Ancient Heresies series

[Pavel Mosko]

Prologue

Well I am probably going to be doing some kind of web series on ancient Christian heresies. This is something I have thought of doing before and my best friend has encouraged me to do so because it is obvious to those me tend to realize that I really enjoy heresies "and consider them fun".
(This is probably a personality quirk, for those familiar with the Myers Briggs I am an INTJ)


Anyway I've been putzing around trying all kinds of video and blogging ideas. Mostly the crickets are chirping loudly with my content, but this is suppose to be all part of the process. For those of you interested in doing things like living off your creative work, leaving your day job etc. I have a lot to say on that based on, studying the work of Seth Godin who seems like the best person to go for career advice on that, short of getting a Divine Revelation from Yahweh that is....


OK see ya all later.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

there was this thread a long time ago called "my favorite heresy" people posted a bunch of stuff, I just posted a music video for heresy though.

 

[BPPLEE]

Prologue

Well I am probably going to be doing some kind of web series on ancient Christian heresies. This is something I have thought of doing before and my best friend has encouraged me to do so because it is obvious to those me tend to realize that I really enjoy heresies "and consider them fun".
(This is probably a personality quirk, for those familiar with the Myers Briggs I am an INTJ)


Anyway I've been putzing around trying all kinds of video and blogging ideas. Mostly the crickets are chirping loudly with my content, but this is suppose to be all part of the process. For those of you interested in doing things like living off your creative work, leaving your day job etc. I have a lot to say on that based on, studying the work of Seth Godin who seems like the best person to go for career advice on that, short of getting a Divine Revelation from Yahweh that is....


OK see ya all later.

Someone on the forum told me today that American exceptionalism and Dispensationalism are heresies. I didn't see it that way.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Someone on the forum told me today that American exceptionalism and Dispensationalism are heresies. I didn't see it that way.

The word was more meaningful when there was one tradition to compare teachings to.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

(Rough draft will probably insert scripture references and other notations later)

Well Docetism is the first heresy I'm covering using Wikipedia on Docetism as a factual source (not the best source, but things don't look squirrely based on studying the topic for 20 something years off and on).

It kind of fits the bill for what we would call an official heresy, namely an official false teaching that runs counter to the traditional orthodox teaching.


Docetism is based on the word for "appearance" in the Greek. "to seem", dókēsis "apparition, phantom"

It originally suggested that Christ did not really come in the flesh as Christians claim in the doctrine of the Incarnation. Instead Christ, in the Gospels is a pure spirit being and all the times it looks like he is interacting with people and things are really illusions. This teaching however soon became a little more nuanced as new heresiarchs like Basilides arose, where they said Christ indeed had flesh, but it was of a different order than humans he has celestial flesh, angelic flesh etc.


Anyway Doceticism is the first "Gnostic" heresy. It often was a small part of the doctrine of many of the Gnostic schools / churches of the classical age.


Doceticism seems to be directly referenced in Scripture a number of times especially in the Johannine texts speaking of "The Word became flesh", and on spiritual discernment "Believe not every spirit that says that Christ did not come in the flesh".


This teaching in general does fit the basic Hellenic mindset of the times especially coming from Plato that tended to equate the true pure spiritual as literally being from spirit and removed from the earthly material realm.


In the time of the Apostolic Fathers we can see this teaching formerly taught in two of the Gnostic Gospels concerning the nature of the crucifixion. The Treatise of the Great Seth, Simon of Cyrene was crucified.
Gospel of Barnabas, Judas was crucified.


My take on Docetism's lasting legacy
Besides it's affects on the Gnostic heresies this teaching had a permeant affect on Islam that was influenced by a variety of sources including the Gnostics who survived in Arabia into the time of Mohammed. In Islam Christ is indeed born as a human, but the Koran does follow the narrative of the Gnostic Gospels by saying Christ was not truly crucified that instead there was another person who was crucified (need to re-edit this later).


Docetism as a heresy was considered very serious and not just for the obvious reasons of it implying the Christian preaching, gospels, apostles, epistles etc. had it wrong. But there is a very basic assumption in early Christian theology, starting with saint Paul that Christ had to come into the world as a human to be our redeemer.
Romans 5:12-19

This notion was summarized by Athanasius during the Nicene era with the saying "That what is not assumed is not redeemed". Gregory of Nazianzus likewise had a very similar saying of "What is not assumed is not saved."