(5) Church History: Notable Heresies (inc. Philosophical and Biblical Explanations)

Sources: DK Chronicle, Redeemed Zoomer, Got Questions

Montanism (All Facts)

• Heresy started by the namesake founder around 170

• It is the first Christian heresy

• Heretical belief that

  • Declares that there are prophets of God that ministered (or are currently ministering) after the time of the New Testament

  • Overemphasizes spiritual experiences and contends that personal revelations are more valuable (or more authoritative) than what the bible says

  • Spiritual ecstasy is more valuable than a biblical understanding of the faith

• They were known for “speaking in tongues” and babbling and prattling nonsense, inconsistent with the rational prophesying of the prophets, for which they were condemned by the Church

• They discouraged marriage and forbade second marriages

• They refused any compromise with Roman authority and many were martyred

• Those that opposed them pointed out that they had ever endured any persecution or martyrdom because of the peculiarities of their doctrine

0s CE - Gnosticism (All Facts)

• Heresy that started in the 0s CE 

• It is one of the first Christian heresies 

• Heretical belief that

  • The only goal of Christianity is to escape the fallen / physical world and enter heaven

  • The fallen / physical world is inherently bad and that spiritual goals should be directed towards entrance into the spiritual world, which is inherently good

  • Rejects the idea that a good God made our fallen / physical world very good, and that this world was created created by a lesser deity called the Demiurge instead

  • Rejects the idea that Jesus took on a fully human nature to come and redeem the fallen / physical world and/or emphasizes Jesus’s divinity but rejects Jesus’s humanity 

  • Emphasizes salvation through spiritual knowledge rather than faith alone 

• Those who held this belief believed

  • They possessed a divine spark that needed to be awakened by a divine messenger, such as Jesus, to escape the material prison that is the world and return to the divine realm

  • They possessed secret knowledge about the spiritual world 

• Term used to to a number of groups including the Valentinians and Sethians

• Influences the modern, non-Christian religion of Mandaeism 

• Considered non-Nicene

306 - Melitians (All Facts) 

• Heresy started by the namesake founder around 306

• It was essentially Donatism, but their Church was located in West North Africa instead of Egypt 

• Like Donatists, they believed that those who had renounced their faith while persecuted (during the Diocletianic Persecution) could not reenter into the Church 

311 - Donatism / Donatists (All Facts)

• Heresy started by the namesake founder around 311

  • Was condemned as heresy at the Council of Arles in 314

• Heretical belief that

  • The Sacraments only work on someone if they are done by a “true Christian”

    • For example, if a person is baptized and then that person later finds out the person who baptized them was a false believer, then that person would have to get re-baptized

  • Rejects the idea that the Sacraments exclusively depend on God

  • “Traditores” (betrayers), those who had turned over Christian books during the Diocletianic Persecution, had lost their spiritual authority and could no longer hold church office 

• When it first came about in the Roman Empire, it split off from mainstream Christianity because it disagreed with its response on persecution

  • It held that anyone who had sacrificed to the Roman gods should be refused readmission to the Church

• In contrast, those who opposed this heretical belief believed that spiritual authority lay in the office, not the man, and that after doing penance, the “traditores” (betrayers) could continue in office again

318 - Arianism / Arianists (All Facts)

• Heresy started by the namesake founder around 318

  • Was condemned as heresy at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and the First Council of Constantinople in 381

• Heretical belief that

  • God created Jesus, meaning there was a time when Jesus did not exist and thus that He could not be God because God is eternal

  • Rejects the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father

    • They were Christians that taught that The Son (Jesus) was different in substance and subordinate in authority to The Father (God)

  • Rejects Christ’s fully divine nature

  • Jesus is like God, but not actually God

  • Results from the Analogical Fallacy: “The Trinity is like how the sun, its light, and its heat are all the sun”

    • This teaching struck a chord with those who viewed the Christian Trinity as analogous to a human family 

  • Was absorbed by the newly converted Germanic tribes, such as the Celts / Gauls, Vandals, and Lombards

  • Influences modern-day Jehovah’s Witness Theology

  • The Holy Spirit is distinct from God the Father and Jesus the Son 

• One of their supporters, Eusebius, is credited with having baptized Constantine the Great on the Emperor’s deathbed

  • This underlined how strong the namesake heretical movement became, as orthodox church leaders had thought that they had won the day after the Nicene Creed and Council of 325 

• In contrast, those that opposed and rejected this heresy believed that all three persons of the Christian Trinity were of the same substance and thus equal in status 

Apollinarianism / Apollinarians (All Facts)

• Heresy started by the namesake founder in the 300s

  • Was condemned as heresy at the First Council of Constantinople in 381

• Heretical belief that

  • Jesus had only a divine mind, not a human one; but still had a human body and soul

Nestorianism / Nestorians (All Facts)

• Heresy started by the namesake founder around 428

  • Was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 431

• Heretical belief that

  • Jesus’s divine nature is separate from his human nature

  • Treats divine Jesus and human Jesus like two different persons

  • Jesus’s divine nature is “God the Son” and Jesus’s human nature is “Jesus,” and “Christ” refers to both of them

  • Rejects the idea that God died for Christians, only that Jesus and Christ died for Christians, but not God

  • Mary is the mother of Jesus and the mother of Christ, but not the mother of God

  • Jesus and Christ died on the cross, but God did not die on the cross

• Opposite of Monophysitism

• Reached India by 480 

Monophysitism / Monophysites (All Facts)

• Heresy started by Eutyches 

• Was initially accepted by the Council of Ephesus in 449 

• Was condemned as heresy by the Council of Chalcedon in 451

• Heretical belief that

  • The incarnate Christ is of a single, divine nature

  • Jesus’s divine nature and human nature are mixed into one combined nature

  • Jesus resembles something like the Greek demigods in that he would be part god and part human

• In contrast, those that opposed and rejected this heresy believed that after incarnation Christ had a double but indivisible nature, both divine and human 

• Opposite of Nestorianism

• It was a heresy that arose but from two difficult but crucial mysteries of the Christian faith, which were the Incarnation and the Trinity 

• Heretical belief absorbed by the Coptic Church of Egypt 

Monothelitism (All Facts)

• Heresy which emerged in 633 in Syria and Armenia

• Was condemned as heresy by the Lateran Council of 649

• Was condemned as heresy at the Third Council of Constantinople in 681

• Heretical belief that

  • Jesus had only a single will rather than two wills despite having two natures

1100s - Arnoldists (All Facts)

• Movement which stressed apostolic poverty for the clergy and held sacraments administered by any priest as invalid if the priest owned worldly goods

• Movement which was condemned as heretical in the 1184 Synod of Verona by Pope Lucius III

1100s - 1200s - Cathars (All Facts)

• Movement whose members

  • believed that there are two principles in the universe: good and evil, spirit and matter; and that Jesus is pure spirit and man is imperfect

  • saw the Old Testament as the work of the devil

  • saw many Church rituals to be nothing more than useless pomp

  • make a distinction between the “perfect” and believers, in which the “perfect” devote themselves to manual labor and live a life of abstinence and fasting

  • believed that they were saved by the virtue of the “perfect” and were given every liberty in their personal lives as a result

• Movement whose practices raised the most controversy in its day

  • Movement whose critics / enemies said that their believers actually live lives of perpetual debauchery

• Movement which was very strong in France, especially in Toulouse and Albi

  • It was especially strong in southern France and Italy

  • At Saint Felix de Caraman, a few miles away, the namesake movement’s beliefs were first formulated by Niketas, a bishop visiting there from Constantinople

• Movement which was condemned as heretical in the 1184 Synod of Verona by Pope Lucius III

1200s - 1300s - Flagellants / The Flagellant Brethren (All Facts)

• Bands of hooded men who wore white robes marked front and back with a red cross; they

  • travelled in parties from 50 to up to 500 men and were highly organized and were led by the master, a layman

  • were based in Italy, Germany, France, and the Netherlands

• They

  • arose in response to fear of the Black Death

  • attempted to atone for the ravages of the Black Death and avoid divine wrath by whipping themselves three times daily in ritual public ceremonies

  • believed that the Black Death / Plague was a punishment for human sin, and that by scourging themselves they could show mankind’s repentance

• They moved from town to town

  • performing their public mortification rituals, beathing themselves with scourges studded with iron spikes in which blood gushed from their many wounds and the spikes embedded themselves in torn flesh; a ritual which was performed in public twice each day

    • These exhibitions were highly influential, in which the masses saw them as living martyrs, their deeds having been admired and their commands having been carried out

  • touring the countryside proclaiming the namesake action as the way to salvation

  • singing hymns

  • sobbing

• They carried out large-scale massacres of Jews in Frankfurt, Mainz, and Cologne

  • Many of the Jewish survivors of these massacres fled to Poland

• The Catholic Church

  • criticized their attacks on church corruption

  • criticized their promotion of a wave of savage anti-Semitism

• Pope Clement VI

  • condemned the namesake group as heretical

  • forbade their public processions