Church of the Life-Giving Trinity on Vorobyovy Gory. What is heresy and what does it mean in Orthodoxy
Heresies can be traced in the history of Christianity, starting from the first steps of this religion. There has been disorder and deviation from the apostolic tradition in Christian communities from the beginning.
The concept of heresy appears in the later books of the New Testament. Why did the church fathers insist that heresies could not arise before the true teaching, which warned of their occurrence and advised to avoid them. “It was said to the church: “If an angel from heaven preached to you any gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8).” The second letter of Peter says: “But there were also false prophets, so now false teachers will appear among you. They will secretly instill all kinds of heresies that lead to destruction.” The Apocalypse directly mentions the heresies of the “Nicolaitans”: “however, you are doing the right thing in hating the works of the Nicolaitans, I also hate this teaching.” The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, condemns heretics who reject Sunday or question it: this was the error of the Sadducees, accepted in part by Marcion, Valentinus, Apelles and others, who rejected the resurrection of the body.
Attempts to explain the reasons for the emergence of heresies were also made from the beginning. But these explanations were quite in the spirit of that time and generally boiled down to the verbal formula of the fanatical apologist of Christianity, Quintus Septimius Florence Tertullian: “If anyone wanted to ask who incites and inspires heresies, I would answer: the devil, who makes it his duty to pervert the truth and tries in every possible way to imitate the holy rites of the Christian religion in the mysteries of false gods."
Using a scientific approach, we can identify the following reasons for the emergence of early Christian heresies:
1). The reluctance of Jews and pagans, as well as followers of Eastern dualism who converted to Christianity, to finally part with their previous religious and philosophical worldview and the desire to compile old doctrines with new Christian ones into one whole. The mixing of Eastern dualism with Christianity produced Manichaeism, the heresy of Vardesan, Montanism, Messalianism and many other sects, which existed in a slightly changed form even in modern European history (Waldensians, Bogomils, etc.). From the mixture of ancient Judaism with Christianity, the earliest sects arose, with which the apostles and church fathers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries fought. V.; From the desire to compile into one whole the most abstract doctrines of Christianity (the doctrine of God the Word) with the doctrine of the Logos of the Platonists and Neoplatonists, the rationalistic heresies of the 3rd and 4th centuries (monarchians, subordinationists) originated.
2). The desire of stronger minds to put Christian teaching, given as revelation, on the same level with the philosophical and dialectical methods of the latter. These teachers had a good intention, but by the very nature of things it was impossible to fulfill; it led to rationalism, which was the inspiration for the most powerful heresy of the early Middle Ages - Arianism with its varieties.
The arrogance and conceit of the philosophers who lived in the time of the apostles were the cause of heresies in the early church and, according to Hobbes. “They were able to reason more subtly than other people, and more convincingly. Having converted to Christianity, they almost inevitably found themselves elected presbyters and bishops in order to defend and spread the faith. But even having become Christians, they, as far as possible, preserved the teachings of their pagan mentors and therefore they tried to interpret the Holy Scriptures, wanting to preserve the unity of their philosophy and the Christian faith." “In the early church, right up to the Council of Nicea, most of the dogmas that caused controversy among Christians concerned the doctrine of the Trinity, the mystery of which, although recognized by all as unknowable, many philosophers tried to explain, each in their own way, relying on the teaching of their mentors. From here they first arose disputes, then quarrels and, finally, in order to avoid indignation and restore peace, councils were convened, not at the direction of the rulers, but at the voluntary desire of bishops and pastors. This became possible when the persecution of Christians ceased. These councils determined how things should be. to resolve the issue of faith in controversial cases. What was accepted by the council was considered the Catholic faith, what was condemned was heresy. After all, the council in relation to the bishop or pastor was the Catholic Church, i.e., universal, as in general. their opinion (opinio); the separate opinion of any priest was considered heresy. This is where the name of the Catholic Church comes from, and in every church, Catholic and heretic are correlative names.”
3). The original theology of Christian teachers on the basis of Holy Scripture and the pure principles of reason, devoid of the guiding principles legitimized by the church - church tradition and the general voice of the Universal Church.
In addition to the indicated three categories of teachings - heresies, schisms, unintentional mistakes of church teachers, outside the symbolic, universally binding teachings of the church for all Christians there are also the so-called. private, or personal opinions of church teachers and church fathers on various detailed issues of Christian teaching, which the church does not authorize in its name, but does not deny either.
However, it should be recognized that the above, with all its validity, is not able to explain why purely dogmatic disagreements with church teaching resulted in powerful mass movements, if we leave aside the social background of such a phenomenon as heretical movements. The march of Christianity was accompanied by a fierce class struggle, which was waged within Christian organizations, the exploitation of the masses of believers by the church hierarchy, later with bishops at the head, and bloody methods of suppressing protest against the churchmen, who were becoming already in the 3rd century. major political force. However, even staying on the basis of theological sources, one can trace from the 2nd and 3rd centuries a continuous line of class struggle of the masses, already intoxicated by Christianity, clothed in the religious form of heresy, among other things, in an attempt to reorganize the church, to return it to its “original simplicity.”
It was this simplicity that most often attracted large masses of people to sects and made the ideas of heresiarch teachers popular. Tertullian, describing the behavior of heretics, notes how “frivolous, worldly, ordinary” it is. “It is unknown who their catechumen is, who is faithful. ... Since they differ from each other in their beliefs, they don’t care, everything is suitable for them, if only more people join them in order to triumph over the true one.” The simplicity of the internal structure of heretical sects, the simplicity of the relationships between heretics are the main reasons for the popularity of sects, with the exception of those that were distinguished by strict asceticism, which proves the correctness of the above. In addition, within the heretical organization it was possible to quickly rise in rank: “nowhere do people rise in rank so quickly as in the crowds of rebels” and this is regardless of social status, “which is why they have no or imperceptible strife.”
The early Christian period is characterized by an abundance of heresies. Celsus already mentions a number of heresies of pneumatics, psychics, sibilists and others: “Some declare themselves Gnostics... some, recognizing Jesus, want to live with him according to the law of the Jews (Ebionites).” Celsus also mentions the Marcionites, led by Marcion. Jerome, in his letter to Augustine, writes that there is a heresy among the Jews, which is called the Minaean; "They are usually called Nazarenes." In addition, we can list the following heresies of the first period: Cerinthianism, Elkesianism, Docetism, Manichaeism, Montanism, Chiliasm. In the doctrine of the Trinity, triadological heresies arose, such as Monarchianism, Arianism, the heresies of the Eunomians, Anomeans, Eudoxians, Semi-Arians or Doukhobors, Sabellians, Fokinians, Apolinarians, etc.
Many of these heresies were greatly influenced by Gnosticism. Initially, it was the Gnostics who were called heretics. Although it is hardly legitimate to consider Gnosticism a Christian teaching, it is the most important chapter in the history of heresies. The teachings of philosophical schools had a great influence on people's religious ideas. It is not for nothing that Tertullian noted that “philosophers and heretics talk about the same subjects, confuse themselves with the same questions.”
However, one should not think that Gnosticism was a reaction of the ancient world to an already emerging, completely new phenomenon (Christianity) - this is exactly the point of view on Gnosticism that existed in the first centuries of Christian apologetics (for example, in Clement of Alexandria) and to which European, and Russian science in the last century. After the discovery of the Gnostic library in Nag Hammadi (Egypt), it became clear that the Gnostic worldview has a more independent meaning. Although the first Gnostic is traditionally considered to be a contemporary of the apostles, Simon Magus, there is no doubt that the origins of Gnosticism historically lie in the same place as the origins of Christianity: in Palestine, or more precisely, in Judaism at the time of the Nativity of Christ. Proto-Gnosticism had Jewish roots. And if Judaism itself, after the events of the 1st-2nd centuries, after the bloody uprisings against Roman rule, closed and returned to the state of a tribal religion, then Christianity and Gnosticism turned out to be widespread precisely because of the idea of the supra-tribal nature of the revelation of the Divine. The mimicry of Gnosticism under Christianity began only in the 2nd century, but in the same way at this time Gnosticism took on certain aspects of ancient philosophizing, Egyptian religion and Zoroastrianism. In this century, the line between Gnosticism and Christianity is thin, sometimes to the point of elusiveness. We can recall, for example, that the catalyst for the process of collecting the New Testament was the Gnostic Marcion (or rather a Christian - a “Paulist”, that is, who recognized the exclusive authority of the Apostle Paul). Christianity self-defined itself in a dogmatic and ecclesiastical sense precisely during the polemics of the 2nd century, and accepted some ideas first expressed by the Gnostics.
heretical movement middle ages
Gnostic philosophizing arose very early, went alongside the victories of the Christian doctrine itself, and, already under the emperor Hadrian, in the theory of Saturninus, a student of Menander, managed to take shape in distinct forms. An unbroken tradition connects the first Gnostics - Euphrates, Simon, Menander, Cerinthos and especially the Syrian school of Saturninus, Cerdon, Marcion, the Egyptian Basilides - with those Cathars against whom Rome rose up in an uncompromising war in the 13th century. Basilides explains the afterlife in the same way as some Albigensians explained it: good souls return to God, evil ones move into lower creatures, and bodies turn into primeval matter. Other Gnostics add to this a whole independent cosmogony, which could not but have a direct influence on the history of later sectarianism.
In the era contemporary with the development of Gnosticism, as many other independent theories appeared as no century had produced either before or since. The number of heresies increased in a surprising way. Some church writers of the first centuries of Christianity are exclusively engaged in the study of heresies; they count a huge number of mystical and ritual Christian sects. Jerome knows at least forty-five of them, but Augustine already counts eighty-eight, Predestinus - ninety, and Philastrius, a writer of the late 4th century who lived in the Arian era, finds it possible to indicate more than one hundred and fifty. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, one of the authoritative witnesses, numbers in the 7th century about seventy sects, most of which date back to the first centuries, and notes that “there are others without founders and without names.”
In the era of the emergence of Christianity, there were the most diverse societies, sects, interpreting every church dogma in every possible way, following the most opposite rules of life. Many of them were distinguished by strangeness, ignorance, and superstition. The anthropomorphites gave the Supreme Being human members; Artotirits (i.e. “bread eaters”), following the example of the first people, ate exclusively bread and cheese, as “fruits of the earth and herds”; the Adamites, following the same instruction, went naked, both men and women; The Nicolaitans (one of the oldest sects, as can be seen from the Apocalypse of John; they taught their teachings from Deacon Nicholas - one of the deacons appointed by the apostles) indulged in extreme debauchery, following the example of the leader who offered his wife to every community, etc. some sects were distinguished by their bizarre mythology. Like, for example, the followers of a certain Cerinthus, who taught that the world was created not by the first god, but by a power that is far removed from this superior first principle and knows nothing about the supreme god. In relation to God, the heresy of the Ebionites is very close to this heresy. But most of these sects were dominated by teachings that contained the dualistic element of later Catharism.
A sect existed under this name back in the first century of Christianity, although its system has come down to us vaguely and fragmentarily. The Cathars (kataros - Greek “pure”; Latin - “Puritan”) of the time of St. Augustine called themselves this because of the purity of life that they preached . They rebelled against fornication, marriage, and denied the need for repentance. By the name of Novatus, who rebelled against rebaptism and the acceptance of apostates, whose teaching the first Cathars represented something similar, they were often called Novatians (representatives of the extreme wing of the Christian clergy who, after the persecution of Emperor Decius in 251, objected to the return to the church of people who had washed away their baptism) and mixed with these latter. But from the words of the sources it is not clear that the Cathars of that time followed the foundations of the system of Albigensian dualism. It is believed that these first Cathars either disappeared in the 4th century or merged with the Donatists (the Donatist movement (on behalf of the Carthaginian bishop Donatus) arose in 311 under slogans similar to those of the Novatians). However, scattered elements of later Albigensianism can be traced in a variety of Gnostic and other sects of the era contemporary with both the age of the pagan emperors and the age of Isidore of Seville.
Beliefs in the struggle between good and evil principles, eastern cosmogony and at the same time abstinence were far from rare phenomena in the systems of that time.
We have already noted the general foundations of Gnosticism. They were held in all the branches of this vast system, in all the creations of its followers, who laid the foundation for their own theories. Each of them brought with him some new concept, which together served as material for later thought. The Menanderites, Basilides, Cerdonians, Marcionites and other Gnostics, as well as the Archons, did not recognize the world as the creation of God (they separated God the Creator and the Archon who ruled the created world). Valentine considered Christ to have passed through the Holy Virgin and undefiled - as water passes through a canal; while Carpocrates and Paul of Samosata, on the contrary, developed a theory about the humanity of Christ.
Christians of the first centuries were worried about the same idea that the dualists of the 12th and 13th centuries struggled to resolve and because of which they aroused so much self-loathing among their Catholic contemporaries. Thus, from the many fermenting ideas, under the direct influence of the Gnostics, the teachings of the Manichaeans, Priscillians, Arians, Paulicians and later the Bulgarian Bogomils were compiled successively - those sects that, with more or less probability, are recognized by various authoritative scientists as the direct ancestors of the later Albigensians of the dualistic or, as we call it, eastern direction.
The root of these teachings lies in the steppes of Central Asia, and Mani may have been the first Albigensian.
Manichaeism is still not sufficiently studied and assessed. It captivated the minds and hearts of people to a much greater extent than a superficial acquaintance with its exotic mythology suggests, and left a more significant sediment in the religious thinking of Christian humanity than is usually admitted. The founder of Manichaeism was the Persian Mani, born in the first quarter of the 3rd century. at Ctesiphon. He drew his ideas from the sect of the Mogtazili - baptizers, related to the Mangeans, and Elkesiasts and others, as well as from Marcionism, in the system of Basilides. Mani's heresy attracted people with its rationalism, manifested in radical dualism. Manichaeism impressed ordinary Christians with its asceticism and abstinence. However, this is precisely what did not allow the broad masses to be conquered. To a much greater extent, people were attracted by the anti-state nature of heresies, which allowed them to express their social protest.
Mani considered himself called upon to explain what had hitherto been interpreted so differently. He carefully studied the cabalist Scythian, who lived under the apostles and was inclined towards Gnosticism. The teachings of Zoroaster could not fully satisfy Mani, who preferred the beliefs of the more ancient magicians.
Mani's ideas were characterized by pantheism, which was also characteristic of all Gnostic sects. He said that not only is the cause and purpose of all existence in God, but in the same way God is present everywhere. All souls are equal to each other, and God is present in all of them, and such spirituality is characteristic not only of people, but also of animals, even plants are not without it. Everywhere on earth one cannot help but see the predominance of either good or evil; reconciliation is a fiction, it does not exist in reality. Good and evil beings are hostile from the very day of their creation. This hostility is eternal, just as the continuity of the creatures inhabiting the world is eternal. Since there is nothing in common in good and evil phenomena, physical and spiritual, they must come from two different roots, be the creation of two deities, two great spirits: good and evil, God himself and Satan, his enemy. Each of them has their own World, both of them are internally independent, eternal and enemies among themselves, enemies by their very nature.
For Mani, his Satan is the immediate state of matter. Everything is evil in it, and a person shackled by it, only through victory over it, feats of self-mortification, suppression of passions, feelings, love and hatred, receives hope of liberation from the kingdom of evil. In any case, the God of light must be higher than the God of darkness, and an innate ethical sense suggested to the creator of the system the victory of the former over the latter.
The Manichaeans paid great attention to the moral purity of man. The high calling of man is moral purity, which is why the Manichaeans sometimes called themselves Cathars, that is, pure. The earth, the visible world created by God through the life-giving spirit, was supposed to serve as an arena for the spiritual exploits of the first people, a witness to their struggle with the body. This interpretation was believed by the “uninitiated listeners,” as they were called in the community; the chosen ones rose to the ideal contemplation of objects. (The Albigensians also had a similar division.) The chosen or perfect were also offered a more severe practical code of morality, similar to the rules of the Syrian Gnostics and their harsh way of life. Purification, liberation from earthly attachments, purity and holiness are the goal of existence.
Mani also developed a wonderful doctrine about the soul. Mani did not accept the resurrection of the dead and adhered to the views of dualism. However, he introduced into his teaching much that directly belonged to Christianity. Twelve apostles and seventy-two bishops preached with him; he had elders and deacons for religious service in various places.
So Manichaean theology and the Church, or, better, the Manichaean philosophical system, were created. The limits of its distribution were extensive; it appeared with amazing speed in the East and West. A new, Manichaean house of prayer was erected next to the Christian one, and this was at a time when the Christian religion itself had not yet received the right to be called a state religion. The ecclesiastical appearance and orthodox practices contributed to the spread of Manichaeism. Like the Albigensians, the Manichaeans skillfully knew how to take advantage of the character of the new adepts, their zeal for ritual, for the letter. At first, they made concessions, winning Catholics over to their side with gospel texts, which they then began to reinterpret allegorically. Being philosophers by conviction, they did not renounce Baptism, but brought it to a simple ritual and recalled the words of the Savior: “Whoever drinks this water will thirst again; And whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; but The water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life" (Gospel of John 4:13-14). By Communion they meant the Gospel concept of spiritual bread.
The founder of the sect died as a martyr in 274 year at the hands of the Persian king, condemned by a council of Zoroastrian priests who opposed the spread of Manichaeism. For later generations, Mani became a legend. For his followers he was either Zoroaster or Buddha,
first Mithra, then finally Christ. As we shall see, it will be difficult to define limits to the influence of his thoughts. The power of his spirit is manifested all the more decisively, all the more remarkable, because his system was the fruit of only personal, and exclusively his, reflections. Dualism was modified and developed in different eras as a result of independent creativity, but in its first and most influential Manichaean form it was the work of one mind. The gnosis of the Syrian school gave Mani special authority in the East, establishing in the West in the next, fourth century, the dualism of his student, Priscillian.
The Montanist heresy, which arose in the second half of the 2nd century, became widespread. Its founders were Montanus, his closest successors were Priscilla and Maximilla (Phrygian women). Those Christian movements, among which the main line of historical development of the church was developed, waged a long and stubborn war with the Montanists, who were partly supported by such a significant figure as Tertullian. The heresy was also called kataphrigian because it originated in Phrygia. Like many heretics, Montanists in their views hardly deviate from the doctrines of the church. “They accept the prophet and the law, they confess the father and the son and the spirit, they expect the resurrection of the flesh, as the church preaches; but they also preach some of their prophets, that is, Montana, Priscilla and Maximilla.” But the Catafrigians differed from the Orthodox Church in one position of faith: following Savely, they “squeezed” the Trinity into one person, and also did not observe traditional rituals and church hierarchy. However, even small differences were enough to cause the church to take up arms against the heresy of Montanus.
Catholics complained against them for a parody of the holy sacrament at Baptism and Communion, where they uttered some incomprehensible, mystical words, like the Gnostics, and also that they allowed women to participate in the public education system, which was strictly prohibited by the councils. In general, the heretics in this age of decay of the Western Empire represented a more educated society, stronger in their moral strength. The best minds of the time often turned to them. Many rhetoricians, poets, scientists, very famous women and, finally, priests and bishops belonged to this sect, which shone with the talents and eloquence of its founders. This doctrine was widespread in Spain and Gaul; Aquitaine and the province of Narbonne soon became the center of the Priscillian heresy. Actually, the Manichaeans could not have retained such a number of followers because they did not represent the Christian Church in the strict sense of the word.
Emperor Maximus, yielding to the insistence of Saint Martin, himself executed the Priscillians and ordered that heretics be executed everywhere in case of resistance.
These were the first councils against heretics. For the dreamers and utopians in religion of that time, who looked at the theological dispute as an exclusively philosophical question, such administrative and ecclesiastical persecution was unexpected. But this news served as an example that began to be imitated too often. Due to persecution, heretics hastened to unite into stronger and more friendly societies. The sect accepted the mystery of the rituals and became inaccessible to the uninitiated, attracting the latter all the more temptingly. Until the middle of the 6th century it maintained itself as a separate and strong denomination, and only the Council of Braga dealt a decisive blow to its existence. But, nevertheless, the ideas of the Priscillians, so happily sown, found support in the skepticism of the Languedoc people's character. These ideas did not disappear, but, enriched with new material, grew the future, much stronger opposition of the Albigensians.
Around the same time, similar views of the Paulicians were brought from the East to the same Languedoc - a sect related to Syrian Gnosticism, of the same Greek origin, with the same Neoplatonic principles, but which lost much of the Manichaean traditions. To be specific, Paulicianism arose in Armenia in the middle of the 7th century. Apparently named after the Apostle Paul, it may have a genetic connection with the Paulist churches of the 1st-2nd centuries. The founder of the movement is the Armenian Konstantin Silvan.
The Provencal Paulicians even cursed the memory of the famous heresiarchs of antiquity; they anathematized Scythian, Buddha and Mani himself. In Gaul they were called publicans. They agreed with the Manichaeans only in the concept of dualism and the struggle of principles, rejecting, like the future Waldenses, any external cult, giving Baptism and Communion only a ritual meaning by uttering certain words. They had no hierarchy, no trace of church organization, just as the Waldensians would have none. Like the latter, they recognized marriage and did not reject meat. Actually, the Paulician system should be looked at as nothing other than the concession that Asian dualism made to European rationalism in Christianity, as a prototype of the future reformers of the 12th century, who vaguely wavered in matters of faith and balanced between rationalism and Christian theology.
Therefore, if the Paulicians occupy a place in the general history of the Albigensians, it would be a cruel mistake to produce from them dualists of the Albigensians (Cathars), although this is done even by such representative authorities as Bossuet, Riccini, Muratori, Mosheim, Gibbon, and finally, some historians of the heresies of modern times. time, such as Gan, the Russian Doukhobor explorer Novitsky and the Englishman Maitland.
In terms of dogmatics, the late Cathars had as much in common with the Paulicians as the Massilians (from Massilia, Marseilles), these “semi-Pelagians”, so named because they were the exclusive property of Provence, where they appeared at the end of the 4th century with dogma developed by Pelagius’s student Cassian and supported by the priests of Marseilles and several bishops of Aquitaine. Completely alien to dualism, the Massilians stood on Catholic soil and brought only their own view of grace, the necessity of which, if they did not completely reject it, then, in any case, gave it a secondary importance that assists the believer. Only the Pelagians themselves were reproached for Manichaean rituals. The councils of Arles and Lyon (475) armed themselves against the Massilians, and the Council of Arabia in 529 placed a curse on them.
But the most remarkable heretic who shook the church was Arius. He denied the identity, consubstantiality of God the Father and God the Son; the son did not exist before birth, cannot be original: the creation cannot be equal to the creator. Essentially, Arius stood on that monarchist position, which had already been recognized as heresy and condemned. In a thin, barely noticeable stream, Manichaeism flows into Arianism, and Eastern philosophy, pursued by the founder of this most extensive of heresies, nevertheless often serves as material for the systematic constructions of Arius. In Arius, finally, the words “Logos”, “Sophia” are found; he has God the Son - almost a demiurge who created the first people together with the Spirit, who later assisted him in matters of creation. The subtleties and difficulties of the system, the lack of clarity and precision, especially in the definition of the substance of the Son, are the same signs of Gnosticism; these parties especially contributed to the fall of heresy.
Arius vigorously promoted his doctrine. As a result, the movement penetrated deep into society. This was also facilitated by the fact that at that time the confrontation between the Eastern and Western churches was clearly visible. The inability to clearly identify dogmatists was to the advantage of the Arians, their absolute triumph. “A difficult time came,” wrote Jerome, “when the whole world professed Arianism.”
The triumph of Arianism was put to an end by the Council in Constantinople in 381, which approved only the belief in the “consubstantial”. However, Arianism still made itself felt for a long time. Having great influence on European states, it stubbornly held on there, largely due to the simplicity of its provisions. The Ostrogoths remained Arians until 553, the Visigoths of Spain until the Council of Toledo in 589; the Vandals until 533, when they were broken by Belisarius; The Burgundians were Arians before they joined the kingdom of the Franks in 534, the Lombards - until the middle of the 7th century.
When considering Arianism, its connection with the Albigensian Cathars becomes undeniable. To a contemporary of the Albigensian War, the English chronicler Roger Goveden, the Provençal heretics were directly presented as descendants of the Arians. This is how they seemed to the famous author of Arian church history, Christopher Sand.
But if a Gnostic element is hidden in the teachings of Arius, then not to such an extent that, without much stretch, he could create the absolute dualism that characterizes the main branch of the Cathars, and so that it would be possible to find any tradition other than an indirect one, that is, one that past events influence the formation of religious and philosophical systems. In this sense, Arianism noticeably influenced the Albigensian heretics, although the Arians, as individual sectarians, did not exist within the Languedoc in the 13th century.
Thus, Arianism cannot be considered a random outbreak. There were a lot of general conditions that prepared and supported it. The colossal energy that the church spent in the first centuries on the fight against the state was now released and went to internal self-organization. Everything unspoken, suppressed by the threat of external danger, broke free and required clarification and formulation. Nowhere does this revival reach such a high level as in the field of dogmatic activity.
The strengthening of the church in the West, especially after the adoption of Christianity according to the rite of the Roman church by King Clovis, strengthened the union of the altar and the throne and subordinated the masses to the ruling class.
The growth of the economic and political power of the church was accompanied by an increase in the moral laxity of the clergy, who justified themselves by the “weakness of human nature” before the irresistible force of sin. Thus, already in the 5th century, the monk Pelagius, outraged by the Roman clergy, denied the church’s teaching about original sin. He said that there is no “invincible sin”: if it is a matter of necessity, then it is not a sin; if the commission of a sin depends on the human will, it can be avoided: a person himself is saved, just as he himself sins." Pelagius is echoed by Celestius. In 412, their teaching was recognized as heretical.
In the East, the masses also experienced state oppression, only this time of an entire empire. This resulted in discontent taking religious forms. Christological heresies became widespread. Of these, Monophysitism stands out, a heresy founded by Archimandrite Eutyches or Eutychos, supported by the Alexandrian Patriarch Dioscorus and condemned by the church at the Council of Chalcedon (Fourth Ecumenical) Council in 451.
The essence of Monophysitism is the assertion that Christ, although born from two natures or natures, does not dwell in two, since in the act of incarnation, in an ineffable way, two became one, and human nature, perceived by God the Word, became only an accessory to His deity, lost any reality of its own and can only mentally differ from the divine. Monophysitism was defined historically as the opposite extreme of another, not long before condemned, view - Nestorianism, which strived for complete isolation or delimitation of two independent natures in Christ, allowing between them only an external or relative connection or the dwelling of one nature in another - which violated the personal or the hypostatic unity of the God-man.
Monophysitism caused great unrest in the Eastern Empire. Monophysitism itself did not remain united. It was divided into two main sects: the Severians (Theodosians) or perishable worshipers, the Julianists or imperishable ghosters, and fantasists. The latter (Julianne) in turn split into ktistites and actistites. Later, niovites and tetratheites also emerged.
None of the religious movements of the early Middle Ages brought Byzantium as many troubles as Monophysitism: it ended up on the banner of all separatists and morally, and therefore politically, tore a good half of it away from the empire. The passionate struggle, which more than once led to bloody clashes, shook the empire for a century and a half. The religious interests that gave rise to the movement were largely subject to the play of political forces. They created the crisis, but could not control the course of events. At the moment of intensification of religious disputes, the struggle for the dominance of the three main churches - Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome - appears on the scene and brings the tension to the extreme.
This once again clearly demonstrates to us that all disputes about “faith” were not only speculative, but also, as a rule, of a purely practical nature; used to achieve certain goals. The main goal at all times has been power. Those who were striving for power “needed concepts, dogmas, symbols with the help of which they could tyrannize the masses, drive people into herds. This “flock of Christ,” the mass of people oppressed not only by the state, but also by the church, created powerful heretical movements, Hiding behind religious slogans, they wanted to achieve the embodiment of the utopian ideals of a just world and the former simplicity of the church structure. As we see, “faith” was only a pretext, a masquerade, a curtain - instincts played behind them endlessly, but acted as they should. instinct prompted.
In the 7th century The Monothelite movement arose, which was a modification and natural continuation of the Monophysites. Monophelites (one-willers) in their movement went through two stages: monoenergism and monophelinism in the proper sense of the word. By the middle of the 8th century. monothelitism is fading away. Disputes about a single will were suppressed by disputes about icons. These disputes resulted in the 8th century. in Byzantium into the iconoclasm movement. Its essence was the refusal of many people to venerate icons, since these are material things, and, therefore, the creation of Satan. These ideas were especially disseminated by the Paulicians, who appeared in the 6th century. and demanding renunciation of earthly goods, the destruction of the church hierarchy and monasticism, and the abolition of the veneration of icons. This heresy influenced the subsequent heresies of the developed Middle Ages. Behind this outwardly ideological struggle was hidden the confrontation between church and state, the people's dissatisfaction with the growing oppression of church and state. Evidence of this is the uprising of Thomas the Slav, which took place under the slogans of restoring icon veneration. The rebels were immediately joined by the Paulicians, who preached, as we remember, the ideas of iconoclasm. This precisely shows us that heresies in their essence were an expression of social protest of the masses, but dressed in religious forms. It doesn’t matter that the ideas of the Paulicians and Thomas the Slav diverged, the main thing is that their desires coincided. After the suppression of the uprising in 825, the Paulicians still continued their struggle with the state.
It is also worth highlighting the original theologies of individual schismatic teachers. Already by the middle of the 3rd century. The Christian church was a powerful, ramified organization that possessed great property. The wealthy bishops at the head of the community, supported by the new provincial landowning and service nobility, led not only the religious and financial life of the church, but also policies directed against the dying senatorial, patrician Rome. At the same time, there is a fierce class struggle within the church; the poor, imbued with the Christian religion, exploited by their own co-religionists and the church, powerlessly dream of a return to the imaginary “purity” of original Christianity; the despair of the exploited erupts in heresies and schisms. During this tense period, Novatus, Novatian and others split. Bishop Cyprian of Carthage reports that Evaristus, a former bishop who was excommunicated from the see, “wanders through remote regions... and tries to entice others of his own kind. And Nicostratus, having lost the holy diaconate and fled from Rome... poses as a preacher.” Cyprian does not mince words when describing Novatus - “the ever-present heretic and treacherous” who was the first to ignite “the flame of dissent and schism.” Cyprian also informs about “the insidious plans of Felicissimo... who attempted to separate part of the people from the bishop and became the leader of sedition and the chief of indignation.”
Thus, heresies appear already in the early period of Christianity. For this period, it is quite difficult to paint a picture of the movement of religious sects, which most often represented a transition to Christianity from Judaism and other religious movements. The establishment of the basic tenets of Christianity took quite a long time, which gave rise to multiple interpretations of its main provisions and thereby determined the ideological richness of the heresies that arose. However, even then, heresy (sectarianism) “represented ... a huge camp, where everyone who had lost heart, broken in their energy, and disappointed in the possibility of resistance with weapons fled. That is, in other words, heresies initially took the form of social protest and were of a political nature. Religious debates became a way of expressing the discontent of certain social groups, the struggle against the existing order. All this is clearly manifested in the heretical movements of the early Middle Ages. It was in this type of heresy that they would acquire the greatest scope and significance in the era of the developed Middle Ages.
In the traditional sense, the concept of “heresy” means any statement that contradicts the teachings of the Christian Church. Specifically in Orthodoxy, this is a deliberate distortion of dogmas, delusion regarding them and stubborn resistance to the Truth set forth in the Holy Scriptures.
The attitude of the holy fathers to heresy
The Holy Fathers classify heretics as people who deliberately alienate themselves from religion and faith itself. What distinguishes them from true Christians is a worldview that is inconsistent with the orthodox opinion of the Church. In its depths, heresy is a hidden rejection of the teachings of Christ, outright blasphemy.
On a note! Ancient Christian writers consider the biblical character Simon the Magus to be the founder of heresy. The first mention of this man can be found in the Acts of the Apostles. The book indicates that Simon considered himself a grandiose being who performed miracles and the “True Messiah.”
When Peter and John arrived in Jerusalem, the Magus, seeing their divine power of bringing down the Holy Spirit on man, decided to buy this gift. The apostles rejected Simon and denounced him, so the sale and purchase of sacred sacraments began to be called “simony.” From ancient Greek this word is translated as “choice” or “direction”. Heresy was understood as a religious movement or school of philosophy. For example, in the Bible the Pharisees and Sadducees were called such.
Modern representatives of heresy preach views that contradict what is contained in the Bible
The Apostle Peter in his letters predicted the emergence of a movement opposite to Christian teaching. He said that there were false prophets before, and in the future false teachers will come, bringing corrupting and blasphemous knowledge. Peter predicted heretics, as those who had departed from Truth and God, would soon die and put them on a par with idolaters and sorcerers.
- The concept acquires a certain semantic connotation in the epistles of the New Testament apostles. Here heresy is considered to be in complete opposition to the true (orthodox) doctrine and gradually turns into a cruel denial of Revelation taught by God. In the New Testament, the concept is already more than just a line of thought; it deliberately seeks to distort the fundamental foundations of Christian teaching.
- From the point of view of the science of asceticism - a section of theology that studies rebirth in the course of asceticism - heresy is an extreme error that does not decrease from the evidence of orthodox teaching and becomes stable. The term combines numerous vicious states of mind (pride, self-will, seduction).
- Saint Basil the Great precisely defined the essence of all heretical teachings. He believed that such trends are alienating from Orthodoxy and distorting the dogmas set forth in the Holy Scriptures. The monk spoke about the great difference in the very way of believing in the Almighty Creator.
- Bishop Nikodim notes: in order to receive the mark of a heretic, it is enough to doubt at least one dogma of the Christian Church, without affecting the foundations of the Orthodox tradition.
- Saint I. Brianchaninov believes that heretical teaching secretly rejects Christianity itself. It arose after idolatry had completely lost its power over the minds of people. Since then, the devil has made every effort to prevent people from being able to fully surrender to saving knowledge. He invented a heresy by means of which he allowed his followers to have the appearance of Christians, but in their souls to blaspheme.
During the Reformation comes European rationalism, and after variations of Manichaeism and Nestorianism.
The essence and formation of heresy
The early Christian Church carefully ensured that the teaching remained in its original purity, resolutely rejecting various distortions of orthodox knowledge. Therefore, the term “Orthodoxy” appeared, which means “correct knowledge or teaching. Since the 2nd century, this concept has absorbed the strength and faith of the entire Church, and the term “heterodoxy” has since that time been used to designate something other than the words of Truth.
Heresy is complete opposition to the true (orthodox) creed.
E. Smirnov notes that in heretical views distorting the divine teaching of Christ there is a systematized sequence, moving from a general concept to a particular one. This happened because Christianity was accepted by pagans and Jews who were not ready to fully renounce idolatry and Judaism. Accordingly, there was a mixture of orthodox knowledge and those ideas that were in the minds of the newcomers.
This is where all the misconceptions regarding church teaching come from.
- The Jewish heretics (Ebionites) sought to merge their own knowledge with Christianity, and soon completely subjugate it. The pagans (Gnostics and Manichaeans) wanted to create a symbiosis of orthodox teaching, Eastern religions and the philosophical system of Greece.
- After the Church was able to reject the first stream of false teachings, other heresies came to replace them, which gained strength on the basis of Christianity itself. The subject of this deliberate distortion was the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and thus anti-Trinitarians appeared.
- Further, heresies delve into more and more specific issues, for example, the Second Person of the One God. This heresy was called Arianism and appeared at the beginning of the 4th century.
Ardent fighters against the distortion of true doctrine include: Origen, St. Cyprian of Carthage, Clement of Alexandria, St. Augustine, St. Theodoret and many others. The Church also denies other forms of apostasy; it opposes schism and parasynagogue (a private gathering of clergy).
Anathema to heretics
Violation of Christ's commandments is associated with a person's personal desire and the harmful contamination of the poisonous filth of sinfulness. God created the Church in order to attract fallen souls to good deeds. A religious worldview allows a Christian to fall away from vice, growing spiritually and becoming like the One who personally showed an example of true being. Then it becomes clear that violators of Heavenly Law are necessary and are no exception.
All the fight against heresies that the Church wages is done only for the sake of human salvation
- Sinfulness in itself does not become grounds for immediate separation from the Lord. If this happened, the Church would gradually become empty, and evil would increase on earth. This state of affairs pleases only the devil, and not the merciful God the Father.
- Correction exists for wicked people, but this does not mean that there is no limit to the crimes committed. Excommunication can occur if a person begins to violate the Laws of God to one degree or another. Such punishments are used for correction and further unification with Christ. Excommunication does not aim to completely forget the sinner and does not want to deprive him of hope of returning to God.
- Heretics deserve special criticism and condemnation, because they absolutely do not want to hear the voice of Christian knowledge, do not want to renounce error and purify their souls. By such behavior, a person demonstrates self-will and accepts some other faith, different from the orthodox one.
- When the Church anathematizes a heretic, it shows that the person excommunicated himself because he personally refused to accept the Orthodox tradition as true. Sometimes heretics are called pagans who worship a newly created god and create an imaginary truth. It is very important for them not to believe in the teachings disseminated by the Church.
Religious environment:
\r\n- Jews (predominated, had much in common with Christians). But few accepted Christ - most decided that he was not the Messiah.
\r\n- pagans, believed in many pagan cults of gods. This also includes various systems of Greek philosophy (Neoplatonism), which have a partly religious overtone.
\r\n- teachings that used some Christian motifs, in which Christ appeared as a significant part of the doctrine, but the teaching itself was different. These teachings began to be called heresies.
\r\nThe word heresy itself comes from gr. The words “choose, elect.” Those. a doctrine in which something is selected. The danger was precisely in the proximity to Christianity. It’s always like this - the closer the creeds, the more they clash over differences. For example, the religious struggle between Christians and pagans quickly faded away (there were political persecutions).
\r\nAlready in the first centuries a lot of heresies arose. Christians did not have a “code” that stated what Christians believed. There were sacred books that had not yet been collected into the New Testament. But firstly, there were many of them, and secondly, this is a narrative, not a “formula”. The only measure of the “correctness” of books was oral tradition.
\r\nOne of the main heresies is Gnosticism. Gnosis is knowledge. Originated in the 1st century. There is dualism (two principles - good and evil, which oppose each other). It would seem that there is dualism in Christianity too. But no, in X there is one beginning - God, Satan is not an independent beginning, he simply refused to obey God, he is secondary. Satan has no creativity, he cannot create, he can only ridicule or spoil. In Gnostic dualism, two principles competed with each other as two comparable poles. The good principle was associated with the spirit, and the evil principle with matter. Everything that could be touched was associated with evil.
\r\nChrist had a special place in the teachings of the Gnostics. The place is bizarre: between the good and evil poles there are transitional forms - eons. One of these eons was Christ. The role is modest and auxiliary. His task is to come to earth and complete a mission. The essence of the mission is to convey knowledge. From the point of view Gnostics Christ did not experience bodily suffering, because. was not connected to the body. In one of the concepts, the body is “ghostly”. In short, they needed to remove the body, because... it is evil. The essence of knowledge is everything stated above.
\r\nSecret knowledge.
\r\nTexts. Gospel of Judas. List from the 2nd century. Something completely special. In his text it turns out that Judas was the only true devoted disciple to whom Christ revealed secret knowledge about the structure of the world. So that everyone would not know about this, a cover version was invented (about 30 pieces of silver). This concept is purely Gnostic. The teachings of the Gnostics seriously competed with Christianity.
\r\nMontanism.
\r\nThe name on behalf of the creator is Montana.
\r\nArose in the 2nd century. Montanists are Christians who developed a new teaching, suggesting that strict asceticism was needed. From their point of view the kingdom of the spirit began (under Christ - the kingdom of the Son).
\r\nIn every era, people appear who say that the church is mired in sin and we need to return to the times of the apostles.
\r\nOut of the desire to more strictly observe the rules, a bunch of details grew, they became heretics and were rejected.
\r\non lectures (I don’t know whose, but thank you very much)
Even the briefest overview of heretical movements in Christianity (from the first days of the Church) is useful in that it shows how diverse, next to the general Church Catholic teaching and the “rule of faith,” deviations from the truth, which very often took on a sharply offensive character and caused a difficult struggle inside the Church. In the first three centuries of Christianity, heresies spread their influence over relatively small territories; but from the 4th century some of them captured about half the empire and caused a huge strain on the forces of the Church, involving it in fighting them; Moreover, when some heresies gradually faded away, others arose in their place. And if the Church remained indifferent to these deviations, then what would happen (humanly speaking) to Christian truth? But the Church, with the help of messages from bishops, exhortations, excommunications, local and regional councils, and from the 4th century - Ecumenical Councils, sometimes with the assistance, sometimes with the opposition of state power, brought the “rule of faith” out of the struggle unshakable, and preserved Orthodoxy intact. This was the case in the first millennium.
The second millennium did not change the situation. There are many more deviations from Christian truth, divisions and sects than in the first millennium. Some currents hostile to Orthodoxy are distinguished by no less passionate proselytism and hostility towards Orthodoxy than was observed in the era of the Ecumenical Councils. This shows how vigilant it is in preserving Orthodoxy. Particular vigilance in preserving dogmas requires the false path now emerging from the circles of extra-church Christianity, unacceptable for the Orthodox Church, to achieve a good goal - neglect of the dogmatic side of the Christian faith to achieve the unity of the entire Christian world.
Judaizers
Ebionites(from the name of the heretic Ebion or from the Hebrew word “Ebion” - poor) considered Jesus Christ a prophet like Moses and demanded from all Christians strictness in fulfilling the law of Moses; Christian doctrine was looked upon as an addition to the law of Moses.
Nazarenes believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, but insisted on the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law by Jewish Christians, without demanding this from non-Jewish Christians (moderate Ebionites). Ebionite Gnostics. Their teaching arose from the teaching of the Jewish sect of the Essenes, who lived beyond the Dead Sea (excavations at Qumran), combined with elements of Christianity and Gnosticism. The Essenes considered themselves the guardians of a pure religion, revealed to Adam, but subsequently obscured by Judaism. Ev.-Gnostics recognized the restoration of this religion by Christ, as the bearer of the Divine Spirit; the Gnostic element was expressed in their view of matter as an evil principle, and in the preaching of severe asceticism.
Gnosticism
The Gnostic systems are based on the ideas of creating higher religious and philosophical knowledge by combining Greek philosophy and the philosophy of the Alexandrian Jew Philo with Eastern religions, especially with the religion of Zoroaster. In this way, the Gnostics developed various systems that assumed an unconditional solution to all questions of existence. They gave fantastic symbolic forms to metaphysical constructions. Having become acquainted with Christianity and even accepted it, the Gnostics did not abandon their fantastic constructions, trying to combine them with Christianity. This is how numerous Gnostic heresies arose among Christians.
Gnostics of the Apostolic Age
Simon the Magus, using the techniques of magic, pretended to be “someone great” (Acts 8:9) - “the highest Aeon”, in the Gnostic sense. He is called the ancestor of all heretics.
Kerinthos, Alexandrian; his teaching is a mixture of Gnosticism and Ebionism. He lived for some time in Ephesus when the ap was staying there. John the Theologian.
Dockets They recognized only the illusory humanity in Christ, since they considered flesh and matter, in general, to be evil. They were denounced by the ap. John the Theologian in his epistles.
Nicolaitans(Apocalypse 2:14-15) based on the Gnostic requirements of mortification of the flesh, they allowed debauchery.
In post-apostolic times
Gnostics of Alexandria(Basilides the Syrian and the Jew Valentinus and their followers), based on dualism, or the recognition of two principles of being, considered matter to be an inactive, inert, dead, negative principle, while Syrian Gnostics, accepting the same dualism, recognized matter as the active principle of evil (in the religion of Zoroaster - “Ahriman”). Tatian, a former student of St., also belonged to this trend. Justin the Philosopher, who preached strict asceticism. The offspring of the Syrian Gnostics were antinomians who allowed licentiousness for the sake of weakening and killing the principles of evil - flesh, matter.
Marcionites(named after Marcion, the son of a Syrian bishop, who excommunicated his son for Gnosticism). The creator of the heresy, Marcion, taught that the world is ruled, on the one hand, by the good God, the spiritual principle, and on the other hand by Satan, as the ruler of matter. In Jesus Christ, according to the teachings of Marcion, the good God Himself descended to earth, taking upon Himself a ghostly body. The Marcionites taught that the knowledge of God is inaccessible. The heresy persisted until the 6th century.
Carpocrates and his followers belittled the Deity of Jesus Christ. His sect is one of the many “antinomistic” sects - deniers of the moral law.
Manichaeism
Manichaean heresy, like Gnosticism, was a mixture of elements of Christianity with the principles of the religion of Zoroaster. According to the teachings of Manes, who gave rise to this heresy, the struggle in the world of the principles of spirit and matter, good and evil, light and darkness constituted the history of heaven and earth, in which the activity of: a) the life-giving Spirit was manifested, b) the impassive Jesus and c) the suffering Jesus - "Souls of the World". The dispassionate Jesus, having descended to earth, took on only the appearance of a man (Docetism), taught people and promised the coming of the Comforter. The promised Comforter appeared in the person of Manes, cleansed the teachings of Jesus, which had been perverted by people, and opened the Kingdom of God. Manes preached strict asceticism. Accused of distorting the religion of Zoroaster, Manes was killed in Persia. This heresy spread mainly in the Western half of the Roman Empire and was especially strong in the 4th and 5th centuries.
Antitrinitarian heresy
This heresy, which also bore the name monarchians, arose on the basis of philosophical rationalism; heretics did not recognize the doctrine of three Persons in God. It had two branches: dynamites and medalists.
1) Dynamites falsely taught that the Son of God and the Spirit of God are Divine Powers. (Paul of Samosata, bishop in Antioch, 3rd century, belonged to them).
2) Medalists, instead of the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons, they falsely taught the revelation of God in three successive forms; they were also called patripassians, since they brought up the idea of the suffering of God the Father. (A prominent representative of this heresy was Sabellius, former presbyter of Ptolemais, in Egypt).
Montanism
The name of this heresy was given by Montanus, an unlearned man who imagined himself to be a Paraclete (Comforter). Lived in the second century. In contrast to the anti-Trinitarians, the Montanists demanded the complete subordination of reason to the dictates of faith. Their other distinguishing features were the severity of asceticism and the rejection of the “fallen” in persecution. The ascetic spirit of the Montanists endeared them to the learned presbyter of Carthaginian Tertullian, who joined them, although he ended his life somewhat moving away from this heresy. The Roman bishops Eleutherius and Victor were also inclined towards Montanism. The Montanists recognized the doctrine of the thousand-year earthly kingdom of Christ (chiliasm).
(The teaching of chiliasm was held, in addition to the Montanists, by some other heresies, such as the Ebionites. Some teachers of the Church were also inclined towards this teaching until the 2nd Ecumenical Council, at which chiliasm was condemned).
4th-9th centuries Arianism
The Arian heresy, which troubled the Church for a long time and greatly, had as its original culprit the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. Arius, who was born in Libya and was a student of the theological school of Antioch, who avoided any abstraction in the interpretation of the dogmas of faith (as opposed to the contemplative spirit and mystical inclination of the Alexandrian school), purely rationally interpreted the dogma of the incarnation, relying on the concept of One God, and began to falsely teach about the inequality of the Son of God with the Father and about the created nature of the Son. His heresy captured the Eastern half of the empire and, despite condemnation at the first Ecumenical Council, persisted almost until the end of the 4th century. After the first Ecumenical Council, Arianism was continued and developed:
Anomea, or strict Arians,
Aetius, former deacon of the Antioch Church, and.
Eunomius, who was Bishop of Cyzicus before his excommunication. Aetius and Eunomius brought Arianism to its final heretical conclusions, developing the doctrine of a different nature of the Son of God, not similar to the nature of the Father.
Heresy of Apollinaris the Younger
Apollinaris the Younger- learned man, former bishop of Laodicea (from 362). He taught that the God-manhood of Christ did not contain a full human nature - recognizing the three-component nature of man: spirit, unreasonable soul and body, he argued that in Christ there is only a human body and soul, but a Divine Mind. This heresy was not widespread.
Heresy Macedonia
Macedonia, Bishop of Constantinople (about 342), who falsely taught about the Holy Spirit in the Aryan sense, namely, that the Holy Spirit is a ministering creation. His heresy was condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council, which was convened about this heresy.
(At the Second Ecumenical Council, the heresies of the Eunomians, Anomeans, Eudoxians (Arians), Semi-Arians (or Doukhobors), Sabellians, etc. were also anathematized.
Pelagianism
Pelagius, originally from Britain, layman, ascetic (early 5th century) and Celestius The elders denied the heredity of Adam's sin and the transfer of Adam's guilt to his descendants, believing that every person is born innocent and only, thanks to moral freedom, easily falls into sin. Pelagianism was condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council along with Nestorianism.
Nestorianism
The heresy is named Nestoria, former archbishop. Constantinople. The predecessors of Nestorius in false teaching were Diodorus, teacher of the Antiochian theological school, and Theodore, bishop. Mopsuetsky (d. 429), whose student was Nestorius. Thus this heresy came out of the Antiochian school. Theodore of Mopsuetsky taught about the “contact” of two natures in Christ, and not their union at the conception of the Word.
Heretics called the Blessed Virgin Mary the Christ Mother, and not the Mother of God. Heresy was condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council.
Heresy of the Monophysites, or heresy of Eutyches
The Monophysite heresy arose among the Alexandrian monks and was a reaction to Nestorianism, which belittled the Divine nature of the Savior. Monophysites believed that the human nature of the Savior was absorbed by His Divine nature, and therefore recognized only one nature in Christ.
Except for the elderly Konstantinop. Archimandrite Eutyches, who gave rise to this non-Orthodox teaching, defended it Dioscorus, archbishop Alexandrian, who forcibly carried out this heresy at one of the cathedrals, thanks to which the cathedral itself received the name of the robber cathedral. Heresy was condemned at the Fourth Ecumenical Council.
Heresy of the Monothelites
Monothelitism was a softened form of Monophysitism. Recognizing two natures in Christ, the Monothelites taught that in Christ there is one will, namely, the Divine will. Supporters of this teaching were some of the Patriarchs of Constantinople who were subsequently excommunicated (Pyrrhus, Paul, Theodore). Honorius, the Pope, supported him. This teaching was rejected as false at the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm was one of the most powerful and long-lasting heretical movements. The iconoclastic heresy began in the first half of the 8th century and continued to plague the Church for more than a hundred years. Directed against the veneration of icons, it also affected other aspects of faith and church structure (for example, veneration of saints). The severity of this heresy was enhanced by the fact that a number of Byzantine emperors energetically contributed to it for reasons of domestic and foreign policy. These emperors were also hostile to monasticism. The heresy was condemned at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, and the final triumph of Orthodoxy took place in 842 under the Patriarch of Constantinople Methodius, when the day of the “Triumph of Orthodoxy” was established, observed by the Church to this day.
A few words about the author, Protopresbyter Fr. Mikhail Pomazansky
Protopresbyter Mikhail Pomazansky, one of the greatest theologians of our time, was born on November 7, 1888 (on the eve of the Archangel Michael), in the village of Koryst, Rivne district, Volyn province. His parents came from hereditary priestly families. Nine years old Fr. Mikhail was sent to the Klevan Theological School. After graduating from the School, Fr. Mikhail entered the Volyn Theological Seminary in Zhitomir, where Bishop Anthony Khrapovitsky paid special attention to him.
From 1908 to 1912 Fr. Mikhail studied at the Kyiv Theological Academy. In 1918, he married Vera F. Shumskaya, the daughter of a priest, who became his faithful and inseparable companion. From 1914 to 1917 Fr. Mikhail teaches Church Slavonic at the Kaluga Theological Seminary. The revolution and the subsequent closure of theological schools returned him to his homeland in Volyn, which was then part of Poland. From 1920 to 1934 o. Mikhail taught at the Rivne Russian Gymnasium. During those same years, he collaborated in church publishing houses. In 1936, he accepted the priesthood and was included in the clergy of the Warsaw Cathedral as the first assistant protopresbyter. He held this position until 1944. After the end of the war, Fr. Mikhail lived in Germany for four years.
In 1949 he came to America and was appointed teacher at Holy Trinity Theological Seminary in Jordanville, where he taught Greek and Church Slavonic languages and Dogmatic Theology. Peru o. Mikhail owns a number of brochures and many articles in “Orthodox Rus'”, “Orthodox Life” and the magazine “Orthodox Path”. Most of these articles were included in the collections “On Life, on Faith, on the Church” (two volumes, 1976) and “Our God created everything in heaven and on earth, as He pleased” (1985). But the most famous is the now reprinted "Orthodox Dogmatic Theology"(1968 and in 1994 - English translation), which became the main textbook in all American seminaries. Fr. passed away. Mikhail November 4, 1988
Each heresy gradually becomes an impetus for the development of Orthodox doctrine, forcing theologians to pronounce again and again the key dogma of Christianity - the incarnation of God the Word, clarifying and deepening its formulations.
Christ the Pantocrator. Sophia of Constantinople, mosaic.
Church teaching about Christ - Christology - is the product of long evolution. Over the course of the first two centuries of the Christian era, the Church was just forming its conceptual apparatus, translating the truths of Revelation from the poetic language of living and immediate Jewish religiosity. For a long time, She did not have developed theological terminology to explain the mystery of the Incarnation. Under these conditions, numerous attempts to rationalize the main mystery of Christianity, to explain it in the language of the ancient philosophical tradition, give rise to Christological heresies, most of which are overcome by the Church only towards the end of the era of the Ecumenical Councils. Each heresy becomes a kind of impetus for the development of Orthodox doctrine, forcing theologians to pronounce again and again the key dogma of Christianity, clarifying and deepening its formulations.
Docetism(from ancient Greek δοκέω “I seem”) - a doctrine that asserted the illusory nature of the incarnation. From the point of view of the Docetes, the Body of Christ was of an immaterial nature and only appeared to be human. In fact, embodiment in this case is equated to vision and becomes ephemeral. In the first centuries of our era, Docetism was quite widespread in Syria and Asia Minor, where near-Christian Gnostic teachings were generally popular at that time. In the future, this region will become the scene of the largest theological disputes in the Christian East.
Arianism and Apollinarism
It so happened that the doctrine of the relationship of the Persons of the Holy Trinity during the first centuries was not formulated by the Church in the form of a strict doctrine. The term “Trinity” was first used by the Asia Minor theologian Theophilus of Antioch, and this only happened at the end of the 2nd century. At the beginning of the 4th century, the largest heresy of its time flared up in the Christian East - Arianism. The Alexandrian presbyter Arius, following the logic that developed in the Antiochian theological tradition (associated with the name of Paul of Samosata), speaks of the creatureliness of the second hypostasis of the Trinity. One of his principal critics, Apollinaris of Laodicea, also a native of Asia Minor, although he adheres to the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as a whole, a little later gives rise to a new Christological heresy: Apollinarism. Conceptually, his Christology turned out to be consonant with Arianism in terms of describing the unity of Christ. Thus, Apollinaris’s attempt to answer the question of how Christ can be both human and God ends in failure: Apollinaris, relying on Platonic ideas about the tripartite nature of man (spirit, soul, body), argues that the incarnate Logos in Christ, preserving in the fullness of the human soul and body, replaced the spirit. Despite the emphasized realism of such an incarnation (as opposed to the Docetes) and the logical simplicity of Apolinarius’s constructions, church tradition denies the system of this theologian, defining it as a heresy.
Nestorianism
Another Christological heresy engulfs the east at the beginning of the fifth century. The school of Asia Minor theology, rehabilitated by the names of the great Capodocians: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Gregory the Theologian, becomes a kind of foundation for church teaching, having developed the main themes of Orthodox teaching and determining its development in subsequent eras. The Antioch theologian, and subsequently the Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, a student of the greatest exegete of the Orthodox East, Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose fellow student was St. John Chrysostom, continuing the logic of the Christological constructions of his teacher, becomes a new heresiarch. In the spirit of the teaching about the “two sons” of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius affirms the unmerged coexistence of two natures in Christ. Both natures are presented in full (in the polemic against Apollinaris, this thesis was approved by the “great Capodocians”), but they exist separately. Nestorius objects to calling the mother of Christ “Theotokos”, since she, according to the teachings of Nestorius, gave birth only to the “human nature” of the Savior, being only the “Christ Mother”. This teaching was criticized by St. Cyril of Alexandria and was condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council of 431-433.
Monophysitism
The uncompromising tone set for Alexandrian theology by St. Cyril, and “interpolations,” that is, the insertion of alien quotations into the texts of the great saint, soon became the reason for the emergence of a heresy opposite to Nestorianism. The reason for its spread was also the peculiar “impudence” of supporters of Alexandrian theology (it is known that the Third Ecumenical Council ended in schism, so the final document of the discussion around Nestorius’s heresy was not his Oros adopted in 431, but the conciliatory “formula of unity” adopted by the Antiochians three years later year), nephew of St. Cyril, and a zealous follower of his methods, Dioscorus of Alexandria, became the founder of the doctrine of Monophysitism, which “dissolved” the humanity of Christ in his divine nature. The teaching of the Monophysites was condemned by the church at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of 449, held in Chalcedon and “rehabilitating” partly the logic of Antiochian theology, establishing the dogma of the unfused and indivisible coexistence of two natures in Christ.
Monothelitism
The Fifth Ecumenical Council confirmed the condemnation of Nestorius and rejected some formulas from the writings of a number of Antiochian saints from the era of the Third Council. In some way, this council restored the balance between the two largest theological schools in the east: Alexandria (Egypt) and Antioch (Asia Minor and Syria). A hundred years after the Fifth Council, whose decisions were dictated, among other things, by political considerations of the “reunification” of Constantinople with the eastern outskirts, the logic of theological concessions, driven by state needs, and since the time of Justinian, accepted by the Byzantine emperors, became the basis for the emergence of a new heresy - monothelitism. The Monothelites, making concessions to theologians of the Monophysite persuasion, proposed to see in Christ, although two natures, embodied in a single hypostasis, but united by a single will. Thus, monothelitism recognized only one thing, divine action, energy and will in Christ. This doctrine was refuted by the key theologians of the time, St. Sophronius of Jerusalem and Rev. Maximus the Confessor, who defended the logic of Chalcedon. Monothelite disputes put an end to centuries-old Christological disputes, separating the source of will (nature: divine and human, there are two of them) from the subject of will and action - Christ.
