O.K. Patrick, in the early days of the infant Christian church different viewpoints started to arise about just who the person and identity of Jesus Christ truly is. Some heretical opinions surfaced that challenged the apostolic orthodox tradition of who Christ is and also got the early church fathers thinking about how to clearly proclaim with dogmatic certitude what the church left in charge by Jesus truly believed about the identity of her founder.

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Here are just 7 of those heresies.

Sabellianism, or Modalism,

“attempted to safeguard monotheism by viewing Father, Son & Holy Spirit as a succession of modes or operations of the single Godhead.” ^[1] Sabellius, while not denying Christ’s divinity, denied that He was a distinct person from the Father and that they were one and the same being. The council of Nicaea in 325 taught in her creedal statements that the Son had the same substance as the father but was a completely distinct person from the Father. The son was complete in his deity and “contrary to Modalism, the Son is therefore eternally a distinct subject or person (in Greek, hypostasis) who shares in the one substance, or nature of the Father.” ^[2]

While John 1:14 states that the Word (the Son, divine Logos) became flesh and dwelt among us (Jesus of Nazareth), Docetism claims that he did not come in the flesh but only appeared to take on human flesh. All that pertained to His humanity, hunger, tiredness, bleeding, and death was only an illusion and not real. “And so Jesus manhood is simply a phantasm or a trick that God is working on us and the entire spiritual cosmos.” ^[3] St. John says adamantly throughout his first letter that Jesus has come in the flesh ( 1 Jn. 4:2), that He has touched Him with his hands and seen him with his eyes ( 1 Jn. 1:1), and that he came in water and blood (1 Jn. 5:6). St. Ignatius of Antioch argued that without the incarnation we have no salvation. ‘Caro salutis est Cardo’, ‘The flesh is the hinge of Salvation‘. The son really did take on human flesh and was complete in his humanity and did not just appear to take on human flesh.

Arianism,

taught that divinity rested in the Father alone and that to share his divinity with another would divide him into two distinct beings, thus losing his undividable and unalterable oneness. The Son of God could not then be divine but was a created being, argues Arius. “The son is not generated, begotten from the being of God, but rather ‘ex nilo’ out of nothing. The Son is not generated ‘per naturum’, according to the nature of the Father, but ‘per volunteer’, generated by the will of the Father, as you and I are.” ^[4] The Arian creed is summed up with the phrase, “there was when He was not.” The Council of Antioch in 325 declared “We anathematized those who say or think or preach that the Son of God is a creature or has come into being or has been made and is not truly begotten, or that there was when He was not. ^[5] The Council of Nicaea declared that Jesus is homoousian (of one substance/being) with the Father. Bishop Alexander argued that because God was Father, He must have always been Father, so the Word would be co-eternal with him, un-subject to change as he bears His image and likeness, naturally making him a begotten, not adopted son. The son is coessential with the Father as to his deity and is not a creature created by the Father out of nothing.

Adoptionism

proclaimed the view that Jesus was just a mere man and at his baptism in the Jordan was adopted as a son when the Word of God descended upon him, in much the same way as it had descended upon the prophets of old. He was an ordinary man up till this point. In a letter that was produced at Synod of Antioch in 268, six bishops stated that, “Christ, the one by whom alone the Father is made known, is not a man who has been deified, but is God “in essence and subsistence,” and as such is God from all eternity.” ^[6] The bishops claimed that this is testified by scripture, as to his presence throughout salvation history. “It is Christ who is “God before the ages,“ and while he is spoken of and known by many different names, these do not refer to different entities, but are aspects of the one Christ who is thus “confessed and proclaimed to be God before the ages.“ ^[7] The bishops affirmed that Christ eternally existed before the creation of the world and is the agent in which the Father created the world. He was born from the Father before the ages as His eternally begotten son and was not born a mere man who was adopted by God at his baptism.

Ebionism

insisted, like Adoptionism, that Christ was a mere man that was adopted at His baptism. The Son of God who descended upon Christ was not the Word of God, but the chief archangel in charge of all the other angels. They also believed that Jesus had no pre-existence and was just an ordinary human being. A traditional Marian title was ‘Theotokos’, the mother of God. She was mother of the Hypostasis of the Son who entered her womb and took from her a human nature and interwove it with His divine nature. St. Cyril states that “There was not first an ordinary man on whom the Word (Angel could also be added) descended; rather the Word was made one with animated flesh in Mary’s womb. The Word appropriated to Himself the birth of His own flesh; thus Mary is rightly called Theotokos.” ^[8] Mary is the Mother of God and not the mother of a mere man who was later spiritually inhabited by the chief of all the angels.

Gnosticism

was a complicated system of religious thought that has many variations, among them that there are many gods. There is the god of the Old Testament that created the world and The god that is revealed by Christ in the New Testament. Jesus Christ is divided into two divine eternal beings known as Aeons, who come from a group of about 30 Aeons known as the Pleroma. Jesus the Aeon descends upon a mere man where he attempts his mission of leading fallen humanity into a secret knowledge which will save them from the evil of the material world. All matter is evil and only the spiritual is good. This secret knowledge will free the spirit of its material imprisonment. St. Irenaeus refuted the Gnostics with scripture taking, “great pains to insist that the God of the Old Testament, the God of the Gospels, and the God attainable through reason are all one and the Same God. It was the preexistent Word who became incarnate, and Irenaeus applied again and again the formula one and the same to the Lord Jesus Christ to rebut the Gnostic distinction between the aeons Jesus and Christ “^[9] Jesus is the One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten, and not a mixture of two aeons, one which piggybacks upon an ordinary human being to impart secret knowledge to humanity.

Appolinarianism

affirmed the divinity of Christ but taught that Jesus was united to the flesh alone and did not have a human intellect, human will or human soul, thus denying that Christ assumed full humanity. “Since it is the human soul that is prone to evil and sin, it is necessary to discard this defective part lest it cause Christ to sin and so jeopardize our salvation.” ^[10] The argument is, if Christ had a human mind, will and soul, it would corrupt the divine nature. It was the divine nature alone that animated the flesh. This view was condemned by several different councils and most articulately by Gregory of Nazianzus. He said, “What is not assumed by the Redeemer is not redeemed. If the whole of Adam fell, then the Redeemer must be united to the whole nature of Adam in order to save it wholly.”[11] “Then let them not envy us this complete salvation, nor equip the Savior only with bones and sinews, with mere repetition of a man. ^[12] The differences in the natures is not destroyed because of the union, but are joined in harmony. This joining together is that which redeems humanity.

Nestorianism

argued that the human nature and the divine nature in Christ must remain distinct from one another in the incarnational union or otherwise they would destroy each other in creating a new nature. Nestorius argued that Christ had two physis (natures), each one having its own separate hypostasis (persons) together in one body; one divine and one human person. The Son of God does not actually become man, but is closely related to the human person of Jesus. Cyril of Alexandria argued against Nestorius saying “If we are truly to be saved, the Son of God actually had to become man. The son of God could not just dwell in a man or be joined to a man. The Son of God actually had to exist as a man. “^[13] Cyril said Christ’s humanity is so united to His divine hypostasis that they form one reality know as the Hypostatic Union. As soul and body are one reality, so are Christ’s humanity and divinity. The divine person of Jesus becomes the incarnate Word in that one reality. The council at Ephesus in 431 confirmed Cyril and condemned Nestorius. Jesus was not divided or torn into two persons, but is one complete person with two distinct natures, one human and one divine.

Various saints and councils

upheld the orthodox teaching about who Christ truly is against the heterodoxical statements of the heretics. While the heretics sewed confusion in disciples of Christ, the champions of orthodoxy sewed truth in the hearts of those who truly want to know Him who saved their souls from sin and death. The orthodox statements of the saints and councils leave the church with three distinct Christological truths. “It is truly God the Son who is man. It is truly man that God the Son is. The Son of God truly is man.” ^[14]

END NOTES

^[1] Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787) Their History and Theology (Collegeville, Minnesota: A Michael Glazier Book, The Liturgical Press 1983), 329.

^[2] Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap. Jesus the Christ (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2003), 60.

^[3] Fr. Dan Pattee, TOR, “Class Notes: Theology 731” (Unpublished Manuscript, Spring 2007).

^[4] Pattee, “Class Notes: Theology 731.

^[5] Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 55.

^[6] John Behr, The Formation of Christian Theology Volume 1, The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 2001), 221.

^[7] Ibid, 222.

^[8] Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 151.

^[9] Ibid, 38-39.

^[10] Weinandy, Jesus the Christ, 66, 67.

[11] Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 106.

^[12] Ibid, 68.

^[13]Ibid, 72.