Early errors: docetism and ebionitism

Program / Course 9: Christology and Pneumatology / Lesson 2.1

What you will learn

• Define docetism and ebionitism and say what each denied.
• Identify the early Christian writers who opposed each and the texts they used.
• Explain why both are described as opposite mistakes about the same question.
• Recognize the limits of what is known about these groups, since most reports come from opponents.

The big idea

In the first two centuries two opposite mistakes appeared. Docetism held that Christ was divine but only seemed to be a man, with no real body and no real suffering. Ebionitism, as the church writers describe it, held that Jesus was a man, specially chosen by God, but not divine. The church answered both by holding that Jesus is truly human and truly divine. Most of what is known about these groups comes from writers who opposed them, so historians use the evidence with care.

Key terms

Docetism

From the Greek dokein, to seem. The view that Christ’s body and suffering were only apparent.

Ebionites

A name used by church writers for groups of Jewish Christians who kept the Law of Moses and, in the reports, saw Jesus as a man chosen by God. The name likely comes from a Hebrew word for the poor.

Adoptionism

The view that Jesus was an ordinary man whom God adopted as Son, often at his baptism, and not a Son who existed before.

Gnosticism

A varied set of movements in the second century and later that taught salvation through secret knowledge and often saw the material world as flawed. Many were docetic.

Heresy

In Christian use, a teaching judged by the church to contradict the faith. The word can be used by opponents, and historians often use it carefully.

Orthodoxy

From Greek words for right belief or right praise. In this course the lower-case word refers to the teaching the church came to hold. The capital letter refers to the Eastern churches.

Apostolic Fathers

Christian writers of the late first and early second centuries, such as Ignatius of Antioch, who were close to the apostles’ generation.

Background

The New Testament was written before the church had a settled vocabulary for Christ. In the generations after the apostles, teachers explained Jesus in the thought-world of their day. Some of these explanations went in directions that other Christians found dangerous. Two directions turned out to be especially important because they pull in opposite ways.

Both views appear in names and labels. Historians remind students that these labels were often given by opponents and that actual groups were more varied than the labels suggest. Where the evidence is thin, this lesson says so.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Docetism, a Christ who only seemed

Docetic ideas arose in settings where people thought matter was low or corrupt. If so, a divine being could not truly have a body or suffer. A Christ who only seemed to be human solved the problem. According to such teachers, the figure on the cross either felt nothing or was someone else.

The warning appears early. The first letter of John says that every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God (1 John 4:2-3), and 2 John 7 warns of deceivers who do not confess this. Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early second century on his way to martyrdom, insisted that Christ “truly” was born, suffered and was raised, and that those who said he only seemed to suffer were themselves only seeming (Letter to the Trallians 10).

Step 2: Who held docetic views

Many teachers called Gnostic held something like docetism. Their versions varied. Some said the heavenly Christ came upon the man Jesus at baptism and left him before the cross. Cerinthus, according to Irenaeus, taught something of this kind. Marcion, who taught in Rome around the middle of the second century, rejected the God of the Old Testament and held that Christ appeared without being born.

Reports about these teachers come mostly from Irenaeus, Tertullian and other opponents. Some Gnostic writings survive, especially those found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, and they give a fuller picture of how the groups described themselves. The groups were diverse, and not all were docetic in the same way.

Step 3: Ebionitism, a Jesus who was only a man

The Ebionites appear in the writings of Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius and Epiphanius. According to Irenaeus, they used only Matthew’s Gospel, rejected Paul as a breaker of the Law, and held that Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary and was made Christ by his obedience. Origen reports two kinds of Ebionites: some accepted the virgin birth and some did not, but neither accepted the Son’s pre-existence.

The Ebionites seem to have held to the Law of Moses and to circumcision. Their concern, on the reports, was to protect the oneness of God and Jewish practice. This is an important point for fairness: their motive was loyalty to what they took to be the faith of Israel. Fragments of a Gospel used by some Ebionites survive only in quotations by Epiphanius.

Step 4: How the church replied

Against docetism the church stressed the physical facts: birth, hunger, blood, death and burial. These appear in the creeds. The Apostles’ Creed in its older forms says he was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. The mention of Pilate fixes the death in history.

Against ebionitism the church stressed the pre-existent Word, the testimony of John’s Gospel and the worship of Christ. It also continued to treat the Old Testament as Scripture, which answered the Ebionites partly on their own ground. The Gospels and letters were used on both fronts. Irenaeus devoted much of Against Heresies to showing how the whole body of Scripture speaks of one Christ.

Step 5: Why these two belong together

The two views are mirrors. Docetism protects the divinity of Christ at the cost of his humanity. Ebionitism protects his humanity, and the unity of God, at the cost of his divinity. Later errors, such as Arianism and Apollinarianism, have a similar shape, and each time the church answered by keeping both halves.

Historians caution that actual practice was messier. Some Jewish Christians, such as those sometimes called Nazarenes, held a higher view than the Ebionites. Not all Gnostics were docetic. The labels point to tendencies and not always to clean schools.

1. Why would a person find docetism attractive?
2. Why would a person find ebionitism attractive?
3. What does the phrase “suffered under Pontius Pilate” protect against?
4. How should a student treat reports about a group that come only from its opponents?
5. In what sense are the two views opposite mistakes?
6. Which modern ways of speaking about Jesus resemble each ancient view?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching holds that Christ is true God and true man and cites Fathers such as Ignatius and Irenaeus as witnesses that these early views were rejected as contrary to the faith received from the apostles.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers also treat the rejection of docetism and ebionitism as an early sign of the church’s continuity. The liturgy and the icons both assume that the Son was truly seen in the flesh.

Protestant

Protestant churches accept the early rejection of both views as consistent with the New Testament, and cite 1 John, John 1 and Hebrews. Some modern Protestant scholars emphasize that the New Testament itself already addresses these issues.

Historians of early Christianity

Many scholars hold that early Christianity was more diverse than later writers admit, and that groups were not always sharply divided. They also hold that the opponents’ reports can be accurate in outline. How far to trust them is debated.

Jewish scholars

Jewish historians note that Jewish Christians like the Ebionites show the continued link between early Christianity and Jewish life, and that their disappearance reflects growing separation. They differ about how much influence such groups had.

Why it matters

These two errors show the shape of the problem that the councils later faced. Almost every later dispute asks, in a more refined way, whether Jesus is truly human, truly divine, and one. Seeing the pattern makes the later debates easier to follow.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Which of the two errors do you think is more tempting in your own setting?
2. What is lost if a teacher is judged only by his opponents’ summary?
3. Is the Ebionite concern for Jewish practice something the church needed to hear more fully?
4. Why might the creeds name Pontius Pilate?

Independent assignment

Two errors, one question

In your own notebook, write 400 to 600 words. In one column, summarize docetism: what it held, why, which texts and writers answered it. In a second column, do the same for ebionitism. Then write a paragraph explaining how the church’s reply to each one protected the same two claims about Jesus. Note one point where the evidence is uncertain. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study

• Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians Read the letter and notice how Ignatius speaks of the flesh and blood of Christ.
• Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies Read selectively in Book 1 and Book 3 for his reports and arguments.
• J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines Read the early chapters on Christology.
• J. B. Lightfoot, ed., The Apostolic Fathers Read other letters of Ignatius for the arguments against docetism.
• 1 John 4:2 Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
• 2 John 1:7 A warning about those who do not confess Christ in the flesh.
• Acts 15:1 The early debate on whether Gentiles must keep the Law.