Christological Heresies

Question 1

Adoptionists

Paulianists

Answer 1

theologians who sought to ensure monotheism by describing Jesus as a man gifted by the Father with divine powers.

Question 2

Alexandrians

Answer 2

School of theologians centred in Alexandria in Egypt whose tendency was toward the spiritual interpretation of Scripture and the insistence on the full divinity of Christ

Question 3

Angel Christology

Answer 3

an early popular attempt to express the transcendence of Christ by describing Him as the greatest of the angels as in the Shepherd of Hermas.

Question 4

Anomeans

Answer 4

Arian theologians who held that the Son is unlike (anomoios) the Father. Aetius and Eunomius were their leaders.

Question 5

Antiochenes

Answer 5

School of theologians centred in Antioch in Syria whose tendency was to the historical interpretation of Scripture and insistence on the full humanity of Christ.

Question 6

Aphthartodocetists

Answer 6

followers of the Monophysite Julius of Halicarnassus who taught that from the first moment of the Incarnation the body of Christ was by nature incorruptible (aphthartos), incapable of suffering and immortal, but that Christ by a free act of the will accepted suffering and death

Question 7

Apollinariantists

Answer 7

faction led by Apollinaris of Laodicea, a staunch Nicene, who maintained that the Divine Logos functioned as the mind of Christ who possessed a sentient human body.

Question 8

Arians

Answer 8

Faction led by Arius of Alexandria who proposed that the Son of God was created by the Father from nothing as an instrument for the creation and salvation of the universe; not God by nature this highest of creatures received the title Son of God on account of his foreseen righteousness.

Question 9

Communicatio Idiomatum

Answer 9

an interchange of properties, is the theological principle that though the human and divine natures of Christ are distinct, the attributes of the one may be predicated of the other because of their union in the one person

Question 10

Communio

Answer 10

bond of faith and love, strengthened by the Eucharist, united the local Christian communities and the entire Church at a level deeper than a union of common purpose and expressed in charitable works, letters of recommendation and communication among bishops.

Question 11

Donatists

Answer 11

schismatics largely in North Africa who insisted on a holy church in which the unworthiness of the minister invalidated the sacraments he conferred; thus they broke with Caecilian of Carthage on the grounds that his consecration involved a bishop who had handed over sacred books to the Roman authorities during the persecution of Diocletian.

Question 12

Enhypostaton

Answer 12

term proposed by Leontius of Byzantium signifying that the full human nature of Christ subsists only within the single Divine Person or Hypostasis

Question 13

Eusebians

Answer 13

large body of conservative bishops led by Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea who opposed the Creed of Nicaea I as favouring Sabellianism and who preferred to distinguish the Son from the Father as image from prototype the Son being united to the Father through knowledge and love

Question 14

Gnosticism

Answer 14

a complicated religious movement which claimed a secret knowledge(gnosis) revealed to the Apostles capable of freeing the spiritual element in humans from the evil of the body in which it was trapped by a primal mischance among the higher beings emanating from the Father and of restoring it to its original heavenly home

Question 15

Homoeans

Answer 15

theologians led by Acacius of Caesarea who asserted that the Son is only like (homoios) the Father

Question 16

Homoeousians

Answer 16

party opposed both to the Arians and the term

Question 17

Homoeousians

Answer 17

Party opposed both Arieans and the term Homo-ousios which they thought blurred the distinction between Father and Son, instisting instead that the Son is of LIKE substance (homoiousios) with the Father.

Question 18

Homoousians

Answer 18

Those supporting the term HOMO-OUSIOS, of one substance, used by Nicaea I to express the relation of the Son to the Father.

Question 19

Hypostasis

Person

Answer 19

(greek term) individual reality or person.
Cappadocian Fathers standardized eastern Trinitarian theology by insisting on the formula:
THREE HYPOSTASES or persons in ONE OUSIA or substance.

Question 20

Hypostatic Union

Answer 20

The substantial union of the Divine and Human natures in the one divine person of Jesus Christ.

Question 21

Iconoclasts

Answer 21

Outlawed the use of sacred images and ordered their destruction.
Supported Emperor Leo III (717-41)

Question 22

Iconophils

Answer 22

Supported the use of sacred images.

Question 23

Macedonians

Pneumatomachians

Answer 23

Denied the full divinity of the Holy Spirit

Question 24

Modalism

Answer 24

Jesus Christ is divine, BUT NOT really human.

Question 25

Monarchians

Patripassions-Sabellians

Answer 25

Attempted to safeguard MONOTHEISM by viewing Father, Son and Holy Spirit as a succession of modes or operations of the single Godhead.

Question 26

Monoenergism

Answer 26

Doctrine that there are TWO NATURES in Christ BUT ONLY ONE mode of Activity

Question 27

Monophysites

Answer 27

Proponents of the view that there is ONE DIVINE NATURE of the Incarnate Word.

Question 28

Monothelites

Answer 28

Adherents of the doctrine that there is only ONE WILL in the God-Man

Question 29

Montanists

Answer 29

Viewed the body as evil and beat up the body.

Question 30

Nestorians

Theotokos

Answer 30

Insisted that in Christ there were TWO objectively real HYPOSTASES or concrete SUBSISTENT BEINGS joined in one prosopon of union or one external undivided appearance.