The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ---John 17
How important is the "purity" of the church? Is the church supposed to be a place for sinners or is membership reserved for the identifiably saved? Should there be a type of two-level admission process? The earliest churches used baptism as the boundary between the saved membership and a not-quite-ready-for-communion group. Taking Paul seriously, early Christians were certain that the eucharist (communion) ritual was physically dangerous for the uninitiated. First Corinthians chapter 11 outlines the risk of "eating the bread or drinking the cup in an unworthy manner." Those who did so were subject to judgement and, Paul says, "For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died."
And so a process of observation and learning developed for those who wanted to join the church. The newcomer was called a Communicant or Catechumen and could participate in most of the ecclesiastical activities described by Paul in 1 Corinthians with the major exception of eating the bread and drinking the cup. The newbies would exit and go home at that point in the program.
Every spring at Easter, after a long period of fasting and soul-searching (which later became Lent), a Catechumen graduated by being baptized into the ranks of those whose salvation was assured. By publicly assenting to the core doctrines of the church at the time, they could be counted on to support the hierarchy of priests, bishops, and post-Constantine, the emperor.
This is how the church aimed for unity in it's earliest forms; clear boundaries and firm commitments to a set of authoritative truths. The problem was that not everyone agreed on what defined the boundaries and what specific truths must be affirmed.
The dream of church unity was never achieved, even from its earliest moments. The promise of a pure, cohesive, univocal reflection of the perfection of God by universal alignment to one unassailable truth has tantalized the church for twenty centuries, with no apparent progress.
Usually we hear that unity in the Church is tremendously important, and the pathway to obtain it travels straight through the land of doctrinal agreement. Some of the church's earliest writings show a real concern for correctness and agreement on one version of truth. Paul, writing to chastise the Corinthians on their lack of unity says: "Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you..." the authors of First, Second and Third John are very concerned about false teachers. Second Peter records this observation: "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions."
And as time went on, the fight over truth just got more intense. It stands to reason of course, that if there's one God and one truth, and the church has become the steward of that reality, we should all agree on the core principles that interpret the world we find ourselves in.
But here we are.
Imagine for a moment that one modern system of belief is somehow affirmed as the single orthodox "Truth." Imagine that one of our current theological flavors wins out completely and all churches, Roman Catholic included, has to sign off on it. This could not be done without a creed or statement of faith- and that is usually what we do when trying to build consensus.
Where do we get the ideas for what goes into our new universal creed? Unless it can show some kind of pedigree or provenance from ancient days, not many would assent to it. Even the oldest creeds of the church were summaries of positions that were already long tested by debate and dissent.
To that end, many churches use the Nicene or Apostles' Creed, sometimes both. Now, some might breathe a sigh of relief that we indeed have a set of statements that a) draw a doctrinal line between saved and unsaved and b) provide a unifying pole star for the entire church. One might also find themselves under the misapprehension that Athanasius and his doctrinal allies settled things in 325 CE when the Nicene Creed was completed and published.
It actually took another 56 years of fighting to finally settle things down.
Council of Constantinople in 381 finally produced an edited version of the original Creed that included language that satisfied a faction called the "Pneumatomachi" (Spirit-Fighters) who refused to admit the Holy Spirit as a full member of the Trinity. God the Father and God the Son were of "similar substance" (homoiousios), but the Spirit was something different altogether. This means that a major branch of the church in the mid-fourth century was Binitarian.
Would a modern Catholic, Baptist or Pentecostal church admit a Binitarian as a member? What would they say about that poor Binitarian's salvation? What would they say about their spiritual family tree, which has an entire proud and ancient branch of Binitarians? Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, Eustathius, Bishop of Sebastia and other powerful fourth century church leaders might take issue with any modern mockery of their hard-won position. They were all convinced that they had it right!
The modern 21st Century church and all its certainties, statements of faith, doctrinal assertions and systematic theologies, are descended from a large discordant family of discontented dissenters who failed to find agreement on much of anything from the earliest days of the church's existence.
Have we inherited truths of a pure, authentic and simple disposition? Has there been an unbroken line of orthodox belief that we can depend on as reliable? Can we really claim that we belong to a through-line of true believers that were committed to the exact same truths we hold in our day?
One look at church history gives you a speedy and obvious answer: No. And here's more evidence of the shifting theological sands in the history of the church. What follows is a very abbreviated summary of so-called heresies that were finally vanquished by the maneuvering of what later become two orthodoxies, one in Constantinople and one in Rome. Note that many of these heresies aren't completely extinguished, just relegated to the margins of mainstream Christendom.
Docetism
Starting with the gnostic-platonic assumption that creation is essentially bad and corrupt, a Docetist agreed that there is an obvious dualism to existence- the spiritual and the physical. We should attain to the spiritual and shrug off the evil that is inherent in our material body as Paul suggests in Romans 7 and 2 Corinthians 4. Docetism even gets a mention in 2 John verse 7:
"Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist!"
Docetism asserts that Jesus never had a fleshly body like ours. How could he? He lived a sinless life, perfectly aligned with God the Father's will. Only beings that live on a spiritual plane could possibly achieve that. Therefore, the human body Jesus apparently inhabited was simply an illusion.
Ignatius of Antioch especially disliked this view partly because his ambition was to suffer like Christ by martyrdom, and if Jesus only "seemed' to suffer, Ignatius's hopes for a glorious death were misplaced.
This view addresses the thorny problem of Materialism, or the idea that God or spiritual beings have some kind of material existence, different as it might be from ours. "Ousia" language lends itself to picturing a "substance" that is somehow tangible, for example, angels made of fire or deities in the night sky visibly shining. Was there some kind of ethereal matter that gives form to God?
Montanism
Montanus was a convert in Phrygia, a region in central Asia minor (today's Türkiye) whose specialty was prophesying in a trance-like state under the influence of the Holy Spirit. While this did not at first directly appear to contradict the contemporary understanding of biblical prophecy, his style and methods eventually did cross some lines. Montanus's charismatic practices featured himself and two prophetesses passively channeling the Holy Spirit.
This concerned a few bishops because it led to possible additions or changes to the authoritative writings used in the church, and though an official canon of writings would not be decided on until a couple of centuries later, it seemed disorderly to add these ecstatic speeches to the teachings of Christ and the Apostles.
There was also the matter of eschatology. Montanus and his followers took the Parousia even more seriously than most other Christians, and insisted that the New Jerusalem would land in Phrygia any day now. Montanists also promoted a very strict ascetic lifestyle, martyrdom if one could get it, and discouraged marriage in light of the impending return of Christ.
Side note- Tertullian, the famous Carthaginian theologian, joined up with the Montanists around 206 CE, mostly in protest of the improprieties of many western bishops.
Adoptionism
All four gospels contain an account of Jesus's baptism. As Jesus emerges from the Jordan river, God's voice can be heard saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” For adoptionists, that indicates the moment Jesus was imbued with divinity. With the exception of John, the gospels don't say much of anything about Jesus's pre-existence. Reading Paul's letters tends to reinforce the idea: "… concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power… by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…" in Romans 1.
Adoptionism lands in the non-Trinitarian zone by virtue of their distaste for an incarnational view. Jesus became God at a certain point in his earthly sojourn, Matthew and Luke embed Jesus in very human genealogies, and focus on his baptism by John as his "adoption" as the Son of God.
An adoptionist would be a fan of the heteroousian group, supportive of the idea that Jesus existed in a form that had a different ousia than the Father.
Some of the very earliest Jewish Christians firmly held this view and maintained it as a plank in their theological platform for a long time. The Ebionites, as best we can reconstruct their positions, were adoptionists.
Adoptionism heavily favors the humanity of Jesus over his divinity, and doesn't answer later questions about the possibilities for Jesus sharing in some kind of divine nature with God the Father.
Sabellianism (Modalism / Monarchianism)
If there was any kind of rock-solid bias at the very beginning of Christianity, it was that God the Father was "simple," or exactly one with no parts or divisions. Remember "hypostasis?" This is where we begin to find out just how difficult it is to stretch language to fit a counterintuitive idea. If God can only be described as one distinct reality or hypostasis, how can we then talk about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as God too? Third century priest Sabellius insisted on this thoroughly Jewish idea, expressed in the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One."
The gospel of John's Logos theory was Sabellius's target. The theory goes something like this: Logos was pre-existent "inside" God, sort of like a human being might have wisdom as part of their nature. The Logos became a separate creature when God the Father started his creation project. This heresy, thought the Monarchians, was a violation of the oneness of God principle, essentially claiming that there were two Gods all along. Sabellius took a hard pass on that.
Monarch comes from a compound of two Greek words: "mono," which means single, whole, alone, and "arche" which connotes first and primary, original and therefore highest in importance. In order to preserve God's oneness yet still propose that Jesus possessed the rank of deity, Monarchians proposed that the one hypostasis expressed himself in different ways while retaining the exact same substance. From this you get some strange-sounding statements like, "…the Father…himself became his own son" (Noetus). Later Monarchians took on the pejorative nickname "Patripassians," meaning "the Father suffers."
So did the immutable, eternal Creator God actually suffer pain and die? How is that possible given the scriptural material we have that describes God as utterly transcendent, holy and incorruptible? Was there a period of time when God was dead in a grave? Did he resurrect himself?
Common illustrations used in our day to explain the trinity descend from these ideas. Eggs, with their shell, white and yolk, the three phases of water as solid, liquid and steam, a man as Father, son and cousin; all these try to capture one hypostasis manifesting as different persons under certain circumstances.
We also refer to this group of beliefs as "Modalism," which captures the idea that God has one hypostasis and three modes. Most mainstream theologians of late antiquity, as varied and creative as they were in answering questions about the trinity, held that modalism was the one thing you never wanted to be. If enough bishops sensed a modalistic tendency in your creed, it was off to exile for you.
Gnosticism
This moniker comes from the Greek word for knowledge: "gnosis." It connotes the idea that special knowledge is what makes the difference when addressing metaphysical questions. The key to solving the human condition lay partially in explaining how we got into this condition in the first place, and Gnostics had a story to tell that made everything crystal clear.
Well, maybe not so much. Gnosticism is an umbrella term that describes a group of highly complex philosophical approaches to understanding the universe, especially how its origins explain why lives are brutal and terrible, and what is needed to transcend an unacceptable reality. Emanations, Demiurges and Aeons aside, there are a few principles that generally apply to ancient worldviews that in hindsight we label as gnostic.
The first principle is that there was not a defined, chartered group of religious believers that had a distinctive identity as Gnostics. There were no gnostic churches, rather it was a generic term like "evangelical" which could overlap and influence many different pre-orthodox Christian traditions. Remember, the late first century CE is akin to a boiling cauldron of experimental theories competing for the best way forward for Jewish-Christian and ex-pagan groups. Into these new gatherings came amalgams of ideas from Plato, Pythagoras, Stoicism, Jewish mysticism, Hellenistic mystery religions, Persian Mandaeism, and other contemporary religio-philosophic perspectives.
Some additional general principles featured in gnostic thought are these:
Belief in a supreme, remotely transcendent godhead called a monad
From the monad emanate lower beings known as Aeons
From the population of Aeons arose a Demiurge, an evil corrupt godlike figure who created the physical world
Other emanations fell into the Demiurge's material world as blind and impaired humans who contain a "spark" of divinity but are unable to participate in their true identity.
From these basic ideas follow some practical applications to how life works:
Behind all perceivable events is a strong dualism between a transcendent invisible spirit world, and the derivative, lower material world, with varying degrees of parity between good and evil
A tendency toward asceticism as the way to achieve one's true enlightened identity and ascend to one's rightful place in the cosmos. Denial of self and desire helped to detach a believer from this present corruption and allowed "gnosis" to purify the soul.
The purpose of Gnostic ethics was to facilitate the experience of gnosis. That’s why the Gnostics placed so much emphasis on abstaining from worldly pleasures and emotional participation in society. The less one was attached to worldly things, the freer the spark of God within oneself would be.
The point was not to improve anyone else's circumstances. Why bother? Being more comfortable in our human condition is actually counterproductive to the cause of freeing people from their flesh-prisons. Therefore, in contrast to the developing Christian social ethic, a gnostic attitude had little time for altruistic concern for the physical needs of others.
Jesus was recognized as a Messenger Aeon from the pleroma ("fullness," referring to the non-spatial realm of divine life), sent to show humanity the way. Same with the Holy Spirit.
Sophia, connected to the Greek concept of wisdom, is personified female world-soul. She is related to John's Logos theory as the animating life-force of the universe. Sophia is often a villain in the story because she begets the Demiurge.
A close reading reveals a number of New Testament concepts and ideas with roots in gnostic thinking. For example:
The concept of a "sarkic" or "carnal" existence- the fleshly, instinctive level of living. Paul uses the concept to contrast life in the Spirit versus the "natural." In 1 Corinthians 3, he informs the Corinthians that they are "fleshly," not "spiritual."
"Pneumatic," Spiritual, immaterial forms of being which can escape material existence. Paul often refers to this as the final state of believers who ascend to heaven, having escaped their mortal bodies.
"Charisma," the gift or energy from the pneumatic realm by way of aspiring to special knowledge. The Holy Spirit is usually depicted as a giver of abilities to human believers as a sign that the end of the age is breaking through.
There's a long list of different gnostic species as one would expect. To name a few:
Elkasaites- active between 100 and 400 CE. Possibly linked to the Essenes, majored in baptismal rites
Mandaeism- Still around today in southern Iraq and Iran, favors John the Baptist over Jesus, strongly dualist in terms of "light" and "dark."
Syrian-Egyptian with subtypes Sethianism, Valentinianism and the Basilideans- Valentinus was a candidate for Bishop of Rome in the late second century, but started his own gnostic sect instead. Monistic, not quite as hard on created materiality, advocated a strongly allegorical approach to Paul's epistles.
Manichaeism- emerged from gnostic Ebionites (a Jewish Christian sect in Palestine), transported to Afghanistan, and syncretized with Hinduism. Embraced Zoroastrian dualism and endured until the sixth century.
And many more, right on up through the middle ages.
Gnostic Christology
Back to Jesus, many gnostic-leaning Christians were known to think of Jesus as an emanation of the supreme god who embodied himself in order to bring special knowledge (gnosis) to imprisoned humankind. Opinion was divided on whether Jesus was pre-existent, consisted of the same "stuff" as the Monad, incarnated as a god-human or simply gained enlightenment while only human. Same with his actual body- did he simply appear to have a body? Or was his physical being authentically human, having been birthed by an actual human female?
All of these ideas prefigure the later debates over the exact nature of God, Christ and the relationship between the two. If nothing else, the presence of complex systems of explanation in Gnosticism forced the church to differentiate with precision to protect against heresy.
A Brief Digression
Before continuing with data about the competing Christologies that we know about, it's worth mentioning that there are many we don't know anything about. The earliest Christians diversified, speculated, and worshipped in a huge variety of ways, carrying vastly different conceptions of Jesus the Christ or Messiah in their minds and hearts as they did so. What are we to do with the fact that for at least three hundred years the church as we know it went through massive changes of opinion about articles of faith we now hold as "certain?" Questions about the divinity of Jesus, the identity of the Holy Spirit, how atonement works, what scriptures should be used for official faith and practice and many others were on the negotiating table. Sects with differing emphases and definitions popped up everywhere, even after many of the first church councils and the eventual materialization of orthodoxy.
This is the church's family tree. Does insisting on our own version of Jesus betray the first saints? Some of them went to a martyr's death as non-trinitarians, well before those ideas took shape. Plenty of early Jewish Christians died while absolutely convinced that keeping kosher, circumcision, keeping Jewish festivals and other ancient traditions were essential to avoiding the imminent wrath of God on the last day. Others went to their graves with complete certainty that Jesus was not pre-existent, but rather adopted as the Son of God at his baptism. Still others were convinced that Jesus was indeed fully God, but his human body was a clever divine illusion. They were all just as sincere as we are in our own christology. All these had reasonable defenses of their positions, or followed leaders who did.
It's a historical Catch-22. Without the unity enforced by the eventual doctrinal winners, Christianity would have had little chance to survive plague, persecution and paganism. Lost, however, is the richness of a much wider spectrum of ideas about the "Jesus Event."
Now, back to some of those colorful congregations that failed to gain the badge of orthodoxy...
Marcionism
He was one of the most famous heretics of ancient times, and his influence lasted well beyond his lifetime. Many, many Christians made commitments to Marcion's way of believing, built on principles we would have a hard time buying today. But back in the 140's CE there hadn't been enough time for orthodoxy to completely stamp out movements they considered outside the pale. So Marcion's "heresies" flourished for a surprisingly long time in Asia Minor and points east.
According to his enemies, who spilled more than a little ink in opposition to his doctrines, he was a well-off shipowner who inherited a bishopric from his father in Sinope and spent time in Rome before his excommunication in 144 CE. Back in Asia Minor (modern Türkiye), he managed to create an ecclesiastical organization that for a time rivaled Rome's. Marcionite churches endured for several centuries, withstanding Roman ecclesiastical and imperial persecution, internal controversies and a rapidly changing church landscape.
Marcion's Christology
As best historians can reconstruct, here's where Maricon went with the information he had about the Christian faith. The data are sketchy and most of it was preserved in the writings of Marcion's enemies. Characterizations of one's belief system by someone who vehemently disagrees with it is a sure setup for misrepresentation, but with those caveats, here's what we think we know:
He's best known for concluding that the teachings of Jesus are incompatible with the behavior of YHWH in the Jewish scriptures. Therefore, Christians should ban any and all of the writings of the Old Testament plus deuterocanonical books of Jewish origin.
The god of the Old Testament was in fact very near what Gnostics called "the demiurge," possessed a physical body and appeared as a jealous tribal deity. This god was into punishing people for lawbreaking as opposed to what is depicted and taught by Jesus in the gospels (peace and reconciliation). Jesus was sent here to earth by a completely different and better god of mercy to free us from the clutches of this evil, vengeful Jewish god.
Tertullian thought that Marcion was a docetist, believing that Jesus's body was illusory and his actual "form" was spiritual in nature. Marcion might have also taught a kind of ditheism, with two levels of deity to allow for a gnostic-style evil creator and a fully transcendent supreme god who sent Jesus as his emissary.
Marcion apparently ignored the entire Old Testament, and put in writing the first attempt at a canon of scripture, partly to clarify his opposition to many of the authoritative writings in use by churches. From what historians can infer, he used a unique version of Luke and ten of Paul's epistles. Marcion's editions of these texts were likely different from later versions, for example, Marcion's Luke omits material related to Jesus's birth and childhood.
There aren't too many modern Christians who would describe Jesus as an ambassador for an unknowable god that is decidedly not YHWH of the Old Testament. Marcion's moral critique of the "Jewish Bible" is alien to our way of thinking in the modern church, dependent as we are on a conception of the OT as a repository of messianic prophecy. In addition, Marcionite tradition takes a dim view of the virgin birth, James as the brother of Jesus, and the idea that Jesus was the Jewish messiah.
Marcionite Church
Readers can visit a Marcionite website and find a modern version of the church that flourished in the eastern reaches of the Roman empire in the second and third centuries. Their claims to fame include the first New Testament, first hymnbook, and the oldest inscription featuring the name "Jesus" in association with a worshipping community.
“The meeting-house of the Marcionites, in the village of Lebaba, of the Lord and Saviour Jesus the Good – Erected by the forethought of Paul a presbyter, in the year 630 Seleucid era.”
This equates to the year 318 CE and ruins were located by French archaeologists in 1870 in Syria. From the website's history section:
"The Marcionite Christians were one of the largest and most widespread Christian sects, until the fourth century. In the fourth century, the Catholics gained political influence, and the Catholic Roman emperors began persecuting and exterminating all other faiths, including the Marcionite Christians. Marcionite Christians continued to flourish outside of the Roman Empire until the tenth century, with many of the faithful being found in Syria and northeastern Persia during the latter stages of its existence."
And, yes there were Marcionite Martyrs. Metrodorus, bishop of Smyrna, burned alive with Polycarp in 156 CE; Asclepius, another bishop, burned alive at Caesarea during the persecution of Diocletian in the 300's.
Psilanthropism
Of course one set of burning questions among early Christians centered on what kind of being Jesus was. It took four centuries to sift through all the creative solutions to the exact combinations of deity and humanity were expressed in the person of Jesus. One of the simplest was the general sense that Jesus was "only human" by nature, the literal son of two human parents. How he got his power and wisdom is a separate question with more than one possible answer.
The term comes from "psilos" meaning plain or bare, and "anthropos" meaning human. One group that ran with this idea is the aforementioned Ebionites. The council of Nicaea dealt with the issue as they tackled the proposals of Arianism. In modern times, Psilanthropism has appeared in the teachings of quite a few notables, including Harry Emerson Fosdick, Martin Luther King, jr., Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and even a sect of Mormonism called Strangites.
A careful, close, informed reading of the gospels and Paul can reasonably lead to the conclusion that the earliest testimony about Jesus did not necessarily clarify his divinity. The claim of Jesus's deity didn't take long to emerge, and it's not difficult to retroject the idea into our New Testament texts, but psilanthropistic caution should have a seat at the table. When we read of the deification of Julius Caesar or Philip II (Alexander the Great's father), we are quick to chalk it up to an antiquated worldview, yet when the same is said of Jesus we make an exception.
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No one said early church history was simple! This is but a very brief overview of the struggle to explain salvation, dealing with the data passed down through oral and written histories, attempts to stay with Judaism or split from it, and the most basic question: what is actually true about the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus?
For many, eternal life under the favor of God hung in the balance. For others it was a matter of maintaining a power structure that kept them in authority. Matters of life and death through persecutions and plagues served as fuel for the raging debates, excommunications and executions facing a faith that did nothing but grow exponentially in its early days.
As much as we'd like to ignore it, the fact is that the church has never been "pure" in terms of unanimous agreement on even the most basic tenets, for example, what "salvation" actually entails. Is it a simple thief-on-the-cross verbal confession? How much of what information does a person need to know in making a decision? Can it be a sacrament applied to you that has objective power to change your eternal destiny? Is it sincere belief? Is it that plus a behavioral change ("bearing fruit") that establishes the line between lost and saved?
What is God's role in all this theological turbulence? Its popular to claim that one's own brand of faith has been shepherded by God down through the ages, just like the inerrant scriptures that "clearly teach" the truth about so many things.. In light of the historical evidence, should we be so sure about our truths?
We read in the Gospel of John that Jesus prayed for his followers to be as unified with each other as he was in harmony with the God the Father: "Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one." Assuming that a prayer spoken by Jesus himself would have an affirmative answer, what explanatory options do we have for our past, present and probably future chaos in the church? Do we actually have the unity he asked for, but don't understand it? Has God said "No" to Jesus's prayer? Is the answer delayed, far off in the future (not likely, since Jesus also indicated in Jn.17:23 that unity was a vital part of introducing the God's glory to the world)? Are we the problem, with our faithless fragility?
For even more heresies, have a look at this Wikipedia Article: List of Christian heresies for a long list of weird versions of Christianity (not exhaustive, so there are really even more).
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