Why Orthodoxy?
Christian orthodoxy
is a set of very basic teachings in the Bible that define what
salvation is, basically speaking the Gospel of Salvation. God
is perfect. Man is
not. Take a look around you. Man is hopelessly lost in sin, even those
that we consider to be good are not perfect. The
Bible simply states that no one will be able to, nor can earn
salvation, eternal life, by his or her own obedience to God’s
Law simply because everybody has sinned at least once in their
lifetime. No one has lived a perfect life. Paul states this in Romans 3:9-12, 19-20,
23-26 “….we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles,
that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none
righteous, no not one: there is none that understandeth, there
is none that seeketh God. They
are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable;
there is none that doeth good, no, not one….Now we know
that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are
under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world
may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there
shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin….For all have sinned, and come short
of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to
be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare
his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through
the forbearance of God; to declare I
say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just,
and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” In
the Old Testament God gave his people Israel a way to cover their
sins which was to foreshadow the salvation offered through the sacrifice
of Jesus Christ. This
was accomplished by the sacrifice of a young lamb, one without
blemish or spot, a perfect little lamb. This
was done at Passover, one lamb per family. This
was also done on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest would
sacrifice a young goat for the whole nation of Israel. Their
sins were symbolically covered by the blood of these animals,
which pointed to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. One
person had to live a perfect life without having sinned once. And that “person” had to be
more valuable than any other person who had ever lived. That
person had to be God, part of the triune God. If an ordinary person could have lived
a perfect life and then been sacrificed to atone for sins, his
sacrifice would only have covered one other person, or maybe
only himself. We already know from our study of John
1:1-5 that Jesus is God the Son, the Logos, the very one who
created the heavens and the earth [see http://www.unityinchrist.com/john/john1-1-5.html].
The Five Essentials of the Gospel of Salvation, the
Gospel of Christ
1. Who
Jesus Is: Without proper knowledge
of who Jesus was and is, the gospel would be meaningless. If Jesus died as an
ordinary man, not as the Messiah, God in the flesh, the Gospel is meaningless,
pointless. Jesus Christ himself
thought it of such importance that he asked his disciples in Matthew 16:14, “Who do men say that I, the
Son of man am?” Then after the
disciples gave all their answers, he asked them in verse 15 more directly, “But
who do you say that I am?”. Clearly
he’s going a certain place with that question. Important question for anybody, everybody who has ever lived. You should be able to answer that, and by the
grace of God, answer that correctly, and mean it in your heart. The answer that you would give to that
question is so, so important in your life, and the life of anyone being drawn
to Christ. What, who do you say Jesus is? You know, confession to that, the
answer to that can determine even what is in your heart as far as salvation
goes, are you really even saved, do you really know God? The answer to that, 1st John 4:15 says, “Whoever
confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” Peter as we see there in verse 16 of Matthew 16, says “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 1st John 5:5 says, “Who is he who
overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” So first, as an essential part of the Gospel
of Salvation, we have to understand that Jesus Christ is God, God the Son. Further proof from Jesus’ own mouth would not
hurt. Jesus stated in John 8:56-58,
“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said
the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen
Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham
was, I am.” Jesus just identified
himself as “I am”. The Jews knew who “I
am” was. And because Jesus referred to
himself as the “I am” they took up stones to stone him, as the next verse
shows. Why? Because to state you were God, if you were an
ordinary person, was blasphemy. That is
why they took up stones to stone him, as the next verse says, “Then they took
up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple,
going through the midst of them, and so passed by.” Why did the Jews think Jesus had just stated
that he was God? The Old Testament in
Exodus identifies who “I am” is. Let’s
look. Exodus 3:13-14, “And Moses said
unto God, Behold, when I come unto
the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath
sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I
say unto them? And God said unto Moses,
I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I
AM hath sent me unto you.” Jesus just
identified himself in John 8 as the great “I AM”, the one whom the Israelites
knew as Yahweh, the very one who led the Israelites out of Egypt, the God of
the Old Testament. This very God of the Old Testament became God the Son, as
stated in Jesus Christ’s own words out of his own mouth. So we see, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the
Great I AM came to earth as God the Son and would sacrifice himself for the
sins of mankind, everybody. One man,
greater than all the men who have ever lived, the Creator of the heavens and
the earth and all physical matter, would become the sacrifice for sin, all
sin. So it’s critical to understand and
know who Jesus Christ is. [to read
further proof of who Jesus Christ is see: http://www.unityinchrist.com/prophecies/1stcoming.htm.]
2. We Are All Sinners, Lost In Our Sins: Also we saw, knowing you are a sinner, beyond
hope for salvation on your own is critical to the knowledge of salvation. All these facts are fairly simple. Romans
3:9-12, “What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved
Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none
righteous, no, not one: There is none
that understandeth, there is not one that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are
together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” So if we’re all sinners, the Law of God has
already condemned us to death, the 2nd death, without hope, as verse
20 states, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified
in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” So we all need a Savior to rescue us from the
2nd death, destruction in the Lake of Fire spoken of in Revelation
20:14-15.
3. Jesus Christ Died To Pay For The Sins Of Mankind: Next it is important to understand, that just
as the Passover lambs died, Jesus had to die. The Bible states that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for our
sins. As we see in 1st Corinthians 15:3, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I received,
how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” Jesus’ sacrificial blood paid for the sins of
mankind, all who believe. So belief in
Jesus Christ and faith in his sacrificial death and blood, accepting Jesus into
your life, asking for him to come into your life, and accepting his sacrifice for
your sins is all part of the simple Gospel of Salvation. [see Matthew 26-27;
John 19-20]
4. Jesus Christ Rose From The Dead: Also part of the Gospel of Salvation is that
Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Paul
states the importance of this fact in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 12-14, “For I
delivered unto you first of all that which I received, how that Christ died for
our sins according to the scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose
again the third day according to the scriptures…Now if Christ be preached that
he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of
the dead? But if there be no
resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen,
then is our preaching vain, and your
faith is also vain.” Peter, in his first sermon in Acts chapter 2
preached the first Gospel sermon, and that ‘Gospel’ was about the death, burial
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Result, 3,000 were baptized that very same day and the Church was in
essence born that day. [see also John 20, Luke 24.]
5. Jesus
Christ Is Coming Back To Earth Again: This
is often a part of the simple Gospel of Christ which is left out by some
Christian denominations, and included by others. But it is included within all the Old
Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah, describing who Jesus Christ
is. It is also included in Luke quoting
a short description of Peter preaching the Gospel before the Sanhedrin giving
us an accurate synopsis of what was included in the Gospel of Christ, or
Salvation, in Acts 3:18-21. “But those
things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that
Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted
out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and
he shall send Jesus Christ, which was before preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times
of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his
prophets since the world began.” For the
prophecies showing the Messiah’s 2nd coming, log onto: http://www.unityinchrist.com/prophecies/2ndcoming_2.htm and to view the Bible’s teaching about the soon-coming Millennial Kingdom
of God Jesus will establish at his return, log onto: http://www.unityinchrist.com/kingdomofgod/mkg1.htm.
What’s next? Confession and calling upon the name of the
Lord
And as John 14 and Acts 2 show
us, when we recognize these simple things and ask Jesus into our lives, he and
God the Father enter into us by placing the Holy Spirit into us, and we become
born-again believers in Jesus Christ, Christians or Messianic Jewish believers
in Yeshua haMeshiach. [Jesus explained
this to Nicodemus in John 3:1-21.] So
when one has come to see his true deplorable condition, and that Christ died to
pay for his or her sins, and rose again (and will return again to this earth),
the next step is for that individual to call out to the Lord, acknowledging him
as the Lord of their life, and ask him to come into his or her life. Romans 10 shows this, and often Evangelicals
use this in their altar calls. It is
Biblical. Let’s read it. Romans 10:8-12, “But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in
thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth
on him shall not be ashamed. For there
is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all
that call upon him.”
Next step
One who truly believes Jesus
Christ died to pay for their sins and rose again, and has called out to him,
acknowledging him as their Savior and Lord, one who now believes this core
message about Christ, now being indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit, will “repent”,
that is change his or her mind about their dead works of sin in the past, and
be baptized because of the remission of those sins. As we’ll see in Acts 2:38, this was the Biblical
model. Acts 2:38, “And Peter said unto
them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for
the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost [Holy
Spirit].” Often these two steps, asking
Jesus into one’s life, and baptism, in the early Christian Church, as seen
throughout the Book of Acts, was an event that was all rolled up into one,
happened more or less simultaneously. That is why some denominations, reading Acts, feel the Holy Spirit will
not be given except upon baptism. It
usually happened this way with the early Church, but not always, as seen in
Acts 8-10 with Cornelius and his family. He was baptized after he received the Holy Spirit. So right within the Book of Acts, we see it
can go both ways.
when people come to understand
these five simple points, what then?
When people have come to
understand these five simple facts, recognizing who Jesus Christ is, God the
Son, recognizing they are hopeless sinners, recognizing Jesus Christ came as their
personal Savior and died to pay for their sins, and recognizing he rose to life
and lives to continue to save us through his life, indwelling us through the
Holy Spirit, they are ready for a radical change in their life. How? Often people become born-again believers in Jesus Christ by saying a
simple prayer which we see outlined in Romans 10:8-12. It is called the sinners prayer in many
Evangelical circles. It goes something
like this. “Jesus I know that I have
sinned and am a sinner. Please forgive
me. And I ask you now Jesus to come into
my life and live in me.” Knowing who
Jesus Christ is, and that he died on the cross to pay for our sins, the sins of
the world, accepting that sacrifice and asking Jesus Christ into one’s life is
the simple Gospel of Salvation in action. Then if you read John 14, it will show you how Jesus Christ and God the
Father come into a believer’s life, by the indwelling Holy Spirit. What we were not able to do concerning
obedience to the Law of God becomes possible through the power of God’s Holy
Spirit, who now indwells the believer. Then with Jesus acting within us through the Holy Spirit who indwells
the new-believer, the believer is progressively brought more and more into harmony
with God’s Law as he or she walks through life with Jesus and the Father (cf.
Jeremiah 31:31-34). Even though the
differing Christian denominations and groups can and do have different
interpretations and definitions on the subject of law and grace, this simple
result in the believer’s life is the same throughout all these Christian groups
and denominations, which would indicate that all our human interpretations for
what the Bible actually teaches on law and grace is somehow incorrect. (see http://www.unityinchrist.com/whatisgrace/whatisgraceintro.htm for more on this vital subject about what law & grace is.) Salvation is a free gift, and we now live
changed and changing lives in Christ, and we live these lives by faith, a faith
that comes into us by that same Holy Spirit. It’s that simple. That’s
orthodoxy, the orthodox teaching of the Bible. The word orthodox simply means “right teaching.” Orthodox knowledge means proper
knowledge.
There was a ‘Jewish’ gospel being
preached from the Maccabees until the time of Christ
But the Gospel of Salvation is
quite simple. It is different than the
gospel or good news of the coming Kingdom of God which Jesus will establish at
his 2nd coming. It is how
people enter into a living relationship with Jesus Christ and God the Father by
having the Holy Spirit enter into them, once they have come to understand these
four essential points listed above. There are some Sabbatarian Church of God
denominations that teach a gospel about the coming Kingdom of God at the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ. This is not a
wrong gospel, but merely an expanded Biblical view taken from all the Old and
New Testament prophecies, to show how God intends to redeem the whole world at
and after the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ, bringing the world into a
clear understanding of the Gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Salvation as
well. It is a Biblical view, and not a
perversion of the gospel. But it is not the Gospel of Salvation or Christ. In reality, this ‘Jewish gospel’ is the
Biblical exposition of the 5th point I gave in the simple
Gospel of Salvation. So although the ‘gospel’ about the coming
Kingdom of God that will be brought about through Jesus Christ’s 2nd coming is not “the Gospel of Salvation” it is an integral part of it, and not
the other way around. The
confusion comes when people think this ‘Jewish gospel’ is the Gospel preached
by Paul and the others. It is not. You can take the 5th point within
the simple Gospel of Salvation and expand upon it, coming up with the whole
Biblical prophetic scenario about the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ and
the establishment of the Kingdom of God physically on this earth, and in this
way make the gospel of salvation include that teaching. It is not wrong as long as you include the
other points. Point 5 is the way
Salvation will be brought to the whole world after Jesus Christ’s return. But even then, those who come to salvation
will still go through points 1 through 4. Point 1 (Who is Jesus Christ) can be expanded in a similar fashion, for
we see point 1 would include all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as
well as any description of who Yahweh was in the Old Testament, for Yahweh was
the pre-incarnate Christ. But we must be
careful not to confuse any one point in the simple gospel of Salvation for the
entire Gospel. You might say all the
other information is merely the Biblical exposition of each point in the simple
Gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Salvation. Point 2, “we are all sinners,” well, you could include most of the Bible
to expound on and prove that point, as well as many secular history books. Do you get my point? Hope so. The Jews from the Maccabees onward to the time of Jesus Christ had a
gospel, which taught to the best of their understanding the prophecies of the
Coming Messiah and what they termed “the World to Come”, what we would
understand as the prophecies about Jesus Christ’s 2nd coming and the
establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth (I often call this “the Jewish
Gospel”). The very active evangelistic
preaching of the Jews throughout the
Diaspora to the Gentiles brought many Gentiles during the Maccabean period into
their synagogues to worship the One true God, Yahweh. This group became known as “the God-fearers”. (Many God-fearers became Christians under
Paul’s evangelism, but that is another story, to be found at http://www.unityinchrist.com/history2/index3.htm.) So, simple Gospel of Christ, Gospel of
Salvation, preached by Paul and the apostles, some groups preach 4 points, some
5. Bible seems to include 5 simple
points.
The Great Commission to the
Church
We must realize that the core
message about Christ which makes up the simple Gospel of Christ, Gospel of
Salvation, does not, in itself, contain any instructions about what we as
new-believers must do. We must only
believe and accept Christ into our lives. One who truly believes will call upon God, repent and be baptized. But all of these actions, and all of our
other steps of obedience occur after and as a result of truly
believing the core message of the simple Gospel. This is made clear in the order of events
outlined by Jesus when he gave the apostles The Great Commission for the Church
in Matthew 28:19-20. Let’s read it:
1,) “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,” 2) “baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…” 3) “teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you…” (King James Version)
So we see Jesus’ command clearly
envisions three separate steps, one of which has to do with non-believers and
two of which have to do with believers and those who are becoming
believers. 1), The first command involves
evangelism, presenting the core message of the Gospel of Salvation to the whole
world, composed of unbelievers, so that those God is calling can be led to
believe it, change his or her mind, repent, and call on the name of the
Lord. Paul shows this in the very next
verses in Romans 10 after he defines what many call “the sinner’s prayer”. He says, Romans 10:14-15, “How then shall
they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom
they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall
they preach unless they are sent? As it
is written:
How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who
bring glad tidings of good things!’”
2), The second step is baptizing
those who have believed “baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”. The altar-call, coming to Christ by
calling on him (ie, sinner’s prayer) followed by baptism (or all rolled up into
one) is the second essential step outlined in the Great Commission of Jesus to
the Church, leading people to this after their evangelistic efforts have
brought some people this far along. Step
2 in the Great Commission is the first baby-step of the new-believer. Encouraging baptism is definitely a part of
the process. 3), The third step, which
is essential for all babes in Christ, they need nourishment, like all babies
do. The Church is called “the mother of
us all”, and Jesus gave this essential third step in his Great Commission to
the Church, a command to spiritually nourish those who had just received Christ
and been baptized, “teaching them to
observe all things I commanded you.” This is the job of individual congregations whose evangelism has brought
new-believers into their congregations. This is also the first major job of this website, UNITYINCHRIST.COM, to
nourish all believers online---“teaching them to observe all things that I
commanded you.” This site also supports
worldwide international evangelism by promoting the $5.00 a week program, the
first step in Jesus’ Great Commission (see http://www.unityinchrist.com/missionstatement.htm.)
in summary
Those who believe the simple
message of the Gospel of Salvation, Gospel of Christ---who Jesus is, that we
are all sinners beyond hope, that Jesus died to pay for our sins, was buried,
and that he rose again on the third day, and that he will come again---this all
leads to a person to call out to God, asking Jesus into his or her life (the sinner’s
prayer), which begins their having a direct relationship with God, receiving
the Holy Spirit, repentance and baptism---and all this followed by spiritual
growth (the lifetime sanctification process). I want to make this perfectly clear, attendance at church meetings and
performance of any particular denominational church rituals are not an
essential part of the message of the Gospel of Salvation. It is a message about Jesus Christ, who he
was and is, what he did for us sinners who wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in
hell without his sacrificial death, burial and resurrection, and our asking and
acceptance of Jesus into our lives---and once he’s in our lives, he transforms
us into his image.
Related links:
Who is Jesus Christ? Log onto:
http://www.unityinchrist.com/prophecies/1stcoming.htm and read the Gospels, can start with http://www.unityinchrist.com/mathew/Matthew1-1-17.htm
Jesus Christ is coming to earth again and will set up his kingdom on
earth:
http://www.unityinchrist.com/prophecies/2ndcoming.htm
http://www.unityinchrist.com/revelation/Revelation%2018-20.htm
http://www.unityinchrist.com/kingdomofgod/mkg1.htm
Bible teachings on Law & Grace:
http://www.unityinchrist.com/whatisgrace/whatisgraceintro.htm
The spirit and meaning of the Great Commission:
http://www.unityinchrist.com/missionstatement.htm
The Early Christian Church:
http://www.unityinchrist.com/history2/index3.htm
What is heresy?
Anything that
would complicate the simple gospel of Christ, or change it
in any way is heresy. Heresies
pervert:
1.
The proper knowledge
of who Jesus Christ is---the very key to salvation.
2.
The proper knowledge of the Gospel of Christ, the
Gospel of Salvation---making it more complicated than it actually
is.
Heresy is not another understanding
of what the Bible teaches in all the other areas that are secondary
to the simple gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Salvation. Differing
groups disagree on whether the earth and universe are 4.5 billion
years old, or only six thousand years old (old earth/new earth
controversy), they almost all disagree on the subject of heaven
and hell. If you
read what Irenaeus taught and believed in this area, it is not
what is generally taught and believed now, except within a few
Sabbatarian Church of God denominations. Was
Irenaeus a heretic? No,
he was one of the most famous early apologists to have ever walked
this earth. His works are still read and used to this
day. And as I have
stated, almost all disagree on the teaching of Law and Grace,
but the results of being born-again are all the same, the believer
comes into greater and greater harmony with God’s Law as
he or she walks through life with Jesus. Many modern apologists add their group’s
personal interpretations of Bible teachings to their personal
list of what is heretical and what is not. The
apostles John and Paul, and Irenaeus didn’t. They
defined heresy simply as anything that would complicate the simple
gospel of Christ, as we will see below.
What is the Bible Definition of Orthodoxy and Heresy?
The apostle Paul
ran into this problem in the Galatian church, and he stated in Galatians 1, verses 1-9, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed
from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another
gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble
you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.” Now
here, we can see that Paul is talking about the gospel of Christ. That
is the gospel of salvation, simply put, the four points I gave
above. Let’s
continue to see what Paul said. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel
unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again,
If any man preach any
other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be
accursed.” What were some who had come into the
Galatian church from Jerusalem, some Judaizers, doing? If you read Galatians, they were complicating
the simple gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Salvation. In the early Church, especially in Asia
Minor and the whole Roman empire where it had spread, heresies
and those holding heretical beliefs that perverted the simple
gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Salvation, were spreading throughout
all these congregations. Paul first ran up against such heretical
teachings that were trying to complicate the simple gospel of
Christ in Galatia. But
the heresies got far worse as time progressed. As
time went on, worse heresies and those holding them attacked
the Christian churches across the Roman empire. Paul
said this at the end of his life, in Acts
20:29-31, “For I know this, that after my departing shall
grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also
of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things,
to draw away disciples after them. Therefore
watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased
not to warn every one night and day with tears.”
Battle lines drawn between the
heretical and orthodox
A massive spiritual
war was beginning to be waged against the Christian Church, entering
into the various congregations amid the influx of new believers. These
heresies and heretics were threatening the very core of the Christian
faith, the gospel of Salvation, the simple gospel of Christ. Some of those individuals entering into
the congregations were not real believers, but carriers of these
damnable heresies. They thought they were genuine believers,
but as Paul said of those who brought in any teaching that altered
the simple gospel of Christ, let them be accursed. Pretty
strong words by the apostle Paul, but they are a part of God’s
Word now. During
the first three hundred years of the Christian Church a pitched
battle raged against these heresies and those who were spreading
them into the congregations. Many of the early Church leaders after
John would start to draw up the battle-lines between the orthodox
and heretical. Polycarp
was John’s trained disciple. He
trained a disciple named Irenaeus, another Jewish-Christian,
who then moved up into the region of Gaul and was a bishop in
what became Lyons in 177-178AD. He wrote five lengthy books defining the
heresies that were attacking the Church. He
was the Christian Church’s first major apologist. He wrote a number of books, but the most
important that survives is the five-volume On
the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis, normally
referred to by the Latin title Adversus
Haereses (Against Heresies). Book
I talks about the Valentinian Gnostics and their predecessors,
who go as far back as the magician Simon Magus. Book
II provides rational proof that Valentinianism contains no merit
in terms of it’s doctrines. Book III shows that these doctrines are
false by providing evidence from the Gospels. Book
IV consists of Jesus’ sayings, and stresses the unity of
the Old Testament and the Gospels. The
final volume, Book V, focuses on more sayings of Jesus plus the
letters of Paul the Apostle. Irenaeus recognized the legitimacy of
the church in Rome, which at this time had apparently not become
an apostate church yet After 325AD this all changed, but at this
time the Judeo-Christian congregations and Gentile Christian
congregations co-existed peacefully, side-by-side, recognizing
each other and working with each other. All the genuine Christian churches were
busy fighting these heresies and those who brought them into
their congregations. These heresies had torn into the early
Judeo-Christian churches, just as John and Paul had warned, noting
especially what Paul said, that when he departed, he said grievous
wolves would tear into the flock. The
nature of what become the Catholic Church would all change by
the 300s AD. Irenaeus is claimed by the Catholic Church
as one of their early “fathers” to this day. As
stated Irenaeus was a Jewish-Christian, and was a student of
Polycarp, who was said to have been tutored and discipled by
John the Apostle. It’s interesting, Irenaeus gives
us in these five volumes a sort of snap-shot picture of what
the early Judeo-Christian, and even Gentile Christian churches
believed, which modern apologists might label heretical, sort
of proving my point that heretical beliefs should only be those
that complicate the simple gospel of Christ, and nothing more.
What Orthodoxy is Not
Early Apostolic eschatological
beliefs as recorded by Irenaeus: Irenaeus
gives us a vivid snap-shot of early Judeo-Christian eschatological
doctrines, which should not surprise ex-members of the Worldwide
Church of God. “Irenaeus identified the Antichrist,
another name of the apostate Man of Sin, with Daniel’s
Little Horn and John’s Beast of Revelation 13. He
sought to apply other expressions to Antichrist, such as “the
abomination of desolation,” mentioned by Christ (Matt.
24:15) and the “king of a most fierce countenance,” in
Gabriel’s explanation of the Little Horn of Daniel
8. But he is not very clear how “the
sacrifice and the libation shall be taken away” during
the “half-week,” or three and one-half years
of Antichrist’s reign.” Small
wonder he wouldn’t understand some of this, as these
events are due to occur about 2,000 years later. Irenaeus
is at the early end of the Church age, and we now are at
the end of it. “He
also understood that Rome, or some form of the Roman system,
would be extant at the time of the 2nd coming
of Christ. Like
the other early church fathers, Irenaeus interpreted the
three and one-half “times” of the Little Horn
of Daniel 7 as three and one-half literal years. Antichrist’s three and a half years
of sitting in the temple are placed immediately before the
Second Coming of Christ.”
Millennium
“Irenaeus declares
that the Antichrist’s future three-and-a-half-year reign,
when he sits in the temple at Jerusalem, will be terminated by
the second advent [2nd coming of Christ], with the
resurrection of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and
the millennial reign of the righteous. The
general resurrection and judgment follow the descent of the New
Jerusalem at the end of the millennial kingdom.” Well, he got the order a little mixed
up, as Revelation 20:11-13 shows the general resurrection taking
place, and Revelation 21:1-17, after that event, shows the descent
of the New Jerusalem---after the lake of fire, and the new heavens
and earth are created. “Irenaeus calls those “heretics” who
maintain that the saved are immediately glorified in the kingdom
to come after death, before their resurrection.”---i.e.
he does not believe that the spirit-in-man component within humans
remains conscious upon death when they rise to God in heaven,
but as Ecclesiastes teaches, the spirit of man rises to God,
but is unconscious, which is often called the doctrine of “soul
sleep”.” So Irenaeus and the early Church during
his lifetime believed that believers were to be brought back
to life and made immortal at the time of the 1st Resurrection,
spoken of by Paul in 1st Corinthians 15:49-56. The
doctrine of
“the immortal soul” was considered Biblically inaccurate
and heretical by the early Christian Church, and don’t
forget this is a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of
John. So what Irenaeus
pens in these five books, these beliefs here, were the doctrinal
beliefs of John and the other 11 apostles, as well as those of
Paul. “He avers that the millennial kingdom
and the resurrection are actualities, not allegories, the first
resurrection introducing this promised kingdom in which the risen
saints are described as ruling over the renewed earth during
the millennium, between the two resurrections.” “Irenaeus
held to the old Jewish tradition that the first six days of creation
week were typical of the first six thousand years of human history,
with Antichrist manifesting himself in the sixth period.”---Wow! No
wonder his concepts of what the end-time Roman government, or
some form of it, were fuzzy. He
knew he was 1800 years away from that event---“And he expected
the millennial kingdom to begin with the second coming of Christ
to destroy the wicked and inaugurate, for the righteous, the
reign of the kingdom of God during the seventh thousand years,
the millennial Sabbath, as signified by the Sabbath of creation
week…he applies Biblical and traditional ideas to his
descriptions of this earth during the millennium….” i.e.
he’s relying on Old Testament prophecies that describe
that millennial period, such as found in Isaiah. He
saw the millennial period bounded by the two resurrections. You
know, I learned most of this information when I first became
a member of the Worldwide Church of God, which was under the
leadership of Herbert Armstrong at the time. Now
isn’t that a kicker? Most other Christians and apologists like
to paint Mr. Armstrong as being a fringe cook, a cultist (heretic?). But here is described the eschatological
beliefs of the early Church, and undoubtedly the apostles themselves,
as recorded by the first and foremost apologist of the Christian
Church. So we see reflected in what Irenaeus wrote
in his five books, as he battles heresies John and Paul also
battled, the very same beliefs the early Church of God in Jerusalem
believed, which are the same beliefs taught and believed by the
Worldwide Church of God under Mr. Armstrong. So what should we conclude from this snap-shot picture of early Church
beliefs that are secondary to the gospel of Christ? Secondary beliefs, in such areas as prophecy,
soul-sleep verses immortality of the soul, new-earth verses old-earth
beliefs, differing beliefs about heaven and hell---all these
secondary beliefs are not to be considered on the list of what makes beliefs orthodox or
heretical. We must go by what Paul taught, and that is simply that anything that
complicates the simple gospel of Christ is to be considered heresy. Personal
or denominational beliefs about prophecy or immortal soul verses
soul-sleep, or the new-earth verses old-earth theology, even
teachings about heaven and hell, all fall within the realm of
secondary teachings, and can and do differ amongst the various
denominations that make up the body of Christ. Apologist’s
beware, you must not aim your gun-sights on other denominations
and groups just because they disagree with you on these secondary
items I have just listed. For years you have hammered at the Worldwide
Church of God under Mr. Armstrong’s leadership, calling
him a heretic, and you were wrong in doing that. Now
let’s take a look at some very real heresies, the very
heresies that were attacking the early Christian Church, threatening
its very existence. And those that espouse and hold to these
heretical belief systems are still around.
Walter Bauer
“The classical
understanding of the relationship of orthodoxy and heresy met
a devastating challenge in 1934 with the publication of Walter
Bauer’s Rechtglaubigkeit
und Ketzerei im altesten Christentum, possibly the most significant
book on early Christianity written in modern times…Bauer
argued that….In some regions what was later to be termed “heresy” was
in fact the original and only form of Christianity.” [emphasis mine throughout] Hmmm, what did we see were the early beliefs
of the Church in the works of Irenaeus? Was
the Christian Church a Jewish-Christian Church in the beginning?---don’t
you think? [see http://www.unityinchrist.com/history2/index3.htm.] “In other regions, views later deemed
heretical co-existed with views that would come to be embraced
by the church as a whole, with most believers not drawing hard
and fast lines of demarcation between the competing views. To
this extent, “orthodoxy,” in the sense of a unified
group advocating an apostolic doctrine accepted by the majority
of Christians everywhere, did not exist in the second and third
centuries. Nor was
“heresy” secondarily derived from an original teaching
through the infusion of Jewish ideas or pagan philosophy. Beliefs
that were, at later times, embraced as orthodoxy and condemned
as heresy were in fact competing interpretations of Christianity,
one of which eventually (but not initially) acquired domination
because of singular historical and social forces. Only
when one social group had exerted itself sufficiently over the
rest of Christendom did a “majority” opinion emerge;
only then did the “right belief” represent the view
of the Christian church at large.” [ibid,
p.7] Now as we saw
what some of the early beliefs were under Irenaeus, a Church
that was very much Judeo-Christian, after 325AD became decidedly
Gentile Christian, and actually forced Judeo-Christianity out
of existence for 1700 years. So the orthodoxy of what emerged was Gentile
Christian orthodoxy, which was not the simple orthodox teachings
of Paul and John, but also had a decidedly anti-Jewish-Christian
bias. That’s what Bauer is trying to say,
if you read between the lines. “To
establish his claims, Bauer chose certain geographical regions
of early Christendom for which we have some evidence---particularly
Edessa, Egypt, Antioch, Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rome---subjected
the ancient sources for the Christianity of these regions to
the closest scrutiny, and demonstrated that contrary to the reports
of Eusebius, the earliest and/or predominant forms of Christianity
in most of these areas were heretical (i.e., forms subsequently
condemned by the victorious party [i.e. the Roman Catholic Church
starting with Constantine and onwsard]….It is the winners
who write the history: later proponents of orthodoxy (i.e., the
victors) preserved the writings of their theological forebears
and insisted that they represented the opinion of the majority
of Christians from apostolic times.”
“How,
though, did this one form of Christianity---the form that came
to influence all major branches of Christendom down to the present
day, the form responsible for the Apostles’ and Nicene
creeds, for Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism---attain
a level of dominance? For
Bauer this was the kind of Christianity found predominantly in
the church of Rome, a church that had always used it’s
superior administrative prowess and its vast material resources
to influence other Christian communities. Among
other things, the Roman church urged a hierarchical structure
on other churches---the monarchial episcopate---which, given
the right bishop, could persuade the majority of church members
to adopt certain perspectives. And
to some degree the Roman influence was purely economic: the manumission
of slaves and the purchase of prisoners brought large numbers
into their fold, while the judicious use of gifts and alms effected
a generally sympathetic hearing of their views.” [ibid.
p. 8] Bauer saw what had happened. The question I ask, is this: Is the Catholic Church the true picture
of Apostolic Christianity? [again, see http://www.unityinchrist.com/history2/index3.htm.] But the early Christian church in
Rome during the first two centuries had not yet become apostate,
the church that was after Constantine in 325AD. All
of Christianity was fighting a massive spiritual war against
the heresies and those that promoted them. Bart
Ehrman goes on to state “One would naturally not expect
the victors of the struggle to reproduce the literature of their
opponents. And indeed
they by and large did not, except for excerpts that they quoted
simply for purposes of refutation. This
means that prior to such fortuitous findings as the library
of Gnostic writings uncovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945,
our understanding of heterodox Christianity was necessarily one-sided.” [ibid.
p9] “In some measure, the absence of
clear boundary lines explains Irenaeus’s famous lament
that Gnostic Christians proved so difficult to uproot from the
church because they were far from easy to locate and differentiate
from simple believers.” [bid. P.10]
The Battleground, Satan launches an all-out attack
against the early Church
“Eusebius meant
something relatively basic by “orthodox” Christianity:
it is that kind of belief preached by the apostles and their
followers from the beginning, as opposed to major deviations
that came subsequent to it, deviations that deny such indispensable
Christian doctrines as the goodness of the creation, or the deity
of Christ, or the unity of the Godhead. Heresies,
then, are secondary incursions into the community of true believers,
inspired—as is all evil for Eusebius—by the devil
and his wicked demons, who move willful persons to corrupt the
faith proclaimed by the apostles of Jesus”….Eusebius’s
treatment of Simon Magus, portrayed as the first heretic and
father of them all, exemplifies his views. Quoting
the apologist and heresiologist Justin, Eusebius claims that
the demonically inspired Simon appeared in the course of apostolic
mission, performing black magic and misleading others to believe
that he was himself divine. Not
only did Simon advocate blasphemous and false doctrines, he also
lived a profligate life, openly consorting with a public prostitute
named Helen and engaging in secret and vile rituals….” [quoted
from “The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture”, p5,
par. 1]
“The
“classical” view of “orthodoxy” and heresy
formalizes this basic understanding. For
this view,
“orthodoxy” (literally meaning “right opinion”)
represents the teachings advocated by Jesus and his apostles,
spread throughout the world by Christians of the first generation,
and attested by the vast majority of believers in all periods….Heresy
represents a contamination of the original teachings of Christianity
by ideas drawn from the outside, either from Jewish circles or
from the teachings of pagan philosophers.” [ibid,
pp. 5-6]
early confusion
“Even before
the earliest councils that were called to adjudicate among theological
claims and to depose heretics from positions of authority, as
far back in fact as our earliest sources go, we find Christians
castigating others who similarly claim the name but differently
interpret the religion. Furthermore,
all of the intolerant parties appear certain of their own interpretations,
which means among other things that every group understood itself
to be orthodox (i.e., to subscribe to the “right beliefs”)
and every other group to be heretical. Such
as state of affairs is, of course, natural: when do persons of
strong convictions ever believe themselves to be wrong?” [ibid.
pp. 11-12]
the proto-orthodox emerge
“Ignatius of
Antioch, Polycarp, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus,
and even Clement of Alexandria and Origen---the writers whose
works were preserved by the victorious party and who continue
today to influence students concerning “the” nature
of Christianity after the New Testament period” [ibid.
p12] these authors emerged as the proto-orthodox apologists of
the early Church. “Given
this state of affairs, how should these progenitors of the dominant
party be labeled? [Again,
many of these Christian leaders were not part of the dominant
party of what become the Roman Church, they came way before that
church became dominant. They were merely defenders of the faith
of the apostles. But
the dominant church adopted them as their own, historically speaking. “We may be somewhat loathe to call
them
“orthodox”, because, on the one hand, their positions
had not yet attained a level of dominance, and, on the other,
they themselves had not yet defined these positions with the
degree of clarity that was later obtained. For this reason, we might best describe
them as “proto-orthodox”….”This is to
say, these proto-orthodox Christians opposed anyone who claimed
that Christ was a man but not God, and that he was two distinct
beings, one divine and one human. It
appears to have been the opposition to variant claims that compelled
the orthodox of a later generation to espouse such highly paradoxical
Christologies as emerge in their creeds.” [ibid.
pp. 12-13] The apostle
John, it bears noting, opposed these same heresies. The
“proto-orthodox” were merely defining John’s
early stand against such heresies.
Defining the three major heresies
Adoptionists: “Those groups I will
describe as adoptionists believed that Christ was a full flesh
and blood human being who was neither pre-existent nor (for most
adoptionists) born of a virgin. He was born and he lived as all other
humans. But at some
point of his existence, usually his baptism, Christ was adopted
by God to stand in a special relationship with himself and to
mediate his will on earth. Only in this sense was he the “Son
of God”: Christ was not divine by nature, but was human
in every sense of the term. Orthodox Christians opposed such Christologies
because, for them, Christ had to be more than a “mere man” for
his work of salvation to be effectual. He
must himself have been divine.” [ibid.
p. 14] “For
adoptionists, Jesus was a flesh and blood human being, born of
the natural union of Joseph and Mary. An
extraordinary man, without peer in righteousness and wisdom,
Jesus was chosen to be the unique Son of God, the savior of the
world. Some early
adoptionists situated Jesus’ election at his resurrection;
by the second century most believed it had occurred at his baptism. Advocates of both positions agreed that
Jesus was not himself divine, but was, as their opponents put
it, a “mere man.” In opposition to this kind of low Christology,
proto-orthodox Christians insisted that Christ was far more than
a man, that he was himself divine. Much
of the controversy centered on the nature of Christ’s uniqueness,
as the proto-orthodox claimed that he had pre-existed, that he
had been virginally conceived, that he was God on earth. A
variety of passages from the emerging New Testament could be
used by both sides of this debate; and, significantly for this
investigation, the wording of these passages was by no means
etched in stone. To
the contrary, scribes who transmitted the texts occasionally
changed them to make them “say” what they were already
known to “mean.” [ibid. p.97] And
these “orthodox” corruptions of the original texts
the New Testament came from, corruptions of the ancient manuscripts,
are plain evidence of the massive doctrinal battle that was taking
place before 325AD, a battle that was being waged against these
heresies. It is interesting that such evidence of
this spiritual warfare should be preserved within the various
copied manuscripts. It
was wrong to do this. But they were in a spiritual war, and
weren’t so concerned with the right or wrong of it, but
more so with the survival of the very congregations under their
care. So who, in
today’s day and age might you consider to hold adoptionist
beliefs? And because
they do, they are labeled as heretical by most modern apologists. The
Mormons, for one, fit
into this adoptionist low Christology, as do the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, two modern versions of this heresy surviving into
the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Separationist
Gnostics: “Other
Christians [he uses upper case for Christians, here, I wouldn’t,
but the author brings out later, that Gnostic Christians
thought of themselves as Christian. You
be the judge.] agreed with the adoptionists that Jesus was
a full flesh and blood human and that something significant
had happened to him at his baptism. For them, however, it was not that he
was adopted to be God’s Son; instead, at his baptism
Jesus came to be indwelt by God. It
was then that an emissary from the divine realm, one of the
deities of the Godhead, named “Christ,” entered
into Jesus to empower him for his ministry. Again
at some time prior to his crucifixion, the divine Christ
departed from Jesus to return to the Pleroma, the divine
realm, leaving him to suffer his fate alone. This
is a Christology that I will label separationist, because
it posits a division between the man Jesus and the divine
Christ. As we
will see, it is a view that was prevalent among second-century
Gnostics, one that the orthodox found objectionable on a
number of grounds.” Cerinthus was labeled as an archheretic. It is recorded in early religious history
that a disciple of John (not Polycarp) witnessed John as
he came running out of a Roman bathhouse in Ephesus, yelling “Quick,
run, the roof is going to fall in! Cerinthus
is in there!” When you read the following description
of Separatist Gnoticism, you will see why John probably did
voice those words, or something similar. He
wrote 1st John in response to this heresy. “Cerinthus
is a shadowy figure of the early second century, around whom
there accumulated several interesting, if apocryphal tales.” The above mentioned one is probably one
of them. “An
early Gnostic, like the adoptionists, Cerinthus believed
that Jesus was a full flesh and blood son of Joseph and Mary,
a man distinguished by neither a divine nature nor a miraculous
birth, remarkable only for his exemplary righteousness and
wisdom. Also
like them, Cerinthus maintained that Jesus’ baptism
marked a turning point: he did not, however, regard it as
the time of Jesus’ adoption to sonship. Instead, at his baptism, Jesus received
into himself the portion of the Godhead, the divine Christ
who came upon him in the form of a dove. This
indwelling Christ empowered Jesus for ministry and remained
in him until the very end; then, when Jesus was about to
suffer, the Christ withdrew to return to heaven, leaving
Jesus to endure his passion alone.” [ibid.
p.119] It gets
better. This
is nothing folks.
Thumbnail sketch of the notoriously
complex world of Christian Gnosticism
“As Irenaeus
pronounces in his famous lament over the Valentinians: “Since
they differ widely among themselves both as respects doctrine
and tradition, and since those of them who are recognized as
being most modern make it their effort daily to invent some new
opinion, and to bring out what no one ever before thought of,
it is a difficult matter to describe all their opinions.” (Adv.
Haer. 1, 21, 5)
“It
is hard to engage an opponent who cannot be grasped. Faced with a cacophony of disparate myths,
beliefs, and practices, the heresiologists undertook to restore
a semblance of coherence to the disparate groups of Gnostics
by tracing (or better, creating) their various genealogical relationships. These
genealogies explained why Gnostics appeared so similar in outline
yet so increasingly complex and discrepant in detail. Most of the heresiological accounts draw
the Gnostic line back to Simon Magus, the contemporary of the
apostles who has already been discussed. Simon’s
willful disposition and passion for magic led to a remarkable
self-serving form of heresy, in which he claimed to be God himself,
come to bring salvation to the world. Simon’s
successors did not share their master’s exalted image of
himself, and his own divine status faded quickly into oblivion. But
they retained the basic components of his soteriological system,
modifying and expanding them with fantastic cosmological and
cosmogonical details….For our purposes, the discrepant
mythologies of these various Gnostic groups are less important
than what lies behind them, namely, the Gnostic understanding
of the world and of human existence with it (at least as these
were perceived by the orthodox polemicists). Gnostics
were regularly attacked for taking a radically anti-cosmic stand
that struck at the heart of the orthodox belief that the God
who created the world and reigns as its Lord is also the God
who redeemed it. For
the Gnostics, the true God did not create this world at all. The world emerged from a cosmic disaster
in which a lower deity or group of angels [Satan and his demons,
anyone?], either out of malice or ignorance, created the material
universe and entrapped elements of the divine within it. The
mythologies that these Gnostics espoused served to explain how
these lower deities came into being (often as emanations from
the true God) and how conflicts among their ranks led both to
the catastrophic conception of matter and to it’s aftermath,
the imprisonment of divine sparks. While these cosmogonies struck the fathers
as puzzling in their complexity and bizarre in their detail,
they proved particularly disturbing in their guiding premise,
that the Creator and Ruler of this world is not the true God
but a lower deity whose creation comprises the realm of evil
and ignorance.”
“The
material world is prison to the sparks of the divine, and the
goal of the Gnostic systems is to liberate them. It
is, in fact, within human bodies that the sparks have become
imprisoned and from which they must be released. This
release can only come when the divine sparks are awakened, brought
back to life by acquiring the true knowledge (Greek: gnosis)
of their origin and destiny. The
Gnostic religion, therefore, entails the revelation of salvific
knowledge, knowledge of who we were and what we have become,
of where we were and where we have been made to fall, of whither
we are hastening and whence we are being redeemed, of what birth
is rebirth. When
persons within whom the divine spark reside learn the mysteries
of their own existence, of their fall into matter and the secret
way of escape, then they have become
“Gnostics,” that is, “Knowers,” those
who have been set free from the ignorance and evil of the material
world and enabled to return to their home.” [Almost sounds like the current belief
in the immorality of the soul doctrine may have had early Gnostic
beginnings, as the early Church believed in soul-sleep, where
the dead would not regain consciousness until the resurrection
they were slated for, either the first to immorality, or the
2nd back to physical life. Interesting.]
“Because
this salvific knowledge provides a way to escape this world,
it cannot be attained through normal “worldly” means. The
God of this world has certainly not provided it, as he is either
evil and thus intent on keeping the divine sparks perpetually
entrapped, or ignorant of any realm superior to his own. One
can only acquire the knowledge necessary for salvation through
a revelation of the true God himself. This
salvific knowledge, then, is revealed by an emissary from the
divine realm to a select group of followers, who in turn
convey it to those deemed able to receive it.”
“It
is within this context of Gnostic revelation that we can situate
the development of Gnostic Christologies. The
emissary who provides the knowledge requisite for salvation must
come from the divine realm, else he would have no access to the
true gnosis. Moreover,
he cannot actually participate in the material world, else he
would himself be entrapped within it. Given
the logic of this system, at least as it was perceived by the
church fathers, Gnostic Christians had two basic christological
options: [1] they could claim either that Christ was a divine
being who came into this world in the semblance, but not the
reality, of human flesh, that is, that he was a phantom who only
appeared to be human, or [2] that he descended from the fullness
of the divine realm, the Pleroma, to indwell a human being temporarily,
in order to communicate his message of salvation before returning
to his heavenly home. I will explore the former option, the
one more appropriately labeled “docetic,” in the
chapter that follows, and devote the present discussion to the
second view, the “separationist” Christology that
was embraced by the majority of Gnostic Christians.”
“According
to separationist Christologies, Christ was one of the divine
aeons of the Pleroma, who entered into the man Jesus at his baptism,
through whom he conveyed salvific gnosis to
the disciples during his public ministry, and from whom he departed
at some time prior to the crucifixion. The
view is found in relatively pure form in Irenaeus’s description
of an unnamed group of heretics near the end of Book I of his Adversus
Haereses:
Jesus by being begotten of
a virgin through the agency of god, was wiser, purer, and more
religious than all other human beings. The
anointed (Christ) in combination with wisdom (Sophia) descended
into him, and thus was made Jesus Christ. Accordingly
many of his disciples---they say---did not recognize that the
anointed (Christ) had descended into him; but when the anointed
(Christ) did descend into Jesus, he began to perform miracles,
heal, proclaim the unrecognizable parent, and openly confess
himself to be the child of the first human being….And
while he was being led away (to death)---they say---the anointed
(Christ) himself, along with the wisdom (Sophia), departed
for the incorruptible realm, but Jesus was crucified (Adv.
Haer. I. 30, 12-13).
“This was not
the end of the story, however, for these Gnostics maintained
that Christ raised the man Jesus from the dead, and over an extended
period of time revealed through him the gnosis necessary for salvation.
The anointed (Christ) was
not unmindful of its own, but sent down to him a certain power,
which raised him up in a (kind of) body that they call animate
and spiritual, for he let the worldly parts return to the world….Now
after his resurrection he remained (on earth) for eighteen
months. And because
perception had descended into him (from above), he taught the
plain truth. He taught these things to a small number
of his disciples, who, he knew, were able to receive such great
mysteries (Adv. Haer. I. 30, 13-14).
“Thus, according
to opponents of the view, Jesus’ teachings were said to
be preserved only among the elect, only, that is, among those
who had the divine spark within them and so were able to receive
the gnosis requisite
for salvation. In
the typical Gnostic anthropology, such persons were called “pneumatics” (“spiritual”). All others were understood to be either
“psychic” (“animal”) or “hylic” (“material”). The
latter were creations of the world’s “Demiurge” pure
and simple, and had no possibility for existence beyond this
world. Upon death, they simply ceased to exist. The psychics, however, could hope for
a limited kind of salvation, though not one so glorious as that
reserved for the pneumatics. Included
among the psychics were members of the Christian church at large,
who accepted the literal teachings of Christ, but who erred in
understanding their surface meaning alone, not their deeper (“real”)
significance. Such
persons would be saved by faith and good works. Only pneumatics, the Gnostics themselves,
could truly understand the revelation from God; on the basis
of that revelatory knowledge, they were destined to escape this
material world.”
“In
part, then, gnosis involved
understanding the true but hidden teachings of Scripture. Given the rest of their system, it is
not surprising that Gnostics typically understood the Old Testament
to be the book of the Demiurge, the God of the Jews who created
the world and received the worship of most Christians, ignorant
believers who mistook him for the true God. But
even within the Demiurge’s book had been secreted important
revelations that could be discerned when one moved beyond the
literal meaning to the allegorical. [Not
to go off the subject, but isn’t that what Amillennialism
does, apply allegorical meanings and not literal ones to all
the Old Testament prophecies? After
325AD, the Roman Catholic Church did just exactly that, using
many of Origen’s allegorical interpretations instead of
the literal.] The
opening chapters of Genesis were particularly to be cherished,
for here the mysterious beginnings of the universe lay hidden
in allegorical form. Even
more significantly, the writings of Jesus’ own apostles
conveyed secret revelations not accessible to the literal-minded
psychics of the church. Only
true Knowers could unravel the meanings embedded in seemingly
unrelated details of the text, meanings that comprised the secret
teachings of the Gnostic system.”
“This
refusal to subscribe to a literal understanding of the text was
a source of perennial frustration for the proto-orthodox church
fathers. The frustration strikes a cord of sympathy
with most moderns: if a “common-sensical” or “straightforward” reading
of a text (i.e., a literal interpretation} has no bearing on
what the text actually means, then the text can scarcely be used
to arbitrate disputes. Since Gnostics already knew what the text
meant (Christ had told them!) they were no longer constrained
by what the text
“said” (or at least by what the orthodox said it
said).”
“As should be clear from this description,
the Gnostics who were attacked by such heresiologists as Irenaeus,
Hippolytus, and Tertullian did not consider themselves to be
a religion distinct from Christianity. [I
emphasize that because this is what makes this group extremely
dangerous. They believe they’re Christians,
Christians with “more” knowledge (gnosis),
and as such they can enter into Christian churches and congregations
unawares, at least until they start teaching others what they
believe, making converts of their own. I
am of the firm belief that Gnostic “Christians” are
not Christian at all, but as Paul and John would say, wolves
in sheep’s clothing.] They instead claimed to possess the correct
interpretation of Christianity itself, an interpretation allegedly
transmitted secretly from Jesus to his disciples. It
is for this reason that their opponents found such persons
so difficult to track down and uproot. Gnostics
could remain within their Christian communities and confess
everything that any orthodox Christian confessed. But
the Gnostics understood even these standard confessions allegorically,
professing the orthodox faith with their lips, but redefining
the terms in their hearts: “Such
persons are to outward appearance sheep; for they appear to
be like us, by what they say in public, repeating the same
words as we do; but inwardly they are wolves” (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. III, 16, 8; see also IV, 33,
3). Thus, as
a solitary example, Valentinians could profess the “resurrection
of the flesh,” even though they believed that the flesh
was evil and bound for destruction. For them, the confession “meant” that
people who are in the flesh (entrapped sparks) can ascend to
the Pleroma through gnosis…..”
“Thus, in a trenchant discussion in
Book III of his Adversus
Haereses, Irenaeus attacks those “blasphemous systems
which divide the Lord, as far as lies in their power, saying
that he was formed of two different substances” (III,
16, 5). Both the
Gospels and Paul, claims Irenaeus, contravene the Gnostic notion
that the heavenly Christ entered into Jesus only at his baptism
and left him before his passion. To the contrary, Scripture affirms that
Jesus was actually born the
Christ (III, 16,2), that he was recognized as
the Christ while yet an infant (III, 16,4), that he suffered as the Christ (III, 16,5), and that he died as the Christ (III, 16,5). In contrast to the variegated separationist
views, “the
Gospel knew no Christ who flew away from Jesus before the Passion;
but Him who was born it knew as Jesus Christ the Son of God,
and that this same one suffered and rose again”
(III, 16, 5).” [ibid. pp. 119-124]
Docetic Gnosticism: Other Christians, both among
the Gnostics and outside of their ranks (e.g., Marcion), went
in another direction, claiming that Jesus Christ was God himself,
come to the earth for the redemption of his people. But
because he was God, he could scarcely have experienced the restrictions
and finitude of humanity. And
so Jesus was not really human; he only “seemed” or “appeared” to
be. Such Christians
have been traditionally called docetists (from the Greek word
that means “to seem or appear.”) They
were opposed by the orthodox, who insisted that Christ’s
appearance was no deception: he had actually been a real human
being, the Word of God made real flesh.”
[ibid. p. 14]
“The
representatives of docetism proved far more pestiferous for the
second- and third-century defenders of orthodoxy. As
we have seen, the term docetism derives from the Greek word meaning “to
seem” or “to appear,”
and is normally used to designate Christologies that deny the
reality of Christ’s fleshly existence. According
to these views, Christ only “seemed” or “appeared” to
be human and to experience suffering. In
a general way, of course, the separatist Christologies we have
already examined could be said to fit this description since
they claimed that the divine Christ, contrary to appearances,
departed from Jesus prior to his crucifixion. There
has consequently been no shortage of scholars who have chosen
to label this Gnostic view docetic. For
our purposes, however, it is better to maintain the distinction,
sometimes drawn by orthodox polemicists themselves, between separationist
Christologies, which saw Jesus and the Christ as distinct entities,
and docetism, which argued that the one (indivisible) Jesus Christ
was completely and absolutely divine, and for that reason not
a real flesh and blood human being. According to this view, Jesus Christ was
a phantom, human in appearance only.
Docetism
was not the view of one particular social group, but a christological
tendency that characterized several groups, some of them unrelated. As already seen, the tendency was in evidence
among some members of the Johannine community, the secessionists
denounced by the author of 1 John near the end of the first century
[and that author would be the apostle John himself]. Several
decades later, the church in Rome expelled Marcion of Pontus
from their fellowship, in part for advancing a similar view. There is no trace of historical communication
between Marcion and the opponents of 1 John. In
the intervening years, between the aspersions of the Johannine
secessionists and the castigation of Marcion, stands the sharp
polemic of Ignatius, directed in no small measure against the
heretics of Asia Minor who maintained that Christ only “appeared” to
be a human being and to suffer. The latter group may well have been connected
with certain Gnostics denounced by Irenaeus some seventy years
later, heretics whose Christology moved along docetic rather
than separationist lines. [ibid. p181]….
Johannine Community Docetics, split
of John’s church
“More specifically,
it appears that the Johannine community originally comprised
a group of Jews who worshipped in a local synagogue, even after
having come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. At
some point I its history, prior to the penning of the Fourth
Gospel, the group’s new set of beliefs created friction
with nonbelievers among the Jews. The resulting tensions eventuated in a
permanent estrangement: those who believed that Jesus was the
Christ were “cast out of the synagogue” (John 9:22) More
or less in exile, these estranged Christians [Jewish Christian,
or Judeo-Christians] formed their own insular community. As a consequence, their theological views
developed within a context of rejection and exclusion. One result was a Christology that accounted
for the repudiation of the Christian message by Jews outside
the group. Why had “the Jews” not accepted
the message of Jesus? In
the thinking of the estranged party, it was because those who
were accustomed to darkness could not see the light; those who
belonged to this world
could not recognize the one who came from the world above, the
world of God. As
the Christology of the community developed, Jesus came to be
portrayed not simply as a Jewish rabbi, or as the Jewish Messiah,
or even as the Savior of the world. To be sure, he was all these things, but
he was also much more. He
was the one who came from God, the very Word of God made flesh,
who always existed with God and was equal with him (e.g. [John]
1:1-14; 8:58; 10:30; 20:28), who had come to call his own out
of this world by revealing to them the truth of God that could
set them free (e.g. [John] 8:31-32; 14:1-11). At
the same time, the identity of this one sent from God was not
public knowledge; only those who had experienced the birth from
the world above [i.e. being born-again, accepting Christ into
one’s life] could recognize him and the truth of his message,
and thereby receive the salvation that he had brought (cf. [John]
3:3, 5). [ibid pp. 182-183, par. 1]
“The
christological notions embodied in the Gospel of John, then,
developed over a period of time and represent reflections inspired
by the internal struggles of an ostracized Christian community. Moreover,
neither the community’s history nor its theological reflections
came to a standstill with the completion of the [Fourth] Gospel. To
the contrary, as Raymond Brown, in particular, has shown, it
was precisely such views as are encapsulated in the Fourth Gospel
that led to the secession from the community that we have already
discussed. Some members
of the group took the community’s high Christology to an
extreme deemed inappropriate by others [probably John the apostle
himself]. And so, sometime prior to the writing
of 1 John, the community again split over christological issues,
with the
“extremists” (in the view of the author of 1 John)
leaving the community to form a group of their own (1 John 2:18-19, “Little
children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist
shall come, even now are there many antichrists; They went out
from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us,
they would no doubt have
continued with us: but they
went out, that they might be made manifest that they were
not all of us.”) In the preceding chapter I argued that
the Christology of these secessionists was in fact docetic, that
they claimed that Jesus, the Savior from above, was so much the
equal of God that he could not have been manifest in the flesh
in any real sense (he only “appeared” to be fleshly)
and that, as a consequence, he did not actually shed blood (he
only
“appeared” to suffer). Against
these secessionist claims, the author of 1 John argued that Christ
really did come in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3, “Hereby know
ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that
confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not
of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have
heard that it should come; and even now already is in the world.”) and that he [Jesus] could be sensibly
perceived (1 John 1:1-4, “That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word
of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it,
and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which
was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which
we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may
have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that
your joy may be full.”), that he shed blood (1 John 5:6, “This
is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus
Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And
it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is
truth.”), and that it was this shed blood alone that effected
a right standing before God (1 John 1:7; 2:2; 4:10).” [ibid
p. 183] This was
a thumbnail sketch of why the letter of 1st John was
written by the apostle John. He
had come head to head with a form of Gnosticism that had split
one of his congregations, a congregation of Jewish-Christians,
which most of churches in Asia Minor were [see http://www.unityinchrist.com/history2/index3.htm.] One form of Gnosticism was beginning to
spread through these early Judeo-Christian churches in Asia Minor,
and John was writing to try to stop it. John
had also run into Cerinthus, who was a Separatist Gnostic, considered
by later apologists and scholars as an archheretic.
Simon Magus, and his disciples
Saturninus and Basilides
“As I have
indicated, docetism was one of two major possibilities for Gnostic
Christians who wanted to maintain that Christ brought redemption
into the world without himself actually belonging to it….Chief
among the “purely” docetic culprits that the heresiologist
Irenaeus names is none other than the father of all heretics,
Simon Magus. According
to Irenaeus, Simon claimed to be God himself, come down to bring
salvation to the world. He
had previously appeared as Jesus, even though this was nothing
but an “appearance”; as Jesus he had not really been
a man, and had appeared to suffer even though he had not really
suffered (Adv. Haer. I,
23, 3). For Irenaeus this was only the first of
several, genealogically related docetic Christologies. Simon’s disciple was Menader, whose
two most notorious followers, Saturninus and Basilides, were
also docetists. According to Saturninus, Jesus came to
destroy the God of the Jews and to liberate the sparks of the
divine from their bodily prisons. He
[Jesus, according to Saturinus] was not actually born and did
not actually have a body, but was only mistakenly supposed to
be a material, visible being (Adv. Haer. I, 24, 2). The
Christology of Basilides appears to have been somewhat more developed. According to Irenaeus, Basilides claimed
that one of the divine aeons, Nous (Mind), also called Christ,
appeared on earth as a man in order to bring salvation from the
powers that created the world. But this appearance was a pure deception,
which climaxed at the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. On his path to crucifixion, assuming the
appearance of Simon of Cyrene, the bearer of his cross, while
transforming Simon into his own likeness, Simon was then mistakenly
crucified in Christ’s stead, while Christ stood aside,
laughing at those he had deceived. As a result, for Basilides, confessing “the
crucified man” is an error; those who do so (e.g. the orthodox)
worship Simon of Cyrene rather than Christ, and show themselves
still to be slaves, under the power of the creator who formed
bodies (Adv. Haer. I,
24, 3). [ibid. p.
184]
“Whether
or not the historical Basilides actually held to such a remarkable
view is less germane to our discussion than the undisputed fact
that several of the orthodox church fathers believed he did. It
is nonetheless striking that precisely such an idea (a particular
twist on the concept of vicarious atonement!)
has now turned up in some of the literature uncovered at Nag
Hammadi. The so-called Second Treatise of the Great
Seth also portrays a Jesus who miraculously exchanges places
with Simon of Cyrene and mocks his opponents who think they have
crucified him. Other Gnostic documents known to the orthodox
polemicists advance comparable docetic views. [ibid.
p. 184]
Marcion of Pontus: “Particular
infamy surrounds the best-known representative of doceticism,
Marcion of Pontus. No other heretic evoked such vitriol,
or, interestingly enough, proved so instrumental for counterdevelopments
within orthodoxy. It
is striking for our deliberations that Marcion’s views
developed independently of the earliest form of docetism of which
we are aware---that of the Johannine community---and almost certainly
under a different set of social and ideological precedents. Marcion’s
relation to the Gnostic docetists is a more
disputed matter, to which we will turn in due course.
“None
of Marcion’s own writings has survived, but from the orthodox
attacks against him, particularly those of Tertullian and, less
reliably, Epiphanius, some biographical details can be reconstructed
with varying degrees of certainty. Marcion
came from Sinope in Pontus, where his father was allegedly an
orthodox bishop of the church. He himself made a living as a commercial
shipper, and as a young man amassed a small fortune. At some point in his adulthood he left
Sinope; according to the patristic sources, which are difficult
to trust on this point, it was under duress: his father excommunicated
him from the church for propounding deviant teachings. After
spending some time in Asia Minor, Marcion came to Rome, probably
around 139 C.E. [just after the Bar Kochba Revolt put down by
Rome]. Here he gained admission to the church and donated to
it’s work a substantial sum---some 200,000 sesterces. Little
is known of Marcion’s activities in Rome, although there
is good reason to think that he devoted most of his time to developing
his theological system and establishing its basis in two literary
projects, the production of his own work, the Antitheses (so named because it set the
works of the Old Testament God in opposition to the God of Jesus
and Paul) and the expurgation of what he considered to be heretical
Jewish interpolations in the sacred text of Scripture (comprising,
for him, a version of Luke and ten Pauline epistles). Around
the year 144 C.E., Marcion chose to make his theological system
public, possibly with a view to swaying the church at large. He
called a council of Roman presbyters to hear his case, the first
such council on record. The
outcome of the proceedings, however, was not at all what he had
envisaged. The Roman presbyters rejected his views,
returned his contribution to their work, (the 200,000 sesterces)
and excommunicated him from the church. [Comment: It’s
interesting, but most of the Gentile Christian churches extant
today, although they haven’t actually expunged the Old
Testament or altered Scripture the way Marcion did, removing
any “Jewish” traditions from it, they have by emphasis
of what is taught and studied, de-emphasized the study of the
Old Testament in preference for the new and especially the Pauline
letters. This happened
in full force after 325AD. The
Gentile Christian churches did not absorb docetic teachings,
but this refocusing away from a balanced study and teaching of
both Testaments, to the exclusivity of the New did take over
in the Gentile churches, distancing them from their Judeo-Christian
brothers in Christ and their congregations in Asia Minor.]
“From
this time on we lose track of Marcion, although there are reasons
for thinking he returned to Asia Minor to begin a series of missionary
campaigns. It is known that within a few short years
he had acquired a considerable following. By
156 C.E., Justin could say that he had already deceived “many
people of every nation” (Apol. I,
26). Marcion’s missionary success can
be gauged by the extent of his opposition; over the course of
three centuries his views were attacked throughout the Mediterranean
East and West by such notables as Hegessipus, Justin, Theophilus
of Antioch, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Ephraem,
Epiphanius, Theodoret, and Eznik de Kolb. [ibid p. 185]
“As
can be inferred from my brief description of Marcion’s
literary activities, he is best understood not as a philosopher
but as a biblical theologian, specifically as an interpreter
of the Apostle Paul. His theological system took its cues from
the Pauline epistles, especially Romans and Galatians, in which
he found a clear emphatic contrast between the Gospel of Christ
and the Law of the Old Testament, a contrast evident above all
in Paul’s violent opposition to those who sought to follow
the Law after having come to faith in Christ. [Comment: I
think it is plainly evident, that although Gentile Christianity
never absorbed, but plainly rejected the docetic heresies of
Marcion, they ended up absorbing his anti-Jewish, anti-Old Testament,
anti-“Law of God” bias, which would lead in the end
to religious laws being enforced against even voluntary Sabbath
and Old Testament Holy Day observes, which the Judeo-Christian
churches in Asia Minor were in the practice of observing. I am beginning to see how these biases
formed, even though their early progenitors themselves were rejected
for their extreme views and heresies. The
author continues.] For
Marcion, these basic dichotomies between Law and Gospel, Jewish
Christianity and Pauline Christianity, required yet other, more
serious dichotomies. If the Law of the Old Testament is a hindrance
to salvation in Christ [which it isn’t], then Christ must
have no relation to the God who inspired that Law; moreover,
because the God who inspired the Law is also the God who made
the world, Christ must have no relation to the Creator. In
short, there must be two Gods. One
is the God of the Jews, who created the world, chose Israel to
be his people, and gave them his law. The
other is the God of Jesus, previously unknown before his coming
into the world. This is also the God whom Paul knew and
preached, a God with no relation to the God of the Old Testament,
a Stranger both to the world and to its Creator. [Wow! I
can see how Gentile Christianity absorbed the bias of Marcion,
without the extreme specifics of his heretical views. Plainly
throughout the New Testament and even Paul’s letters, Jesus
is identified as the Great I Am, the God of the Old Testament,
Yahweh. John 1:1-14; 8:56-58, just to name to
passages make this plain. Marcion’s
biases ended up divorcing the Gentile Christian church from its
precious Jewish roots. Now
this served a purpose, so the simple Gospel of Christ, the gospel
of salvation, could span the globe into all the Gentile nations
without Jewish cultural restrictions which would have hindered
that gospel of salvation going to the Gentiles. But in the process, this divorcing process
brought a strong blindness of what the early Church had been
like, a Judeo-Christian church. And
the Roman Catholic Church itself, as a result, would become strongly
anti-Semitic (see http://www.unityinchrist.com/messianicmovement/bloodstainedhands.htm.). Now the Lord has basically restored the
Jewish branch of the body of Christ which was virtually destroyed
in 325AD. Check the
other links out on the upper nav bar of the link above for the
stunning story of this recent restoration of the Jewish branch
of the body of Christ.]
“Because
Christ [in Marcion’s heretical theological system] came
from the Stranger-God, he must have had no real ties with the
world of the Creator. This means, for Marcion, that Christ was
not really a flesh and blood human being, else he would share
in the materiality of the Creator’s realm. Christ
was therefore not born. He
descended in the appearance of a full-grown man during the reign
of the Emperor Tiberius and ministered among his disciples before
being crucified under Pontius Pilate. It
is difficult to know what Marcion actually thought about the
crucifixion, although the cross remained a central component
of his system. It
would appear, though, that Christ did not really suffer in the
sense that other crucified humans suffered, in that he did not
possess a real body of flesh and blood. This
at least was the orthodox construal of Marcion’s position
(the only construal that matters for our purpose), as evidenced
in the anti-Marcionite polemic of Tertullian: “For He suffered nothing who did
not truly suffer; and a phantom could not truly suffer. (Adv. Marc. III, 8).
“I
have already discussed the implications of Marcion’s theology
for his canon and text of Scriptures. Marcion
was evidently the first to insist on a closed canon, a canon
that excluded the Old Testament in its entirety and accepted
only one Gospel (a form of Luke) and ten letters of Paul. Marcion
edited each of these books heavily, not in order to “corrupt” them
but in order to “correct”
them---to return them to the pristine state they had lost when
transcribed by the Christian Judaizers, heretics who inserted
passages that affirm the goodness of creation or that quote the
Old Testament as a work of the good God or that suggest that
Christ came in fulfillment of the predictions of the Hebrew prophets. Marcion
deleted such passages as contaminations of the text. Among
other things, this means that Marcion’s canon contained
neither Luke’s birth narrative nor Paul’s affirmation
of the Old Testament, including his reflections on the parallels
between Adam and Christ. [ibid. p. 186]
“As
can well be imagined, Marcion’s system proved problematic
for orthodox Christians on virtually every ground. It
divided the creator of this world from its redeemer, it treated
Scripture capriciously (in Tertullian’s words, Marcion
did exegesis with a knife), and it made Jesus a phantom who merely
appeared to be human. The christological charges are particularly
significant for our purpose. In
the eyes of his orthodox opponents, Marcion denied that Christ
was really born, that he had real flesh, and that his crucifixion
involved real pain and suffering…. “To sum up: A number
of Christian individuals and groups were known to oppose the
orthodox notion that Jesus was a real flesh and blood human being. The
reasons that various docetists adopted their views are not always
easy to discern. In
no case can we insist that the matrix was purely ideological
or purely sociological, as if these represent discrete categories. What
is clear is that all such groups were opposed by proto-orthodox
Christians who insisted that even though Christ was divine, he
nonetheless had a real human body, a body that was actually born;
that became hungry and thirsty and tired; that suffered, shed
blood, and died for the sins of the world; that was raised from
the dead and ascended into heaven; and that was soon to return
from heaven in glory.” [ibid. p. 187]
Nag Hammadi Texts
Bart D. Ehrman just
gave us an excellent picture of the early heresies that were
attacking the first to third century Christian Church throughout
the Roman empire. Most of the literature from this category is
known/confirmed to us in the modern age through the Library discovered
at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. So what follows is a list of the “Christian”
Gnostic books found in the ancient library of Nag Hammadi, Egypt,
essentially.
* Sethian works are named after the third son of Adam and Eve, believed
to be a possessor and dissiminator of gnosis. These typically include:
*The Apocryphon of John
*The
Apocalypse of Adam
*The
Reality of the Rulers, Also know as The hypostasis of the Archons
*The
Thunder-Perfect Mind
*The
Three-fold First Thought (Trimorphic Protennoia)
*The
Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (also known as
the (Coptic) Gospel of the Egyptians)
*Zostrianos
*Allogenes
*The
Three Steles of Seth
* Thomasine works are so-named
after the School of St. Thomas the Apostle. See Thomasine Church (Gnostic). The texts are commonly attributed to this
school are:
*The Hymn of the Pearl, or, the Hymn of Jude Thomas the Apostle in the Country
of Indians
*The
Gospel of Thomas
*The
Book of Thomas: The Contender Writing to the Perfect
*Valentinian works are named in reference to the Bishop and teacher
Valentinius, also spelled Valentinus. Ca.
153 AD/CE, Valentinius developed a complex Cosmology outside
the Sethian tradition. At
one point he was close to being appointed the Bishop of Rome
of what is now the Roman Catholic Church. Works
attributed to his school are listed below….:
*The Divine Word Present in the Infant
*On
the Three Natures
*Adam’s
Faculty of Speech
*To
Agathopous: Jesus’
Digestive System
*Annihilation
of the Realm of Death
*On
Friends: The Source of Common Wisdom
*Epistle
on Attachments
*Summer
Harvest
*The
Gospel of Truth
*Ptolemy’s
Epistle to Flora
*Treatise
on Resurrection (Epistle to Rheginus)
*Gospel
of Philip
- Basilidian works
are named for the founder of their school, Basilides (132---?CE/AD). These works are mainly know to us
through the criticisms of his opponents, Irenaeus in his work Adverssus Haereses. The other are know through the work
of Clement of Alexandria:
*The Octext of Subsistent Entities
*The
Uniqueness of the World
*Election
Naturally Entails Faith and Virtue
*The
State of Virtue
*The
Elect Transcend the World
*Reincarnation
*Human
Suffering and the Goodness of Providence
*Forgivable
Sins
*The Gospel of Judas is the most recently discovered Gnostic text. National
Geographic has published an English translation of it, bringing
it into the mainstream awareness. It portrays Judas Iscariot as the most
enlightened disciple, who acted at Jesus’ request when
he handed Jesus over to the authorities. Its
reference to Barbelo and inclusion of material similar to the
Apocryphon of John and other such texts, connects the text to
Bareloite and/or Sethian Gnosticism. [taken from Wikipedia]
I fully recommend
Bart D. Ehrman’s book “The Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture”, where he as a masterful detective has uncovered
the evidence of this massive spiritual war, buried in the Scriptures.
This evidence was in the form of orthodox “corruptions” added
to the original texts of the Scriptures by orthodox Christian
scribes, copyists, during the 2nd and 3rd centuries
AD. These “corruptions” were added
to deny Adoptionists and Gnostics the ability to easily use Scripture
to prove their heresies. It’s
a scholarly work by a Greek scholar, but fully readable. Every
pastor should have a copy of it in his library and read it thoroughly. You can order it on http://www.amazon.com.