TENETS OF CHRISTIANITY
HERESIES AND SCHISMS
Introduction
This is perhaps the most painful chapter in the history of the early Church. Jesus had prayed to his Father and our Father that “They all may be one”(Jn 17: 21-23). He had particularly put his apostles on their guard against the divisions which would grow up among even those who received the good news of reconciliation with the Father and the universal fraternity of all the saved. It was to happen very soon. Once the glorious enthusiasm of the first days had died down, Christians dared to strike a blow at the unity of faith and love.
The early Church did not make any distinction between schismatics and heretics. One was in communion with the neighboring bishoprics and their communities, or one was not; and this communion was plainly manifested by the fact that at the moment of celebrating the Eucharist, which is the sacrament of unity, each bishop named in a loud voice, before the Lord and in the presence of his assembled people, the bishops whose faith he shared;[1] these names were written on tablets called diptychs. It was the Middle Ages which distinguished canonically between schism and heresy, heresy being a grave attack on the doctrinal unity of the Church, schism a grave attack on its disciplinary unity.
Christian Belief
The Christian doctrine was synthesized in the Credo (Creed) and was presented to those to be baptized as an obligation and as a rule of faith (regula fidei), also called the rule of truth. It was also called “truth, faith, teaching, institution, doctrine” or even “the word” alone.
That faith included the belief in one God, Father and Creator of everything, omnipotent and governor of the world. This absolute monotheism was common to both Christians and Jews and was the point of distinction of Judaism and Christianity from polytheism and paganism.
A new and exclusive doctrine to Christianity was the belief in the Holy Trinity, that is, the belief in the One Triune God, which we find in the commandment of baptizing all people (Mt 28:19).
The Christian religion demanded belief in the only-begotten Son of God who appeared in Jesus Christ of Nazareth for the salvation of mankind as the Messiah prophesied by the prophets, who was born a man of the Blessed Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died on the cross and was buried, He ascended up to heaven and reigns as Lord (kyrios) with power and glory and will come to judge the living and the dead. The spurious Second Letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians begins with the words:
Brethren, we must think of Jesus Christ as we think of God, that is, as judge of the living and of the dead.
The Christians believed, too, in the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity,[2] the Holy Paraclete, who will always remain with the disciples of Christ (Jn 14:16). They believe in the Holy Church, which Paul described as the Mystical Body of Christ. They believed in the remission of sins, actuated in Baptism as a bath of regeneration; they believed in the Resurrection of the flesh which will take place at the moment of the end of the world and last coming (parousia) of the Lord and finally they believed in the happy and eternal life of the world to come as a reward for the just.
The whole effort of the first Christian generation was aimed at maintaining intact this teaching received, this trust which had been faithfully transmitted and which they must transmit equally faithfully in their turn. The word was communicated by word of mouth, rather like a secret. It was truly the object and the instrument of initiation. One did not invent Christian truth, one did not change it. One did not touch it up, one did not even discuss it. One received it as it was, one believed it as it was, one eventually defended it, and above all one transmitted it just as one had received it. It was only later, on the occasions of the discussions between theologians which led to the decisions of the great ecumenical councils – that one thought of developing a little the teaching received, of making it more explicit. But in the beginning everything revolved around the question of faithful transmission.[3] The idea, while very lawful and very valuable, of an organic development of Christian revelation, as of a living thing which opens out and displays its potentialities, was still strange to the early Church.
We must underline now an extremely important point. In practice, the Christians of early times gave their adherence of faith, not so much to the words said to come from the lips of Jesus, as to the teaching which in their eyes offered the surest guarantees of apostolicity. The ephemeral success of the apocryphal gospels did not deceive the Church. Instinctively the Christians preferred to them the more solid food of the teaching of the apostles. Also, from the beginning, local communities which went back in a direct line to an apostle (Corinth, Rome, Ephesus, etc.) enjoyed exceptional prestige, exceeding even that of Jerusalem, and a good number of Christian Churches proved the integrity of their faith simply by the fact of the uninterrupted succession of their bishops from the apostle-founder. In practice, then, the supreme norm in the matter of doctrinal safety was none other than the teaching of the Church herself in the measure in which this was built over the foundation of the apostles. It was her own teaching which served as a touchstone of doctrinal purity; it was her own heads, the bishops, who were successors of the apostles, who kept intact the paradosis and transmitted it authoritatively to the faithful. For the Christians that time (and it is the same for us today) what the Church taught was true, because by the apostolic succession of her bishops she took the teaching directly from the apostles. Once again, apostolicity is shown to be a fundamental characteristic of the Church of Christ.
But not all to whom the gospel of salvation was preached recognized the beatific word of God, which had to be received simple and pure as it was, without adding or taking away anything. Some people believed that they could accept what they liked or was pleasing to them and mixed that doctrine with some strange beliefs. The Lord has foretold that in the kingdom of God the weeds would grow with the wheat until the day of the last harvest. According to St. Paul, there must be divisions (heresies) in the Church.[4] In fact, the whole history of the Church is permeated by non-Christian doctrines which constantly appear and put to the test the faith handed down to us by Jesus and his apostles. These doctrines are the so-called heresies.
How does heresy begin? This, no doubt, is an important question and a student of history should try to make an effort to understand the genesis of heresy.
Theology implies an attempt to understand the contents of the revealed religion with the help of human reason. Orthodox theology starts by underlying a concrete revealed dogma, or the whole canon of faith, and afterwards compares the results of its own intellectual and theological reflections with that dogma. Orthodox theology “listens” and “confesses” the faith before trying to explain it. Orthodox faith tries to take seriously all the truths of faith.
Unorthodox theology parts away from the previous method by Orthodox theology. Unorthodox theology, in its wish to explain the Christian faith, puts its own judgments before the objective truth, before the faith proclaimed by the Church. It is a subjective attitude, not an objective one. This attitude implies a selection of the whole treasure of revelation and thus becomes unilateral, particular. Instead of catholic synthesis we have heretical partiality. The essence of heresy is subjectivism and partiality.
A study of the heresies of all times testifies, in a clear and instructive way, what we are writing about above and it also shows that the Church is the system of the center, the synthesis that faithfully protects the whole treasure of revelation.
From the second century the name “catholics”[5] is used in a general way to designate the members of the “great” Church[6] in opposition to the small communities formed by the heretics.
During the first period of the Church the heresies or heretical doctrines were of either Jewish or pagan origin. The Jews, or better, the Christians coming from Judaism, could not quite admit that the Mosaic Law was substituted by the New Testament. It is the heresy of the Judaizers. The pagans, on the other hand, reacted against the Christian doctrines about creation and origin of evil, because it seemed impossible for them to accept “Creatio ex nihilo” and so they opposed this doctrine with their dualism (God and eternal matter). Hence the Gnostic and Manicheistic Heresies. The Trinitarian dogma, that is, the question about reconciling the Divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit with the unity of God, was the cause of the first heresies on this point.
The heresies had a tremendous importance in the development of the Christian doctrine. They gave a notable impulse to a clearer and deeper understanding of the truth of the faith in all its various aspects and were the motive for a more complete formulation of the dogmas of the Church. This is why St. Augustine has this to say:
Haeretici cum foris sunt plurimum prosunt, non verum docendo quod nesciunt, sed ad verum quaerendum carnales et ad verum aperiendum spirituales catholicos excitando.”[7] (The heretics, although outside, help tremendously, not teaching the truth, which they do not know, but moving the carnal people to search for the truth and the spiritual catholics to be opened to the truth.)
Judaizers
We have already spoken of Judeo-Christianity. It was, in the beginning of the Church, the only kind of Christianity. Then the entry of crowds of pagans into the Christian communities made it the Christianity of some only, who perpetuated thus the memory of their glorious origin. But, from the time that some of these converted hebraics refused the decisions of the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem, continuing to treat the Mosaic observances as a necessity of salvation for all Christians, Judeo-Christianity went astray; because Jesus alone is our Savior, and the law of the Old Testament was only there to prepare hearts to receive the grace of the New. Beginning with this refusal, Judeo-Christianity became a heresy. It was the doctrinal error of those who claimed that the redemptive work of Jesus had not dispensed his believers from the practice of the Jewish law. To support their point of view the Judeo-Christians quoted these words of Jesus: “I am not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but rather to fulfill them” (Mt 5: 17), interpreting these words in the most material, most literal sense, while Jesus used “to fulfill” in the sense of “bringing to perfection, to perfect”. Towards the end of the second century in Palestine, the meddlesome activity of one Ebion catalyzed this Judaic obstinacy. His disciples formed a group, the Ebionites, who considered St. Paul as an apostate and enemy of the Mosaic Law, and Christ as a simple man. The other group are the Nazarites, a less intransigent group, who admitted a miraculous birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Fathers of the Church, however, considered these groups as plain heretics with their own Gospel, the Gospel to the Hebrews, and continued in Syria and Palestine up to the Arab conquest (637).
Gnosticism
Introduction
The young Christian Church had to face tremendous dangers from within during the first and the second centuries. Perhaps this internal danger has been the most serious the Church had ever had to face in her whole history. This danger is called Gnosis or Gnosticism.
The Gnosis is basically a pagan phenomenon which reflects the great religious movement of paganism, or, better to say, the mixture of religions of the first centuries of the Christian era. The Christian heretical Gnosis, which is the only one to have interest for the history of the Church, is no more than a part of the general phenomenon prevalent in the Graeco-Roman world of the first, second and third centuries called syncretism. The Gnosis tried to explain the problems which continuously beset the human spirit in a way opposed to the Gospel and the traditions of the Church. In so doing, the Gnosis put in danger the very existence of the Church.
The Gnostics dissolved and mixed the Christian religion in such a way as to leave it unrecognizable, with concepts and ideas taken from Platonist and Pythagorean philosophies, from Stoicism, from the religions of Asia Minor; such as the dualism of Zoroaster (God-World; Light-Darkness), Syrio-Phoenician cosmogony, Babylonian astrology, etc. Gnosticism is not only a school of thought inspired by an all powerful religious tendency, hoping to find a deeper meaning of Christianity than that offered by the Gospels and the tradition of the Church, but also “an attempt on the part of the Christian intellectuals” – some of them thinkers of unusual power – “to usurp a right of speculating, of systematizing and dogmatizing in the strictest sense of the word after the manner of the pagan school of philosophy.”
To the ordinary man, the detailing of the belief and theories of these heretics is a wearying business. Speculations seemingly as divorced from the right reason as the schemes of the professors in Laputa, nightmarish, mechanically contrived fantasies, a wilderness of sounding phrases and necromantic names, a chaos where sounds abound and sense is all to see – in studying these systematic aberrations we have to remind ourselves at every turn that their bizarre-extravagance covers a discussion and an offered solution, of the most fundamental of all problems. The nature and origin of evil, of man, of God, the purpose of life and its attainment through living – these are the problems, theoretical and practical, which the Gnostic interpretation of Christianity claimed to answer. Nor was Gnosticism a mere academic discussion, it offered itself as a religious system. It had its rituals and its observances, its regulatons and its officials. It was a formidable competitor to traditional Christianity, and to Gnosticism the Church lost its best minds and the most energetic spirits. Nor did the influence of the movement end with the second century. That century witnessed a life and death struggle between the Church and the Gnostics, which ended in the Gnostics’ expulsion from the Church; but the defeated theories survived outside the Church to provide, for centuries yet to come, an under-current of influences which never cease to irritate and disturb the development of Catholic thought.[8]
Gnosis literally means knowledge. Gnosis in the pagan religions of the first and second centuries and in the Christian heresy, however, means not only knowledge but a salvific knowledge, that is, a knowledge of a religious character. St. Paul also pretended that his religious communities should build, on the first foundation of the Good News, a superior structure, and so arrive at an “epignosis” (superior knowledge of the Gospel). But while this superior knowledge was destined to all Christians, in the second century, there appeared certain Christian trends of thought which defended that there existed a special salvific knowledge which was accessible to only a few, the so-called “knowledger” (Gnostics) and that this Gnosis was different and superior to faith (pistis).
There existed more than 60 main different systems of Gnosticism. All of them contain certain ideas from the Judeo-Christian revelation and elements of the Graeco-Oriental religions. In some of the Gnostic systems the Christian element plays a preponderant role. But the most important thing in them is not the faithful acceptance of revelation. The first thing for the Gnostics is the attempt to construe a conception of the world taking as basis the intellect which freely decides for itself. More often than not the intellect is substituted by phantasy and philosophical extravagance (mainly the oriental Gnosis).
Essential Points of Gnosticism
The point of coincidence of all the Gnostic sects (which were more than 60) was the solution of the problem of evil; it was explained by the co-existence of two principles, one good and the other bad: God and Matter. Then, as now, the Church taught the Creatio ex nihilo and considered evil as abuse of freedom. Some Gnostics, however, supposed that matter was eternal, while others sustained that it was derived from the divine substance. According to this hypothesis the world had not been created by God, who could not have any contact with the matter, principle of evil, but by some intermediaries called Eons, Demiurges. Considering matter as something evil, in what way they can man, who aspires to his union with God, separate or free himself from the domination of matter? To give him a means, God sent a superior Eon, the Word, the Logos Christ. His work is called Redemption. To achieve this, Jesus took the appearance of a Body: the Logos could not unite Himself with matter, which is something evil. This doctrine is called Docetismus (from the Greek Dokein, appear). St. John the Evangelist said that the Word was from God and that the Word was made Flesh.
The morality of Gnosticism recommends asceticism, because the human soul could not free itself from matter but with a severe penance. This theory, carried to its extreme, tended to a disappearance of life, condemned matrimony and in general all kinds of work, because of it, one needed the concourse of matter. As we can see, Gnosticism is a doctrine absolutely not Christian – naturalistic: it does not only eliminate God and the unity of the celestial Logos with the terrestrial mission, but reduces all religion to a naturalistic process which does not respond to the free will of man. For the Gnosis redemption is only a part of the general evolution of the world, not a free act of love from the part of God.
The Gnostics divided the Christians into three different types:
1. the Gnostic or spiritual men (pneumatikoi)
2. the animate man or somatic men (pistikoi)
3. the material men (hylikoi)
According to them only the Gnostics, the pneumatikoi, the chosen by the Spirit are the truly and really Christians. Only to them is due, by a special grace, the true redemption. The pistikoi, the sumple faithful, attain a redemption of secondary order through the sacraments and good works. The last type, the hylikoi, in whom matter lives, are left outside redemption.
This theory was a false ideal, but it seduced many souls in search of spiritual perfection. They thought of themselves not only as superior, which is already against Christianity, but as the only ones capable of salvation and redemption. The Church condemned them. Within the community any man is capable of obtaining total salvation. This was the fundamental decision against this spiritual elitist, contrary to Christ’s designs. This was a dangerous spiritual separatism. Against this separatism and all the sects and conventicles which repeatedly appear in history, presuming to present a surer kind of Christianity, the Church emphasized the fundamental need of spiritual unity in the community.
The strict asceticism of the Gnostics, of which we wrote above is something extrinsic, an overcoming of matter and assumes an exterior rigor, sometimes against nature.
Experience, however, teaches us that at all times this rigor passed quite easily to the opposite extreme. In the concrete case of the Gnostics, the identification of the Demiurge Creator of the world as the Legislator of the Old Testament favored an autonomy and licentious “libertinage”. The Gnostics pretended to have a superior knowledge and undervalued the eternal discipline; because of this, some of them considered an indifferent thing to partake with the pagans at their sacrifices and as a superfluous thing the confession of the faith before the pagan authorities, because true and proper confession or martyrdom consisted in the Gnosis. The Gnostics, as perfect men, could not commit sins. Many of them led a life of debauchery, because for them the Gnosis gave a state of impeccability.
Conclusion on Gnosticism
The Gnosis represents the radical degeneration of the inviolable religious revelation of Jews and its conversion into a philosophy. It was the complete “hellenization” of Christianity, the corruption of its very essence. The great success of the Gnosis is due to its religious contents, which impressed the human phantasy, and also due to the greatness of its conception of the universe.
Marcion (ca. 140-160)
The Gnostic system close to Christianity and the more serious morally and religiously and, because of this, more dangerous for the Church, was the system of Marcion. Its creator, based on it, founded in Rome, in 146, a proper Church. Marcion, a rich merchant from Sinope, a city near the Black Sea, was obsessed with the difference between the Old and the New Testaments. He exaggerated this difference to the point of creating an absolute contraposition between the two. Like other Gnostics, Marcion imagined that there existed an opposition between the God of the Old Testament (the God of the Law and of merciless and pitiless justice) and the God of the New Testament (the good God, Father of love who revelaed himself in Jesus). He founded a real Church in Rome, with bishops, priests and a liturgy in competition with the real Church. He won more adherents than any other Gnostic sect, but he was excommunicated and by the fifth century, Marcionism had entirely disappeared.
Manicheism and the Persian Gnosis
Introduction
When at the end of the second century Gnosticism had lost most of its importance in the Graeco-Roman world, a new Gnostic religious sect appeared in Babylon and Persia, the so-called Manicheism. With its subsequent diffusion, it became a universal religion and a dangerous rival of Christianity.
The basis of its doctrine is a rigid dualism, taken from Zoroaster and from many other religions, such as the religion of the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Buddhists (for morals and asceticism), Jews and Christians. To tell the truth, the Christian elements were known, so it seems, through the Gnostic Marcion and the Syrian Gnostic Bardesane. These elements are quite insignificant and can be reduced in substance to mere names, forms and external usages.
Founder of Manicheism
The founder of the new religion was Mani (Manes or Manicheus) born in Babylon in 216 from Persian parents and educated in the religion of the Mandeans (Gnostics still in existence today in Southern Mesopotamia). In the years 1902-1903 many fragments of the writings of Mani and his followers were discovered in the Chinese Turchestan. In 1930, many original works were found in Coptic in Egypt. We find there his letters, psalms, homilies and a description of his death. From his writings we gather some of his doctrines.
In these writings Mani recognizes the dependence upon the “Fathers of Justice”, Jesus, Zoroaster and Buddha, but confesses his intention of surpassing these religions, considered by him as “sects”, through missionary actions all over the world. He had already preached in India, when after the year 242, under king Sapor I (241-272), he came to Persia as an “Apostle of the True God” and there founded many communities. He was, for some time, favored by King Sapor and took part with him in his military expeditions. But at the end of 277, under King Bahram I, he was crucified, due to the intrigues of the magicians, that is, the priestly castes of Zoroaster. His followers suffered a violent persecution for political reasons not only in their land but also under Diocletian, that is, within the Roman Empire. Diocletian in 296, published an edict against them and the Christian Emperors did the same. Sissinius, Mani’s successor (282-305) as head of the sect also ended his life on the cross. The Manichean writings were burned, but Manicheism, in spite of the persecutions, diffused itself in many new countries. In the East it went as far as China and in the west it reached North Africa, where Augustine was a follower for nine years. It spread to Italy and Spain, although the number of followers was not very high.
The Fathers of the Church and ecclesiastical writers and, from the fourth century, the Synods took great pains in fighting Manicheism. Even during Medieval times, Manicheism constituted a favorable field for subsequent heresies: Neo-Manicheism, Paulicians, Bogomilians, Cathari or Albigensias and others.
Doctrine of Manicheism
According to Manes there are two eternal principles in perpetual hostility: God and Satan. The first is the principle of good and light and the second, the principle of evil. Man cannot free himself from matter except through the knowledge of true science. This true science was taught by Jesus, who came to the world in a phantasmagorical body (Docetismus). This work, which is the Redemption, and which for some time was put in danger by the apostles, had to be completed through the Paraclete, who made his appearance in the person of Manes, the last and the greatest prophet.
To attain the further liberation of the element of light, Manes taught the three seals:
1. The signaculum oris – seal of the mouth, prohibition of impure words and pleasure, especially flesh meat and wine.
2. The signaculum manus – (manuum) the prohibition of manual work, considered as an offense against the world of light.
3. The signaculum sinus – prohibition of marriage.
When the separation of the two worlds becomes complete, the visible world will be destroyed in a fire of 1,468 years.
Montanism
While Gnosticism preached a kind of Christianity based on the worldy spirit of Hellenist culture, there were within the Church certain people who advocated a discipline of extreme rigor and even a total “flight” from the world.
This tendency is well represented by Montanism. At first it was only a movement of religious enthusiasm, similar to revivals in Protestantism or in some modern Catholic Charismatic movements. It promulgated no new doctrine, but it desired to group all Christians together, to separate them from the world, and to prepare them for the kingdom of God which was imminent. Yet Montanism did in fact constitute a new Gospel, and when faced by the opposition of the Church, the Montanists were soon led to form a Church of their own, and what was at first only a group of prophets and enthusiasts degenerated into a sect.
If we wish to understand the rise of this movement, we must remember the part played by prophecy in the Church. We have in the Didache the important plave occupied by most prophets at the end of the first century. Hermas at Rome gave the prophets precedence over the priests.
This belief in the diffusion of the prophetic spirit was not without its dangers: some might claim gifts which in fact they did not possess, and worse still, charlatans could deceive Christians by semblance of prophecies. The danger was so serious that in the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas, the faithful are put on their guard against false prophets, and they are given signs whereby these are to be recognized. The danger was still more evident in which the Last Day was awaited.
The founder was Montanus, a neophyte supported by two female Christians Maximilla and Priscilla. Probably he had been a priest of the goddess Cybeles. According to St. Epiphanus (315-405) Montanus appeared in the scene around the year 155-156, but if we are to follow Eusebius’ Chronicle, without doubt much more exact, he began in Asia Minor, in 173. He presented himself as a prophet and reformer under the pretense of being the organ of the Paraclete (Cf. Jn 14: 16-26) promised by Christ to inaugurate for the Church the age of the Holy Spirit. The first age, then, was Judaism, dictated by God the Father; the second was Christianity, dictated by God the Son. The third, more perfect than the two previous ones, was already manifested in the world, through the work of the Holy Spirit. This last age differs from the two others by a very severe discipline. The Montanists began by prohibiting second marriage (often marriage as such was very much despised). Fasting was made more difficult and Xerophagy was ordained (to eat dry food, without meat). It was prohibited to flee during persecutions and even it was recommended to offer oneself spontaneously to martyrdom. Those guilty of capital sins (adultery, apostasy, murder) could never be admitted into the Church. During the sacred functions the Virgins and Spouses had to carry along with them their veils.[9]
If the Christian Church had listened to and followed Montanus, it would have meant the exit of Christianity from the world, it would have meant the destruction of Christianity. The Church would then have renounced to evangelize the world and to dominate the world. Montanism means the attempt to deny the historical development of the kingdom of God on earth and putting back this development to its infant state. The movement that parted from Montanus was the first idealist and utopian movement within the Church. If his movement had been seconded, the Universal Church would have been no more than a series of conventicles. The redemption of the world (mankind) would have finished in the more enthusiasm of a few dreamers or visionaries.
The Church also rejected this ideal of Christianity, which is false because it is partial. The Church affirmed with it, once more to be the system of the center; to be religious, Christian and ascetical and nevertheless be open to the world; to be “earthly” yet not to be lost in the world.
This movement, however, diffused itself quite rapidly not only in Asia Minor, but also in some other countries. As a result of keen propaganda, Montanism spread with astonishing rapidity. It appeared in Phrygia in 173, but already in 177 the Churches of Lyons and Rome were alarmed at the commotion caused, of which they felt the effects.
The bishops realized the danger. They might have been more tolerant towards a rigorous asceticism which was content to preach fast and abstinence, forbid second marriages, and recommend chastity and even towards a milleniarism like that of Justin and Ireneaus which also made room for a less literal interpretation of the prophecies of the Apocalypse, but they could not suffer a message which calling itself prophetic, claimed to go beyond the Gospel and rejected the hierarchy.
Synods were convoked, the first which history mentions, and the heresy was therein condemned. These measures were certainly efficacious. The Montanists were regarded as excommunicated, and even persecution did not modify their severe attitude. Closely linked together the Asiatic bishops succeeded in arresting the disease and in expelling from the Church the adherents of the new prophecy.
Pope Victor (189-198) and Pope Zephyrinus (198-217) did the same in Rome. But nothing could stop the movement which spread, especially, in Northern Africa. Here, in 205, Tertullian of Carthage, with his hard and bitter temperament, professed himself favorable to Montanism and became its greatest defender. He wrote a series of writings[10] defending the Montanist ideal and in his polemic against the Psychicos (Catholics) became more and more intransigent. The sect still continued for a long time. The synod of Trullum of 682 and Emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-745) in the year 722 adopted some provisions against the Montanists.
Chiliasmus or Millenarianism
Among the Christians of the early primitive Church there was the widely diffused hope of an immediate return of Christ (Parousia). This eschatological expectancy contributed to give to the way of thinking and living of the Christians profound seriousness and a great rigor. The Apostles themselves believed that Christ would soon return for the final judgment of mankind (Parousia).
Because of this, there were some exaggerated movements; one of them was Chiliasmus or Milleniarism, that is, the error of those Christians who believed in an immediate coming of Christ to inaugurate with his saints a glorious kingdom of a thousand years, hence Milleniarism. This was a terrestrial, political kingdom.
This error was due to the influence of the Judeo-Christians who still expected the Messianic kingdom on earth. Some Christians associated that glorious kingdom with the second coming of the Lord and interpreted in this sense the mysterious words of the Apocalypse of St. John (ch. 20-21). According to them, Satan, after some time, would be chained and the just people would remain with Christ for a thousand years, hence the name Chiliasm or Xiliasm; afterwards, the devil will be freed from his chains and defeated a second time; there would then be a general resurrection, the last judgment and the formation of a new heaven and a new earth, the world coming like thus, to its end.
In the terrible hours of the persecution, the milleniarist error offered beautiful hopes for the future and contributed to a high degree, to give fortitude to the Christians who went to martyrdom. It is then, not strange to find followers of Xiliasm not only among the Judeo-Christian sects, but also among famous Christian martyrs and writers, such as:
a. the author of the Letter to Barnabas (150?)
b. Papias of Hierapolis (130?)
c. St. Justin (ca. 100-168)
d. St. Irenaeus (ca. 140-202)
e. St. Hippolytus (ca. 170-235)
f. Tertullian (ca. 155-228)
Millenniarism lost ground not through rational arguments or discussions against them but through the sudden and complete change of the conditions of the Church under Constantine (306-337) and his successors. However, it never died and, now and then, we find it in certain movements of sectarian tendency. Milleniarism met with opposition at Rome (Caius) and in the east (Origen; Dennis of Alexandria).
Triumph of the Church Over the Gnosis
In spite of its Gnostic-dualist basis, the system of Marcion represented an attempt to save Christianity from the menacing smothering of the Gnosis. Montanus made another attempt, but in the field of moral life alone. Both were total failures. The only attempt against the Gnosis which was successful was carried out by the Church through a faithful defense of the apostolic legacy.
The heretics taught doctrines which were in contradiction with the concepts of the doctrine of the Church. They themselves knew quite well that Christianity could only accept the truths preached and handed over by apostolic tradition. Hence, to defend their opinions, the Gnostics had recourse to an occult apostolic tradition. Based on this supposed tradition they not only rejected capriciously some of the books of Holy Scriptures, but also mutilated those which they accepted, and created a rich literature of new gospels (apocrypha), or Acts of the Apostles, etc.
In the fight against the Gnosis, Christian science and the bishops established the bases peculiar and essential to Christianity and the Church, which distinguishes them from that of heretics and of supposed occult apostolic tradition. The bases are:
a. The Canon of the Holy Scripture, that is, the treasure of the true revealed books, with the expressed inclusion of the Old Testament.
b. A detailed Creed, as rule of faith, which contains the essential belief of Christianity (unity of God, Who is Creator of the world and Father of Jesus Christ; earthly life of Jesus) and according to which the Holy Books must be interpreted.
c. The fact and need that every doctrine must come, in an uninterrupted way, from the residents of the Church. Orthodoxy will be assured by this “apostolic tradition” of the bishops and especially of the Roman bishops.
With her victory against the Gnosis the Church made impossible, once and for all, the dissolution of the Christian doctrine into a philosophy. This doctrine was final and decisive for all time.
The work of the adversaries of Gnosticism, St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Hippolytus can also be considered as a synthesis. To the separation of “creation or redemption”, “knowledge or faith” they opposed the true Christian doctrine of “creation and redemption”, “faith and knowledge”.
[1] Today still, at the beginning of the Canon of the Mass, they mention the Pope, the Bishop of the diocese, and all the bishops of the world who “faithful to the true doctrine, keep the Catholic and apostolic faith.”
[2] The word “trias” appeared for the first time in Theophilus, Ad Autholicum II, 15; or in Clement of Alexandria (120-215), Excerpta ex Theodoto 80, 3; “Trinitas” in Tertullian (155-228), Adv. Praxeam, 2 et ff.
[3] In Greek, paradosis, which is best translated in the Christian language by “tradition.” Paradosis as well as “tradition” can mean both the transmission itself of the faith and its doctrinal content.
[4] “…For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.” I Cor 11: 19.
[5] The expression if first found in St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. ca. 117 AD).
[6] A term used by the pagan philosopher Celsus to refer to the Church.
[7] Augustine, De Vera Rel. 8, 15.
[8] Philip Hughes, A History of the Church, I, pp. 84-85.
[9] The Church rejected Montanism but its spirit is ever present in some exaggerated Christian movements recurrent in history.
[10] De Exhortatione Castitatis, De Monogamia, De Ieiunio Adversus Psychicos, de Virginibus Velandis, De Fuga in Persecutione, De Pudicitia.
