Heresies and How to Avoid Them, a Look into the Main Eight

        In this paper, I aim to show the main issues facing the early church in regards to the personage of Christ; who was he, and what he was not. Heretical views rose as understanding of the original text and teaching were lost, missed, and misinterpreted, leading to the issues of Arianism, Docetism, Nestorianism, and Eutychianism. I will explain what these are and how they related to the overall views and issues that arose regarding the early church’s view of Jesus Christ.        

All heresies stem from similar roots: a failure to fully comprehend an aspect of the Christian belief and a rationalization of it. A heresy takes the form of a side explanation that many will find easier to comprehend than the difficult truth of God’s ways. The four heresies discussed in the first four chapters of Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why it matters what Christians believe, edited by Ben Quash and Michael Ward, are the heresies of Arianism, Docetism, Nestorianism, and Eutychianism: Arianism, the belief that Jesus Christ was created by God, rather than always being God from the beginning; Docetism, the belief that Jesus Christ was only God and divine, rather than being fully God and fully human; Nestorianism, the thought that Jesus Christ was both God and human, but never at the same time, having a split personality with split natures; and Eutychianism, that Jesus was not fully God and fully human, but a third being entirely, separate from both categories.

        Every heresy came as a misinterpretation of scripture, and as earlier mentioned, an easy explanation of difficult concepts, in this case, of the personage of Christ. The heresies brought many challenges, claiming that Jesus Christ was almost anything other than what he was, fully God and fully human at the same time. With Jesus Christ being the central aspect of modern Christian belief, anything that brought his divinity and his claims, along with His place with God the Father and the Trinity, would bring the entirety of Christianity into question. This made any of these heresies incredibly important to deal with.

Many of these heresies taught the opposing and incorrect views as simply another way to look, rather than the only way to look. The early church had to deal, not only with wrong teachings, but with dual views being seen as acceptable and the credence being taken away from the truth; truth not being seen as absolute when it came to the Bible and Jesus. The early church was forced to come together and form a standard belief for all, the nicenoconstantinopolitan creed, which would encompass the issues at hand, and hopefully be strong enough to stand, and be a backing, against further misbeliefs and heresies.

        The early church had many issues to deal with that had very little to do with the heresies themselves, but much larger issues opening up of challenges to Christ and Christianity as a whole. The questions that arose were issues enough, dealing with challenges, misinterpretations, and “easy outs” to problems with Christ. The early church had no choice but to establish a common belief, so as to be able to manage the heresies existing, and hopefully future the heresies that may rise.

Through the second section of this paper, I will explain the issues affecting the church in regards to heresies of the church itself and the Christian life. The heresies discussed and explained in the second half of Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why it matters what Christians believe all relate to issues of the church and what Christians believe about God and salvation: Marconism, a dualist belief that the god of the Old Testament was different than the god of the New Testament, that when Jesus came, he did away with the old ways and the old god; Donatism, the belief that the church was only for the saved and the sanctified, that those who sin had no place within it; Pelagianism, is the belief that the original sin of Adam did not ruin human nature and that we as humans are still capable of choosing good or evil without God’s involvement; and Gnosticism, teaching that the physical world in which we live is actually the creation of a subordinate power or a “false god” rather than of God the father, and that the we as humans, through special knowledge, can transcend this mortal coil.