "Eat, drink, and be merry!" Neoplatonism's principal maxim was that man shall not live by knowledge alone.
Porphyry of Greece (C.E.. 233-304) offered Neoplatonism as a substitute for Christianity. Basically, the Charismatic movement is Neoplatonism. It has two divisions – "holiness" and "hyperfaith." But above all is the suprarational – revelation knowledge (divinely placed in one's mind by the Holy Spirit, rather than acquired by study) – and an attitude that the exercise of reason takes the mind off contemplation of the eternal in which condition one then cannot receive divine revelation.
The Gnostic Threat
Gnosticism comes from the Greek word, 'gnosis' (knowledge, enlightenment). During the first four centuries C.E., Gnostics were identified as a group of people who proclaimed salvation knowledge. Gnosticism centered around two general questions, the origin of the universe and God, and God's method of governing the world. Gnosticism tended to minimize the historical and to divorce faith from life. Gnosticism was highly syncretic, borrowing from Orphic and Platonic dualism, Syrian conceptions, Persian dualism (that both good and evil are in God), the mystery cults (the Bahais of the ancient world), Mesopotamian astrology, and Egyptian religion.
They made a marked distinction between body and spirit. Sin resides in the body. Spirits are held in the body as in a prison. Redemption consists in the liberation of the spirit from the body (as in Orphism). Christ, being God, could not have had a real body. He had a phantom body, or he was just an ordinary human being, became divine at baptism, and divinity departed before the crucifixion.
The Gnostics were either ascetic or libertine (shades of Neoplatonism) – if it is evil, deny it proper care; if it constitutes a prison house, abuse it in licentious living. Gnosticism led to the attempt to harmonize pagan philosophy and religion with Christianity.
Gnostics had no well-knit organization – they were too divided and too varied. Most remained within existing churches until they were cast out as heretics. Being everywhere, however, their influence is widespread even today.
Chief of the Gnostic teachers and schools were the Ophites, the Cainites, the Sethians, the Peratae (or Peratics, from the Greek, 'perao', to pass or cross, or to go beyond [the boundary] of the material world), Simon Magus and the Simoneons, the Nicolaitans, Cerinthus, Basilides, and Valentines.
Chief Gnostic Teachers & Schools
Ophites comes from the Greek, 'ophis', which means a snake, known also as the Naasenes (Serpent Brethren) who ascribed special import to the serpent as a type of gnosis (knowledge). Serpents were used as an amulet. They were a sect of Gnostics described by Iranaeus in Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 2, and Epiphanius' Heresies XXVI. They combined the mythologies of Babylon and Egypt along with popular cults of Greece and the Orient in giving honor to the serpent. Their system of deity was (1) the universal God, the first man, 2) his conception, the second man; (3) the female Holy Spirit and from her, the third man. Christ was begotten by the first and second man.
The Cainites were a Gnostic sect of the second century, also mentioned by Iranaeus, who believed that Cain derived his existence from the superior power and Abel from the inferior power. They regarded God as an evil being whom to resist is a virtue. They honored Cain, Korah, Judas Iscariot; changed vice into virtue.
Sethites, or Sethians, considered the third son of Adam as being the first spirit man and the forerunner of Christ. They maintained three principles – darkness below, light above, and spirit in-between.
Peratae were mystic tritheists who taught three Gods, three Logos, three minds, three men. Christ had a three-fold nature, a three-fold body, and a three-fold power.
Simon Magus represented himself as an emanation of deity (the great power of God). The sect of the Simoneans continued into the third century. Simon declared himself an incarnation of the creative world-spirit, and his female companion, Helena, the incarnation of the receptive world-soul. Here we have the Gnostic conception of the syzygy – a blending/melding (of spirit and soul).
The Nicolaitans were founded by Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch and one of the seven deacons mentioned in Acts 6. Their basic teaching was the crucifixion of the flesh. But, in order to know how to crucify the flesh, one must first indulge the flesh in all the lusts and passions thereof. Like the libertine school, but also with the idea of eternal security, they led lives of unrestrained indulgence.
Cerinthus appeared toward the close of the first century in Asia Minor. Cerinthus was an Egyptian and a Jew who had studied in the school of Philo in Alexandria. He rejected all the Gospels except Matthew, was strongly Judaistic, and demanded circumcision (Galatians 2:4, 2 Corinthians 11:13). He separated the earthly Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary, from the heavenly Christ who descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove – making a differentiation between the human and the divine.
Basilides claimed to be a disciple of the Apostle Mathias. He taught in Alexandria during the reign of Hadrian (C.E.. 117-138). He wrote twenty-four books on the Gospels and produced the first well-developed system of 'gnosis', but it was too metaphysical and intricate to be popular. The system was based on Egyptian astronomy and Pythagorean numerical symbolism. God was not only super-existent but non-existent. Everything created moves upward toward God.
Basilides held a three-fold Christ, the son of the first archon (ruler), the son of the second archon, the son of Mary. The death of Christ was necessary to remove the corporeal and psychical elements. His body returned after death into shapelessness. The soul rose from the grave and stopped in the 'hebdomad', or planetary heaven, but his spirit soared, purified, to the blessed first sonship and the fellowship of the non-existent, or hyper-existent, God, Jesus being the first fruits. All other pneumatic persons will rise, purified, to the same place.
Valentines was the author of the most profound and influential of the Gnostic systems. Iranaeus directed his work chiefly against it. He was of Egyptian-Jewish descent and Alexandrian education. He came to Rome about C.E.. 137 and remained there until C.E. 154. He was excommunicated and went to Cypress where he died about C.E. 160. In Valentines' Christology, there are three redeeming beings, the heavenly Christ, the redeeming Christ, and the Jewish Messiah who passes through Mary and is, at last, crucified, but since he only has an apparent body, he does not suffer.
Of all of the forms of Gnosticism, that of Valentines was the most popular and influential. It was divided into two branches, an Oriental and an Italian. The Oriental school held the body of Jesus to be spirit and heavenly, the Italian school that the body of Jesus was physical, and it was for this reason that the spirit descended upon him at baptism.
Other Gnostic Movements
Saturninus (Satornilos) was from Antioch and a contemporary with Basilides. He believed in a bold dualism between God and Satan, the two antipodes of the universe, and was known for his ascetic severity. God is the unfathomable abyss, absolutely unknown, and from him emanates, by degrees, the spirit world with angels, archangels, powers, and dominions. The Jewish God, the demiurge, is unable to defeat Satan, the ruler of of the 'hyle' (created matter) and is eternally banished to the realm of light. Finally, the good god sends the 'aeon', 'Nous' (mind), in an unreal body as Soter, savior on earth, who teaches the spiritual man by gnosis. Saturninius taught strict abstinence from marriage and carnal food in order to emancipate oneself from the vexations of Satan and from the dominion of the Jewish God, and to rise to the realm of light.
Manichaeism was founded by Mani, or Manichaues (C.E.216-277). Mani was a Persian who attempted to reconcile Christianity with Zoroastrianism, a dualistic religious philosophy mixed with pantheism, gnostic, and ascetic elements. In the third century C.E., it had many adherents in the West, and Augustine was much interested in Manichaeism before his conversion to Christianity.
Mani claimed himself to be the last and greatest prophet of God and the 'paraclete' promised by Christ. He went to East India and China and became acquainted with Buddhism, and in C.E. 270 returned to Persia. He was flayed alive by order of King Bahram I about C.E. 277, and his skin was stuffed and hung up for a terror at the gate of the city of Gunderhapur. The gate has since been known as the Gate of Mani. As the sect spread westward after his death, it assumed a more Christian character. It flourished until the sixth and seventh centuries.
The leading features of Manichaeism were the dualistic separation of body and soul, the ascription of nature to the devil, concealing of heathen views under Christian phrases and the haughty air of mystery. Unlike other Gnostic sects, Manichaeism had a fixed hierarchical organization which ultimately accounted for its endurance (apostolic succession). At the head stood twelve apostles, among whom Mani and his successors held the chief place. Under them were seventy-two bishops, and under these came presbyters, deacons, and itinerant evangelists. In the congregation were two distinct classes, the "hearers," or auditors, and the "perfect," or the 'electi perfecti'. The worship was very simple – four daily prayers, and turning toward the sun or the moon. They observed Sunday, made it a day of fasting, and celebrated in March the martyrdom of Mani.
The perfection of the elect consisted in a three-fold seal, Signaculum – the Signaculum Oris, purity in words and diet, abstinence from all animal food, and from strong drink; the Signaculum Manum, renunciation of earthly property and material and industrial pursuits, even agriculture; and the Signaculum Sinus, celibacy and abstinence of any gratification of sensual desire. The sign of recognition was the extension of the right hand as a symbol of the common deliverance from the King of Darkness by the redeeming hand of the Spirit of the Son. Manichaeism marks the beginning of the ecclesiastical Church.
Marcion & the Marcionites
Marcion was a native of Sinope, a seaport in Pontus on the south coast of the Black Sea, and the son of a bishop. He was reared a Christian, and came to Rome with great wealth around C.E. 139. Justin Martyr regarded him as the most dangerous and formidable heretic of his day. Marcion, although influenced by the Gnostics, yet was at variance with them in many ways. He rejected a secret body of knowledge or initiation into a mystery.
Extremely anti-Jewish, Marcion contended that Christianity had no connection whatever with the past, whether Jewish or heathen, but had fallen abruptly and magically from heaven. Christ had not been born but suddenly descended into the city of Capernaum in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius and appeared as the revealer of the "good god." He had no connection with the Messiah announced by the demiurge of the Old Testament (considered a lower god). His body was a mere appearance and his death an illusion.
The Marcionites practiced strict ascetic self-discipline, rejecting marriage, meat, and wine, and they admitted married people to baptism only after a vow of abstinence of all sexual intercourse (Tertullian 1:29, 4:10, Book IV). He wrested Christ's words in Matthew 17 to, "I am come not to fulfill the law and the prophets but to destroy them."
In worship, they excluded wine from the Eucharist but retained the bread, water baptism, anointing with oil, and the mixture of milk and honey given to the newly baptized. Females were permitted to baptize, and they held baptismal ceremonies for the dead (a practice found in Mormonism). Remains of the Marcionites can be found as late as the tenth century, although by the fifth century most had been absorbed into the Manichaeists.
Montanists were members of a movement distinct from both the Gnostic and the Manichaeists, but which flourished in the second half of the second century. It took its name from Montanus of Phrygia in Asia Minor. At his baptism, Montanus spoke in tongues and began prophesying, declaring that the Holy Spirit was finding utterance through him.
Two women disciples, believed to be prophetesses, were also considered to be mouthpieces of the Holy Spirit. The three taught that the Spirit had revealed to them the early end of the world and that the New Jerusalem would come down out of heaven from God and would be established in Phrygia. Christ would set up his kingdom and reign on earth for a thousand years. Dispensationalism is linked to this idea.
Believers were urged to be strict in their living. Celibacy was encouraged, fasting was enjoined; and martyrdom held in high honor. Montanism spread rapidly, and one of the most eminent converts to Montanism was Tertullian.
Carpocrates, who also lived under Hadrian at Alexandria, put Christ on a level with heathen philosophy, and sank to unbridled immorality. He believed Jesus was just the son of Joseph, except that his soul was steadfast and pure. His followers practiced magical arts, incantations, love potions, and communed with familiar spirits. They declared they possessed power to rule over this world. They were the first known sect to use pictures of Christ that they claimed derived from an original from Pontius Pilate. The son of Carpocrates, Epiphanes (means, the brilliant one), who died at the age of seventeen, taught that God gave benefits to all men alike and in common and, from this concept, derived the community of both goods and women. He was worshiped as a God after his death.
Tatian and the Encratites
Tatian was born in Syria, converted to Christianity by Justin Martyr in Rome, and died C.E. 172. Tatian was anti-Jewish, ascetic, and declared marriage to be licentious and a service to the devil. His followers continued into the fifth century and were called Encratites, or abstainers, from their ascetic life. Because they used water and wine in the Lord's Supper, they were also known as hydroparastatac, or Aquarians. The term, Encratites, was applied ultimately to all ascetic sects.
Justin the Gnostic
Hippolytus mentions a Gnostic by the name of Justin. Hippolytus classed him with the Naassenes (serpent worshipers). He assumed three original principals, two male and one female. The first is the good being; the second, Elohim, the Father of Creation; the third is called Eden and Israel and has a dual form, a woman above the middle and a snake below. Elohim falls in love with Eden, and from their intercourse springs the spirit world of twenty angels, ten male and ten female, and from these people the world. Naas, the serpent, committed adultery with Eve, and a worse crime with Adam. He nailed Jesus to the cross, but this crucifixion of Jesus also emancipated him from his material body, and he rose to the Good God to whom he committed his spirit and, thus, became the deliverer.
Hermogenes was a painter in Carthage at the end of the second and beginning of the third century. Tertullian described him as a turbulent, loquacious, and impudent man who married more women than he painted. He denied God created the world out of nothing and explained the ugly, as well as the evil, by the resistance of matter to the formative influence of God. He taught that Christ left his body in the sun and then ascended to the Father which he proved from Psalm 19.
The Docetae, or Docetists taught that the body of Christ was not real flesh and blood but merely a deceptive phantom and that, consequently, he did not really suffer and die. Docetism was the characteristic feature of the first anti-Christian Errorists about whom John wrote in 1 John 4:2 and 2 John 7. The term, Docetists, applied equally well to most Gnostics.
Antitactae, or Antitactes were licentious, antinomian (from 'nomos'=law, against) Gnostics.
The Prodicians were founded by Prodicius. They considered themselves the royal family and above the law, above every form of worship, even prayer itself, which they considered to be only for the ignorant masses. They also were known as Adamites, Barbelitae, Borboriani, Coddiani, Phibionitae, and by other unintelligible names. Almost every form of immorality and lawlessness was practiced, under the sanction of religion, by these baser schools of gnosticism and, from these schools, we can trace the corruption and perversion of Christianity through the centuries.
