Heresies and Heroes

Heresies and Heroes

Chris Parsons NLC 2011

Three views on history...

“There is nothing new under the sun” Ecclesiastes 1:9

“History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we made today.” Henry Ford, Interview in Chicago Tribune, May 25th, 1916

“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.” Cicero, in ‘Pro Publio Sestio’; Roman author, orator, & politician (106 BC - 43 BC)

Where are we going today?

The Early Church Fathers

1st C- AD 312

What is the relevance of this history today?

• We are returning to a pre-Christian age where myth, legend and superstition are commonplace

• There are tensions between the institutions of Christendom and movements that seek authentic spiritual experience

• We encounter syncretistic attempts to construct an overarching religious scheme through such things as interfaith worship

• Rejecting an arrogant historicity which views the early Christian centuries as ‘primitive’ we can learn from those who have gone before us...

Into what world did the gospel emerge?

• A gentile world... we see challenges in the New Testament

• An assimilating and syncretistic world... A melding of beliefs & practices

• A Roman world... a variably controlled environment

Three things the church wrestled with...

• Moral laxity and apostasy - which could lead to exclusion from the community of faith (Permanent or temporary?)

• Intellectual deviation – what was and was not an acceptable viewpoint (Who decides this?)

• Establishing the authenticity of the gospel message to prove its truthfulness and validity – moving from an oral to written tradition (Which texts?)“The moment they passed outside the ambit of the synagogues of the Jewish dispersion and their loosely attached Gentile adherents, the missionaries were in a twilight world of pagan syncretism, magic and astrology” Henry Chadwick ‘The Early Church’

Who were the Early Church

Fathers? ?

“By the 4th Century “the Fathers” had come to be used as a collective title for those church writers (whether bishops or not) whose writings were accepted as an authoritative source for Christian doctrine” Maurice Wiles ‘The Christian Fathers’

What were the main concerns of

the Church Fathers?

Three Key Areas

• The nature of God• The relationship of the Son to the Father & the

Spirit• The form, purpose and significance of Jesus’

incarnation• The origin of sin and the means of salvation• The nature and authority of the church• The sacramental structure of grace• The ethical life of the believer

A small deviation in course ends up with an arrival in a different place...or on the rocks!

The problem

The BIG question?

Where does authority lie?

They found three answers:•The local bishop – ‘we ought to regard as the Lord himself’ Ignatius of Antioch (approx AD 50-108)•The formation of the New Testament canon Early on Justin Martyr (approx AD 103-165) accepted the synoptics and his pupil Tatian (approx AD 120-180) added John’s gospel. The Muratorian Canon from Rome (AD 200 approx) lists: four gospels, thirteen letters of Paul, Acts, two letters of John, Jude, and Revelation of John ALSO The Wisdom of Solomon and The Revelation of Peter•Rules of faith or creedal statements (Irenaeus approx AD 125 – 202) and Tertullian (approx AD 160-220) led to later defining fourth century formulations

Two early figures from the shadows of the 1st Century had particular influence in determining an authorative way ahead for the post apostolic age...

(AD 1st C -101)Bishop of Rome

Clement of Rome

The influence of Clement of Rome

• In his letter to the Corinthian Church (AD 96) asserted the authority of deposed presbyters as the order prescribed by the apostles

• By the appeal to his judgement he indirectly asserted the priority if not the primacy of Rome as a place of authority

(approx AD 35-108)

Ignatius of Antioch

An early influential voice he wrote seven letters on the way to his martyrdom in Rome:•He emphasised the importance and authority of the local bishop•He encouraged the keeping of Sunday as the day of resurrection rather than Jewish Sabbath•He taught explicitly the deity of Christ•He was the first to refer to the ‘catholic’ (universal) church

The influence of Ignatius of Antioch

What were the main heresies that grew to challenge

the church?

The main Heresies

• Gnosticism• Montanism• Monarchianism or modalism• Arianism

Gnostics and Gnosticism AD 80-150

• Believed they were superior and had secret knowledge (gnosis) to attain redemption

• Believed the spirit was pure and good and the body nothing – could lead to EITHER moral licence OR to extreme moral asceticism (e.g. no marriage or at least no sex!)

• Believed in the worship and following of intermediate powers – often angelic powers tied to planetary bodies which influenced man’s fate

Gnostics and Gnosticism AD 80-150

• Believed the elect, following a pre-cosmic disaster, had in them a divine spark that had become imprisoned in matter, and had lost memory of its true home

• Believed in secret passwords and magic amulets that could be obtained by the soul as it passed through planetary systems to heaven

• Believed that the serpent in Genesis was a good power because he had enlightened Adam and Eve to true knowledge over against the god who had kept them in ignorance and his son Jesus

What are we to make of these Gnostic conjectures?

“The truly significant contrast is not between scientific knowledge of the solar system or geology...and the cramped ideas of the Church Fathers; but between those same ideas, which for all their limitations derived from history, and the arbitrary reconstruction of reality which sprang like a fairy palace, cloud capped but unsubstantial, from the imagination of Hellenistic mythology” GL Prestige ‘Fathers and Heretics’

Implications of Gnosticism for the Gospel

• Rejected the idea of both the incarnation and the resurrection

• Rejected the Hebraic concept of resurrection of the body preferring the Platonic idea of the immortality of the soul

• Rejected Creation as the work of at best, an incompetent or at worst a malevolent power, and saw the physical world as intrinsically evil

• Tended to see the Old Testament as a story of a malevolent god choosing a bloodied nation as his chosen people (Marcion ‘s Antitheses : excommunicated AD 144)

Where do we find Gnosticism today?• The New Age movement• In some Gaia philosophy• In an Angelology stripped

of its biblical context• In movements within the

church where creation, sex and procreation are viewed as second best to a pure world of the spirit

• Among those who favour a spiritual resurrection over a holistic physical resurrection...

Justin Martyr

(approx AD 103-165) from Nablus, on the West Bank

The influence of Justin Martyr

‘Dialogue with Trypho the Jew’ – approx AD 160• An argument with the Jews which saw the OT as

prefiguring the Gospel and the law as a necessary discipline for a wayward people who were waiting for their redemption in Christ

‘First and Second Apologies’ – approx AD 150“The future lay with the programme first announced by Justin

Martyr, (AD 160) by which the church would make common cause with Platonic metaphysics and stoic ethics, whilst rejecting pagan myth and cult as a demonic, superstitious, counterfeit religion propagated by evil powers and maintained by prejudice and erroneous information about the nature of the church” Henry Chadwick ‘The Early Church’


• Justin’s adoption of platonic ideas was critically important for the future development of Christian thought – seeing both Abraham and Plato as ‘Christians before Christ’

• Jesus is the ‘Son-Logos’, God immanent derived from the Father (God transcendent) as one torch is lit from another – light from light

• Justin rejected Gnostic promotion of a predestination robbing individuals of their free will and a moral imperative

• He also rejected the Gnostic Marcion’s disparagement of the Old Testament instead seeing its prophetic fulfilment in Christ


• For Justin, Creation was good and the work of the supreme God acting through the Logos as mediator

• In the incarnation the Logos assumed a complete manhood, body, soul, and mind

• Christ truly suffered in his passion - not the Docetic view (an off-shoot from Gnostic thought) that Christ only ‘seemed’ to be human

• For Justin the destiny of man was not freedom from bondage in his mortal frame but a rising again in a literal resurrection

• In Revelation he saw a millennial hope where Christ would descend to earth and begin a 1000 year reign


• Justin was the first recorded Christian thinker to sense two distinct periods of human history as being the profane and sacred with the coming of Christ as the pivotal moment between the two

• Also important was the idea that God had planted seeds of truth in many places that would eventually guide men to the importance of Christ for all the world

(approx AD 125 – 202) Bishop of Lyon in France

Irenaeus

The influence of Irenaeus

‘Against Heresies’ (approx. AD180)•Directing his arguments against the Gnostics Marcion and Valentinus he stressed the unity of the Old and New Testaments seeing the parallelism of Adam and Christ in Paul’s writings•In Christ, he said, we gain the likeness of God lost through the Fall•Mistakes and imperfections were the result of Adam and Eve who, like children, were prone to error on their way to maturity though the incarnation of the Divine Word and the gospel diffused throughout the world by the church

The influence of Irenaeus

• He saw the necessity of having a definitive canonical list of New Testament writings

• He gave reasoned arguments for what should or should not be included

• He stressed the importance of the doctrinal unity authentically preached in the churches of apostolic foundation, none of whose bishops were Gnostics, - appealing especially to what was taught in Rome

• He appealed to the unchanging faith taught from the apostles time and argued against the myriad doctrinal innovations and inventions so prevalent in the Gnostic sects

(approx AD 150-215)

Clement of Alexandria

The influence of Clement of AlexandriaThe Exhortation to Conversion (Protrepticus)The Tutor (Paedagogus)The Miscellanies (Stromateis)

• Clement saw Gnosticism as vulnerable to philosophical attack and combined philosophical argument with a biblical exegesis understood by the Greek world

• He was also able to articulate the necessity of a higher moral virtue in which the Gnostics were disinterested

• He saw Platonic metaphysics, Stoic ethics, Aristotelian logic as God implanting seeds of truth in his rational creatures with all truth and goodness coming from one Creator

The influence of Clement of Alexandria

• He affirmed celibacy and marriage and saw ascetic practices as a matter of personal conscience not universal prescription

• He saw the Christian life as a dynamic advance towards God

The main Heresies


Montanism AD 170• A Phrygian (located today in Central Turkey)

named Montanus and two women Prisca and Maximilla claimed to be speaking directly from the ‘Paraclete’

• Insisted on the literal resurrection of the flesh and the imminence of the return of Jesus

• The heavenly Jerusalem would last a thousand years and would descend upon...Phrygia!

• All Christians had to accept this divine revelation – rejection of it was to be seen as both a rejection of, and blasphemy against, the Holy Spirit

Montanism AD 170• This was partly a struggle between two opposing

forces in the Church – a focus on increasing order and structure and the freedom and individualism of a former apostolic age

• Eventually Tertullian became an advocate of Montanism which he saw as restoring the church to ‘spiritual’ men

• But Hippolytus of Rome – saw spiritual gifts as good but the greater gift being conversion with every believer enabled to use the gifts of the spirit. The supernatural was to be found in the normal ministry of word and sacrament not in a divisive exercise of gifts leading to pride and judgmentalism

Where do we see traces of Montanism today?

• In exclusive charismatic circles or sects where extra biblical authority is claimed for special prophecies, spiritual awakenings, and end time warnings

• In faiths or sects which demand allegiance to post biblical prophets

(approx AD 160-220)A lawyer from Carthage, North Africa

Tertullian

The influence of Tertullian

Apology; The tracts ‘Against Marcion’, ‘Against Praxeas, ‘On Baptism’•A North African fiery and brilliant lawyer who demanded a purity that forbade attendance at the arena, service in the army, civil service, or schools, or in anything that might contribute in any way to idolatry

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”


• He was the first major figure of the patristic period to write in Latin and therefore used vocabulary and forms of language that became part of later Trinitarian and Christological debates

• He had three major concerns:Christianity’s attitude to the Roman state and

societyThe defence of orthodox beliefs against heresyThe moral behaviour of Christians


• He was not pessimistic about the nature of man without grace but saw traces of goodness and truth as latent attributes of the divine image and the gospel as a means of stripping away of pagan influences freeing the soul to attain God’s original intention

The main Heresies


Monarchianism or modalism

Was the Son ‘one with’ OR ‘distinct from’ the Father? Those who upheld the ‘monarchy’ of God were divided into two contradictory camps:

•Modalism (or Modalistic Monarchiansm) Sabellius (3rd C priest and theologian) emphasizing the unity of God put forward the view (against the logos theology of Justin Martyr) that the Father, resurrected Son and Holy Spirit were aspects or modes of the one God perceived by the believer rather than three distinct persons in God himself

• Adoptionism (or Dynamic Monarchianism) held that God was one being, above all else, wholly indivisible, and of one nature. Its approach was that the Son was not co-eternal with the Father, and that he was essentially granted godhood (adopted). Different proponents located this adoption as taking place at either his baptism or ascension

Where do we see traces of Monarchianism or Modalism today?

• In a relativistic culture which rejects objective truth and locates it in an individualistic framework - “truth is what I perceive it to be”

• Among those in a material and rationalistic worldview who prefer to see Jesus as a ‘special man’ rather than God’s divine Son

• Among Unitarians who wish to emphasise today the unity of the Godhead

(AD 184-253)from Alexandria

and then Caesarea in Palestine

Origen

Origen

The outstanding scholar of his age and a voluminous writer. Most notable are his biblical commentaries and also other works Stromateis, On First Principles, Hexapla (A 50 volume 6 column analysis of the Old Testament text in different versions of his day), Exhortation to Martyrdom, On Prayer, Contra Celsum,

Origen’s legacy

“He was the founder of biblical science and though not absolutely the first great biblical commentator, he first developed the principles which exposition was to follow and applied the fashion of methodical explanation on the widest possible scale. He inaugurated the systematic treatment of theology by writing a book which treated God, the world, and religion in their several relations. He finally and completely established the principle that Christianity is an intelligent religion, by bringing all the strength and vigour of Greek philosophical insight to bear on the elucidation of Hebrew religious intuition and Christian spiritual history.” GL Prestige ‘Fathers and Heretics’

Key Areas of influence

• Despite using and studying extensively its forms Origen turned consciously away from Greek ‘inspiration’ for Christians

• He was the first to locate his anti-Gnostic arguments within an overall doctrinal framework in which the Gnostic questions could find their answer in a wider and deeper if speculative system (see Appendices for examples)

• He saw the apologetic necessity of an accurate and mutually acceptable Old Testament

Key Areas of influence

• In his biblical exegesis he found consistency though both an allegorical and spiritual understanding with historical narrative being secondary to spiritual truth

• Layers of meaning were to be found in biblical texts and Christians were to seek the inner meaning even at the expense of the literal understanding – from the material to the spiritual

• Scriptural meditation likewise assuages spiritual hunger and thirst as “God grants food to satisfy the soul’s hunger” moving from the letter to the Spirit

Origen

“Origen is the greatest of that happily small company of saints who, having lived and died in grace, suffered sentence of expulsion from the Church on earth after they had already entered into the joy of their Lord” GL Prestige ‘Fathers and Heretics’

Meanwhile...

A pagan intellectual reaction

• Celsus (AD 177-180) a Platonist fought for polytheistic practice

• Plotinus (AD 205-270) sought a philosophical synthesis between Aristotelian logic and Stoic ethics

• Porphyry (AD 232-305) Plotinus’ biographer, wrote a fifteen volume treatise against the church and other anti Christian works

The persecution of Decius (AD 249-51)

• Decius demanded that everyone should hold a certificate (libellus) of sacrifice to the gods before specially appointed commissioners

• The church was split as to how to deal with the large number of apostates. How far could sin be remitted and by whom?

• After the martyrdom of the Bishop of Rome two rival candidates were elected over this issue Cornelius (liberal) and Novatian (strict)

The Great Persecution of Diocletian

• Under Diocletian (AD 284-305) with administration of the Roman Empire split between East and West – persecution in the East once more broke out and wrought great destruction of life and property – less so in the West

• Constantine the son of Constantinius (assistant Caesar to Maximian) influenced by his Christian half sister named Anastasia (resurrection) was proclaimed Emperor by his troops on his fathers death in York in AD 306

• In AD 312 he sought the Christian God for help in gaining complete power in the Western Empire. In AD 312 Constantine in the West and Licinius in the East emerge supreme and in Milan in AD 313 they agreed on a policy of religious freedom and toleration for all and on the restoration of all property both to individual Christians and churches

The main Heresies


Arius and Arianism

• Arius (AD 250-336) was an Alexandrian Christian presbyter

• He taught that that the Son of God did not always exist, but was created by - and is therefore distinct from and inferior to - God the Father

• Arianism arose in the 3rd century but dominated theological debate throughout the 4th Century

• In AD 325 Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea to develop a statement of faith that could unify the Church. The Nicene Creed declared that the Father and the Son were of the same substance (homoousios)

• But the controversy was far from over and looking back to AD 360 Jerome could write that the world “awoke with a groan to find itself Arian”

• Not until AD 380/81 and the edicts of Emperor Theodosius did the Nicene Creed (actually finalised in Constantinople in AD 381) triumph and Arianism subside

Where do we see Arianism today?

• Common in some thinking outside the church today ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ Philip Pullman

• Common on the fringes of the Church where the divinity of Jesus might be questioned

• Common in theological circles where the search for the ‘historical Jesus’ rather than the Jesus over layered with centuries of piety and tradition can easily become a search for Jesus ‘the man’ at the expense of his divinity

(AD 293-373)Bishop of Alexandria

Athanasius

The foremost champion against Arianism

• He attended the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 as a deacon accompanying his bishop

• Succeeded Alexander as Bishop in AD 328• Exiled five times as political fortunes changed

Gaul (AD 335-337); Rome (AD 339-346); to the Egyptian desert monks (AD 356-361); Egypt in hiding (AD 362-363) & again (AD 365-366)

“Christ was made man that we might be made divine”

‘On the Incarnation’

• Only God could restore man to communion with himself

• He argued that if Christ was less than God he could not be our saviour

The stage was set for...

• Further division over the definition of apostasy and the re-admittance of apostates to the church community (Who decides?)

Led to The Donatist schism in Carthage, North Africa. Donatus was a rival bishop who held to the strict view that no apostate should be readmitted to the church.

• The question of the relationship between church and state and ecclesiastical rivalries (Who rules?)

• Continuing debate and division over the relationship of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit

• The nature of the Christian life (Which is best?)

and the key players...

• The successors to Athanasius ...The Cappadocian Fathers – Basil of CaesareaGregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa

• Cyril of Alexandria• John Chrysostom • Augustine of Hippo• The Desert Fathers (the Ascetic movement)• And others...

Appendices

1. The historic creedsNicene CreedApostles CreedChalcedonian Creed

2. Further notes on Origen3. Books that may be helpful

The Nicene Creed [First Council of Nicea AD 325, Revised at Constantinople in AD 381]

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Apostles’ Creed [From 2nd Century, First written in Letter to Milan AD 390]

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into Hell; the third day he rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven; and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Chalcedonian Creed [Council of Chalcedon, Asia Minor AD 451]

Therefore, following the holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one essence with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.

Origen on creation and redemption

• Creation was a spiritual realm from which souls endowed with reason and free will fell after becoming sated in their adoration of God – one soul never tuned away from God - Christ

• The material word results from the fall but has purpose at its heart – to educate train and remake man so that he turns once again to his Creator

• Life in the material world is a temporary and provisional stage in a much longer journey of the soul

• Redemption is a gradual process and atonement takes place constantly


• Revelation is conditioned by the capacity of the recipient

• Language of heaven and hell though primarily symbolic still bears an inner truth of divine punishment with remedial intent

• For Origen freedom is an inalienable possession of rational beings allowing even Satan to turn once again to God but thereby also allowing the possibility of an endless cycle of fall and redemption


• Deeply opposed to Monarchiansm in its modalistic and dynamic or adoptionist form he saw Christ as the pre-existent logos albeit as a lower level within the God head.

• He saw the Son as being ‘ begotten not made’ and as a mediator between God and man

Origen on the Trinity

• After Origen's death the gulf between those who like Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria, a pupil of Origen, who denied the Father and the Son were of one substance (homoousios) and those who tended to speak in terms of the unity of the Godhead such as Dionysius of Rome, grew wider. In a correspondence Dionysius of Rome rebuked his Alexandrian namesake over his views


“The correspondence is the first indication of a gulf, which soon became a yawning chasm between East and West. The Origenist theology looked like tritheism to the West. The Western doctrine was perilously near ‘Sabellianism’ in the eyes of the East.” Henry Chadwick ‘The Early Church’


Books that may be helpful• ‘The Early Church’ by Henry Chadwick

One of the best and easiest introductions to the subject• ‘Spirit and Fire’ Edited by Hans Urs Von Balthasar

First published in 1938 but by far the most accessible way into Origen’s writings and still in print

• ‘The writings of Justin Martyr’ published by Shepherd’s notesAn example of an original source that is still available today

• ‘The Christian Fathers’ Maurice WilesEminently readable history introducing the Church Fathers around the different doctrinal views they expressed

• ‘Fathers and Heretics’ GL PrestigeOriginally given as the Bampton lectures and first published in 1940 this is one of the classic books on the patristic period with a wonderfully enthusiastic chapter on Origen

• ‘The writings of Irenaeus’ published by The Apocryphile PressAnother example of an original source that is available today

Heresies and Heroes

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