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Early Heretics: Difference between revisions
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|'''Montanism''' | |'''Montanism''' | ||
||Montanus believed he was the incarnation of the 'paraclete' mentioned in the Gospel of John 14:16. Accompanied by two women, Prisca and Maximilla, who likewise claimed to be the embodiments of the Holy Spirit, "the Three" spoke in ecstatic visions and urged their followers to fast and pray, so that they might share these personal revelations. The prophets of Montanism did not speak as messengers of God (i.e. "Thus saith the Lord") but rather spoke in his person. "I am the Father, the Word, and the Paraclete," said Montanus (Didymus, De Trinitate, III, xli). Montanus was condemned by Irenaeus and other early church fathers for heresy and being false prophets. | ||Montanus believed he was the incarnation of the 'paraclete' mentioned in the Gospel of John 14:16. Accompanied by two women, Prisca and Maximilla, who likewise claimed to be the embodiments of the Holy Spirit, "the Three" spoke in ecstatic visions and urged their followers to fast and pray, so that they might share these personal revelations. The prophets of Montanism did not speak as messengers of God (i.e. "Thus saith the Lord") but rather spoke in his person. "I am the Father, the Word, and the Paraclete," said Montanus (Didymus, De Trinitate, III, xli). Montanus was condemned by Irenaeus and other early church fathers for heresy and being false prophets. | ||
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|Manicheism | |||
||Mani (ca. 215–277), a self-styled “Apostle of Jesus Christ,” who resided for a good part of his life in Persia, on March 20, 242 AD, announced himself as a new prophet. Although Manicheism may have started as a Christian heresy, it developed into a new missionary religion, drawing in part on Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, which for a time rivaled Christianity. Its main feature was its thoroughgoing dualism, in which Light and Darkness were two equal and opposite principles. It was totally world-renouncing. Augustine was a Manichean for nine years (373–382) before his conversion to Christianity.<ref>F. F. Bruce, “Literature, Early Christian,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 343–344.</ref> | |||
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| | |Sabellianism | ||
||SABELLIUS is by far the most original, profound, and ingenious of the ante-Nicene Unitarians, and his system the most plausible rival of orthodox trinitarianism. | |||
Philip Schaff and David Schley Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 581. | |||
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