10 Mega-Heresies

Even before the Day of Pentecost birthed the Christian Church into existence, the Lord Jesus Christ had warned His disciples that vicious wolves would slip in amongst the flock with destructive heresies and false doctrine.

Today, false doctrine abounds. We only have to switch on our TVs to come across counterfeit messages such as the Prosperity Gospel or the Word of Faith movement. So what we’re going to do in this article is to take a look at ten of the most prominent heretical movements that waged warfare against the faith of the early church. A few of these currents were so powerful that they continue to exist in some quarters today.

Let’s get cracking.

#1: The Ebionites (1st century)

The Ebionites (from the Aramaic word for ‘poor’) were a small Jewish group that believed Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. So far so good! The problem with their teaching, however, was that they shunned the notion of Christ’s divinity and salvation by grace alone. Biblically speaking, they were akin to the Judaizers against whom the apostle Paul wrote and preached so vehemently in the name of the Gospel.

Rather than proclaiming the Good News of Christ’s perfect righteousness being freely imputed to believers by faith, the Ebionites sought to gain acceptance with God via their religious performance based upon their fulfilment of the Law of Moses. But by the Law –as Brother Paul reminds us- no flesh shall be justified.

#2: The Docetists (2nd century)

Docetism comes from the Greek verb ‘to seem’ or ‘to appear’. The chief idea of their cult was that the Son of God could not have had a real human body since the physical is intrinsically sinful. In this sense they were very close to the Gnostics. One wing of the sect believed that Jesus only appeared to be a real flesh-and-blood person whereas another wing taught that the heavenly Christ entered into the body of the man Jesus at His baptism and then left Him once crucified.

Either way, if the Son of God did not assume a complete human nature then humanity could not be redeemed. The very core of the Gospel was at stake! The early church did well to condemn such heresy at the Nicene Council (325).

#3: The Arians (3rd century)

Another group condemned at Nicaea were the Arians, that is, the followers of Arius. The major problem with Arius’ Christology was that he taught that the Father had created the Son in eternity past. The Son, rather than being eternal God, was brought into existence. He was a mere creature rather than the Creator. But if Christ were not God –as Athanasius retorted- He could not save! Neither should Christians evoke His name in prayer! Thus Arianism was dealt the orthodox death blow although its spirit lives on in such groups as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons today.

#4: The Modalists (3rd century)

Modalism a.k.a. Sabellianism reasoned that there was no personal distinction within the Triune Godhead. The Father is the Son. The Son is the Spirit. And vice-versa! So instead of three divine persons sharing the same glory, Modalism alleged that the Father, the Son and the Spirit were just three ‘modes’ of the one divine being much in the same way as I am a writer, a preacher and a husband. Three roles but only one person! Thanks to the efforts of Tertullian, the church was safeguarded from the Modalistic deviation however it has reappeared in the last century under the guise of Oneness Pentecostalism.

#5: The Apollinarists (4th century)

Apollinarism was a lot closer to orthodoxy than any of the previous four movements. It held that the Son of God was divine, that He was distinct from the Father and the Spirit and that He truly had a human body. The point at which Apollinaris departed from the New Testament faith was when he suggested that Jesus did not have a human mind. Apollinaris justified this belief by reasoning that Christ’s mind was replaced by the divine Logos. S

uch a digression was fatal for the Gospel for the same reason as the error of Docetism, namely, that if Jesus had not taken assumed human nature in its entirety (mind included), then he could not have redeemed humanity. The movement was condemned at the church council of Constantinople in 381.

#6: The Nestorians

The big problem with the Nestorians was that they divided so strictly between Jesus’ divine and human natures that they literally made him out to be two different people. In opposition to these Nestorian errors, orthodox Christology upheld the view of Jesus as being one person with two distinct natures. In no part of Scripture do we ever find one of the natures of Christ working independently of the other. There was no such tension within the Lord. The unanimous testimony of Scripture is that Jesus always acted in unity with regards to His divine and human natures.

#7: The Monophysites

The Monophysites went to the complete opposite extreme. The Nestorians had underscored Christ’s two natures so sharply that He more or less became two different autonomous people whereas the Monophysites (from the Greek for one nature) highlighted Jesus’ unity that He no longer had two distinct natures.

In some bizarre twisting of events, the divine and human substances of Christ had blended together in such a manner as to produce a third kind of substance which was neither wholly divine nor wholly human (although the divine element prevailed). Something like chicken and mushroom soup! The problem, of course, with this view was that it denied both Jesus’ full divinity on the one hand and His full humanity on the other. Two heresies for the price of one!

#8: The Pelagians

The Pelagians are well-known for their clear rebuttal of the doctrine of original sin, namely, that all of Adam’s descendents are born into sin. Pelagius, an eccentric British monk, decried Augustine’s dependence upon the sovereign grace of God. One does not simply belittle Augustine! Neither does one simply belittle dependence upon sovereign grace! Why such belittling? Because the Pelagians believed that humankind could fulfil all of God’s commands in their own strength. “If God commands a thing,” they reasoned, “then we are well able to do it!” Hence they taught that even perfectibility was in the reach of mere mortals since Jesus had commanded His own to be perfect as His Father in heaven was perfect (Matthew 5:48). In a word, the Pelagians repudiated the notion of Christ’s expiatory sacrifice on the cross as God’s chief means of applying grace to us.

#9: The Pneumatomachians

The Pnuematomachians, as the term suggests, fought against the biblical teaching about the Spirit of God. Instead of saying a hearty “Amen” to Christian orthodoxy, these wonderfully-named folk (try saying Pneumatomachians ten times without stopping if you’re bored!) called the whole idea of the Spirit’s divinity into question by erroneously teaching that the Spirit was merely an angelical creature brought into existence by the Son of God. Given that they openly rejected the divinity of the Spirit, they ultimately did away with the conviction that it was the Spirit who worked rebirth in the souls of dead sinners by His regenerating power.

#10: The Socinians

Socinianism popped into being pretty much simultaneously with the Protestant Reformation. It was a pre-Rudolf-Bultmann rationalistic version of the Christian faith which jettisoned anything that had a supernatural odour about it. Bye, bye Trinity! Farwell, divinity of Christ! See you later, eternal punishment!

Not surprisingly they also downplayed Jesus’ expiatory work on the cross reasoning, reasoning and reasoning some more that Jesus had merely aimed at giving us a moral example to follow throughout His martyrdom: nothing more, nothing less! Socinianism was a forerunner of what would become theological liberalism due to its aversion to anything remotely doctrinal.

Wrappin’ up

The existence of so many heresies in the Christian past and present must impulse us to dig deep into Scripture and systematic theology so that we may refute the false prophets rising up within twenty-first century Christianity. In our own generation heresies are on the rise again –some new, others not so new- and only those of us who are well versed in the Word of the Lord will be able to resist such aberrations in the name of God Almighty.