Heresies about the person of Jesus Christ

While Jesus was alive, some of his closest followers

close ones expected that he would try to seize power from those who
they governed the earth, but Jesus showed that his kingdom was not
of this world.
He was famous in his time because he taught about
God spoke of Himself to the religious who were His
contemporaries in a different way
After his departure, already in the first centuries of
Christianity, many doubts and heresies began to arise
about Him.
The first Fathers of the Church had to
position oneself in front of many discussions and controversies that
they revolved around the nature of Jesus Christ. Questions
like: "Who is Christ?" "Could God become
human?” “Can anyone believe that Jesus Christ is a
mix of humanity and divinity?” made the Church
had to solidify his doctrine.
In these controversies, they discussed and thought about the
essence of Jesus. During the first three centuries, the
Christians had to fight not only against the
persecutions of the pagan world, but also against
heresies and corrupted doctrines within the very flock.
In the following years, throughout the centuries, several of
these questions emerged in a new guise,
causing the Church to position itself in response to these new ones
confrontations.
 Christian thinkers and leaders have always
recognized and attempted to identify a set of beliefs
essentials that every mature and capable Christian must affirm
to be truly considered Christian.
We see this in the New Testament itself: the first
Juan's letter says that anyone who claims that Christ does not
wine in flesh (that is, that Jesus Christ was not
truly human) may be considered anathema (cursed,
section).
The Church of the first two centuries was concerned
by people who claimed to be Christians, but who taught
"another gospel". The doctrine of Christ was the most attacked in
the whole history of Christianity. Each phase of its mission
messianic was being continually challenged: its
birth, his life, his miracles, his death, his
resurrection... everything was questioned. From the movement
New Era to the infamous movie 'The Last Temptation of
"Christ" raises the question: Did Jesus exist?

12.1 UNTIL THE COUNCIL OF NICEA (100-325 AD)

The Fathers of the Church of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries (some
of whom were bishops, supervisors of groups
(ecclesiastics) —Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian,
Athanasios, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and
Gregory of Nyssa - they were the great defenders of the faith
Christian in this period marked by controversy over
divinity of Jesus.
Some responses presented during this period to
questions like: 'If He is God, how does this relate to'
the monotheism of the Old Testament?
Is Jesus equal to the Father, and in what sense is He different?
they constituted heresies that have reached our days, such as the
gnosticism, ebionism, docetism, monarchianism
Arianism, etc.

a. GNOSTICISM
The Gnostics believed that matter was evil and
they denied the real incarnation and the bodily resurrection of the
Son of God. His teachings about creation, Christ, and the
salvation opposed so radically to preaching and to
teaching of the Church Fathers, that the churches of the
The Roman Empire developed correct confessions of faith to
to be professed by all the converted called Creeds.
Today Gnosticism resurfaces under the guise of 'Christianity.'
"esoteric," such as Christian Science, which
It establishes a strong distinction between 'Jesus' and 'Christ.'
denying any real, unique, and ontological incarnation of
God in the man Jesus.
The term gnosticism comes from the common opinion
of the Gnostics about the source and highest norm of faith
Christian: lagnosis, translated from Greek as 'wisdom' or
higher education
The Gnostics claimed to have abilities and
higher spiritual knowledge that Christians do not have
They had. The Gnostics follow the leaders, the disseminators of
spiritual knowledge that transcends understanding
normal, generally considered secret.
 In the early centuries of Christianity that
secret spiritual knowledge was related to the
ideas that 'Christ' is someone distinct from the man 'Jesus'
that "Christ" would have only dwelled in "Jesus", but never
completely identified with him, and that the soul or spirit
human is a spark of the divine fullness (as they say today)
the followers of the New Age.

b. EBIONISM
The Ebionites appeared in the early 2nd century. Their
name derives from the Greek term ebionaioi, has its
corresponding in Hebrew ebionim, which means "the
poor ones.
The Ebionites were Jewish believers who did not abandon
the Jewish precepts and also accepted Jesus only as
a man. This cult had an exaggerated teaching about
poverty; rejected the writings of the apostle Paul because in
his epistles recognized the converted Gentiles as
Christians. The greatest attack on primitive Christianity was
related to the interpretation they had about the
divinity of Jesus and his virgin birth.
For them, Jesus was a simple man, son of Joseph and
Mary, who observed the law in a special way, being thus
chosen by God to be the Messiah. In his baptism, when
descend the Holy Spirit, Jesus would have been empowered by
He to be the Messiah; thus, of course, Jesus was not.
eternal, then he was not God.
Basically, this was also the position of the
dynamic monarchists, with Pablo of Samosata as their
main representative, who made a distinction between Jesus
and the Logos. They sacrificed divinity for the defense of the
humanity of Christ. No council officially condemned
to Ebionism, but Tertullian, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and Origen
they were heavyweight opponents.

c. DOCETISM
Docetism has a strong connection with the
gnosticism, for whom the material world was evil and
corrupt. The term derives from a Greek word (δοχεω)
what does 'seem' mean. The Docetists argued that the
the body of Jesus Christ was an illusion and his crucifixion only
it would have been apparent.
For the followers of this heresy, matter was evil,
And the logos, which is eleon (spirit), would not be involved.
with matter, which is the principle of sin, so Christ
it seemed to be in a carnal matter, but in truth it was not,
was illusory.
In the conception of this heretical movement, given that
Christ is good and the material is essentially bad, there was no
possibility of union between the spirit (logos) and a body
terrestrial.
Therefore, the Docetes denied the humanity of
Jesus, saying that he seemed to be human, but was divine.
They claimed that the body of Jesus was nothing more than a ghost;
that suffering and death were mere appearances: 'O
he suffered and then he could not be God; or he was truly
God and then I couldn't suffer'.
 There was no official condemnation of this thought, but
Irenaeus and Hippolytus were the opponents of this philosophical idea.
Greek and pagan of the time, but which was introduced in the
Church of those times. Irenaeus, disciple of Polycarp,
bishop of Smyrna, disciple of the apostle John, disciple of
Jesus wrote about the common Christian faith around 177
C.C.:
In fact, the Church spread throughout the world
to the ends of the earth. He received from the apostles and their
disciples the faith in one God, Almighty Father, who made
the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in it; in a
only Jesus Christ, Son of God, incarnate for our
salvation; and in the Holy Spirit who, the prophets,
they announced the economy of God; and the coming, the birth
of the virgin, the passion, the resurrection of the dead, the
ascension to heaven, in the body of Jesus Christ, our beloved
Lord; and in His coming from the heavens in the glory of the Father,
to recap all things and resurrect all flesh of
human gender; in order that, according to the blessing of the Father
invisible, before Christ Jesus, our Lord, God,
Savior and King, let every knee bow in the heavens and on the
hells, and every tongue confess it; and execute the judgment of
everyone.1

d. MONARCHISM
This designation was given for the first time by
Tertullian. Like the doctrinal defense of the apologists, of
the agnostic parents and the Alexandrian parents about the
Against Heresies. Book 1. pp. 61-62.
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logoi (logos) did not satisfy the theological doubts of everyone in
that moment and Christological theology was still new and
Without coherence, new thoughts emerged.
Monarchianism emerged in the 3rd century and the great
the difficulty was to combine faith in the one God (monotheistic)
with the new Christian faith in which God is Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. This difficulty was complicated to resolve, already
that, on one hand, there were those who believed that the logos
he was a divine person who seemed to hurt the monotheistic idea and,
On the other hand, there were those who defended the idea that the
logos (logos) was subordinated to the Father and that hurt the
deity of Christ. This theological conflict gave rise to two
types of thinking: dynamic monarchianism, also
known as adoptionism, and monarchianism
modalist.

Dynamic Monarchism
It was an attempt to safeguard the unity of God. This
the idea had traces of Ebionism, which preached that Jesus was
only a man. It is said that Theodotus of Byzantium, a
cultured man who sold leather, gave rise to the
dynamic monarchism. It was against the
Christology of the logos, denied the assertion that
Jesus Christ is God, thought it was safer to say Jesus
he was a simple man. He did not deny the virgin birth,
but that birth did not deify Jesus; He remained a
simple man, despite being just.
Theodotus divided the life of Jesus into stages, that is,
until his baptism, Jesus lived as every man lives his
daily life, with the difference of having been extremely
virtuoso. At his baptism, the Spirit or Christ descended
about Him and from that moment he began to perform miracles,
but without becoming divine. This idea was named
dynamism. Jesus, then, was a prophet and not God, and a
prophet with divine anointing (just like Elijah, Elisha, and others).
Only after the resurrection did Jesus Christ join God.
Teodotus to make an apology for the unity of the Father
I needed a good argument, and for that I had to at least
deny the deity of Jesus, equating themselves with the Ebionites.
Pope Victor excommunicated Theodotus, but his idea did not.
could have been forbidden, so much so that Paul of Samosata, who was
bishop of Antioch around 260 A.D., defended this
dynamic form of monarchianism. Paul of Samosata was
a little further than Theodotus and affirmed that the λόγος (logos)
is identified with reason or wisdom and that these
equalities are not characteristic of the incarnate Christ, but rather a
an adjective that any man can have, that is,
even further diminished the deity of Jesus Christ. What happened
then it was that divine wisdom dwelt in man
Jesus and that does not mean that he is a divine person. The
doctrines of Tertullian on theλογος(logos) as a
person and that of Origins about the λόγος (logos) as
independent hypostases were rejected by Paul of
Samósata.
Pablo of Samosata at the synod of Antioch in 268
d. C. was declared a heretic, but somehow his ideas
later appeared in some branches of theology
liberal.
 Modalist Monarchianism
The modalist monarchians denied humanity
of Christ just like the Gnostics. They saw him only as a
mode or manifestation of the only God in which not
they recognized the distinction of people. Any suggestion of
that the Word or the Son was different from the Father, or one
A person different from Him seemed to lead inexorably to the
blasphemy of two Gods. This is the other way of
monarchism, that is to say, it is the other way of apologizing for the
divine unitarism. Modalism (as it is also known)
knew) was different from adoptionism, which said that Jesus
he was adopted by God, preached that Jesus was God, but was
he manifested as the creator of the world (Father), then came to
the Earth incarnated in Jesus to save man (Son) and
today is manifested in the person of the Holy Spirit. For the
Modalism is the belief that there is only one person, the Father, who manifested.
differently and with different names. The idea of
Jewish monotheism was not affected.
The first theologian to formally declare the position
monarchical was Noeto of Smyrna, who in the last years
in the 2nd century was summoned twice by the elders of that
city to provide clarifications. In the heart of the
Noeto's preaching was the energetic affirmation that
there was only one God, the Father.
In the West, his disciples became known
as patripassionists, that is to say, the idea that it was the Father
who suffered and lived the different human experiences of
Christ.2Therefore, it would have been the Father himself who entered into
the womb of the virgin, becoming, so to speak, her
own Son who suffered, died, and resurrected. In this way, this
a natural person united in itself mutually attributes
incompatible, being invisible and also visible, impassive and
also transitable. In the East, this more refined modalism
it was known as Sabellianism, according to the name of its author
Sabelio, who received a more systematic structure and
philosophical part of Sabellius, was taken to Rome around the
final of Zeferino's papacy, being attacked with
vehemence for Hipolit. Sabellius denied the Trinity by affirming
that they are not three persons, but one person who manifests
in different ways. He used the analogy of the sun, an object
the only one who radiates both heat and light; the Father was, so to speak
to say it, the form or essence, being the Son and the Holy Spirit
the modes of self-expression of the Father.
In the year 261 A.D., the doctrines of Sabellius were
rejected and condemned for denying the distinction of the
divine persons in an attempt to rescue a theology
unicist for Christianity.

e. ARIANISM
The Arians were followers of an elder named
Arrio. He stated that the Word (Jesus Christ) was not the same as
Father, but rather a great creature. According to Arius, Christ is the
first of the created beings through which all the
other things are done. Anticipating the glory that
2
Tertullian coined a label of patripassianism for that heresy, which means suffering (and death)
of the Father.
At the end, he is called Logos, the Son, the only-begotten. Arius
he said that Jesus could be called God, even though he is not God in
the fully understood reality in the term.
In light of this fact, Alejandro, bishop of Alexandria,
called a synod, which removed him from the presbytery and
excluded from communion in the Church. Then the emperor
ordered that all Christian bishops appear to
to deliberate on the person of Christ and the Trinity in a
meeting that he would preside over in Nicaea in 325 A.D. The great
the assembly was held with the presence of 318 bishops
catholics and, according to reports, only 22 were openly
Arrians from the beginning.3Arius himself did not have a license.
to attend the council because he was not a bishop. He was
represented by Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicea.
Alejandro led the legal process against Arrio and the
Arianism, being assisted by his young assistant named
Athanasius, who would succeed him in the episcopate of Alexandria
a few years later. At this council, a
document called the Nicene Creed in which the teachings
of Arrio were condemned.

12.2 THE POST-NICENE PERIOD (325-600 A.D.)

After reaching the model profession of faith, the
Church, now convinced that Jesus Christ is God
true, I would have to figure out how they relate to each other
divinity and humanity of Jesus, since there were many
heresies within Christianity. During this period

AUGUSTINE, San. The Trinity. p. 11.

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Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, and
eutiquianism, among others.
 Apolinariansim
This name is derived from Apolinario who was a bishop of
Laodicea of Syria at the end of the 4th century.
He strongly opposed Arianism. Apollinaris said
that the divine nature took a place in nature
humanity of Christ when assuming the physical body through the
incarnation.
The question of the mutability of the logos
preached by the Arians was condemned by Apolinario,
because for him the divine, when incarnating, did not cease to be divine nor
shared divinity or energy with the humanity of Christ,
if it continued with the sacred divine characteristic, because
something spiritual cannot be mixed with the flesh, since the
the word (logos) is perfect and the sinful flesh.
For Apolinario, the human nature of Jesus had
divine qualities, for the λόγος (logos) is of the same.
substance of the Father and there cannot be a kind of
symbiosis between two completely opposite natures.
Jesus Christ would then have no genetic inheritance from
Maria, because if that were the case, her flesh would be like that of the
common men, but he brought from heaven a, let's say,
"celestial flesh"; Mary's womb would be just a place for it
fetal development.
Apollinarianism was condemned by the Council of
Constantinople in the year 381 A.D.

b. NESTORIANISM
 The Nestorians were followers of Nestorius, bishop of
Constantinople. Néstor saw the divine and the human as
antithesis and was a defender of the theology of Antioch, which
taught that the divine and human nature present in the
the person of Christ cannot be confused, since they do not
they fuse, because Christ had two parts or divisions, one
human and another divine.
This theory explains that when Christ was hungry, he was
the human part that was in action, but when
walking on water or performing miracles, what was
In action was the divine part.
Jesus was then a person divided into two parts.
with separate operations. The two natures of Christ
they would be two independent persons from each other, that is to say, that
Christ was just a man who was possessed and inhabited by
God.
The idea that Christ acted with all his personality
it was unacceptable for Néstor.
Néstor objected to the expression Theotókos (Mother of God),
used by the monks. For him, Mary gave birth to the
descendant of David in whom resided the λόγος (logos), for
it would be incorrect to say that Mary is the mother of God,
that is to say, Mary had been the mother of the human part of
Jesus, for it was impossible for her to be the mother of the part
divine, where is the deity of Jesus. Néstor preferred the
expressionXristotokos.
The Council of Ephesus, held in 431 A.D., supported the
Alexandrian theology, declaring Nestorius a heretic and
condemning him to exile, but the Nestorians, however,
they organized an independent church in Persia. Despite
not having grown so much, there are Nestorian churches until the
today, such as the Church of Saint Thomas in
India.

c. Eutychianism
The Eutychians were followers of Eutyches, abbot or
archimandrite4from a monastery on the outskirts of
Constantinople in the 5th century.
Eutychus was a disciple of Cyril of Alexandria, opponent of
Néstor.
This theory taught that there were not two natures, but instead
one single nature in Christ. Everything in Christ was divine,
even his body. The divine and the human were one.
For teaching this theory, Eutychus was excommunicated from
Constantinople. Pope Leo I then convened a synod.
in Ephesus in 449 AD, but the Alexandrian party defended
Eutycus (they were friends), and he returned to his ministry. The Pope
Leo I expressed his idea in a letter to Bishop Flavius of
Constantinople, but the idea was not discussed. Marked by the
confusion, that synod was named 'synod of
"thieves" and is not recognized as an ecumenical council.
Leo I was satisfied with these results and in 451
d. C. convened another council, this time in Chalcedon, in which
the idea of Eutychus, who was from Alexandria, was rejected, and it was accepted.
the position of Pope Leo I.

Superior of the monastery in the Greek Church.

4
 d. THE ELCESAÍTAS
They were the followers of Elcesai, who claimed to have
having a vision of an angel that had brought him
revelations. Whoever accepts the teachings of Elcesai
would achieve the forgiveness of sins.
The Elcesaitas rejected the virgin birth of
Christ, and they believed that Jesus would have been born like any other;
however, Jesus was considered a superior angel, the
most high archangel. This sect was of Jewish nature,
but syncretic, because in addition to observing the law, they practiced
the magical art and astrology.

e. MONOPHYSITISM
This word is derived from two other Greek words:
único = unique y φύσις = nature.
The formation of the word already explains what it teaches.
this theory, that is, Christ has a single nature that is
composed.
One of the formulations of this idea states that a single
energy united the two natures so perfectly that not
there remained a distinction between them.
Another formulation explains that the humanity of Christ.
it was transformed by the divine, having a kind of
symbiosis that makes Jesus an impeccable and divine man,
that is to say, the physical/human part of Jesus was transformed into
a divine nature.
Actually, what happened was that some groups did not
they accepted the position of the Council of Chalcedon, arguing
what a council denied the unity of Christ. Severus of
Antiochus, who was a defender of the theory, said that the
logos (logos) has only one nature, namely the one that is
he made meat. He argued that "one nature" is equivalent to
"hypostasis or a person".
The Monophysites found it impossible to say that Christ
it has two natures and at the same time has a body or is
only one person. In 451 A.D., monophysitism was
condemned and the Council of Constantinople in 680 A.D.
he also rejected it, but the Jacobite Syrian churches, Copts,
Abyssinians and Armenians adopted the monophysite idea.

f. MONOTHEISM
This word also comes from Greek: monos=
unique and will
So, this sect that emerged within Monophysitism,
asked the following: Does the will belong to the person or to
Nature? That is clear in Christ! The answer that
they said that Christ had a single will, denying others
wills.
In opposition, the duotelists emerged, who
they preached that Christ had two wills, just as two
natures.
The sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople,
celebrated in 680 AD, adopted the doctrine of the two
wills as orthodox doctrine, but human will
it is subordinate to the divine, with no decrease or
absorption of one nature into the other and, nevertheless, the two
they unite and act in perfect harmony.