Rating The Major Early Christian Heresies
(Note: I am leaving out gnosticism and Manicheanism. Gnosticism is a bucket term for too many different beliefs to summarize succinctly; I could do a whole post just rating different gnostic beliefs. And the Manicheans were not even really Christian. It was a totally separate religion that blended Christianity, gnosticism, mithraism, neo-Platonism, and even Buddhism. For the record, the gnostics and the Manicheans are both 10/5 fucking chad heroes of weird esoteric Christian-adjacent religious bullshit.
Note 2: “Where are the Cathars!” “Where are the Bogomils!” I said EARLY Christian heresies. I ain’t here to talk about no johnny-come-latelies.)
Docetism: Jesus was a hologram. Because the world of matter is inherently corrupt, it is inconceivable that Christ ever had a physical form. His apparent “”“body”“” was a phantom, or illusion. This inherently denies the death and resurrection, as there was no body to die or resurrect.
5/5 stars, this is the kind of wet and wild shit I like to see.
Montanism: Super into prophesizing, and they believed that anything revealed to them as a prophesy in the grips of religious ecstasy superceded the word of Christ himself.
3/5 stars: you’re on extremely shaky theological ground here, but I like the potential for shenanigans, and I give them an extra half a star for letting women be bishops.
Adoptionism: Jesus was a normal guy, conceived in the regular way, who God adopted upon seeing that he lived a sinless life. They believed that Jesus only attained his divine status after his adoption.
4/5 stars, because imagine you’re Jesus in this scenario. What a weird day that must have been.
Sabellianism: If you can’t wrap your head around the Trinity at all, this is the heresy for you. Adherents of Sabellianism believed that there was no difference between the ‘persons’ of the Godhead: there is just the one God, who manifests himself at different times and for different purposes in different ways.
3/5 stars because it makes a lot more sense than the canonical interpretation, but it doesn’t whip any ass, you know?
Arianism: This one holds that Christ was created by God, but is not the same as God. It demotes Jesus to being kind of like a lesser deity. This one has really stuck around, it’s cropped up over and over again throughout the centuries. The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe a version of Arianism.
4/5 stars just for being the last man standing.
Pelagianism: Pelagians rejected the doctrine of Original Sin and the belief in humanity’s inherently sinful nature. Official Catholic doctrine holds that man is doomed to sin, and only by God’s grace can he transcend his total depravity. But the Pelagians believed that you don’t actually need God’s grace or intervention (which includes, you know, Christ’s entire existence and ministry) in order to do God’s will and lead a good life: you can just…choose to be good.
5/5 stars, these sound like really nice people.
Donatism: So if I’m a bishop or whatever, and I administer a sacrament to you (baptism, making you a priest, etc), and then I am subsequently excommunicated, the Donatists believed that my excommunication rendered every sacrament I had ever administered null and void. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think this one holds water at all, and I bet these people were pretty insufferable. Basically what they’re saying is that in order to serve the church you need to be absolutely pure and without sin: which no one is, except for, apparently, the Donatists themselves.
No stars.
Marcionism: The god of the old testament and the god of the new testament are two different gods. The god of the old testament they called the Demiurge, and should be understood to be the god of the Jews, who were still due a messiah; and the god of the new testament was the Supreme God, who sent Jesus Christ in order to reveal himself.
5/5 stars. This is Judeo-Christian polytheism and I’m fucking here for it. Plus, after Marcion was done editing everything out of the new testament scriptures that contradicted him, all he was left with were like 10 of Paul’s letters and a highly edited version of the Gospel of Luke. The brass balls on this guy for saying that every other apostle could eat his shit gets this one a whole extra star.
Monophysitism: Christ was not human at all but fully divine. Docetism can be viewed as a kind of Monophysite heresy, but the Monophysites did believe that Christ was physically on Earth. They just didn’t think he had a human nature and believed he was incapable of suffering.
2/5 stars because Christ’s humanity is obviously what actually makes him interesting and his suffering is what makes his sacrifice meaningful. Doctrinally they’re on pretty firm ground though, the early church easily could have broken their way. Emperor Justinian I wanted this to become orthodoxy, but he died before his plans could go into effect.
Apollinarianism: Jesus had a normal human body and a normal human soul, but he was fucking mind controlled to spread the word of God. He had no conscious mind of his own and was born into this world solely in order to serve as a meat-sleeve for the eternal Logos.
5/5 stars. What the fuck. What the fuck.
