Hello my siblings in Christ, I am Bojan and today, I want to show you a short overview of some of the more notable heresies that have sprung up in Christianity. These will be followed by how I envision the icons of Christ to look like within those teachings. These aren’t meant to mock orthodox iconography, they are there to visually emphasize the errors of particular heresies.
Gnosticism. Well, we are off to a great start. Essentially - Gnosticism is a faith system revolving around the notion that the highest divine principle emanates the lesser ones. One of these is a creator of material world. Our souls, the divine sparks, are trapped within our bodies by a lesser deity, the Demiurge. Gnosticism is very, very diverse and was freely mixed with different religions, but especially ancient Judaism and nascent Christianity. It is really, really weird, but it did exist before Christianity - that is why early Christians could easily identify Gnostic ideas, such as in Gospel of Judas.
Docetism. Docetism is a subset of Gnostic beliefs based upon the belief that matter, in itself, is evil, and that Christ Himself couldn’t have had a real body; His physical body, they claimed, was a mere illusion, and He never died on the cross.
Adoptionism. Belief that the divinity was granted to Jesus later in His life, generally thought to be at His baptism. Before that, Jesus was simply a virtuous man, becoming the Son of God when St. John baptized Him in Jordan.
Sabellianism. Belief that there is no Trinity, and that God simply manifests Himself as one of the Three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, without them being distinct. If you have seen this witty thing - that’s Sabellianism, and Christianity has dealt with that joke centuries before it even came to existence. Another name for this is
Patripassism - the teaching that the Father suffered on the cross. Since God is an unified whole, when Christ died, the Father died.
Novatianism and Donatism. These two heresies are very similar, and they both basically revolved around the notion that the Christian life should be very, very strict - readmission to Church after a lapse should be difficult, baptism should be repeated, lapsed clerics should be re-ordained or barred from the priesthood entirely, the sacraments offered by sinful priests were invalid, so on and so forth. Their main idea was that the Church had no power to absolve sins.
Arianism. Coming from Alexandria, this is probably the heresy that was the most serious threat to the Church, claiming that the Son is not eternal with the Father and that there was a time when the Son was not. The Son, while divine and far above an ordinary human, was still a creation; the same is said of the Holy Spirit.
Macedonianism. Unlike Arians, Macedonists taught that the Son is co-Eternal with the Father, but, like Arians, they denied the same priviledge to the Holy Spirt. For Macedonists, the Holy Spirit wasn’t a Person, He was a creation and action of the Father and the Son. If you ever hear that ‘the Holy Spirit isn’t a person, it’s a force’, or if someone ever refers to Him as an ‘it’, yeah, that’s Macedonisanism.
Apollinarianism. In a typical case of orthodoxy going overboard, Apollinarianism teaches that Christ never had a rational mind and human soul, His divinity serving as both. As an overreaction to Arianism, it essentially taught that Jesus Christ wasn’t fully human.
Nestorianism. Nestorius and his followers stated that Virgin Mary shouldn’t be called ‘Theotokos’ (She Who gave birth to God), but ‘Christotokos’ (she who gave birth to Christ). The issue was, according to Nestorius, that Mary, being human, couldn’t have given birth to divinity that existed before she did. This made sense on the surface level, but it left us with one awkward question: if the child she gave birth to isn’t God, whom did she give birth to? Realizing that this is a thinly veiled Apollinarianism, Nestorianism was quickly condemned.
Monophysitism. In contrast to orthodox teaching that Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, divine and human, Monophysitism teaches that natures in Christ create a new, single nature. As with many other heresies, this turns Christ into a non-human, and thus incapable to bridge the gap between God and humanity.
Iconoclasm. In the beginning, iconoclasm had more to do with Christian practice: it considered icons of Christ, the Theotokos and the saints to be idols. Later on, iconoclasts quickly slipped into Nestorianism, claiming that icons of Christ could not be painted as we could never truly depict His divine nature. According to them, the only true icons of Christ were the Eucharist and the cross.
Predestination. God loves you… God loves you not… God loves you… God loves you not…
Gnosticism. Well, we are off to a great start. Essentially - Gnosticism is a faith system revolving around the notion that the highest divine principle emanates the lesser ones. One of these is a creator of material world. Our souls, the divine sparks, are trapped within our bodies by a lesser deity, the Demiurge. Gnosticism is very, very diverse and was freely mixed with different religions, but especially ancient Judaism and nascent Christianity. It is really, really weird, but it did exist before Christianity - that is why early Christians could easily identify Gnostic ideas, such as in Gospel of Judas.
Docetism. Docetism is a subset of Gnostic beliefs based upon the belief that matter, in itself, is evil, and that Christ Himself couldn’t have had a real body; His physical body, they claimed, was a mere illusion, and He never died on the cross.
Adoptionism. Belief that the divinity was granted to Jesus later in His life, generally thought to be at His baptism. Before that, Jesus was simply a virtuous man, becoming the Son of God when St. John baptized Him in Jordan.
Sabellianism. Belief that there is no Trinity, and that God simply manifests Himself as one of the Three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, without them being distinct. If you have seen this witty thing - that’s Sabellianism, and Christianity has dealt with that joke centuries before it even came to existence. Another name for this is
Patripassism - the teaching that the Father suffered on the cross. Since God is an unified whole, when Christ died, the Father died.
Novatianism and Donatism. These two heresies are very similar, and they both basically revolved around the notion that the Christian life should be very, very strict - readmission to Church after a lapse should be difficult, baptism should be repeated, lapsed clerics should be re-ordained or barred from the priesthood entirely, the sacraments offered by sinful priests were invalid, so on and so forth. Their main idea was that the Church had no power to absolve sins.
Arianism. Coming from Alexandria, this is probably the heresy that was the most serious threat to the Church, claiming that the Son is not eternal with the Father and that there was a time when the Son was not. The Son, while divine and far above an ordinary human, was still a creation; the same is said of the Holy Spirit.
Macedonianism. Unlike Arians, Macedonists taught that the Son is co-Eternal with the Father, but, like Arians, they denied the same priviledge to the Holy Spirt. For Macedonists, the Holy Spirit wasn’t a Person, He was a creation and action of the Father and the Son. If you ever hear that ‘the Holy Spirit isn’t a person, it’s a force’, or if someone ever refers to Him as an ‘it’, yeah, that’s Macedonisanism.
Apollinarianism. In a typical case of orthodoxy going overboard, Apollinarianism teaches that Christ never had a rational mind and human soul, His divinity serving as both. As an overreaction to Arianism, it essentially taught that Jesus Christ wasn’t fully human.
Nestorianism. Nestorius and his followers stated that Virgin Mary shouldn’t be called ‘Theotokos’ (She Who gave birth to God), but ‘Christotokos’ (she who gave birth to Christ). The issue was, according to Nestorius, that Mary, being human, couldn’t have given birth to divinity that existed before she did. This made sense on the surface level, but it left us with one awkward question: if the child she gave birth to isn’t God, whom did she give birth to? Realizing that this is a thinly veiled Apollinarianism, Nestorianism was quickly condemned.
Monophysitism. In contrast to orthodox teaching that Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, divine and human, Monophysitism teaches that natures in Christ create a new, single nature. As with many other heresies, this turns Christ into a non-human, and thus incapable to bridge the gap between God and humanity.
Iconoclasm. In the beginning, iconoclasm had more to do with Christian practice: it considered icons of Christ, the Theotokos and the saints to be idols. Later on, iconoclasts quickly slipped into Nestorianism, claiming that icons of Christ could not be painted as we could never truly depict His divine nature. According to them, the only true icons of Christ were the Eucharist and the cross.
Predestination. God loves you… God loves you not… God loves you… God loves you not…
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ReplyDeleteThese are excellent! May I use these images for catechesis? They would be excellent visuals for what can be a very metaphysical topic.
ReplyDeleteOf course! Feel free!
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