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47-457: Eutychians were often labelled Phantasiasts by their adversaries, who accused their Christology of reducing Jesus' incarnation to a phantasm. At various times, Eutyches taught that the human nature of Christ was overcome by the divine or that Christ had a human nature but it was unlike the rest of humanity. One formulation is that Eutychianism stressed the unity of Christ's nature to such an extent that Christ's divinity consumed his humanity as

94-591: A 4th-century antinomian sect from Macedonia held that the Threefold God transformed himself into a single hypostasis in order to unite with the souls of the perfect. They were anti-clerical and rejected baptism and the sacraments, believing that the passions could be overcome and perfection achieved through prayer. Many groups held dualistic beliefs , maintaining that reality was composed into two radically opposing parts: matter, usually seen as evil, and spirit, seen as good. Docetism held that Jesus' humanity

141-503: A Christian apologist, Bauer's theory does not show an equality between the established church and outsiders including Simon Magus . According to Mitchell et al., each early Christian community was unique, but the tenets of the mainstream or catholic Church insured that each early Christian community did not remain isolated. The Ante-Nicene period (2nd–3rd century) saw the rise of a great number of Christian sects , cults and movements with strong unifying characteristics lacking in

188-545: A core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches . It is distinguished from both apostasy and schism , apostasy being nearly always total abandonment of the Christian faith after it has been freely accepted, and schism being a formal and deliberate breach of Christian unity and an offense against charity without being based essentially on doctrine. The development of doctrine,

235-492: A historian the overwhelmingly dominant view that for the period of Christian origins, ecclesiastical doctrine already represented what is primary, while heresies, on the other hand somehow are a deviation from the genuine (Bauer, "Introduction"). Scholars such as Pagels and Ehrman have built on Bauer's original thesis. Drawing upon distinctions between Jewish Christians , Gentile Christians, and other groups such as Gnostics and Marcionites , they argue that early Christianity

282-575: A letter read before the Council of Chalcedon (451), Pope Leo the Great castigates the phantasmatici Christiani (Christian phantasmatics) in a clear reference to the Eutychians. Moderate Miaphysites like Timothy Aelurus , Philoxenus of Mabbug and Severus of Antioch also labelled the Eutychians phantasiasts. One Miaphysite oath administered to those returning to Miaphysitism from heresy called for

329-616: A visit to Rome. The letters of Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna to various churches warned against false teachers, and the Epistle of Barnabas accepted by many Christians as part of Scripture in the 2nd century, warned about mixing Judaism with Christianity , as did other writers, leading to decisions reached in the first ecumenical council , which was convoked by the Emperor Constantine at Nicaea in 325, in response to further disruptive polemical controversy within

376-411: Is disputed by Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy . Present-day nontrinitarians , such as Unitarians , Latter-day Saints and other Mormons , and Jehovah's Witnesses , reject all seven Councils. Some Eastern Orthodox consider the following council to be ecumenical, although this is not universally agreed upon: Some individual examples of the execution of Eastern Orthodox heretics do exist, such as

423-758: Is the Hussite movement in the Czech lands in the early 15th century. The last person to be burned alive at the stake on orders from Rome was Giordano Bruno , executed in 1600 for a collection of heretical beliefs including Copernicanism , belief of an unlimited universe with innumerable inhabited worlds, opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation. Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon , who played an instrumental part in

470-679: The Catholic Church has convened numerous other councils which it deems as having the same authority, making a total of twenty-one Ecumenical Councils recognised by the Catholic Church. The Assyrian Church of the East accepts only the first two, and Oriental Orthodoxy only three. Pope Sergius I rejected the Quinisext Council of 692 (see also Pentarchy ). The Fourth Council of Constantinople of 869–870 and 879–880

517-617: The Chalcedonian Creed . The reaction against Eutychianism also led to the schism with Oriental Orthodoxy . As the Christian Church grew and developed, the complexity of its understanding of the Triune God and the person of Christ also grew and developed. It's important to understand the controversies of Christology regarding its parallel with the organisation of the church , as they are ideally united as one,

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564-622: The Trinity are co-equal and co-eternal. It was only after the legalisation of Christianity, which began under Constantine I in AD ;313 that the various beliefs of the proto-orthodox Church began to be made uniform and formulated as dogma, through the canons promulgated by the General Councils . The first known usage of the term 'heresy' in a civil legal context was in 380 by the " Edict of Thessalonica " of Theodosius I. Prior to

611-479: The "worst of all heresies". He taught that Christian believers are bound to follow the moral law for their sanctification . Methodist Christians thus teach the necessity of following the moral law as contained in the Ten Commandments, citing Jesus' teaching, "If ye love me, keep my commandments" (cf. Saint John 14:15). In the 17th century, Jansenism , which taught the doctrine of predestination ,

658-576: The Christ that there would be false prophets or false teachers. Irenaeus' opponents also claimed that the wellsprings of divine inspiration were not dried up, which is the doctrine of continuing revelation . The earliest controversies in Late Antiquity were generally Christological in nature, concerning the interpretation of Jesus' (eternal) divinity and humanity. In the 4th century, Arius and Arianism held that Jesus, while not merely mortal,

705-479: The Christian community, in that case Arianist disputes over the nature of the Trinity. Irenaeus ( c.  130  – c.  202 ) was the first to argue that his orthodox position was the same faith that Jesus gave to the apostles , and that the identity of the apostles, their successors, and the teachings of the same were all well-known public knowledge. This was therefore an early argument supported by apostolic succession . Irenaeus first established

752-748: The God-bearer ( Theotokos ) since she only contributed to and bore the human nature of Christ, making her the Christotokos . Nestorius and his teachings were condemned by the Third Ecumenical Council , held in Ephesus in 431, which defined the Church of the East . The Council of Ephesus did not answer the question of how the human and divine interrelated in the person of Christ; it seemingly rejected any attempted answer that stressed

799-525: The Middle Ages whose teachings were deemed heretical by the established church, such as: At the beginning of the 13th century, the Catholic Church instituted the papal or monastic Inquisition , an official body charged with the suppression of heresy. This began as an extension and more rigorous enforcement of pre-existing episcopal powers (possessed, but little used, by bishops in the early Middle Ages) to inquire about and suppress heresy, but later became

846-573: The abjuration of the Phantasiasts. The use of the label Phantasiasts by both Dyophysites and moderate Miaphysites indicates the extreme nature of the position relative to orthodox theologies. In the middle of the sixth century, the term Phantasiasts was applied to the Aphthartodocetae , the followers of Julian of Halicarnassus , the theological foe of Severus of Antioch. It was in this sense that Patriarch Sergius I of Antioch used

893-470: The apostolic period. They had different interpretations of Scripture , particularly the divinity of Jesus and the nature of the Trinity . Some of the major sects , cults and movements with different interpretations of Scripture from those of the Proto-Orthodox church were: Before AD 313, the heretical nature of some beliefs was a matter of much debate within the churches , and there

940-483: The doctrine of four gospels and no more, with the synoptic gospels interpreted in the light of the Gospel of John . Irenaeus' opponents, however, claimed to have received secret teachings from Jesus via other apostles which were not publicly known. Gnosticism is predicated on the existence of such hidden knowledge, but brief references to private teachings of Jesus have also survived in the canonic Scripture as did warning by

987-586: The domain of selected Dominicans and Franciscans under the direct power of the Pope. The use of torture to extract confessions was authorized by Innocent IV in 1252. The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) was part of the Catholic Church 's efforts to crush the Cathars . It is linked to the movement now known as the Medieval Inquisition . Another example of a medieval movement condemend as heretic

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1034-547: The duality of Christ's natures to the expense of his unity as a single hypostasis (understood to mean "person"). In response to Eutychianism, the Council adopted dyophysitism , which clearly distinguished between person and nature by stating that Christ is one person in two natures but emphasized that the natures are "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation". Miaphysites rejected that definition as verging on Nestorianism and instead adhered to

1081-607: The execution of Avvakum in 1682. From the late 11th century onward, heresy once again came to be a concern for Catholic authorities, as reports became increasingly common. The reasons for this are still not fully understood, but the causes for this new period of heresy include popular response to the 11th-century clerical reform movement, greater lay familiarity with the Bible , exclusion of lay people from sacramental activity, and more rigorous definition and supervision of Catholic dogma . The question of how heresy should be suppressed

1128-502: The extolling of natural over supernatural virtues, the preference of active over passive virtues, the rejection of religious vows as not compatible with Christian liberty, and the adoption of a new method of apologetics and approach to non-Catholics." Cardinal James Gibbons responded to Pope Leo XIII that no educated Catholic Christian in the United States subscribed to these condemned doctrines. The last case of an execution by

1175-600: The formation of the Lutheran Churches condemned Johannes Agricola and his doctrine of antinomianism —the belief that Christians were free from the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments —as a heresy. Traditional Lutheranism, espoused by Luther himself, teaches that after justification, "the Law of God continued to guide people in how they were to live before God". Among the positions in violation of

1222-578: The inquisition was that of the schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll , accused of deism by the waning Spanish Inquisition and hanged on 26 July 1826 in Valencia after a two-year trial. Some of the doctrines of Protestantism that the Catholic Church considers heretical are the belief that the Bible is the only supremely authoritative source and rule of faith and practice in Christianity ( sola scriptura ), that only by faith alone can anyone ever accept

1269-551: The issuance of this edict, the Church had no state-sponsored support for any particular legal mechanism to counter what it perceived as 'heresy'. By this edict, in some senses, the line between the Christian Church's spiritual authority and the Roman State's jurisdiction was blurred . One of the outcomes of this blurring of Church and State was a sharing of State powers of legal enforcement between Church and State authorities, with

1316-599: The latter seen as the body of Christ . The issue of how to reconcile the claims of monotheism with the assertion of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth was largely settled at the First Ecumenical Council held at Nicaea (325). Especially among the Greek-speaking Christians, attention turned to how to understand how the second person of the Trinity became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. The Nicene Creed said of Jesus that he

1363-594: The ocean consumes a drop of vinegar. Eutyches maintained that Christ was of two natures but not in two natures: separate divine and human natures had united and blended in such a manner that although Jesus was homoousion with the Father, he was not homoousion with the man. Eutychianism was rejected at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon in 451 and the statement of faith known as

1410-471: The party spirit. The word appears in the New Testament , usually translated as sect , and was appropriated by the Church to mean a sect or division that threatened the unity of Christians. Heresy eventually became regarded as a departure from orthodoxy , a sense in which heterodoxy was already in Christian use soon after the year 100. Heresy is used today to denote the formal denial or doubt of

1457-515: The position of orthodoxy , and the relationship between the early Church and early heretical groups is a matter of academic debate. Walter Bauer , in his Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934/1971), proposed that in earliest Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy did not stand in relation to one another as primary to secondary, but in many regions heresy was the original manifestation of Christianity. Bauer reassessed as

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1504-493: The process of self-definition for centuries, defining itself in terms of its faith by clarifying beliefs in opposition to people or doctrines that are perceived as incorrect. The word heresy comes from haeresis , a Latin transliteration of the Greek word αἵρεσις originally meaning choosing, choice, course of action, or in an extended sense a sect or school of thought, which by the first century came to denote warring factions and

1551-884: The state enforcing what it determined to be orthodox teaching. Within five years of the official criminalization of heresy by the emperor, the first Christian heretic, Priscillian , was executed in 385 by Roman officials. For some years after the Protestant Reformation , Protestant denominations were also known to execute those whom they considered heretics. The edict of Theodosius II (435) provided severe punishments for those who had or spread writings of Nestorius. Those who possessed writings of Arius were sentenced to death. Seven councils considered by main Christian denominations as ecumenical were convened between 325 and 787. These were mostly concerned with Christological disputes: Not all of these Councils have been universally recognised as ecumenical . In addition,

1598-636: The term in the late 550s when writing to the Miaphysite bishops of Persia about receiving back those who had lapsed into the "heresy of Julian the Phantasiast". The poet George of Pisidia also describes Phanatasiasts in his poem celebrating the emperor Heraclius's campaign of 622 against the Persians. The term was also applied to the Gaianites (latter-day Aphthartodocetae) and in this sense

1645-599: The views of the Catholic Church that Luther had taken when he was a Catholic priest were, " Haereticos comburi est contra voluntatem Spiritus " (It is contrary to the Spirit to burn heretics). This phrase was the name given to summarized version of his comments that were included in Exsurge Domine , a 1520 papal bull that listed his anti-heretic killing sympathies along with 40 other positions Luther had taken in his writings that were allegedly heretical, and which he

1692-657: The wording of Cyril of Alexandria , the chief opponent of Nestorianism, who had spoken of the "one ( mia ) nature of the Word of God incarnate" ( μία φύσις τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένη mia physis tou theou logou sesarkōmenē ). The distinction of the stance was that the incarnate Christ has one nature, but it is still of both a divine character and a human character and retains all the characteristics of both, with no mingling, confusion or change of either nature. Miaphysites condemned Eutychianism. Phantasiasts Phantasiasts (from Greek φαντασία , phantasia , appearance, phantasm)

1739-591: Was "of one Being ( ousia ) with (God) the Father " and that he "was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human." However, neither the Nicene Creed nor the canons of the Council provided a detailed explanation of how God became human in the person of Jesus, leaving the door open for speculation. One such theory of how the human and divine interact in the person of Jesus

1786-537: Was a label applied to several distinct Christian heresies by their opponents in late antiquity . The term appears in Greek and Syriac writings mainly to refer to extreme forms of Miaphysitism . The term evokes the second-century heresy of Docetism . Both movements were accused of denying the full reality of Jesus 's humanity. The first targets of the label were the Eutychians , the followers of Eutyches . In

1833-486: Was fragmented, and with contemporaneous competing orthodoxies. Ehrman's view is that while the specifics of Bauer's demonstration were later rejected, his intuitions are broadly accepted by scholars and were confirmed beyond what Bauer might have guessed. According to H. E. W. Turner , responding to Bauer's thesis in 1954, "what became official orthodoxy was taught early on by the majority of church teachers, albeit not in fully developed form." According to Darrell Bock ,

1880-418: Was merely an illusion, thus denying the incarnation. Others held that both the material and spiritual worlds were created by God and were therefore both good, and that this was represented in the unified divine and human natures of Christ. The orthodox teaching, as it developed in response to these interpretations, is that Christ was fully divine and at the same time fully human, and that the three persons of

1927-551: Was no true mechanism in place to resolve the various differences of beliefs. Heresy was to be approached by the leader of the church according to Eusebius , author of the Church History . Early attacks upon alleged heresies formed the matter of Tertullian 's Prescription Against Heretics (in 44 chapters, written from Rome), and of Irenaeus' Against Heresies (c. 180, in five volumes), written in Lyon after his return from

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1974-481: Was not eternally divine and was, therefore, of lesser status than God the Father . Arianism was condemned at the Council of Nicea (325), but nevertheless dominated most of the church for the greater part of the 4th century, often with the aid of Roman emperors who favoured them. Trinitarianism held that God the Father , God the Son , and the Holy Spirit were all strictly one being with three hypostases . The Euchites ,

2021-405: Was not resolved, and there was initially substantial clerical resistance to the use of physical force by secular authorities to correct spiritual deviance. As heresy was viewed with increasing concern by the papacy , however, the secular arm was used more frequently and freely during the 12th century and afterward. There were many Christian sects , cults , movements and individuals throughout

2068-703: Was ordered to recant. When Luther failed to accept the bull and give a broad recantation of his writings, he was excommunicated in the subsequent 1521 papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem . The Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Communion and the Twenty-five Articles of the Methodist Churches condemn Pelagianism . John Wesley , the founder of the Methodist tradition, harshly criticized antinomianism, considering it

2115-659: Was put forward by the Patriarch of Constantinople , Nestorius (c. 386–451). Nestorius, a student of the Antiochene school of theology, taught that in the incarnation two distinct hypostases ("substances" or, as Nestorius' critics such as John Cassian and Cyril of Alexandria employed the term, "persons") were conjoined in Jesus Christ: one human (the man) and one divine (the Word). Thus, Mary should not be considered

2162-508: Was regarded by the Catholic Church as a heresy; the Jesuits were particularly strong opponents of Jansenism. The text Augustinus , which propagated Jansenist beliefs, was repudiated by the Holy See . In Testem benevolentiae nostrae , issued on 22 January 1899, Pope Leo XIII condemned as heresy, Americanism , "the rejection of external spiritual direction as no longer necessary,

2209-452: Was used into the ninth century. Christian heresies Heresy in Christianity denotes the formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches . The study of heresy requires an understanding of the development of orthodoxy and the role of creeds in the definition of orthodox beliefs, since heresy is always defined in relation to orthodoxy. Orthodoxy has been in

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