CHAPTER VIII

THE REFUTATION OF HERESY

Other enemies than popular hatred and civil persecution harassed the growing Church with frequent and violent assaults, against which the makers of Christian literature were obliged to set up fresh defences. The most formidable of these foes was heresy in its almost numberless forms. Against it the Church raised the general defence that the true doctrine was that which the whole body of believers accepted; heresy was the local or partial belief of some small section, misguided as to the true interpretation of the Faith.

The earliest heresy which left its traces on the literature was Docetism; the view that the body of Jesus was a phantom. The First Epistle of John was the first of many refutations of this error. JUSTIN MARTYR denounced it in his Letters, so also did POLYCARP and IRENAEUS in theirs. SERAPION of Antioch, fl. 199-211, forbade the use of the Gospel of Peter because it was tainted with this heresy.

This decision was the product of SERAPION'S second thoughts. His first hasty perusal of the Gospel discovered nothing heretical in it; he therefore gave instructions that it should be read in the Church at Rhosus. Later developments however convinced him that this approval was illadvised; he re-read the work, and then wrote a pastoral Letter recalling his sanction.

A much more formidable foe soon appeared in the form of the widespread heresy of Gnosticism. This heresy included a wide variety of religious views, all of which sprang from the desire for mystic or supernatural knowledge. It arose in many places under the inspiration of various leaders,

whose "highly speculative systems sought to explain the origin of evil, the nature of the Divine being, and the interaction of the spiritual and the material." Gnosticism formulated mysterious rites, through which redemption could be attained; it inspired a mystical experience of approach to the Divine; and it separated its own devotees, as men on a higher plane, from the common crowd of religious worshippers.

Gnosticism exerted a deep and enduring influence upon Christian literature. More than any other cause, it obliged the Church to realise the need of having a canon of the New Testament; "It secured for the Old Testament its permanent place as a sacred book . . . In the Letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora (preserved by EPIPHANIUS),1 we find the earliest attempt at biblical criticism. The Commentaries of HERACLEON laid the foundations of exegesis . . . . and among the other contributions may be reckoned the Christian Hymn. Gnostic literature abounded in hymns. . . . and these were taken over in not a few cases and adapted to the service of the Church."2

The First Epistle of John led the attack against the speculations of Gnosticism, by denouncing the distinction between Jesus and Christ which was one of the characteristics of the teaching of Cerinthus (ii.22-23; v.1). The Pastoral Epistles, as well as the so-called Second Epistle of Peter show hostility to the growing menace (I Tim. i.4; II iv.2-4; Titus i.16; iii.9).

The first writing expressly designed to counteract the Gnostic teaching was that of AGRIPPA CASTOR, fl. 135, a most distinguished author in his day. His work was a refutation of the teaching of BASILIDES, and, in the opinion of EUSEBIUS, "ably exposes the fallacy of his heresy."

1 Epiphanius, Heresies, xxxiii. 3-7.

2Cf. E. F. Scott, Ency. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI., pp. 240241.

3 Ecclesiastical History, IV., 7,

JUSTIN MARTYR wrote a now lost Syntagma, to refute the heresy. It is however, in the Clementine Homilies, that the first existing serious attack appears. These Homilies used a fanciful and fictitious series of personal encounters between the Apostle Peter and Simon Magus, as a framework in which to develop the orthodox doctrines of God, sin, and salvation in opposition to the arch-heretic's speculations.

The classical Christian refutation of Gnostic heresies is the work of IRENAEUS, 140-200, whose intellectual perceptions are very sure. Deeply stirred by the conversion of a friend to the sect of the Valentinians, he planned a comprehensive work to expose their errors. The work grew under his hands until it became an almost encyclopaedic treatise, the Refutation and Overthrow of Falsely Called Knowledge, 182-187, usually quoted as Against Heresies. The Refutation not only deals with the Valentinian form of Gnosticism, but also exposes the errors of "all heresies."

In the first book IRENAEUS describes the teachings of the twelve sects; in the second he advances the Christian arguments against them; the third and fourth books give a scholarly statement of Christian doctrine, which is restated in more simple form in book five.

As a memorial of the opinions and practices of the Church of the age, it is a most valuable record; as a Christian criticism of Gnosticism, it is merciless and complete. The style is hard, and the matter tedious to a modern reader, but the work is an immense help to the historian. It "stereotyped the genius of orthodoxy and founded the polemic method of the Church."

The literary history of this rich mine of argument and of information, is a history of mischance. Much of the original Greek has perished, although the whole survives in Latin translations; but it has been damaged by the ravages

of time and patched by quotations from later writers and by editors eager to repair the losses.

IRENAEUS followed this larger work with a Letter to his friend Florinus, warning him against the errors of this heresy. He called it Monarchy or the Supreme Rule: its thesis was that God is not the author of evil. He also preserves an epigram on "the terrible Marcus," a Gnostic of the school of Valentinus, who aggravated the errors of his heresy by magical rites and moral iniquity. The epigram is ascribed to "the saintly elder"; this was probably POTHINUS, bishop of Lyons before IRENAEUS.

Marcus thou maker of idols, inspector of portents,

Skill'd in consulting the stars and deep in the deep arts of magic, Ever by tricks such as these confirming the doctrines of error Furnishing signs unto those involved by thee in deception, Wonders of power that is utterly severed from God and apostate, Which Satan thy true father enables thee still to accomplish By means of Azazel that fallen and yet mighty angel Thus making thee the precursor of his own impious actions. This is the earliest known specimen of critical poetry in Christian literature.

HIPPOLYTUS of Portus, 170-236, a great controversialist, unquestionably the most learned member of the Roman Church of his day, and one of the "earliest anti-popes known to history," composed the Philosophumena, or Refutation of of all the Heresies, directed in the main against the Ophite sect of the Gnostics.

This "small book against thirty-two heresies written in a clear dignified style" was the second anti-heretical book which HIPPOLYTUS had written. The first composed about twenty years before contains many extracts from otherwise unknown Gnostic writings.

EPIPHANIUS of Salamis, c. 315-402, another strenuous champion of orthodoxy, made an Exposition of the true faith to counteract Arianism in Pamphylia, and another, the Ancoratus, in 374, for the benefit of the Christians in

Egypt. His great anti-heretical work the Panarion c. 376, not only attacks Gnosticism but also many other unorthodox forms of Christianity. The name, Panarion, implies that EPIPHANIUS designed it to be a religious medicine chest containing a number of various antidotes to the "poisonous bite of the heretical serpent." At the end he gives a glorifying description of the Church universal, its faith, its manners and its ordinances.

An interesting pen portrait of the arch-heretic ARIUS is given in chapter 69:

He was in stature very tall, downcast in visage, with manners like a wily serpent, captivating to every guileless heart by that same crafty bearing. Always dressed in short cloak and scanty tunic, he was pleasant of address, ever persuading souls and cajoling them.

What little is known of the treatise of PHILASTER of Brescia, fl. 370-390, shows that the number of so-called heresies could be multiplied almost indefinitely. PHILASTER enumerated one hundred and fifty-six; among them he reckoned denial of the plurality of the heavens; the view that the giants of Genesis vi. were the children of angels; the belief that the age of the world was not accurately known; the idea that there is an infinite number of worlds; the practice of using heathen names for the days of the week; and carelessness in reckoning chronology.

Together with Docetism and Gnosticism, a third heresy, Marcionism, called forth Christian defensive writings. MARCION, f1. 150, "the Pontic mouse who nibbled away the Gospels," was one "of the most noted and most permanently influential of the heretics of the second century." He planned to reform Christianity by a return to the pure Word, which he defined in two works; the Evangelicum, and the