In the pneumatic body received at baptism Jesus could triumph over the Archon, whose evil intent he had eluded. This heresy , which destroyed the very meaning and purpose of the Incarnation, was combated even by the Apostles.
Possibly St. Paul's statement that in Christ dwelt the fullness of the Godhead corporaliter Colossians , has some reference to Docetic errors. Beyond doubt St.
In sub-Apostolic times this sect was vigorously combated by St. Ignatius and Polycarp. The former made a warning against Docetists the burden of his letters; he speaks of them as "monsters in human shape" therion anthropomorphon and bids the faithful not only not to receive them but even to avoid meeting them. Pathetically he exclaims: If, as some godless men [ atheoi ], I mean unbelievers, say, He has suffered only in outward appearance, they themselves are nought but outward show.
Why should I pray to fight with wild beasts? In St. Ignatius' day Docetism seems to have been closely connected with Judaism cf. Magnesians 8. Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians re-echoes 1 John ; to the same purpose. Justin nowhere expressly combats Docetic errors , but he mentions several Gnostics who were notorious for their Docetic aberrations, as Basilideans and Valentinians, and in his "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew " he strongly emphasizes the birth of Christ from the Virgin.
Tertullian wrote a treatise "On the flesh of Christ" and attacked Docetic errors in his "Adversus Marcionem". Hippolytus in his "Philosophoumena" refutes Docetism in the different Gnostic errors which he enumerates and twice gives the Docetic system as above referred to.
The earlier Docetism seemed destined to die with the death of Gnosticism , when it received a long lease of life as parasitic error to another heresy , that of Manichaeism. Manichaean Gnostics started with a two-fold eternal principle, good spirit and evil matter. In order to add Christian soteriology to Iranian dualism , they were forced, as the Gnostics were, to tamper with the truth of the Incarnation. Manichees distinguished between a Jesus patibilis and a Jesus impatibilis or Christ.
The latter was the light as dwelling in, or symbolized by, or personified under, the name of the Sun; the former was the light as imprisoned in matter and darkness; of which light each human soul was a spark. Jesus patibilis was therefore but a sign of the speech, an abstraction of the Good, the pure light above. In the reign of Tiberius Christ appears in Judea , Son of the Eternal Light and also Son of Man ; but in the latter expression "man" is a technical Manichaean term for the Logos or World-Soul; both anthropos and pneuma are emanations of the Deity.
Though Christ is son of man He has only a seeming body, and only seemingly suffers, His passion being called mystical fiction of the cross. It is obvious that this doctrine borrowed from that of the Incarnation nothing but a few names.
Scattered instances of Docetism are found as far West as Spain among the Priscillianists of the fourth and the fifth century. The Paulicians in Armenia and the Selicians in Constantinople fostered these errors.
The Paulicians existed even in the tenth century, denying the reality of Christ's birth and appealing to Luke God , according to them, sent an angel to undergo the passion. Hence they worshipped not the cross but the Gospel, Christ's word.
Among the Slavs the Bogomilae renewed the ancient fancy that Jesus entered Mary's body by the right ear, and received from her but an apparent body. In modern theosophic and spiritist circles this early heresy is being renewed by ideas scarcely less fantastic than the wildest vagaries of old.
About this page APA citation. Arendzen, J. The evidence is that docetist Gospel of Peter was more widely read by the first Christians than Mark's 3. Despite their early popularity, after the rise of Cappadocian and Pauline Christianity the docetists were forcibly silenced and mostly eradicated 4.
If he suffered, he was not God, they argued, if he was God, he did not suffer: a most reasonable conclusion. Why then did Christ 'seem' to be human? For docetists, it was all an appearance. Christ didn't have a real flesh-and-blood body and didn't really suffer and die. He only seemed to do so.
Some docetists claimed that Christ's body only seemed to be human, because it was, in fact, phantasmal like Casper the Friendly Ghost. The other docetic view is a bit more complicated. It maintained that there was a real man Jesus flesh and blood like the rest of us , but there was also a different being known as the Christ. The Christ was a divine being who descended from heaven and came into Jesus at his baptism the dove that descended on him and went into him , empowering him [ The first belief amongst Christians was that of adoptionism , which is related to docetism.
Some docetists had adoptionists beliefs: instead of Jesus always being a projection of God, at his baptism Jesus the human was endowed with Christ, the messiah. This is why no amazing stories exist of Jesus as an infant, teenager nor young adult. What these men had believed exactly, prior to their encounter with Paul, is not quite clear. There were others, though—under the influence of Gnosticism, I believe—who knew of Jesus and claimed to believe in the Christ, but had explicitly dissociated the two.
This is suggested in a non-canonical book known as 2 Clement. Without true belief about Jesus, these were false prophets who disguised themselves as apostles of Christ. This, one may think, suggests that they misrepresented Jesus Christ in their preaching. More likely, they preached Christ without reference to Jesus, and the church of Jesus Christ was being disturbed by their activities.
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