Diversity in early Christian theology

Traditionally, orthodoxy

Orthodoxy

The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...

and heresy

Heresy

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

have been viewed in relation to the "orthodoxy" as an authentic lineage of tradition. Other forms of Christianity were viewed as deviant streams of thought and therefore "heterodox", or heretical. This view was dominant until the publication of Walter Bauer

Walter Bauer

Walter Bauer was a German theologian and scholar of the development of the early Christian churches.-Life:...

's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum ("Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity") in 1934. Bauer endeavored to rethink Early Christianity

Early Christianity

Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....

historically, independent from the views of the current church. He stated that the 2nd century church

Christianity in the 2nd century

The 2nd century of Christianity was largely the time of the Apostolic Fathers who were the students of the apostles of Jesus, though there is some overlap as John the Apostle may have survived into the 2nd century and the early Apostolic Father Clement of Rome is said to have died at the end of the...

was very diverse and included many "heretical" groups that had an equal claim to apostolic tradition

Apostolic Age

The Apostolic Age of the history of Christianity is traditionally the period of the Twelve Apostles, dating from the Crucifixion of Jesus and the Great Commission in Jerusalem until the death of John the Apostle in Anatolia...

. Bauer interpreted the struggle between the orthodox and heterodox to be the "mainstream" Church of Rome struggling to attain dominance. He presented Edessa and Egypt as places where the "orthodoxy" of Rome had little influence during the 2nd century. As he saw it, the theological thought of the "Orient" (in this case the Eastern Roman Empire) at the time would later be labeled "heresy". The response by modern scholars has been mixed. Some scholars clearly support Bauer's conclusions and others express concerns about his "attacking [of] orthodox sources with inquisitional zeal and exploiting to a nearly absurd extent the argument from silence

Argument from silence

The argument from silence is generally a conclusion based on silence of opponent, failing to give evidence. In the field of classical studies, it often refers to the deduction from the lack of references to a subject in the available writings of an author to the conclusion that he was ignorant of it...

." However, modern scholars have critiqued and updated Bauer's model. For example, subsequent analysis of Bauer's geographical model have generally fallen against Bauer such as in Egypt.

Divisions

Perhaps one of the most important discussions among scholars of early Christianity in the past century is to what extent it is appropriate to speak of "orthodoxy" and "heresy". Higher criticism drastically altered the previous perception that heresy was a very rare exception to the orthodoxy. Bauer was particularly influential in the reconsideration of the historical model. During the 1970s, increasing focus on the effect of social, political and economic circumstances on the formation of early Christianity occurred as Bauer's work found a wider audience. Some scholars argue against the increasing focus on heresies. A movement away from presuming the correctness or dominance of the orthodoxy is seen as understandable, in light of modern approaches. However, they feel that instead of an even and neutral approach to historical analysis that the heterodox sects are given an assumption of superiority over the orthodox (or Proto-orthodox

Proto-orthodox Christianity

Proto-orthodox Christianity is a term, coined by New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, used to describe the Early Christian movement which was the precursor of Christian orthodoxy...

) movement. The current debate is vigorous and broad. While it is difficult to summarize all current views, general statements may be made, remembering that such broad strokes will have exceptions in specific cases.

Adoptionism

An early form of Adoptionism, the doctrine that Jesus became the Son of God

Son of God

"Son of God" is a phrase which according to most Christian denominations, Trinitarian in belief, refers to the relationship between Jesus and God, specifically as "God the Son"...

by adoption

Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

, held that Jesus was born human only, and that he became divine, by adoption at his baptism

Baptism of Jesus

The baptism of Jesus marks the beginning of Jesus Christ's public ministry. This event is recorded in the Canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In John 1:29-33 rather than a direct narrative, the Baptist bears witness to the episode...

, being chosen because of his sinless devotion to the will of God. The first representatives of this view were the Ebionites

Ebionites

Ebionites, or Ebionaioi, , is a patristic term referring to a Jewish Christian sect or sects that existed during the first centuries of the Christian Era. They regarded Jesus as the Messiah and insisted on the necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites...

. They understood Jesus as Messiah

Messiah

A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...

and Son of God in terms of the anointing at his baptism. While the 27 books that became the New Testament canon present Jesus as fully human, Adoptionists (who may have used non-canonical gospels) in addition excluded any miraculous origin for him, seeing him as simply the child of Joseph and Mary, born of them in the normal way.

Some scholars view a non-canonical gospel used by the Ebionites

Gospel of the Ebionites

Gospel of the Ebionites is the conventional name given to the description by Epiphanius of Salamis of a gospel used by the Ebionites. All that is known of the gospel text consists of seven brief quotations found in Chapter 30 of a heresiology written by Epiphanius known as the Panarion...

, now lost except for fragments quoted in the Panarion
Panarion
In early Christian heresiology, the Panarion , to which 16th-century Latin translations gave the name Adversus Haereses , is the most important of the works of Epiphanius of Salamis...

of Epiphanius of Salamis

Epiphanius of Salamis

Epiphanius of Salamis was bishop of Salamis at the end of the 4th century. He is considered a saint and a Church Father by both the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. He gained a reputation as a strong defender of orthodoxy...

as the first to be written, and believe Adoptionist theology may predate the New Testament. Others, on the contrary, consider that this work "clearly presupposes the canonical Gospels". This gospel's account of the baptism of Jesus

Baptism of Jesus

, as quoted by Epiphanius, says that the voice from heaven declared: "This day have I begotten thee", a phrase echoing , and some see this phrase as supporting the doctrine that it was at his baptism ("this day") that Jesus became God's (adopted) son. These words from Psalm 2 are also used twice in the canonical Epistle to the Hebrews
Epistle to the Hebrews
The Epistle to the Hebrews is one of the books in the New Testament. Its author is not known.The primary purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews is to exhort Christians to persevere in the face of persecution. The central thought of the entire Epistle is the doctrine of the Person of Christ and his...

, which on the contrary presents Jesus as the Son

God the Son

God the Son is the second person of the Trinity in Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity identifies Jesus of Nazareth as God the Son, united in essence but distinct in person with regard to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit...

"through whom (God) made the universe."

The Adoptionist view was later developed by adherents of the form of Monarchianism

Monarchianism

Monarchianism is a set of beliefs that emphasize God as being one person. The term was given to Christians who upheld the "monarchy" of God against the Logos theology of Justin Martyr and apologists who had spoken of Jesus as a second divine person begotten by God the Father before the creation of...

that is represented by Theodotus of Byzantium

Theodotus of Byzantium

Theodotus of Byzantium was an early Christian writer from Byzantium, one of several named Theodotus whose writings were condemned as heresy in the early church.Theodotus claimed that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit as a mortal man, and though later "adopted" by...

and Paul of Samosata

Paul of Samosata

Paul of Samosata was Bishop of Antioch from 260 to 268. He was a believer in monarchianism, and his teachings anticipate adoptionism.-Life:...

.

Adoptionism clearly conflicted with the claim, as in the Gospel of John (see Alogi

Alogi

The Alogi were a group of Christian heretics in Asia Minor that flourished around 170 CE. What we know of them is derived from their doctrinal opponents, whose literature is still extant, particularly St. Epiphanius of Salamis...

for those who rejected the Gospel of John), that Jesus is the eternal Word, and it was declared a heresy at the end of the 2nd century. It was formally rejected by the First Council of Nicaea

First Council of Nicaea

The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325...

(325), which wrote the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity

Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed is the creed or profession of faith that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It is called Nicene because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325.The Nicene Creed has been normative to the...

and identified Jesus as eternally begotten.

Arianism

Arianism, declared by the Council of Nicaea to be heresy

Heresy

, denied the full divinity of Jesus Christ, and is so called after its leader Arius

Arius

Arius was a Christian presbyter in Alexandria, Egypt of Libyan origins. His teachings about the nature of the Godhead, which emphasized the Father's divinity over the Son , and his opposition to the Athanasian or Trinitarian Christology, made him a controversial figure in the First Council of...

. It has been called the most challenging heresy in the history of the Church.

Arius, born probably in Libya

Ancient Libya

The Latin name Libya referred to the region west of the Nile Valley, generally corresponding to modern Northwest Africa. Climate changes affected the locations of the settlements....

between c. 260 and 280, was ordained a priest in Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

in 312-313. Under Bishop Alexander (313-326), probably in about 319, he came forward as a champion of subordinationist

Subordinationism

Subordinationism is a doctrine in Christian theology which holds that the Son and the Holy Spirit are subordinate to God the Father in nature and being...

teaching about the person of Christ.

Arius appears to have held that the "Son of God
Son of God
"Son of God" is a phrase which according to most Christian denominations, Trinitarian in belief, refers to the relationship between Jesus and God, specifically as "God the Son"...

" was not eternal but created by the Father as an instrument for creating the world and therefore not God by nature, different from other creatures in being the one direct creation of God. The controversy quickly spread, with Arius seeking support from other disciples of his teacher Lucian of Antioch

Lucian of Antioch

Saint Lucian of Antioch , known as Lucian the Martyr, was a Christian presbyter, theologian and martyr. He was noted for both his scholarship and ascetic piety.-History:...

, notably Eusebius of Nicomedia

Eusebius of Nicomedia

Eusebius of Nicomedia was the man who baptised Constantine. He was a bishop of Berytus in Phoenicia, then of Nicomedia where the imperial court resided in Bithynia, and finally of Constantinople from 338 up to his death....

, while a local synod under Alexander excommunicated Arius. Because of the agitation aroused by the dispute, Emperor Constantine I

Constantine I

Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...

sent Hosius of Córdoba

Hosius of Córdoba

Hosius of Corduba , also known as Osius or Ossius, was a bishop of Cordova and one of the prominent advocates of what became Catholic Christianity in the Arian controversy which divided the IV century early Christian Church...

to Alexandria to attempt a settlement; but the mission failed. Accordingly, in 325, Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea, which, largely through the influence of Athanasius of Alexandria

Athanasius of Alexandria

Athanasius of Alexandria [b. ca. – d. 2 May 373] is also given the titles St. Athanasius the Great, St. Athanasius I of Alexandria, St Athanasius the Confessor and St Athanasius the Apostolic. He was the 20th bishop of Alexandria. His long episcopate lasted 45 years Athanasius of Alexandria [b....

, then a deacon

Deacon

Deacon is a ministry in the Christian Church that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions...

, but destined to be Alexander's successor, defined the coeternity and coequality of the Father

God the Father

God the Father is a gendered title given to God in many monotheistic religions, particularly patriarchal, Abrahamic ones. In Judaism, God is called Father because he is the creator, life-giver, law-giver, and protector...

and the Son

God the Son

, using the now famous term "homoousios" to express the oneness of their being, while Arius and some bishops who supported him, including Eusebius, were banished.

This council marks the end of the Early Christian period and the beginning of the period of the First seven Ecumenical Councils

First seven Ecumenical Councils

In the history of Christianity, the first seven Ecumenical Councils, from the First Council of Nicaea to the Second Council of Nicaea , represent an attempt to reach an orthodox consensus and to establish a unified Christendom as the State church of the Roman Empire...

Ebionites

The Ebionites ("poor ones") were a sect of Jewish Christians

Jewish Christians

Jewish Christians is a term which appears in historical texts contrasting Christians of Jewish origin with Gentile Christians, both in discussion of the New Testament church and the second and following centuries....

who flourished in the early centuries of Christianity, especially east of the Jordan. They emphasized the binding character of the Mosaic Law and believed Jesus was the human son of Joseph and Mary. They seem to have been ascetics, and are said to have rejected Paul's epistles and to have used only one Gospel

Gospel of the Ebionites

Gnosticism

Early in the common era, several distinct religious sects, some of them Christian, adhered to an array of beliefs that would later be termed Gnostic. One such sect, that of the Simonians

Simonians

The Simonians were a Gnostic sect of the 2nd century which regarded Simon Magus as its founder and traced its doctrines, known as Simonianism, back to him. The sect flourished in Syria, in various districts of Asia Minor and at Rome...

, was said to have been founded by Simon Magus

Simon Magus

Simon the Sorcerer or Simon the Magician, in Latin Simon Magus, was a Samaritan magus or religious figure and a convert to Christianity, baptised by Philip the Apostle, whose later confrontation with Peter is recorded in . The sin of simony, or paying for position and influence in the church, is...

, the
Samaritan

Samaritan

The Samaritans are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant. Religiously, they are the adherents to Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism...

who is mentioned in the 1st-century and who figures prominently in several apocryphal

New Testament apocrypha

The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that claim to be accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. These writings often have links with books regarded as "canonical"...

and heresiological accounts by Early Christian writers, who regarded him as the source of all heresies.

The most successful Christian Gnostic was the priest Valentinus

Valentinus (Gnostic)

Valentinus was the best known and for a time most successful early Christian gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome...

(c. 100 - c. 160), who founded a Gnostic church in Rome and developed an elaborate cosmology. Gnostics considered the material world to be a prison created by a fallen or evil spirit, the god of the material world (called the demiurge

Demiurge

The demiurge is a concept from the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy for an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was subsequently adopted by the Gnostics...

). Gnostics identified the God of the Hebrew Bible as this demiurge. Secret knowledge (gnosis) was said to liberate one's soul to return to the true God in the realm of light. Valentinus and other Christian gnostics identified Jesus as the Savior, a spirit sent from the true God into the material world to liberate the souls trapped there.

While there appear to be Gnostic elements in some early Christian writing, Irenaeus

Irenaeus

Saint Irenaeus , was Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire . He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology...

and others condemned Gnosticism as a heresy, rejecting its dualistic cosmology and vilification of the material world and the creator of that world. Gnostics thought the God of the Old Testament was not the true God. It was considered to be the demiurge

Demiurge

and either fallen, as taught by Valentinus

Valentinus (Gnostic)

Valentinus was the best known and for a time most successful early Christian gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome...

(c. 100 - c. 160) or evil, as taught by the Sethians and Ophites

Ophites

The Ophites or Ophians were members of a Christian Gnostic sect depicted by Hippolytus of Rome in a lost work, the Syntagma....

.

The Gospel of John

Gospel of John

The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...

, according to Stephen L Harris

Stephen L Harris

Stephen L. Harris is Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Religious Studies at California State University, Sacramento. He served there ten years as department chair and was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He received his MA and PhD degrees from Cornell University...

, both includes Gnostic elements and refutes Gnostic beliefs, presenting a dualistic universe of light and dark, spirit and matter, good and evil, much like the Gnostic accounts, but instead of escaping the material world, Jesus bridges the spiritual and physical worlds. Raymond E. Brown

Raymond E. Brown

The Reverend Raymond Edward Brown, S.S. , was an American Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Sulpician Fathers and a major Biblical scholar of his era...

wrote that even though gnostics interpreted John to support their doctrines, the author didn't intend that. The Johannine epistles were written (whether by the author of the Gospel or someone in his circle) to argue against gnostic doctrines.

The Gospel of Thomas

Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library...

, it is often claimed, has some Gnostic elements but lacks the full Gnostic cosmology. However, even the description of these elements as "gnostic" is based mainly upon the presupposition that the text as a whole is a "gnostic" gospel, and this idea itself is based upon little other than the fact that it was found along with gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi

Nag Hammâdi

Nag Hammadi , is a city in Upper Egypt. Nag Hammadi was known as Chenoboskion in classical antiquity, meaning "geese grazing grounds". It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about 80 kilometres north-west of Luxor....

. The scene in John in which "doubting Thomas

Doubting Thomas

A Doubting Thomas is someone who will refuse to believe something without direct, physical, personal evidence; a skeptic.-Origin:The term is based on the Biblical account of Thomas the Apostle, a disciple of Jesus who doubted Jesus' resurrection and demanded to feel Jesus' wounds before being...

" ascertains that the resurrected Jesus is physical refutes the Gnostic idea that Jesus returned to spirit form after death. The written gospel draws on an earlier oral tradition associated with Thomas. Some scholars argue that the Gospel of John was meant to oppose the beliefs of that community.

Some believe that Gnostic Christianity was a later development, some time around the middle or late 2nd century, around the time of Valentinus. Gnosticism was in turn made up of many smaller groups, some of which did not claim any connection to Jesus Christ. In Mandaeist

Mandaeism

Mandaeism or Mandaeanism is a Gnostic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist...

Gnosticism, Mandaeans maintain that Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

was a mšiha kdaba or "false messiah

False messiah

-Judaism:Armilus is an anti-Messiah figure in late-period Jewish eschatology, comparable to the Christian Antichrist and Muslim Dajjal, who will conquer Jerusalem and persecute the Jews until his final defeat at the hands of God or the true Messiah...

" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist. The word k(a)daba, however, derives from two roots in Mandaic: the first root, meaning "to lie," is the one traditionally ascribed to Jesus; the second, meaning "to write," might provide a second meaning, that of "book;" hence some Mandaeans, motivated perhaps by an ecumenical spirit, maintain that Jesus was not a "lying Messiah" but a "Book Messiah", the "book" in question presumably being the Christian Gospels. This however seems to be a folk etymology without support in the Mandaean texts.
A modern view has argued that Marcionism

Marcionism

Marcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144; see also Christianity in the 2nd century....

is mistakenly reckoned among the Gnostics, and really represents a fourth interpretation of the significance of Jesus. Gnostics freely exchanged concepts and texts. It is considered likely that Valentinius was influenced by previous concepts such as Sophia, or by Simon Magus

Simon Magus

, as much as he influenced others.

Marcionism

In 144, the Church in Rome expelled Marcion of Sinope

Marcion of Sinope

Marcion of Sinope was a bishop in early Christianity. His theology, which rejected the deity described in the Jewish Scriptures as inferior or subjugated to the God proclaimed in the Christian gospel, was denounced by the Church Fathers and he was excommunicated...

. He thereupon set up his own separate ecclesiastical organization, later called Marcionism. Like the Gnostics, he promoted dualism

Dualism

Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...

. Unlike the Gnostics, however, he founded his beliefs not on secret knowledge (gnosis) but on the vast difference between what he saw as the "evil" deity of the Old Testament and the God of love of the New Testament, on which he expounded in his Antithesis. Consequently, Marcionists were vehemently anti-Judaism

Anti-Judaism

Religious antisemitism is a form of antisemitism, which is the prejudice against, or hostility toward, the Jewish people based on hostility to Judaism and to Jews as a religious group...

in their beliefs. They rejected the Jewish-Christian Gospel according to the Hebrews (see also Jewish-Christian Gospels

Jewish-Christian Gospels

Jewish-Christian Gospels are non-canonical Gospels used by various Jewish Christian groups that were declared heretical by other members of the Early Church. They are mentioned by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome...

) and all the other Gospels with the single exception of the Gospel of Marcion

Gospel of Marcion

The Gospel of Marcion, called by its adherents the Gospel of the Lord, was a text used by the mid-2nd century Christian teacher Marcion to the exclusion of the other gospels...

, which appears to be a redacted version of the Gospel of Luke

Gospel of Luke

The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...

.

From the perspectives of Tertullian and Epiphanius it appeared that Marcion rejected the non-Lukan gospels, however, in Marcion's time, it may be that the only gospel he was familiar with from Pontus

Pontus

Pontus or Pontos is a historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day northeastern Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region in antiquity by the Greeks who colonized the area, and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: Πόντος...

was the gospel of Luke. Although it has been suggested by some that Marcion's gospel pre-dated canonical Luke the dominant scholarly view is that the Marcionite Gospel was a redaction of canonical Luke in order to conform to Marcion's anti-Jewish stance.

Marcion argued that Christianity should be solely based on Christian Love. He went so far as to say that Jesus’ mission was to overthrow Demiurge

Demiurge

-- the fickle, cruel, despotic God of the Old Testament—and replace Him with the Supreme God of Love whom Jesus came to reveal. Marcion was labeled a gnostic by Irenaeus

Irenaeus

. Irenaeus labeled Marcion this because of Marcion expressing this core gnostic belief, that the creator God of the Jews and the Old Testament was the demiurge

Demiurge

. This position, he said, was supported by the ten Epistles of Paul that Marcion also accepted. His writing had a profound effect upon the development of Christianity

Origins of Christianity

For centuries, the traditional understanding has been that Judaism came before Christianity and that Christianity separated from Judaism some time after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE....

and the canon

Development of the Christian Biblical canon

The Christian Biblical canon is the set of books Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the Christian Bible. Books included in the Christian Biblical canons of both the Old and New Testament were decided at the Council of Trent , by the Thirty-Nine Articles , the Westminster...

Montanism

About 156, Montanus launched a ministry of prophecy, criticizing Christians as increasingly worldly and bishops as increasingly autocratic. Traveling in his native Anatolia, he and two women preached a return to primitive Christian simplicity, prophecy, celibacy, and asceticism.
Tertullian, "having grown puritanical with age", embraced Montanism as a more outright application of Christ's teaching. Montanus's followers revered him as the Paraclete

Paraclete

Paraclete means advocate or helper. In Christianity, the term most commonly refers to the Holy Spirit.-Etymology:...

that Christ had promised, and he led his sect out into a field to meet the New Jerusalem

New Jerusalem

In the book of Ezekiel, the Prophecy of New Jerusalem is Ezekiel's prophetic vision of a city to be established to the south of the Temple Mount that will be inhabited by the twelve tribes of Israel in the...

. His sect spread across the Roman Empire, survived persecution, and relished martyrdom. The Church banned them as a heresy, and in the 6th century Justinian ordered the sect's extinction.

The sect's ecstasy, speaking in tongues, and other details are similar to those found in modern Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is a diverse and complex movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, has an eschatological focus, and is an experiential religion. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek...

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Divisions

Adoptionism

Arianism

Ebionites

Gnosticism

Marcionism

Montanism

See also

External links