Tag Archives: heresy

03/13/18

Heresy, Canon and the Early Church, Part 2

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By the close of the second century an outline of the New Testament had appeared. While there were some disputes about its fringes, the nucleus of the NT canon had formed. “By the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth century, the great majority of the twenty seven books [of the New Testament] … were almost universally acknowledged to be authoritative,” according to Bruce Metzger. Ironically, this process seems to have been helped along by early heretics of Christian belief like the Gnostics, Marcion and Montanus.

Gnosticism was a syncretistic religion and philosophy that thrived for about four hundred years alongside Christianity. Gnostics stressed salvation through gnõsis (knowledge) that would free the divine spark within elect souls, allowing it to escape from the fallen physical world and return to the realm of light. The physical body was a prison that trapped this “divine spark.”

The extensive literature developed by the Gnostics had a twofold purpose. First, it was to instruct believers about their origins and the structure of the visible world and the worlds above. Second, and most importantly, it was the means by which one could conquer the powers of darkness and return to the realm of the highest God. There were Gnostic “gospels” and other documents such as: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Apocryphon of John, and the Hypostasis of the Archons. These and other Gnostic codices are from the Nag Hammadi library, found near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. The library is estimated to be from around 400 AD.

There are three features that appear to be characteristic of several Gnostic systems. First, there was a philosophical dualism that rejected the visible world, seeing it as alien to the supreme God. Second, there was a belief in a subordinate deity, the Demiurge, who was responsible for the creation of the world. And third, there was a radical distinction between Jesus and the Christ, leading to the Docetic belief that Christ the Redeemer only appeared to be a real human being.

The church countered Gnostic beliefs by stating nothing from their systems was found in the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul. The Gnostics acknowledged this, but claimed their teachings were communicated “only to his most trusted disciples” and not to the general public. For proof, they appealed to a number of their ‘gospels.’ These gospels often dealt with the period between the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, a time that the canonical Gospels say very little. There were also other Gnostic texts in which they claimed the apostles reported what the Lord said to them in secret.

The primary role played by Gnosticism in developing the NT canon was to motivate the true followers of Christ “to ascertain more clearly which books and epistles conveyed the true teaching of the Gospel.” Bruce Metzger said:

It was not easy for the Church to defend herself against Gnosticism. Certain elements in the gospel tradition itself seemed to give verisimilitude to the Gnostics’ claim. . . . One can understand that in defending itself against Gnosticism, a most important problem for the church was to determine what really constituted a true gospel and a genuine apostolic writing. In order to prevent the exploitation of secret traditions, which were practically uncontrollable, the Church had to be careful to accept nothing without the stamp of apostolic guarantee.

But before the Gnostic problem was resolved, there was Marcion, a wealthy Christian ship-owner who arrived in Rome around 140 AD. He became a member of one of the Roman churches and made a few large financial contributions to the Church. At the end of July in 144 he was invited to expound his teachings before the clergy of the Christian congregations in Rome, hoping to win others to his point of view. “The hearing ended in a harsh rejection of Marcion’s views.” He was formally excommunicated and his money returned. But he persisted in attempting to win others to his views and although he died in 160, by the end of the second century his teachings had become a serious threat to the mainstream Christian church.

Marcion believed in two gods—the Supreme God of goodness and the God of justice, who was the Creator and God of the Jews. The deficiencies of the creation point to a deficient god. He rejected the entire Old Testament, refusing to admit it was part of the authoritative Christian Scriptures at all. Jesus was sent as a messenger of the supreme God to offer humanity an escape from the creator-god and his deficient world. Since Jesus was sent by the creator-God, he was not part of creation. He was a divine being who only seemed to be human. What followed from his Christology was that Marcion rejected the virgin birth and taught that Jesus did not suffer and die on the cross; he only appeared to do so.

Marcion believed that Paul alone of the New Testament writers understood the significance of Jesus as the messenger of the Supreme God. He only accepted the authority of the nine Pauline epistles written to the churches and Philemon. He rejected the authority of Paul’s pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus. He also freely removed passages where Paul had commented favorably on the Law or quoted the OT. For example, he deleted Galatians 3:16-4:6 because of its reference to Abraham and his descendents. Marcion only trusted the Gospel of Luke, but again heavily edited it, removing most of the first four chapters, because of his belief Jesus could not have been born of a woman since he was divine.

In addition to making the deletions of all that involved approval of the Old Testament and the creator god of the Jews, Marcion modified the text through transpositions and occasional additions in order to restore what he considered must have been the original sense.

The authority of the four Gospels had reached a consensus and confidence in which documents were the true apostolic writings had placed them alongside the Gospels during the first half of the second century. Marcion’s canon accelerated this crystallization of the church’s canon by forcing orthodox Christians to state more clearly what they already believed. “It was in opposition of to Marcion’s criticism that the Church first became fully conscious of its inheritance of apostolic writings.”

Into the heretical mix of the second century came Montanism, which began in Phrygia around 156. The movement was named after Montanus, who is sometimes said to have been a priest of Cybele, a pagan cult whose activity was also centered in Phyrgia (located in the Western part of modern Turkey). Montanus fell into a trance soon after his conversion and began to speak in tongues. He announced that he was the ‘Paraclete’ Jesus had promised to send in John’s Gospel (14:15-17; 17:7-15). He is reported to have said: “ I am God almighty dwelling in man.” A core belief of this New Prophecy in its earliest form was that the Heavenly Jerusalem would shortly descend from heaven and be located at the little Phyrgian town of Pepuza, about twenty miles northeast of Hieropolis.

Along with its two prophetesses, Prisca and Maximilla, Montanism was distinctive in having ecstatic outbursts, speaking in tongues and prophetic utterances. They believed their prophetic ‘oracles’ were revelations of the Holy Spirit and should be regarded as supplementing ‘the ancient scriptures.’ Members of the Montanist sect gathered together and wrote down their pronouncements.

They thought their mission was in the final phase of revelation. Maximilla said: “After me … there will be no more prophecy, but the End.” Montanus’ followers developed ascetic practices and disciplines in the face of what they saw as the growing worldliness of the Church and the impending approach of the end of the world. Their movement spread quickly and was soon found in Rome and North Africa.

At first, the Church didn’t quite know what to do with the Montanists. Eventually the bishops and synods of Asia Minor began to declare the new prophecy of Montanism was the work of demons and they were cut off from the fellowship of the Church. The bishops of Rome, Carthage and the remaining African bishops declared them to be a heretical sect. Hippolytus (170-235), in The Refutation of All Heresies, said the following about the Montanists:

But there are others who themselves are even more heretical in nature (than the foregoing), and are Phrygians by birth. These have been rendered victims of error from being previously captivated by (two) wretched women, called a certain Priscilla and Maximilla, whom they supposed (to be) prophetesses. And they assert that into these the Paraclete Spirit had departed; and antecedently to them, they in like manner consider Montanus as a prophet. And being in possession of an infinite number of their books, (the Phrygians) are overrun with delusion; and they do not judge whatever statements are made by them, according to (the criterion of) reason; nor do they give heed unto those who are competent to decide; but they are heedlessly swept onwards, by the reliance which they place on these (impostors). And they allege that they have learned something more through these, than from law, and prophets, and the Gospels. But they magnify these wretched women above the Apostles and every gift of Grace, so that some of them presume to assert that there is in them a something superior to Christ.

The influence of Montanism on the development of the New Testament was the opposite of that from Marcion’s teaching. Where Marcion motivated the Church to recognize the breadth of its written authoritative writings, the insistence of Montanus on the continuous gift of inspiration and prophecy led the Church to emphasize the final authority of apostolic writings as their rule of faith. See the following map for where to find the founders of early church heresies.

credit: Andre S. Jacobs Scripps College

Despite the clever syncretism of heresies like Gnosticism, Montanism and Marcion, the rule of faith embodied in the Scriptures was not lost. In spite of Marcion, the early Church affirmed the 66 Old Testament books of the Palestinian canon as the Word of God. The claims by Gnostics and Montanists for additional revelation equal to those of the Gospels and the Epistles faded and died as the New Testament canon crystallized. By 100 AD, all 27 books of the NT were already in circulation and the majority of the writings were in existence twenty to forty years before this. All but Hebrews, 2 Peter, James, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation were universally accepted, according to NT Scholar F. F. Bruce by that time.

Information on the creeds and heresies discussed here was taken primarily from Early Christian Creeds and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly; A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray; and The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.” Part 1 of “Heresy, Canon and the Early Church” is linked here.

03/2/18

Heresy, Canon and the Early Church, Part 1

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Christian heresy can be simply understood as a departure from Christian orthodoxy. But it can be difficult at times to define precisely what orthodoxy itself is. In his book, A History of Heresy, David Christie-Murray said: “Heresy is often a conservative reaction, brought about by an attempt to turn back the clock to an imagined early ideal.” A cynic (or relativist) might say that heresy is when a majority considers the opinion of a minority to be unacceptable; and it is powerful enough to punish those they see as heretics.

If we are to avoid a cynical sense of heresy, then we have to believe in orthodoxy that remains true, if only in the mind of God. And there must be a norm of Christian belief ‘on earth’ that reflects this idea and can be “the standard by which a man may be judged a true believer or heretic.” This seems to have been the early thinking on what was called the rule of faith or canon of truth. As the canon of Scripture began to crystallize, the early baptismal creeds sought to be a reflection and expression of this rule of faith contained in the Scriptures and taught by the apostles. Along with Pontius Pilate, we want to ask, what is truth?

There are two fundamentally different approaches to Christian truth. One sees it primarily as a living, growing organism that has to continuously adapt itself to new cultures, civilizations and circumstances. This corresponds generally to the Catholic-Orthodox view. When challenged by the question—by what authority do you claim your doctrines are true—Roman Catholics say that God appointed the Church itself as the supreme authority; the church through the ages is infallible in matters doctrine.

The other, Protestant approach, to Christian truth is a call to return to when the faith was pure, free of dogmatic accrual; when it was simple and obvious. Protestants replaced the infallibility of the Church with the infallibility of the Scriptures. The written Word of God is the final court of appeal, and whatever is not found in the Bible is not binding on believers. Heresy then, from a Protestant perspective, is doctrine or belief not found in the Bible.

The Church itself and any of its doctrines must be judged by Scripture. “The authority of the Bible is greater than that of the Church.” Now we could muddy the waters further with regards to defining heresy, but this will do for our examination of the early Christian creeds. And it seems to be the fundamental premise to which the Church fathers turned as they formulated their early creeds.

The heart of orthodoxy and the assessment of heresy centers on Jesus as God and Savior, together with the rejection of any faith which itself rejects or is inconsistent with the divinity of Christ. “Organically connected with the divinity of Christ is the doctrine of the Trinity.” As you look at the creeds and heresies of the early church, you can see how these essential doctrines were at the heart of most, if not all, of the heresies and creedal expressions of orthodoxy. To an extent, there is some legitimacy to view Christian truth as a living, growing organism as the orthodoxy of the Church was developed and articulated in the creeds. But this does not make the Church itself infallible. It recognizes that the “Word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). What is truth? “Thy Word is Truth” (John 17:17). And God’s Word is available to us in Scripture. Then from a Protestant perspective, canonical Scripture plays a determinative role in sifting what is true from is not true in heresy.

As we look at the Bible we see how God used certain people, historical events, even human culture and its accomplishments—such as the invention of writing—in conjunction with his special revelation through Christ and the Holy Spirit, to reveal Himself and to declare His will to the Church. Christians who confess that the Bible is special revelation, “breathed out” by God (2 Timothy 3:16), acknowledge God’s use of ordinary and extraordinary means to reveal Himself to us. Formal confession of this process exists in several forms; the following is from the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manner, to reveal Himself, and to declare His will unto His Church; (Heb. 1:1) and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.

The Protestant Bible is a “library of books,” with 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament; 66 all together. All the books of Scripture were given “By the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.” The authority of Scripture rests on God (“who is truth itself”) as its author and it should be received as the Word of God. “Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority” of Scripture is from the “inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” And ultimately, “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture in the Scripture itself.”

The crystallization of the Protestant biblical canon was a long process, which technically wasn’t entirely completed until the time of the Protestant Reformation, when the Reformers rejected the view of the Roman Catholic Church that the books of the Apocrypha were inspired. The Apocrypha is a collection of manuscripts written between 400 BC and 27 AD. Reasons for the Protestant denial that these writings were inspired by God include that the New Testament never quotes from any of the apocryphal books. The Catholic response to this is to argue that Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon were also never quoted in the New Testament; and yet we accept them as inspired. However, the inclusion of these five books in the Old Testament canon was never in question, thus weakening the Catholic rejoinder.

A better explanation of the difference comes from an understanding of the history of the Hebrew canon. The rabbis in Palestine after 70 AD recognized a canon of twenty-four books (according to their system of enumeration); it was divided into Law (or Torah), Prophets and Writings. This organization reflected the principle that revelation began with Moses, the author of the Torah, and ended with Ezra. The Apocrypha originated after Ezra; additionally, some of the apocryphal books were composed in Greek. Therefore, they should not be included in this definition of Scripture. “The rabbis claim that the person who brings together more than twenty-four books creates confusion (Midras Qohelet. 12:12) and that one who reads in the outside books will have no place in the world to come (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhadrin 100b).” The Hebrew canon organizes the books of the Old Testament differently than the Protestant Bible does. See the following chart.

However, there are several Septuagint (LXX) manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible that mix apocryphal books with the canonical, prompting the theory there was a wider Alexandrian Canon that included the books of the Apocrypha. The Catholic decision seems to accept the Alexandrian Canon. R. T. Beckworth gave the following explanation for accepting the Palestinian Canon:

The Apocrypha were known in the church from the start, but the further back one goes, the more rarely are they treated as inspired. In the NT itself, one finds Christ acknowledging the Jewish Scriptures, by various of their current titles, and accepting the three sections of the Jewish Canon and the traditional order of its books; one finds Revelation perhaps alluding to their number; and throughout the NT one finds most of the books being referred to individually as having divine authority; but none of the Apocrypha. The only apparent exception is the reference to Enoch in Jude 14f, which may be just an argumentum ad hominem to converts from the apocalyptic school of thought. What evidently happened was this. Christ passed on to his followers, as Holy Scripture, the Bible, which he had received, containing the same books as the Heb. Bible today. The first Christians shared with their Jewish contemporaries a full knowledge of the canonical books. However, the Bible was not yet between two covers: it was a memorized list of scrolls. The breach with Jewish oral tradition (in some matters very necessary), the alienation between Jew and Christian, and the general ignorance of Semitic languages in the church outside Palestine and Syria, led to increasing doubt on the OT Canon among Christians, which was accentuated by the drawing up of new lists of the biblical books, arranged on other principles, and the introduction of new lectionaries. Such doubt about the Canon could only be resolved, and can only be resolved today, in the way it was resolved by Jerome and at the Reformation—by returning to the teaching of the NT, and the Jewish background against which it is to be understood.

The canon of the Old Testament, for all intensive purposes, was closed by the time Jesus declared: “It is written,” as he was tempted by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:1-4). In The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce Metzger said that at first, the teachings of Jesus circulated orally, from hearer to hearer. “Then these narratives were compiled recording the remembered words, along with recollections of his deeds of mercy and healing.” The opening verses to the Gospel of Luke refer to these “pre-Gospel” writings: “Insomuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us.”

After many years the limits of the New Testament canon as we know it were set for the first time in a letter written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in 367. Athanasius also had a key role in the formulation of early church creeds (like the Nicene and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creeds); and in challenging the teachings of the array of heresies that sprang up like the weeds as the New Testament canon and the early creeds were being formulated. More on this in Part 2 of “Heresy, Canon and the Early Church.”

Information on the creeds and heresies discussed here was taken primarily from Early Christian Creeds and Early Christian Doctrines by J. N. D. Kelly; A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray; and The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”