Church History - Heresies

Question 1

Judaizers

Answer 1

• Sought to remain faithful to the Mosaic law (food laws, circumcision as prerequisite for salvation)

Rebuttal:
* Church decides that Gentiles are not required to keep ceremonial law (Acts 15)
* Salvation by grace through faith

Question 2

Gnostics

Answer 2

• “God hides his message for the enlightened” (Holcomb, 33)

Key elements:
* Secret knowledge
* One, silent God (and intermediary gods)
* Physical universe is dark prison which holds human souls captive
* Goal is to be freed from the physical
* Denied incarnation

Rebuttal:
* Church decides to follow robust Christology which upholds OT, transcendent/immanent God, and positive view of body

Question 3

Marcion

Answer 3

• OT god vs NT god (in Jesus)
• Created his own canon (to totally separate law/gospel)
• Denies Christ’s humanity

Rebuttal:
Church decides:
* Christ must have a true body to suffer on our behalf
* One God who is both just and loving
* Material realm is good

Question 4

Docetists

Answer 4

• Spiritual good, physical bad
• From “to seem” – meaning Jesus only seemed to be human
• So no incarnation, crucifixion, or suffering

Rebuttal:
* Church decides incarnational itself is locus of our salvation – Christ must be human and divine (Rom 5)

Question 5

Sabellianism

Answer 5

• One god wearing three hats (77)
• Most developed form of modalism (3 diff. forms/modes of God)
• Taught that God acted in diff. forms throughout history
• So at crucifixion the “one god” i.e., same person as YHWH in OT truly died
• Call this “patripassianism” or “suffering of the Father”

Rebuttal:
* Church decides (following Tertullian) that God is one substance (ousia) in three persons (hypostasis)

Question 6

Arianism

Answer 6

• Jesus is a lesser god
• Cf. “there was a time when he was not”

Rebuttal:
* Church decides Jesus is eternally generated from the Father (thus of one substance with him)

Question 7

Apollinarianism

Answer 7

• Blurs distinctions between the two natures of Christ
• Attempts to defend Christ’s divinity but goes too far
• Saw humans as body, soul, mind – but rational mind is the higher nature
• Christ only took on a human body and soul – his rational mind remains divine
• Not a fully human Christ

Rebuttal:
* Church decides “what has not been assumed has not been healed” (following Gregory of Nazianzus, 103)

Question 8

Pelagianism

Answer 8

• Assumed God would not command anything that’s impossible for us to do (contra Augustine’s “give what you command)
• Humans therefore can reach perfection in this life and have totally free will (denies original sin)

Rebuttal:
* Church decides that we inherit Adam’s sin and our wills are free to act in accordance with our natures (following Augustine, 114ff)

Question 9

Eutychianism

Answer 9

• Answering how Christ’s two natures relate to one another
• Ends up emphasizing the one person of Christ so much that the natures are blurred
• He (or his followers) taught that the human and divine natures merged after the incarnation forming a new “third kind” of nature i.e., human nature swallowed up by the divine nature

Rebuttal:
* Church decides to affirm Chalcedonian Definition saying two natures “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”

Question 10

Nestorianism

Answer 10

• Christ’s human and divine natures are so separate that they can be considered two persons
• Some confusion about his actual teaching

Rebuttal:
* Nevertheless, church decides that Christ is one person in two natures finalized in Council of Chalcedon 451 (communicatio idiomatum i.e., you can use “the term that belongs to either nature to refer to the person of Jesus Christ,” 136)