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“Though with a scornful wonder // men see her sore oppressed, // by schisms rent asunder, // by heresies distressed,” are powerful words of the hymn “The Church’s One Foundation” that describe the present state of the church. Ever since the serpent slithered into the garden sanctuary and hissed, “Yea, hath God said . . . ?” (Gen. 3:1, KJV), the church has had to combat false teaching. In the Old Testament, God warned the Israelites against the teaching of false prophets and idolatry (Deut. 18:9–22). The prophet Elijah dueled with the prophets of Baal to prove the falsehood of their claims and defend the truth that the Lord was Israel’s one true God (1 Kings 18:20–40). In the New Testament no less than in the Old, the church had to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). The Apostle Paul, for example, rebuked the Galatian churches, saying, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel” (Gal. 1:6).
So if the church had to contend for the faith in both the Old and New Testaments, it should not surprise us that the early church had to man the ramparts of truth and defend the faith against false teaching. Four primary challenges to orthodoxy arose in the lies of Docetism, Gnosticism, Marcionism, and Montanism. Broadly, each of these false teachings represents an effort to displace the authority of God’s inerrant and infallible Word. They directly challenged the claims and sufficiency of Scripture. More specifically, Docetism tried to undermine the doctrine of Christ, and Gnosticism questioned the goodness of creation. And while we might bemoan the fact that these false teachings arose in the early church, the challenge of false doctrine produced a benefit—it caused the church to define and demarcate doctrinal truth. The church gained a better understanding of Scripture’s teaching, a benefit that continues to endure to the present day.
Docetism
Ever since the fall, all of redemptive history was working toward the revelation of the seed of the woman, the One who would redeem the people of God from their sin (Gen. 3:15). The Apostle John echoes the opening lines of Genesis when he writes of the eternal Son of God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Word, the Son of God, is fully equal with God. In the words of the Nicene Creed, He is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” Yet, marvel of marvels, John also reports, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14, author’s translation). The Son of God became man—a flesh-and-blood human being. Paul writes in a famous Christ-hymn: “Christ, . . . who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:5–7). In the words of the Chalcedonian Definition, “Our Lord Jesus Christ is . . . the self-same perfect in Godhead, the self-same perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man.” The Scriptures teach the full and complete divinity and humanity of the Son. In the simplest of terms, the eternal Son of God became incarnate as a finite human being.
Just as in the garden of Eden, however, the serpent slithered into the sanctuary of the church and hissed, “Hath God truly become man?” False teachers called Docetists questioned the incarnation of Christ. Docetism is a word that comes from the Greek word dokeō, which means “to appear.” In other words, Docetists denied the incarnation of Christ; they claimed that the Son of God only appeared to be incarnate—His birth and death were illusions. The Apostle John faced early, nascent forms of Docetism, which caused him to write:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it. (1 John 1:1–2)
John stressed the reality of the incarnation—the Apostles had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands the incarnate Son of God. The incarnation was no mere phantasm or illusion. In his letter to the Smyrnaeans (c. 110), Ignatius of Antioch warned his recipients against the Docetists, whom he called “beasts in the shape of men.” He wrote, “If the Lord were in the body in appearance only, and were crucified in appearance only, then am I also bound in appearance only.” In other words, Ignatius knew that he was bodily bound by sin and needed an incarnate Savior to redeem him body and soul. Ignatius instructed the Smyrnaeans to pray for the repentance of the Docetists but also warned the church against this heresy.
Gnosticism
Docetism denied the reality of the incarnation and, in this respect, shared a key tenet of another early-church heresy—namely, Gnosticism. The term Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnōsis, which means “knowledge.” This was a label that the church gave to the heretical sect that believed that salvation came only to a certain elite class of people who had secret, hidden knowledge. They were Gnostics, or those who were “in the know.” While there were a wide array of teachings associated with Gnosticism, there were chief characteristics common to the movement that were antithetical to the Christian faith. Gnostics believed that the ultimate form of being was spiritual—that is, nonmaterial. Before the creation, there had been a battle among spiritual beings that created a rift in the spirit world that led to the creation of an inferior material world. Since the material world is inferior and even in some sense evil, salvation consists in deliverance from material, embodied existence.
Incipient forms of Gnosticism began to arise in the Apostolic church, and the Apostle Paul wrote against them:
Why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Col. 2:20–23)
In other words, Christians were being taught that the body is evil and should thus be denied care and sustenance—freeing the soul from the material body is all that truly matters. Paul refuted this error by reminding the church at Colossae that such anti-body regulations had the appearance of godliness but in truth were contrary to the gospel. God saves only through the gift of faith and the work of Christ, not by denying the body good things, such as food and drink—good things that God has created and given to humans as gifts.
Theologians of the early church continued the fight against Gnosticism, especially Irenaeus of Lyons in his work Against Heresies. Irenaeus specifically mentions the teachings of the Gnostic heretic Valentinus as an “abyss of madness and of blasphemy against Christ.” He explains how Valentinus promoted the false doctrine that there was a preexistent Aeon, an eternal unbegotten, invisible being, who dwelled in the company of other beings who produced another being called Nous, whom they called Monogenes (only begotten) and Father, the Beginning of All Things. These beings sent forth emanations, or subdeities, who eventually created the material world as we know it. Irenaeus held these false teachings up to the light of Scripture and concluded, “Such, then, is their system, which neither the prophets announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, but of which they boast that beyond all others they have a perfect knowledge.” Like the serpent in the garden, the Gnostics questioned the teaching of Scripture and twisted it to their own ends. Irenaeus countered Gnostic heresy with the simple truths of Scripture:
The Church . . . has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God.
Marcionism
The tides of Docetism and Gnosticism arguably coalesce around AD 130 in the false teaching of Marcion, a wealthy shipbuilder who lived in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Marcion traveled to Rome and gave a large sum of money to the church so that he would be allowed to teach. The church studied his teachings, rejected them, and returned Marcion’s money to him. Although his writings are no longer extant, we know of his beliefs from the work Against Marcion, written by the church father Tertullian. Marcion taught that there were two gods: the creator and the redeemer. The creator god appears in the Old Testament, and the redeemer god appears in the New Testament. The Old Testament god was evil, and the New Testament god is loving and good. Jesus comes on the scene in the New Testament to destroy the Law and the Prophets through His work, though He only appeared to suffer and die. Because he saw the New Testament as antithetical to the Old Testament, Marcion created his own cut-and-paste Bible in which he stripped the New Testament of any references to the Old Testament. In line with Gnostic teachings, Marcion also taught that sexual relations were sinful, he replaced wine with water for the Lord’s Supper, and he forbade the consumption of any foods produced by sexual reproduction. Thus, meat and milk were forbidden. According to Marcion, people were saved by God’s grace and were not under the law in any sense, since the law was part of the Old Testament. To say the least, Marcion’s beliefs run completely contrary to the teaching of Scripture.
Like the serpent twisting God’s words to his own ends, Marcion warped the Word of God to promote his own heretical views. Tertullian, for example, stresses that Marcion could arrive at his views only by “mutilating” Luke’s gospel. To counter the two-gods claim of Marcion, Tertullian teaches that there is one God: “God is not, if He is not one.” Here Tertullian echoes Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In the third book of his Against Marcion, Tertullian goes to great lengths to prove from Scripture that Christ is the Son of God who created the world, whose advent was prophesied, and who was incarnate in the flesh. In other words, the advent of Christ is unintelligible apart from the Old Testament. How can one understand the fulfillment of the promises of Christ unless he first knows what has been promised? The Old Testament is promise, and the New Testament is fulfillment. They are a necessary pair. Why else, for example, would the gospels of Matthew and Luke trace Christ’s lineage back to Abraham and Adam (Matt. 1:1; Luke 3:38)?
Irenaeus also joined the fray against Marcion and stressed that the Apostles taught that there were two Testaments and that the same God had appointed both Testaments for the salvation of Jews and gentiles. In fact, Christ’s work was necessary to undo the disobedience of Adam. Irenaeus rested the unity of the two Testaments in the unity of God, the sole mediatorship of Christ, and redemption through faith in the gospel as the only way of salvation. The whole Old Testament looked forward to Christ’s advent.
Because of the false teachings of Marcion, the church eventually defined the canon of Scripture to ensure that false teachers could neither sideline inspired books of the canon nor add uninspired words to the Bible.
Montanism
Montanism originated from the teaching of Montanus, who with two female companions, Priscilla and Maximilla, started a prophetic movement around the 150s. The movement spread through Asia Minor, to Rome, and eventually throughout North Africa. Montanists believed that prophecy and possession of spiritual gifts were the true signs of genuine Christianity. Montanus claimed that the promised Paraclete (Helper or Comforter) of John 14:16; 15:26; and 16:7 spoke exclusively through him. Later defenders of the faith quoted Montanus as saying that he in fact was the promised Paraclete. Montanists promoted strict asceticism, and because of this, they even for a time swept up prominent Christian leaders such as Tertullian into their movement. That Montanus claimed to give direct divine deliverances naturally challenged the position of the Scriptures as the sole authority in the life and doctrine of the church.
Eusebius of Caesarea refuted Montanism in his Ecclesiastical History as a novelty that promoted false prophecy that was tearing the church apart. According to Eusebius, Montanus was a man obsessed with ambition and began “raving, chattering, and speaking nonsense, prophesying contrary to church tradition and custom from the beginning.” People were led astray because they failed to recognize that Montanus’ so-called prophecies contradicted the inspired Word of God. In short, Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla uttered the words of the serpent, “Hath God said?” Rather than pointing people toward the Word of God, they pointed people to themselves. The church rejected their efforts and stood on the firm foundation of the Word of God.
Conclusion
Surveying the history of these early-church heresies might at first seem discouraging. Even in the post-Apostolic church’s infancy, the enemy was trying to drown it in a flood of lies and deception. But whether in the early church or in the present day, we must always remember the words of Christ: “The gates of hell shall not prevail” against the church (Matt. 16:18). While darkness may seek to envelop the truth, our triune God always shines the light of revelation through His Word to meet and overcome the darkness. As our forefathers contended for the faith once delivered to the saints, so we should pray that our faithful Lord would enable us to be faithful to Him. In the words of the well-known hymn:
’Mid toil and tribulation,
and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation
of peace forevermore;
till with the vision glorious
her longing eyes are blest,
and the great church victorious
shall be the church at rest.