The last chapter considered the external problems facing the church in the second century: opposition from the state and the synagogue. This chapter turns to the internal problems involved in drawing the boundaries of acceptable doctrine and practice. Modern usage distinguishes heresy (false doctrine) from schism (division over personalities, discipline, and practices, where fundamental doctrinal error is not involved).

As has been observed, “Heretics are brilliantly wrong; schismatics are obstinately wrong.” Ancient word usage of hairesis (“heresy”) and schisma (“schism”), however, did not originally make this distinction.

I. MARCION#

It may be unconventional to start with Marcion, but his basic position is easier to grasp than that of the Gnostics (this is not to say that there are no problems in interpreting Marcion), and his seems to have been a strictly religious approach without the speculative interests of many of the “Gnostics.”

Marcion started from the distinctiveness of the Christian revelation, and he established a new church (something most other early heretics did not do). His church rivaled the great church and lasted until the fifth century.

Marcion has enough in common with those labeled “Gnostics” to be a good introduction, but enough difference to belong in a class to himself.

Marcion was reared in Sinope, Pontus, where his father was reportedly a bishop. He was a ship-builder and acquired considerable wealth. The false teaching opposed in the New Testament letter to the Colossians and Docetic ideas current in Asia Minor may have been part of his religious background, and anti-Jewish sentiment associated with the Bar Kokhba revolt in Palestine in the 130s likely influenced him, although his basic perspective may have developed earlier.

Marcion went to Rome and gave the church a large sum of money. His teachings, however, were rejected in 144, and his money was returned to him. He proceeded to set up a rival church that in a few years was nearly as widespread as the great church. Marcion’s wealth and organizing ability enabled him to take over some of the emerging Gnosticizing groups, but the organization and worship of his communities seems to have been similar to that of the great church.

Marcion is known for his work on the text and canon of the New Testament. He rejected the Old Testament as Scripture for the church and issued a New Testament consisting of edited versions of the Gospel of Luke and ten Pauline epistles (lacking the Pastoral Epistles). He omitted or changed verses, often on a dogmatic basis. His is the oldest known fixed collection of New Testament books.

He wrote the Antitheses, presenting contradictions between the Old and New Testaments, in which his theology is set forth. We know the work primarily from the five-book refutation by Tertullian, Against Marcion.

The following points reflect the basic views of Marcion as they can be reconstructed from the criticisms leveled against him by his opponents in the ancient church.

1. There are two gods—the creator god and the redeemer god. Marcion’s dualism seems not to have been a metaphysical matter, but an inference from the human experience of contradictions in life.

2. Law and judgment belong to the creator (the Demiurge), and redemption is the work of the Father (the “Unknown” or “Strange” God).

3. The Old Testament is the revelation of the creator. It predicts the Jewish Messiah (the Jews have read their Scriptures correctly). Jesus is not the fulfiller of the Old Testament (he came “not to fulfill but to destroy” the Law). The Old Testament God worked evils, contradicted himself, and delighted in wars.

4. Jesus was viewed in a Docetic manner; he only seemed to suffer. Yet, his death was described as a purchase. Jesus’ resurrection was of his soul and spirit, and he raised himself. This view again seems not to have originated from a metaphysical standpoint (e.g., the inability of the divine to suffer), but from ordinary experience that recoiled from the flesh as unclean.

The physical birth of Jesus was a stumbling block to Marcion, so he began his Gospel in Luke 3 with the statement that in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Jesus “came down” from heaven “to the Galilaean city of Capernaum.”

5. Paul was the only true apostle. The Twelve “Judaized,” so the Father had to call Paul to restore the true gospel, but even his epistles were interpolated by the Judaizers.

6. Marcion took his stand on a written revelation. His significance in the development of the canon will be assessed in the next chapter.

7. Asceticism was emphasized. Sex was abhorrent. Water replaced wine in the Lord’s supper. Foods associated with sexual reproduction were forbidden—meat and milk products. Fish was the only protein allowed. (How did Marcion think fish reproduced? Or, was the problem with the foods used in pagan sacrifice and not with reproduction as such?)

Only the unmarried were baptized, except at the end of life, so there were two levels of adherents in the Marcionite churches, the perfect and the imperfect.

8. The followers of Jesus are not under law. Salvation is by grace alone, and grace needs no law. His views of faith and sin lacked Paul’s depth.

The influence of Marcion was considerable, but was overestimated by his twentieth-century interpreters. The catholic church with its creed, canon, and episcopate were not the product of a reaction to Marcion; but reaction to him did strengthen certain tendencies already at work and so speeded up the process of development of these practices.

Marcion’s asceticism was very attractive as a fulfillment of Christianity and so was one factor in the ascetic influence in orthodox Christianity. His emphasis on soteriology to the neglect of cosmology was a big problem for the old catholic church fathers.

The severing of Jesus Christ from the Creator God was a great incentive to the orthodox thinkers to begin formulating a doctrine of the Trinity.

• Justin Martyr held on to the Old Testament by contending that it prophesied two advents of the Messiah—the first in love and the next in judgment.

• Tertullian affirmed that God is both justice and love. God had to show discipline before love, and the Sender had to make his authority known (in the Old Testament) before the One Sent would be accepted. In contrast, Marcion’s God made a sudden appearance without any preparation.

The church’s rejection of Marcion’s teaching demonstrated, among other things, its realization that it could not surrender its Old Testament roots and what that entailed about the oneness of God and the goodness of his creation.

Marcion shared with many Gnostics the premise of an unknown God distinct from the creator, a dualism of matter and spirit, a docetic interpretation of Jesus Christ, a negative attitude toward the Old Testament and its God, and a concern with the problem of evil in the world.

He differed from them in rejecting mythology, creating an organization for his followers, avoiding allegorical interpretation, and so engaging in textual criticism to deal with problems he found in the text.

II. GNOSTICISM#

The very term “Gnosticism” is problematic. It comes from the Greek word gnosis, which referred to immediate experiential knowledge that comes from acquaintance in contrast to propositional or factual knowledge.

There was a group in the second century who called themselves Gnostikoi (“Gnostics”), meaning “those capable of attaining knowledge” and then “the knowing ones”. But beginning with Irenaeus, Christian heresiologists extended the term to cover opponents in the church in whom they discerned some commonalities yet who had different systems of thought.

So it is well to remember that “Gnosticism” has become something of an umbrella term for what was more a mood and attitude toward the world and its origin (and even these attitudes varied) than a single solution to the problems that some persons felt. That is, Gnosticism was more a movement than a consistent approach.

The religious movement of Gnosticism was characterized by an intuitive knowledge of the origin, essence, and ultimate destiny of the spiritual nature of human beings.

A. Sources for Study#

The study of Gnosticism was long hampered by the fact that our main sources of information were the anti-heretical writers of the church. The principal authors who discussed Gnosticism and preserved Gnostic material were Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius. The Gnostics were also known from the writings against them by the Greek philosopher Plotinus.

Even where these authors preserved quotations from Gnostic writings, these were often out of context and always used for a polemical purpose. It is usually the case in history that losers are known only from descriptions by their opponents, and few persons would like to be remembered only for what their enemies say about them.

Some supplement to what the anti-heretical church fathers said was available from a few original Gnostic works preserved in Coptic, from the Hermetic writings (a pagan form of Gnosticism), and from later Manichaean and Mandaean sources (two movements indebted to earlier Gnosticism).

This situation changed dramatically with the discovery, in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, of a collection of twelve codices (plus other sheets) written in the fourth century and containing mostly original Gnostic works in a Coptic translation. The publication of these works in critical editions and reliable translations have made them the primary focus for the study of ancient Gnosticism.

The Nag Hammadi collection can be broadly grouped into five categories of writings. Of these the most important are the first two, (1) those closer to original “Gnostic” thought—to which the names “Sethian,” “Barbelognostic,” “Ophite,” or others are given and which may represent variations within one school or distinct systems—and (2) those from the Valentinian school.

The accounts of the church fathers give something of the mythical structure of the Gnostic systems, but the new Nag Hammadi documents give more of the living spirit and the methods of interpretation that were employed. The one class of sources helps interpret the other.

SOME WORKS FROM THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY

1) Sethian Works

a) Some concentrating more on the myth of origins

Apocryphon of John Apocalypse of Adam Hypostasis of the Archons Gospel of the Egyptians Trimorphic Protennoia

b) Others relating to the ascent of the soul

Zostrianos Allogenes(“The Foreigner”) Three Steles of Seth

2) Valentinian works

Gospel of Truth Treatise on the Resurrection Tripartite Tractate Gospel of Philip

3) Works from the Thomas tradition in Syria

Gospel of Thomas Book of Thomas the Contender

4) Hermetic works

Asclepius

5) Other works, including non-Gnostic Christian moral/wisdom writings

Teachings of Silvanus Sentences of Sextus

B. Question of Origins#

Before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, three different sources for Gnostic thought were postulated:

1. The view of the church fathers that Gnosticism was a Christian heresy, resulting from Christians explaining their faith to themselves and their neighbors in philosophical terms, has had modern scholarly support.

2. The opposite view, presenting Gnosticism as essentially a non-Christian movement (some tracing it to Persia)—representing the despairing, syncretistic mood of late antiquity that reconstructed a philosophical world view from the old myths and gods, and in the process adopted a veneer of Christianity that in turn provided a model for Christian intellectuals to interpret their faith—was advocated by the history of religions school of interpretation and continues to have many supporters.

3. A less commonly held view that Gnostic speculation began in Jewish circles, perhaps as an effort to find eternity when the kingdom of God did not come (e.g., aeons as “ages” of time in apocalypticism became cosmic components of the divine pleroma in Gnosticism), has found renewed support as a result of the Nag Hammadi documents.

There seem to be elements of truth in all three interpretations. Some of the ideas in Gnosticism were older than Christianity, but a complete Gnostic system has not been identified prior to Christianity. Some expressions of Gnosticism, especially those combated by the church fathers, were Christian heresies. Some of the Gnostic systems known from the Nag Hammadi writings show a proximity to Judaism, if not indeed a Jewish origin.

Gnostic works at Nag Hammadi with no explicit Christian features may point to Gnosticism as at first or as also a non-Christian movement, but not necessarily, for if these works could be read by Christians, they could as well have been Christian compositions.

A middle-of-the-road view would be that Gnosticism and Christianity grew up together but from different sources. They had some interactions in the first century and developed into defined forms as separate religions in the second century.

The fully developed Gnostic systems that we know from the church fathers and that are reflected in the Nag Hammadi library, whatever their antecedents, belong to the second century. It was Christian Gnosticism that made an impact, for the Neo-Platonists regarded Gnosticism as a Christian deviation; Gnostics to them were Christians with a kind of claim to be intellectuals characterized by a passionate dualism and extreme anthropocentricity.

To say that Gnosticism is non-Christian in origin is not necessarily to say that it is pre-Christian. Whatever the points of contact between Christianity and Gnosticism, the former statement can be affirmed; the latter is not confirmed.

C. Components of Gnosticism#

The debate over origins points to the elements that went into the developed Gnostic systems of the second century. These contained Jewish, pagan, and Christian components.

Many of the Gnostic speculations can be explained as arising from reflections on the early chapters of Genesis. Certain developments in Judaism may be seen as a background to the emergence of Gnosticism: the influence of dualistic thinking, esoteric speculations, personification of Wisdom, intermediary beings found in developed angelology. Hence, many now look to the milieu of heterodox Judaism or specifically to Jews in rebellion against their religious heritage for the origins of Gnosticism.

Greek philosophy provides another large component in Gnosticism. Neopythagorean influences may be seen in the negative evaluation of matter, ascetic practices, and speculations about the cosmos. Some speak of Gnosticism as “Platonism run wild,” because of the statements in Plato developed by the Gnostics: a remote supreme being and the soul as immortal and in bondage to the body. Pagan analogies may also be found in the Hermetic literature and the Chaldaean Oracles.

Each Gnostic teacher had his own system of thought for representing reality. What held each Gnostic community together was its myth of origins, the sense of group identity, and the in-group language.

The main features of the various myths were as follows: (1) the original divine element produced other spiritual principles; (2) a “fault” occurred in the divine, spiritual world; (3) as a result matter came into existence; (4) some of the pure spiritual nature was planted in (some) souls; (5) a “redeemer” revealed the way of escape out of the material world for the divine element; (6) the soul passes through the realms of the world rulers in its return to its spiritual home.Although we have continued the common practice of speaking of Gnosticism as if it were a single entity, this was hardly the case. Each Gnostic teacher took these component elements and put them together according to a Gnostic way of thinking in order to construct his own system. Thus there is a great variety in the details of the systems of different Gnostic teachers. Gnosticism was an aggregate of a series of individualistic responses to the religious situation made by teachers who did not think of themselves as eccentric.

D. Common Features of the Gnostic Myths#

Each Gnostic teacher had his own system of thought for representing reality. What held each Gnostic community together was its myth of origins, the sense of group identity, and the in-group language.

The main features of the various myths were as follows:

1. the original divine element produced other spiritual principles

2. a “fault” occurred in the divine, spiritual world

3. as a result matter came into existence

4. some of the pure spiritual nature was planted in (some) souls

5. a “redeemer” revealed the way of escape out of the material world for the divine element

6. the soul passes through the realms of the world rulers in its return to its spiritual home.

The Gnostic attempt to explain the problem of evil posited a fall in the divine world, in deity. This effort to “kick upstairs” the problem of evil was a notable, but ultimately unsatisfying, solution to one of the difficult human philosophical questions.

The way of dealing with this question was one expression of the Gnostic, especially Valentinian, use of the partly poetical, partly philosophical concept of “metaphysical correspondence.” Applying the Platonic idea of earthly realities as imitations of the world of Ideas, Gnostics saw the components of the pleroma as equivalent to the totality of the spiritual nature of humanity. There is a heavenly counterpart of the soul. Accordingly, the Gospel narratives were read as reflections of the drama that took place in the heavenly world.

Thus, in spite of its dualism, “The gnosis of Gnosticism involves the divine identity of the knower (the Gnostic), the known (the divine substance of one’s transcendent self), and [the] means by which one knows (gnosis as an implicit divine faculty to be awakened and actualized)” (Bianchi).

E. Principal Teachers#

The anti-heretical writers of the early church traced “Gnosticism” to Simon Magus, “the father of all heresies.” This genealogy of heresy in the church fathers looks artificial, being influenced by various succession lists employed in antiquity, and the account in Acts 8 does not suggest that Simon held any particularly “Gnostic” teaching.

It may be there was a confusion between the Simon of Acts 8 and another Simon, who was a Gnostic; or Acts 8 may not tell the whole story; or Simon was on his way to becoming a Gnostic, and his followers later may have become Gnostic.

At any rate, the attribution of Gnosticism to Simon may point to a Samaritan origin, to which some now look. The teaching later ascribed to Simon does have features of Gnostic schemes in that it includes a fall from divinity and a descent of a heavenly power (Simon himself) to bring salvation.

Seemingly contradictory reports are given of the teaching of Cerinthus, reported to have been opposed by the apostle John in Ephesus. The earliest surviving report (Irenaeus) puts Cerinthus in the Gnostic orbit: A lower Power and not the Supreme God made the world; Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary who exceeded other persons in righteousness and wisdom; the divine Christ descended on him in the form of a dove at his baptism and flew away before his crucifixion, so the Christ remained an impassible spiritual being.

A slightly later report made Cerinthus a teacher of Jewish millennialism and attributed the book of Revelation to him. A way of reconciling the seeming incongruity of these pictures of Cerinthus is that he anticipated Marcion by saying that the Jewish expectation of a messianic kingdom on earth was a correct reading of the Old Testament prophecies, but Christ revealed the unknown Father and a spiritual salvation.

SOME TEACHERS JUDGED HERETICAL

Irenaeus traced a line leading from Simon to Menander to Saturninus and Basilides. To Saturninus he ascribed a compact summary that corresponds to the principal elements of the basic Gnostic myth: The unknown Father made the various levels of angelic beings; seven of these angels made the world and the first man. The God of the Jews is one of these angels. The Christ, who is incorporeal, came only in appearance in order to overthrow the God of the Jews and to save good human beings. His followers renounced marriage and procreation and were vegetarians.

Carpocrates too affirmed that the world was made by angels, who were far inferior to the unbegotten Father. Jesus was born of Joseph like the rest of men, but because of his purity of soul, power from above came upon him, enabling him to escape the world rulers. Souls which are like Jesus’ soul also receive power to escape the world rulers and may even become stronger than Jesus’ disciples or indeed Jesus himself.

Basilides had a much more elaborate cosmology than other teachers who sought to combine Christianity with Gnostic speculations. The unengendered Father (or “the non-existent God,” i.e., the God beyond existence, in another version) engendered various spiritual qualities and from them produced “powers, principalities, and angels,” one set of each for all the 365 heavens. Among the heavenly beings was an Archon who was God of the Jews. The unengendered Father sent his firstborn Mind (or Intellect) to free those who believed in him from the power of the beings who made the world. This emissary corresponds to Jesus, who worked miracles but did not suffer. Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross, was ignorantly crucified in his place, while Jesus, taking the appearance of Simon, stood by and laughed at them and then ascended invisibly to the Father who had sent him. Salvation belongs only to the soul, not the body. His followers were ready in times of persecution to deny that they were Christians, since they, like the angels, are not able to suffer.

Of those the church fathers called “Gnostics,” by far the most influential teacher was the religious genius Valentinus, who was a Christian reformer of Gnostic theology. Valentinus was educated in Alexandria, and after teaching there, went to Rome, where he was active in the church. Reportedly disappointed in his hope to be elected bishop, and meeting much opposition to his teaching, he dropped out of sight.

Very little that is certainly from Valentinus remains, but it has been suggested that the Gospel of Truth found at Nag Hammadi is a sermon of his. Valentinus was more explicitly “Christian” than his Gnostic predecessors, but he also more fully appropriated the language of Plato.

Moreover, Valentinus’s mysticism modified Gnostic mysticism by understanding salvation as coming through gnosis, knowledge of (or experiential acquaintance with) the savior, the self, and God. His myth of origins starts not with an original monad (the ultimate single entity) but with a pair of first principles, the Inexpressible (Depth) and Silence. Using agricultural language, Valentinus says that they produced other dualities to constitute the first ogdoad (“eight”); from it proceeded twenty-two other powers, making a total of thirty aeons in the pleroma (fullness [of the spiritual universe]).

One of these aeons (named Sophia, the Greek word for Wisdom, in other versions of the myth) revolted and engendered Christ and a shadow (matter). Christ returned to the pleroma, and the rebellious “mother” emitted the Demiurge (the creator). Jesus was an emanation from the Christ or from other aeons of the pleroma. Earthly entities such as humanity and the church were thus seen as reflections of spiritual realities.

It is often difficult to draw inferences from an intellectual system to the social realities in which it operates, and this is especially the case with Gnosticism. For example, the prominence of feminine elements in the pleroma of the Gnostics does not seem to have necessarily transferred to an equality of women in Gnostic communities.

Nevertheless, there were women teachers prominent in some Gnostic circles: for example, an unnamed woman of the Cainite sect, Baptism, whose disparagement of water baptism called forth Tertullian’s On and Philoumene, a prophetess and teacher influential on Marcion’s disciple Apelles.

Yet there does not appear to be any consistent line of greater openness to women’s leadership among “heretical” churches, nor consistent hostility to women as women among the “orthodox.”

F. Sample Gnostic Myths of Creation and Salvation#

Two extensive elaborations of the basic Gnostic scheme have survived:

1. one from the “Sethian” form of Gnosticism and written by an adherent, found in the Apocryphon of John (also known to Irenaeus in a slightly different version)

2. the other from Valentinianism, the system of Ptolemy described in detail by Irenaeus.

The Apocryphon of John is already a Christian version of the Gnostic scheme, for one of the spiritual beings is a preexistent “Christ,” and the content of the work is presented as a post-resurrection revelation of Jesus, yet the true revealer is Barbelo.

Ptolemy’s elaboration of Valentinus’s version of the Gnostic system is more explicitly “Christian,” although “unorthodox,” and seeks to give more orderly explanations to the picture of the spiritual world.

Human beings are in three classes—those who are material and will be lost, the psychics or ordinary Christians, and the spirituals or Valentinian Christians. The latter two receive different kinds of salvation.

G. Doctrinal Errors and Significance of Gnosticism#

Contrary to the fashion in contemporary study to posit considerable variety in primitive Christianity (discussed further below), the reactions by many second-century Christians to the teachings discussed in this chapter show that some fundamental doctrines were commonly regarded as basic to the Christian faith.

Those who came to prevail as orthodox Christians concluded that the Gnostics, including Valentinians, denied some fundamental doctrines:

1. The identity of the Creator (whom the Gnostics made a lesser and at best morally ambivalent figure) with the one supreme God

2. The goodness of the created order of the universe (most Gnostics treated matter as bad)

3. The full incarnation of Christ (although there were variations in how the divine Christ was related to the human Jesus)

4. Revelation in historical events (rather than in speculative myth and secret traditions)

5. Redemption by the blood of the cross (the cross was treated allegorically even in Valentinianism)

6. A resurrection of the body (and not of the soul only)

It is no wonder that those who pioneered the development of orthodox theology rejected the teachings they associated with the rejection of these doctrines.

In spite of what their opponents discerned as fundamental doctrinal errors, Gnostic thought proved attractive to many. The Gnostic Christians represented an effort to interpret their faith in terms of the philosophical and religious climate of the day and so to wrestle with problems they perceived in the nature of the world and human existence.

Because of these concerns, Valentinianism especially influenced orthodox Christian thinkers in Alexandria in the development of their theology. One learns, sometimes imperceptibly, from one’s opponents, and in refuting other ideas, one’s own thoughts are advanced by absorbing elements from the viewpoints being rejected.

Gnosticism, furthermore, showed a concern with salvation. Although the means of achieving this was through knowledge, Gnosticism as a religion of redemption testified to the need of human souls for something beyond this world to satisfy their longings.

H. Lessons from the Struggle with Gnosticism#

Although culture and philosophy always shape expressions of Christianity to some extent, Gnosticism illustrates the danger of allowing an “outside” system of thought to be determinative of the fabric of Christianity.

The risk is one that has to be taken in attempting to relate the Christian faith to whatever culture one finds oneself in, but the results of such an extreme appropriation warn against moving from communication to acceptance. The threat of Gnosticism may not have been so much to orthodox belief systems as to identity (by reason of assimilation).

A related lesson has to do with the use of words. One may have the right words but the wrong ideas. The Gnostics were able to use the Christian Scriptures and conform to the Christian creed, because they gave these words a different meaning.

Gnosticism, furthermore, may serve a warning against intellectual pride. Individual Gnostic thinkers may indeed have been humble, but the Gnostic approach itself created different classes that placed the ones with the “true insight” in a special camp superior to ordinary Christians. Intellectual elitism is a danger always for those “in the know.”

The Gnostic controversy demonstrates the importance of institutions. In a broad sense the Gnostics may be said to have had a “church,” but they remained closer to the social organization of a school in which followers continued the teachings and practices of their teacher. Christianity, however, created stronger organizational bonds uniting its members.

For all its failures through history, the “institutional church” has preserved the Christian faith. And so it has been for all teachers and teachings that have endured: Unless an institution embodies and perpetuates an idea, the idea will fail.

The recognition of this reality in the second century, however, should not be given uncritically, for the acknowledgment that orthodox doctrine was preserved among the hierarchical church must be balanced by the acknowledgement that the “heretics” often preserved more biblical views about the freedom and ministry of the church.

III. MONTANISM#

Marcionism and Gnosticism became the archetypal heresies over against orthodox Christianity. In a similar way Montanism, as an early movement with sectarian characteristics, after a period of activity within the great church, was forced into schism. No fundamental doctrinal differences were involved, but differences in practice and in disciplinary matters eventually created too much disturbance to be accommodated within the same congregations.

Montanism draws its name from Montanus, who—along with two women, Priscilla and Maximilla—in either the 150s or 170s began a prophetic movement in Phrygia. The adherents of the movement called it the “New Prophecy”; their opponents called it the “Phrygian (or Kataphrygian) heresy.”

The Montanists saw prophecy and spiritual gifts as the hallmark of apostolic Christianity. The promised Paraclete (Holy Spirit) of the Gospel of John was regarded as speaking in them, and later opponents quoted Montanus as himself claiming to be the Paraclete.

Differences in practice and degrees of emphasis soon emerged between the Montanists and the mainstream of the church. Their most famous convert, Tertullian, was attracted to the greater rigorism of the movement and developed it: observing stricter fasts, prohibiting second marriages even after death of the spouse, and forbidding flight to escape martyrdom.

That the Montanists had a greater eagerness than other Christians to volunteer for martyrdom does not seem necessarily to have been the case. Modern scholars have attributed to the Montanists intense eschatological expectations centering on Pepuza, a village of Phrygia that they called “Jerusalem,” but an eschatological interpretation of Pepuza appears to be a later development and a specifically millennial expectation is not attested for early Montanism.

Besides women’s prominence in the beginning of this prophetic movement, they continued to be important in its later development (there may have been a later prophetess named Quintilla) and held church offices not allowed to them by the orthodox.

The dispute over prophecy involved the question of authority in the church: Who has it and how it should be exercised. The Montanists seem not to have opposed the organization of the church, but only to have claimed a place for spiritual gifts as well, but the church’s response put the controversy in terms of organization and ministry. The appeal to the authority of the Holy Spirit was countered, it seems, in the church by three developments.

1. The first recorded synods of bishops were held in Asia Minor to consider the proper course of action in relation to the Montanists. Such meetings were comparable to a civil council (koinon) that brought leaders of the imperial cult in the cities of a province together to discuss matters of common concern. These early meetings of bishops to discuss the working of the Holy Spirit laid the basis in the actual practice of the church for the theory that the Holy Spirit works through a council.

2. The source of authority in Scripture was emphasized. Montanist prophecy was not true prophecy by biblical standards, it was argued, because it was ecstatic.

3. The bishops claimed to be the true spiritual leaders of the church, possessing the Holy Spirit by reason of their office. As the bishops claimed apostolic and teaching authority in the church over against Gnostic teachers, so the bishops countered the Montanist appeal to prophets with their own possession of the Spirit. Thus the early triad of apostles, prophets, and teachers began to be centered now in the bishop.

Montanism may be understood as a protest against an increasing worldliness and formality in the church. It won many followers who were dissatisfied with Gnostic “elitism” and with the growing accommodation of the church to the world. Montanism had several appealing features: It represented itself as a return to primitive Christianity, it was a religion of emotional exuberance and less rigid organizational structures, and it offered a direct revelation pertaining to what seemed to be a more committed manner of life.

Montanism’s own excesses, however, brought discredit on the movement. Not uncommonly, a reactive movement swings to an opposite extreme and its opponents more strongly confirm the practices being reacted against. Why? Those opponents conclude that since the ones trying to make corrections are clearly in error, then what they were reacting against must be all right.

IV. ENCRATISM#

“Encratism” (from Greek, egkrateia, “to have in one’s power,” “self-control”) was one of the words used for “asceticism” (Greek, askes“athletic discipline”) and in a positive sense was present in Christianity from the beginning.

Some ascetic practices, however, were deemed excessive—rejecting wine, flesh meat, and marriage. Where these ascetic practices were accepted by the orthodox, they were criticized in the practice of others as springing from the wrong motives, that is, as deriving not from the foregoing of something good in the service of a higher or spiritual goal (which was approved) but from regarding the created world as bad (which was heretical, as in Gnosticism).

The Encratites—without accepting the Gnostic views on the origin of the world and considering matter as necessarily evil—still regarded certain practices, especially human reproduction, as bad and a hindrance to the higher life. Another factor influencing ascetic behavior was the association of certain animal foods and wine with pagan sacrifice. Thus ascetics abstained from animal food and substituted water for wine in the Lord’s supper.

The anti-heretical literature associates a heretical Encratism especially with the apologist Tatian. Seemingly after the death of his teacher, Justin, he returned to the East and became a champion of Encratite ideas, condemning marriage and the eating of meats. The anti-heretical writers found particularly objectionable his conclusion that Adam would not be saved.

In spite of some similarities noted by Irenaeus and others, Tatian should not be thought of as a Valentinian; the Syrian East did not treat him as heretical. Nor did he begin Encratism, as Irenaeus claimed, but, associating himself with this general tendency of the Syriac church, he became one of its leading spokesmen.

V. DID HERESY PRECEDE ORTHODOXY?#

Modern study of the early history of Christianity has stressed the variety of beliefs and practices present in the early centuries, even in those circles later considered orthodox.

The establishment of “orthodoxy” is seen as the achievement of the bishops and church fathers active around AD 200 who were in communion with the church at Rome.

Variety was certainly present from the beginning (as the New Testament itself shows, in what it opposes—if not in other ways) and continued after objective standards of orthodoxy were formulated.

On the other hand, those church leaders who opposed the movements discussed above did not see themselves as innovators but as defenders of teachings that had been handed down to them from the apostles and their associates. There were standards of belief and common practices contained in the earliest apostolic teaching.

In this sense, an “orthodoxy” and standards of what constituted “orthodoxy” were present prior to positions that came to be regarded as heretical or schismatic, even if the movements advocating these teachings drew on materials earlier than Christianity. There was an inherited message and inherited norms of conduct that permitted other teachings to be identified as deviant and that could be systematized in the norms discussed in the next chapter.

Problems with doctrinal deviations and schismatic tendencies have plagued the Christian church from the beginning. How is the true faith and practice to be discerned and defended? The early church adopted strategies that with varying degrees of effectiveness continued to be employed in subsequent centuries. To these we now turn.