Heresy 101 (part 4)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Today we actually get to the heresies themselves, which is the exciting part, I think, what most of you are here to kind of understand and learn.

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But I thought it was important that we had a lot of background information. And a lot of times people wonder how do some of these heresies get started and how do things go and how do we match all this up.

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And I just wanted to read a rather short article just so you get an understanding of kind of what the world thinks.

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And you'll pick out a couple of key words as we go through this. But I just want to open this up before we actually start talking about heresy itself.

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This is an article on the Internet taken from just one of my news sources that I have.

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And it says this. Most, and again, remember the word most, most antiquity scholars think that the

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New Testament Gospels are mytholized history. In other words, they think that around the start of the first century, a controversial

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Jewish rabbi gathered a following in his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity.

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At the same time, these scholars acknowledged that many Bible stories, things like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, women at the tomb, borrowed and reworked mythic themes that were common in the ancient

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Near East, much the way that screenwriters based new movies on old movies or familiar tropes or plots and elements and so forth.

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And in these views, a historical Jesus, quote unquote, became mytholized, mytholonized.

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For over 200 years, a wide -ranging array of theologians, a wide -ranging array of theologians, and what's interesting is it actually says, and most of those

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Christian, you know, so it was interesting that theologians studying of God, and then most of them

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Christian, analyzed ancient texts, both those that were made into the

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Bible, those that had made it into the Bible and those that didn't, in an attempt to excavate the man behind the myth.

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Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship of popular audiences, and they give a couple books that I'm not even going to speak about.

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But other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually historicized mythology.

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And in other views, these ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernels. They got filled in with names, places, and other real -world details as early sects of the

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Jesus worship attempt to understand and to defend the devotional traditions that they had received.

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So that's a view of what the world often thinks, and what you'll find, a lot of times, it's kind of the seeds of heresy and teachings of heresy.

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And as people come to believe that they are Christians and they are in the church and they are growing and learning and maturing, they find this new type of revelation that we've talked about in the past, and they embrace it and they begin to teach it and they go with what is in their gut or what is in some other piece of material or text apart from the holy scriptures that we have in the

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Bible. Now, we've gone through quite a bit. This is week four. We've gone through three weeks previous of various areas talking about what is heresy, how it's changed over time, where it's going in some ways, and just some of the reasons and why it's important, right?

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So as a Christian, why it's important to understand what these heresies are. And today, we'll go through some of the top five, and then if we have some time permitting, we may go through a couple others.

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Mike was great this morning with math, so I essentially have five plus three.

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And so we've got eight different heresies that we can talk about. So I wanted to jump in to a couple of those areas, but I did want to ask the question right up front.

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Was there anything apart from the other three weeks, questions that people had or anything that I might be able to answer regarding heresy that maybe

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I wasn't able to answer or wasn't clear on or people had a question on or anything else?

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Any questions out there? Yes, sir. So discussions, and again, are critical, and it's a good question to ask.

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And a lot of times, what it comes down to, at least for us, is going to be, right, our source book, right? So what's the authoritative word?

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And you'll see, we'll talk about one of the heresies out there that is encompassed mostly by the

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Jehovah's Witness even today and some other churches today, and some of these are ones that come knocking on your door, right?

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We can tell them all we want to tell them, but we really have to use the word of God as our authority and show them out of it, because they're going to say, well, what about this?

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What about that? What about this text? What about our other text, you know, Book of Mormon and so forth? Well, this is the source book for Christianity, and this is our authoritative book of record that we need to proclaim, and we'll show you from this where you err, right?

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And that's why we talked about also early on in the study was ensuring that we know what orthodoxy is and what

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Christian orthodoxy is and what it is based off of so that we then can go and show people this is why we believe what we believe.

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This is why we believe in the Trinity, although the word doesn't appear in the Bible. This is, you know, some of these other areas. These are the things that we need to do.

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And I would say that this is what you have to have a good understanding of to be able to do that when that happens.

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So hopefully that answers your question. Any other questions? Just general questions, anything else?

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Okay. So we're going to get into the good stuff, and we're going to look at these in some ways.

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We're going to look at the first five mainly in chronological order. So we'll look at it as they've kind of went through history.

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And then the others are a little more fringe that kind of go around, and they've come and gone and so forth.

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But I've broken them up a little bit different in history. So I want to go through the first five, and I definitely want to give credit where credit is due.

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As I had spoken in the first week, a lot of the specifics around the heresies themselves, the materials

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I'm taking from the heresies itself, come from... Phil Johnson wrote a great article, again, if you're interested.

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He also preached a bunch on these specific heresies. I don't remember how many years ago it was, but there's an article.

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If you just look up Phil Johnson on heresy, you'll find these top five. And these are the ones that, again, he has specifically stated pretty much we can trace every other heresy to.

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These are all the root heresies, in essence, these top five. And those are the ones I want to go through at least today, and then if we have time for additionals.

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So what do we think is number one, historically, which was the very first heresy that we see? We see it in the

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Bible. There's two that we actually can kind of see in the Bible. One kind of cloudy, happens a little bit more into the future of things, and we'll talk about that.

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But what is the one heresy that we definitely see in the New Testament? Not Pelagianism.

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So Judaizers, I heard twice. So Judaizers is correct. And why is Judaizers... What was their heresy?

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What was heretical about them? I heard works -based, works -based, yeah.

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And why is that wrong? Christian comes, someone comes knocking on our door, and they say, we believe salvation in works.

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Why is that wrong, congregation? Okay, why did

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Jesus have to die, right, at that point? We'll see a couple of these attack the atonement in a lot of ways, a lot of the heresies that we'll go into, that's correct.

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Anything else? Works -based salvation? Works -based sanctification?

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Yes. And if we do those other things right, God loves us more, right? Which we know is not the truth.

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I mean, obedience God does command, but that doesn't make him love us more in any way or means if we are more obedient or not obedient.

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So the Judaizers really were tying the noose around the neck of the

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Christians and saying, you have to follow the ceremonial laws, right? The laws that were out there.

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And what were some of these laws? Circumcision, I heard.

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Dietary laws? They would oppress them with that at times. Any others? Observance of the

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Jewish holidays, the days and festivals and so forth, right? Yep. Any others? Okay.

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No, I think that's good. And that is the majority of what it is, right? So these were, in most cases, now why do we, well, yeah, so I want to give it away,

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I'll ask the question. Where did Judaizers come from? Where do we see the

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Judaizers, I mean, what, why, I'm trying to think of how to best answer the, ask the question.

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What made, or what, where did they grow out of? Let me ask you that. Where did this heretical group come from?

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I'm sorry? Jewish origin. And why from the

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Jewish origin? Again, I'm, I'm not trying to trick everyone here, I'm just trying to. They had the law.

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Correct. Correct. Yeah. So early on, as we talked before, Christianity, when it was starting to be founded, was really by the secular world, just seen as a kind of a branch of Judaism.

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And the Judaizers, in most cases, would have been Jews who either kind of tied on to Christianity or got involved in Christianity or wanted to be a part of this new

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Jewish sect, per se. And they were then misguiding and misleading the

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Christians by saying, you must follow these other Jewish requirements or traditions.

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And so, most of it was, again, based on Jewish information. Phil Johnson says here, really, it came out of an infancy of the view of Gentile practices, unholy, unclean, moral, morality was a big issue that came out of this.

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They were to follow, again, the civil and the ceremonial laws given by Moses. And yet, that is what exactly we see in the

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New Testament that we've been, that Christ died for, right? We have been removed from that law.

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Christ fulfilled the law. Who can read for me? And I know we read this last week, but who has their

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Bible? They can open up to Acts 15 and verses 10 and 11.

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Acts 15, verses 10 and 11. Who will read that for me?

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Yes, sir. Yes. Excellent. Thank you. So, this is where the attack, right, the major defeat of the

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Judaizers took place. This is where the battle started to occur in scripture that we see in Acts fairly early in the book, or later in the book of Acts, but fairly early in the

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Christian founding time, essentially, that we have from scriptures, right? And Peter honed this issue that, you know, salvation is by what?

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What do we know salvation by based on the Bible? Grace, right?

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So, salvation is by grace. And Peter was battling this all the time. And what's interesting is the first heresy, the first heretical group that we have that comes out of this really was what's called a soteriological conflict or a soteriological heresy.

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And what is soteriology? What does it mean? Understanding of salvation, right?

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So, it's a salvation issue. And that specifically is what it was, not by works, but instead by grace.

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And so, the very first controversy was around salvation and soteriology, right?

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We have the gospel instead, as scripture lays out, the doctrine of justification by faith. And there's no argument that the

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Jews have. If the Jews were to take the New Testament, which again at the time was still being written, so they had the

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Old Testament to refer back to. But that's what they wanted to keep going after. That's what they wanted to keep going after.

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And yet, as the scriptures were coming together and as they were being written, it was visible that these

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Judaizers were continuously trying to infiltrate Christian organizations, Christian groups, and destroy them and bring them back into Judaism.

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It was, how do we get back to Judaism, all right? That was the big concern. So, from a soteriological perspective, why is it wrong to view that works of the law can earn merit in God's eyes?

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Why is that incorrect? Yes, sir, right. Yeah, it's our own pride, right?

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We ourselves were able to accomplish salvation ourself. Again, that completely removes the atonement. That completely removes all the other aspects that scripture has clearly laid out.

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And it really comes down to legalism. In the shorter term of things, it was, you must do these things, you don't do these things, you can do these things, and doing those or not doing these please

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God more, and you get closer to God by doing that. And that is a completely wrong view of God in itself.

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So, this was really the first century heresy that was raised more than anything else, and we see it more than anything in scripture being attacked and defended against in scripture because, again, it grew very rapidly as the scriptures were unfolding.

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So, as we now move into, again, the first century, the second heresy that we have, now, again,

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I've heard this pronounced twice, two different ways, so I will say it first once and the other, and then I probably will mix it up as I go, but either docetism or docetism, docetism or docetism.

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And for those who are interested in spelling, it's D -O -C -E -T -I -S -M, docetism or docetism.

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And, again, I've heard it pronounced both ways. This also appeared right around first century timeframe.

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Early on, it happened pretty quick. And it's interesting because this one, again, is a phenomenon, is written here that the phenomenon of Christ is historical and bodily essence.

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I'm sorry, let me see. The doctrine according to which... So, this is where it gets a little complex, so bear with me.

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I just wanted to write this. I have this quoted, so I wanted to be able to read this to you, so you do the same thing and you kind of go, huh? This doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus was altogether mere semblance without any true reality.

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Got it? Can we move on? No. All right. A little more confusing, a little interesting, but in essence, what this all kind of comes down to is this sect, this group of people, what they did is they looked at, you know,

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Christianity and they said, well, this can't be true the way it is, so we need to define

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Jesus in different ways. So, not only did the first attack, the Judairs go after soteriology, we'll see the second one go after Christology.

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And oftentimes, you'll see these two are the things that are attacked more than anything else, soteriology, salvation, and Christology, what we understand or believe about Christ.

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And this one, what it is, is in essence, boiled down this kind of complex quote is,

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Jesus only seemed to be human. So, Jesus was not truly human is what the

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Docetus would have to say. They would say that his body, as we see it in the scripture, as we read about Jesus, and as he was with his disciples, and as he was doing all these various things, it was only an illusion.

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It was merely an illusion. And they have a reason for this. So, you might go, that's kind of crazy thinking, right?

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They actually had a reason for this. And we'll get into this a little bit. So, doceti,

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I believe is how it's pronounced. Doceti is a Latin word for illusionist.

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So, Docetism is this illusionary Jesus Christ or this illusionary person.

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And it was a group that denied Jesus' humanity. So, now, we've got an attack on Jesus, not only Jesus alone, but Jesus' humanity.

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So, they went after it and they said, Jesus could not have been a human and we're going to teach the rest of the world that because he's

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God, he can't be a human. So, they went to an extreme. And they said that, essentially, that the teachings, any teaching that claims that Jesus' body was either absent or illusionary during his earthly ministry would be considered docetism or docetism.

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So, it's this illusionary side of things. It actually occurred... Now, this is where it gets kind of interesting.

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So, as you study some of these, it actually occurred right around 197 to 203

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AD. And it was discovered, the doctrine was first discovered as it was looked at and through writing and so forth, was discovered in the

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Gospel of Peter. And we see that, you know, during his pastoral visits into the

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Christian community, that this was kind of discovered and then quickly was being rejected.

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And it actually lived on for quite some time. It lived on for about 150 years into time from when it was first discovered.

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And then, who knows? We talked a little bit about councils, creeds, and doctrine. Who knows what council went after docetism or docetism?

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Anyone? History class? Hershey chocolate for anyone that gets this one right.

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This was actually the first Council of Nicaea. So, this was in 325. This was regarding, you know, going against and showing where this was an incorrect version.

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This was heretical is when it was brought out in the first Council of Nicaea, again, 325. And there were actually two different versions of docetism, two different versions that had existed.

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One, some of you might be familiar with Marconianism. Marconianism was one form of it.

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And it stated this. It said, Christ was so divine, he could not have been human.

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Since God lacked a material body, so as we see in Scripture, God is spirit, which therefore could not have physically suffered.

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So, they believe that Jesus Christ on the cross was an illusion that he suffered there.

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Others have said that it wasn't Jesus, it was someone else. The second group of docetism or docetism is that Jesus was a man in the flesh.

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So, they believe Jesus was a historically accurate man in the flesh. He walked to the earth, he did what he needed to do.

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And at his baptism, as the dove ascended on him at baptism, docetists would say he was given the spirit of God and he was made

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God at that time. So, there's a little bit of confusion around how these two groups deal with it.

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And we'll see that as we go into the next one. But let me see if there's anything else here.

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Oh, so what they did is, so when Jesus, when the dove had descended during baptism, it empowered him now, so this mere man that was

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Jesus, to perform miracles and abandon him on death. So, then the spirit of God abandoned

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Christ at death is what a docetist would say. Kind of interesting, kind of unique.

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And what you'll see is, you'll see a blending of our third. So, we'll get into the third here. But you'll see a blending of where docetism comes in based on this third one.

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And this is one that was fairly common, started very early at the beginning of Christianity, but it didn't really get its roots until 2nd century.

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So, we're going to get into the 2nd century now. So, we've done two from the 1st century. We'll move into the 2nd century.

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Who wants to guess the 2nd century heresy? I heard something over here.

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Gnosticism. I think I heard Gnosticism over here too. Is that what it was? Yeah. So, Gnosticism really didn't get its start until 2nd century where it really kind of, if I can say it, formed itself into something.

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And Gnosticism is interesting because Gnosticism takes what the Judaizers did, right? Law, law, law, law, law, obey, obey, obey, rules, rules, rules.

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And instead they went, phew, none of those, none of those. Let's completely just remove all that.

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Let's completely just take a step back and let's live free. And what happened is

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Gnosticism really comes out of a blend of pagan rituals. So, Judaism was removed in most cases, very pagan in nature, blended with Christianity.

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So, there was this kind of this mix -up of different areas. And that's where Gnosticism really came.

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What Phil Johnson says here is the Judaizers really wanted to keep the past. They wanted to tie themselves to the

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Jewish religion and the Jewishness of it and keep it tied to the past where the

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Gnostics actually took a completely opposite turn and said, no, no, no, let's completely abandon our Jewishness and instead move into our pagan rules or pagan regulations.

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So, it really was a swing, complete opposites, right? The pendulum swung from one over here into legalism and slid all the way back over here into almost a mess of unknown what it ends up being.

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And the result of that is what Gnosticism is. It's this major swing from point A to point

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B. So, it's out over here. And it's interesting because Phil says this, Phil Johnson says this.

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He said, and I have to laugh every time I read it, is ancient Gnosticism. So, as we know Gnosticism today or back in the days and as we see it in scripture somewhat defined loosely is it's as hard to define as the modern age movement.

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It's hard to define as the modern age movement. Now, I know some of that's kind of gone away, right? We don't have the crystals as much anymore.

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We don't have a lot of the mysticism and so forth that we see anymore at least openly. But it still exists today.

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Various forms of Gnosticism exist today. And it was a very complex, you know, it's hard to put

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Gnosticism in a box and define it. And that's similar to the new age movement again.

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It's hard to just say this is what new age means, right? I mean, we all know it when we see it. We all know it when we hear it.

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We all know it when we read it. And the same thing with Gnosticism. It was very, very complex, very involved, a lot of different areas.

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But it can oftentimes be boiled down into a couple areas, a couple ideas, a couple concepts. So, you can kind of right away say that is ancient

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Gnosticism. Yes, that is definitely Gnosticism. And those are this. It is really around, again, it's a soteriology issue more than anything else, salvation issue related.

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And it boils down to I have hidden knowledge and you don't.

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And because I have this hidden knowledge that you don't, although it's a church bulletin, bear with me here,

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I have limited supplies up here. Although this is my hidden knowledge, that's my salvation.

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I actually get saved through this knowledge. Again, it's a works based in some instances because it's

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I have this knowledge. It may have been given to me by someone. Oftentimes, it would be shared with one another. And now

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Bob has this secret knowledge or now my wife has this secret knowledge and so forth.

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So, I could share it, but salvation comes through this knowledge. And it's going to be knowledge that's different from what we have here.

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And you've probably heard of things like the Gnostic Gospels. You've probably heard of various books that would be

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Gnostic materials. And it was books that were written, otherly books that were not defined as part of scripture and clearly taught this extreme side of paganism, this other end of things.

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What's Gnostic mean? What's Gnosis mean? Gnosis, Greek, not for you

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Greek people to answer. What's Gnosis? To know or knowledge.

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It's all about knowledge. So, Gnosticism is essentially knowledgeism, the study of knowledge or the understanding of knowledge or knowing these special things.

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And that's what it was all about. It was this hidden truth. And again, the Gnostics would believe this to be, this is the key to salvation.

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If you didn't have this understanding, you weren't saved. If you didn't have this special knowledge that was given to you by someone else in most cases, you weren't saved.

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And it really didn't form itself as much as you can say anything formed itself. Again, it's kind of like this big goo if you really study it in detail.

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But it really kind of formed itself again second century. But we definitely see Gnosticism and there's some questions around that is that what

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Jude was battling in scriptures that this Gnosticism was coming into play. It hadn't yet formed, but it was kind of early or what they call ancient

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Gnosticism is what is believed to have been in parts of scripture that we have.

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Not sure, but it kind of looks that way when we understand what Gnosticism is today. And Gnosticism, what's interesting is

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Gnosticism was one of the, you know, one of the first kind of outside of Judaism or the

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Judaizers and even Docetism or Docetism to be really battled outside of the scriptures.

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And we see it. It was battled very, very hard. There were some great, great people who went after it.

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We have Tertullian, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and a few others that were really battling to say, look, guys, what you're teaching, what you're trying to show about this secret knowledge and that this salvation is all based on what we know is wrong, based on what scripture says.

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And these were guys that that opened the pages of scripture and they said, look, this is where it shows that it's by faith alone, through grace alone.

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And this is where God saves and it's not of man and it's not anything else. But we're responsible.

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And that's what these men were battling for. And some of them, it was to the end of their lives.

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They suffered for fighting such things. And one of the areas, well, there's three things that are kind of wrapped into Gnosticism.

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If you again, if you look at the definition of Gnosticism, not only do we have to have this knowledge, this secret knowledge, this unknown knowledge, unless I share it or unless someone shares it with you, right, there's secret knowledge.

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And it's very similar. If you think about it, some of these other kind of cults and other groups that have this knowledge, these other books, these other materials, these other tablets, these other whatever it might be, right?

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It's this secret knowledge and it kind of wraps around what Gnosticism is. But it's said to have three fairly unique things that come along with just about all forms of Gnosticism, even up through today.

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And those are the first is dualism. Who knows what dualism is? Again, this is an education class for everybody, it seems today.

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But what's dualism? Dualism, yes.

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And it could never be coexist. I mean, they would never one or the same could coexist. So dualism is just that, it is the separation of usually material and immaterial.

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And they were at opposite ends. And what you'll find in Gnosticism a lot of times is they believe that Satan created material and God created all the immaterial.

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So anything that we have that's material that we can touch and feel and so forth is considered evil. And anything that isn't is good.

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And as we see with Gnosticism, you have this blending of Jesus could not be God because he was a man.

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Well, you can't have man and God, right? That dualism is always battling and you would have that good and evil conflict.

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Yes, Steve? Correct. And scripture shows that, right?

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It's clear. And I mean, the definition here is, it is the idea that everything in the universe is reducible to two fundamental realities, material, immaterial in most cases is what they would come from.

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Yes, Bob? Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. I mean, we definitely have it in scripture.

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It just doesn't call it Gnosticism, right? So the term or the organizational definition around as much as we can came around second century but it's definitely in scripture as a means of defining areas that we've seen that with, right?

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Where they're being attacked, both Christology and even salvation that we see in the epistles and so forth, right?

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Paul and Peter and those guys battled it quite a bit. The second one, so apart from dualism is syncretism, syncretism, thoughts, syncretism, combining or putting together, synchra, okay?

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And what it generally comes down to is the merging of two different systems of belief. So they usually will merge or join different belief systems.

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So we have orthodoxy of Christianity and then we might have pagan rituals and we may have whatever else it is and it's this syncretism, it's this blending.

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It's taking some of this, it's buffet theology where it's, I like this, we'll leave that because I don't like peas but I like this and I like this, right?

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So it's that kind of buffet style. We take what we like and we leave what we don't but there's often this blending of at least two different types of beliefs or belief systems.

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And then guess what the third one is, docetism. So it is actually a requirement.

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That's one of the reasons we talked about it first. One of the requirements is in essence for Gnosticism or is seen in almost all

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Gnosticism is a form of docetism and again, why would that be? Why would it be that if you're

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Gnostic, you also are going to hold the docetism? We have dualism.

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Talk briefly about that. What's scripture say about the hypostatic union, about Christ being both

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God and man? What does it say? Well, you guys do need chocolate.

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100 % God, 100 % man. So what is a Gnostic going to think about that? Can't be.

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Why not? Matter is evil. That's correct. Material things are evil or matter is evil.

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So you could not have that. So you're going to see this with Gnosticism all the time is this battle between good and evil, material and immaterial.

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So those three were dualism, syncretism and docetism.

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And then there's this bunch of errors that come with Gnosticism. But in most cases, what they're doing is there's two areas again they're attacking.

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And as we go through the rest of these heresies, you're going to see these are very clear. And that is soteriology.

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They attack soteriology, salvation, and they attack Christology or Christ within their belief system.

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It also says here that the Epistles of John are written chiefly to answer in separate forms of Gnosticism.

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So again, this is before it was laid out. But as Bob had pointed out, this is really the primary attack on Christological grounds.

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They didn't go after the salvation in most cases, but they went after what the view is of others around who

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Christ was. And that's laid out in the Epistles of John. Questions on Gnosticism?

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And for those who are wanting to spell, it starts with a G, G -N -O -S -T -I -C -I -S -M,

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Gnosticism. Very well documented in history, very well laid out just from a heresy perspective.

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A lot of details again because it's been around throughout history and it continues today. There are people who claim to be

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Gnostics, openly Gnostics today. Any questions on Gnosticism?

34:16

Bob? And that's where we have the difference between the

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Judaizers and then the swing to paganism on this side.

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And that's easy to do. We see that with our own natures where we want to always go back to our sinful natures if we could, but apart from God's grace.

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But it's so hard from a cultural perspective because that's what they were raised. If I'm raised Jewish, I'm Jewish because I was born

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Jewish. Or paganism, I'm Roman because I'm a Roman citizen or whatever else it was.

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And those are the things that they held to. That's what they were known by in those days in history, so you're right. Any other questions on Gnosticism?

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No? Okay. Let's move on to now the 4th century. So we move from the 2nd century, Gnosticism continued to go throughout time.

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As I said, it continues now, but we're going to now move 4th century. Who thinks they know what the 4th century is?

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This is the third of the five key... Wow, is that really the time?

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We're having too much fun. All right. What's number four? Number three. Number three.

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Who knows? Aryanism. 4th century, Aryanism. We'll go through some of this quick.

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And again, if you have questions, feel free. I'd like to at least finish some of these up. Aryanism was interesting because Aryanism was one of the kind of the first to really attempt to infiltrate the church as much.

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Now, these others did, but in different ways. It was more subtle. It was more teaching they heard and people would bring it into the church.

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This was one that was really designed to kind of infiltrate the church, get in and provide false teaching.

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And it's interesting because, you know, as I studied and I looked at it, well, one of the notes here is the reason

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Arianism actually took off in the fourth century was out of a climate of tolerance.

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What's that sound like to you guys? Tolerance, right? We all have to love one another.

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We all would need to be tolerant. And that's what Arianism came out of is this tolerance. We must just have tolerance for others and love for one another.

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And it took advantage of tolerance. But what's interesting is if you look at Arianism, it's again, an attack directly against Jesus Christ.

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It goes right against the savior and his deity. So we have Gnosticism and we have

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Deceitism talking about his humanity, right? He could not be a human. He was God, but he couldn't have been a human.

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Now we have Arianism saying he was a man, Jesus was a man, but he was not

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God. And that is a heresy that, again, came in very quickly, fourth century, attack on Christ, and it denied

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Jesus, or it claimed, so this is what their claiming is, that Jesus Christ was a created being, higher than humanity, but less than truly

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God. So he wasn't God, he wasn't a man, he was a little bit of an elevated man,

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God kind of thing, angel, whatever you might want to call it. But that is what

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Arianism had said. So we have, again,

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Gnosticism attacking the doctrine of Christ on the fringe of Christendom. So it was kind of, again, outside, but influencing

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Christianity. This was a direct attack inside the church, and it started being taught right away.

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And their approach for Arianism was to draw people out of the church again.

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And as we talked about early on in our study of heresy, it was specifically around destructive nature of heresy.

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And Arianism was one of the most destructive ones that we see up and through its time.

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Again, directed right at the church. And in essence, Arianism took a different approach, bringing the false doctrine right into the church, as we say here, and then the goal from the very beginning of this heresy was to get the church to place a stamp of orthodoxy.

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So they wanted to bring in their heresy and say, we want a stamp of orthodoxy that what we're teaching is now what

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Christianity is. And then again, this is fourth century. So they definitely wanted to get orthodoxy, wanted to get approval from the church.

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Arius, who the name comes from, he's the heretic who invented this doctrine essentially. And quickly, it just says that it's a view that Christ made, a view of Christ that essentially made him a created being.

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So Jesus was created. God first, God existed, right? Jesus was created.

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Secondly, he was considered the firstborn in essence of all creation as we see in scripture.

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But he got it wrong where he was talking about firstborn. He was thinking about chronological. He was thinking about birth.

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He was talking about that he actually was physically born. Yet in the scripture, when we study the scripture in that specific section, it is around preeminence.

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Firstborn, he was the highest. He was the above all. He was preeminent overall.

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And we see that in the book of Colossians is where this is laid out very clearly. Jesus was considered by Arius to be a demigod, small god, lower case g,

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God. And what's interesting, this is the same doctrine that today modern

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Jehovah's Witnesses hold to, is this demigod, this other, this created being.

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And they use the same arguments that Arius did. They use the same scriptures. They use the same areas.

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And so this is one of the areas where you really need to understand. When they come knocking on your door, the Jehovah's Witness have an

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Arian belief or an Arian understanding. And they hold to this heresy today in their doctrines.

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What creed was brought out to battle Arianism? What creed?

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You're thinking Athanasian's Creed? Athanasian's Creed? Nope. Nicene Creed was the one to defeat this.

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And it was interesting because as it was defeated, it was proclaimed to be heresy, right, by the

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Nicene Creed. And what did Arius do? What do you think Arius did at that time?

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He essentially said, you guys are so intolerant, come on, be tolerant with me here. Let's just make this part of orthodoxy.

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I know you just said it's heresy, but you got to be tolerant, right? And I just have to think of our own worldview today on tolerance and where that is.

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And we look and see where these would have gone if people just said, okay, we'll be tolerant of you.

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We'll accept it, right? He actually pled for this. He said, I want tolerance.

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I want broad -mindedness. I want acceptance from the grassroots level.

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I want you to rethink what you just decided in the Nicene Creed. I want you to rethink that. He wasn't very tolerant of the

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Nicene Creed, it sounds. But he wanted them to be tolerant of himself. And it was interesting because this really was infecting the church worldwide.

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It was continuously dealing with it, and it continued to grow. So even though it was considered heresy and actually cast down as heresy, it continued to grow.

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And it was interesting because one of the notes here is that Emperor Constantine became frustrated with the

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Nicene Council. So he actually was angry with kind of the agreement that the Nicene Council came up with, and that they weren't successful in really addressing the

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Arian controversy. So what did he do instead? He became best friends with Arius, and it continued to grow, and it continued to grow, and it continued to grow, and it continued to grow.

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So with that, there was one man who Bob, you had mentioned, stood up to now

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Arius, and who was that? Athanasius. Athanasius now came forward and said, this is heresy, and Athanasius proved it through the scriptures, and opening them up, he won the argument.

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He essentially said, look, here's where it says in the scriptures, and it was again cast down as heresy.

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And it's interesting because one of the notes here is, Arius, the Arian heresy, as Phil Johnson wrote here, is it's a classic example of why scripture, not majority opinion, ought to be the church's first and last test of every doctrine.

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It can't be our thoughts, our understandings. And as I read before, the definition of heresy, it was kind of unanimous what people believe, and so, or doctrine, what people believe unanimously.

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And it was like, no, no, it's what the scripture says. It has nothing to do with what we believe. What are we doing here?

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We're out of time. All right. So it was gonna get to Pelagianism, fifth century

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Pelagianism. This, again, returned on the issue of soteriology, attack of soteriology. It also attacked

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Christology, so it attacked Christ and his natures. This is, the heresy is the most serious when it results in a different gospel and a different Christ.

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So it was both a change in the gospel message and the change in Jesus Christ and who he was.

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They completely took it in a whole different direction, and Pelagianism became a very big issue.

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And Augustine was one of the first to then come and oppose Pelagius, who was the one who started

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Pelagianism. I don't know if I'd want a heresy named after me, but, so Augustine came in to battle it.

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And what's interesting with Pelagianism is it's a lot of the same arguments and issues that we as Reformed, or what people would call

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Calvinist belief, compared to Arminian belief, is where Pelagianism, a lot of times, goes the direction more

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Arminian in their understanding and their belief. And it's interesting because they're concerned more with the elevation of what?

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What's the Arminian side of doctrines? Man and or man's what?

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Man's what will? Man's free will, right, was the biggest concern. And so Pelagian has said, how can

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God make man responsible if he doesn't truly have free will, right?

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So if I don't have the will to do whatever I want to do, God can't hold me responsible because that doesn't sound fair, or just, as some would say it.

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And this was one that popped up, Pelagianism popped up. It was all around really the elevation of the human will and the lowering of God's standard of his glory, his righteousness, his wrath, and so forth.

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And they went as far as saying that they denied original sin. So they said,

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Adam and Eve, when they sinned, and we have Adam as our federal head, we cannot say that we received that sin through Adam because, again, that wouldn't be just.

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That wouldn't be free will. And God we know is all loving and all happy and tolerant of people.

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And he wants to make sure that we are held to those things that we specifically are responsible for and not for those things that we aren't.

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And that was the biggest issue of Pelagianism. So Pelagianism says this, the human will must be totally free, inclined to neither good nor evil, or else your choices cannot be free.

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And if choices are not free, then we can't be responsible before a holy God. That is the argument of Pelagianism.

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Augustine quickly saw this as a problem. He responded to Pelagius by demonstrating from the scriptures again that human will is not free in the sense that Pelagianism taught.

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So again, it's not that we're automatons and robots, but from scripture, we see that God is sovereign.

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God is in control. And at the same time, man is responsible for sin. So Pelagianism continued to grow.

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We have the Council of Ephesus in 431, which condemned Pelagianism. And then guess what happened?

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What came out of that? Here comes the condemnation of Pelagianism. What grew out of that? Semi -Pelagianism.

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So we're not really Pelagianism, but we're kind of Pelagianism, but we're, right?

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So Semi -Pelagianism grew out of that. And what's interesting is Semi -Pelagian exists today in various denominations and organizations.

47:25

What's probably the best known group or organization that holds to Semi -Pelagianism today?

47:34

The Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church is definitely Semi -Pelagian in their understanding of pretty much their soteriology and so forth.

47:45

They would consider themselves as what's quoted here, more a watered down version of Semi -Pelagianism, but nonetheless, they still hold to Semi -Pelagianism.

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And I got to stop. We won't get to Sassinianism. I was going to do Sassinianism. I was going to go to Donatism.

48:06

There was another one called Adoptionism. Some of these were kind of off the area. Bogomillennialism and Catherinism, which is interesting.

48:15

I did a quick search for Catherinism, just some of their beliefs and understandings are fairly out there.

48:21

But there was a whole website about Catherinism exists today and we are Catherines and so forth. And it was kind of interesting, interesting read.

48:28

I wouldn't suggest going there, but it was an interesting read nonetheless. Any questions, quick questions, at least what we were able to cover from the more, and you'll see as we were looking through these, these are arguments that are still being done today.

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They might not have the same wrapper around them. And I think as Phil Johnson was trying to point out, these are where, if we look at all heresies today, no matter who or what they are, we can trace them pretty much back to these top five areas.

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And again, those themselves all trace back to Christology and Soteriology. So salvation and who and what

49:03

Christ is. Is there a question? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, and I've seen it.

49:10

I've seen it. There is a move in a lot of these different religions now, again, based on tolerance and love to go these other directions.

49:19

And we're seeing, and as we move that direction, there was a couple other notes here. As we move that direction, you start to fall into liberalism.

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And then what is true, what isn't true, and you start getting into all these other things. And it gets pretty scary when you really get rid of, scriptures as a whole, as your authoritative source.

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And we are seeing some mainline denominations that have gone the way of some of these, or are starting to embrace some of these heresies that are known today.

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So any other quick questions? I know we got to go. Let me go ahead and pray and we'll be dismissed.

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Lord, again, we want to thank you. We want to praise you for your word. We want to thank you that you have given us your word that we can use it as a means to one understand and to use as a sword to defend against heresy or other false doctrines or false teachings.

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Lord, we know that it is not by our power or our knowledge or our wisdom or anything else, Lord, but it is by the spirit and by your word that we are able to show others what great

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God, what a great God that you are. Lord, it is clear that from a salvific perspective and from a

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Christology perspective, Lord, your word cannot be clear. Lord, it is most cases, these men that have gone in other direction have had their own agendas or their own motives in doing such.

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And we just, Lord would pray for those who are now bound in some of these various groups or organizations that may still hold to these.

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And Lord, instead that you would show them the truth of who you are and the great God that you are. We want to elevate you,

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Lord. We don't want to elevate man. And we just want to thank you and praise you for this time that we had today. And we ask all this in your holy and precious name.