Page 10 - History of Christianity I - Student Textbook

meant immediate death. There was such a slaughter of Christians that they could not be numbered. The
bishops of most churches were martyred by Decius. Persecution ceased just before his death in 251.

Valerian AD 253-258 Continued the edits of Decius and attacked leaders of the churches.

Diocletian and Galerius AD 303 – 313 Constantius (father of Constantine) resisted the edits of persecution and in
306, Constantine assumed the imperial office, and restored properties to persecuted Christians. In 313,
Constantine and Licinius, signed the “Edict of Milan” which offered a comprehensive acceptance of Christianity

Julian the Apostate AD 361 – 363 was the last pagan emperor of the Roman Empire.

The Early Church – the Growth and Struggle Years

As the church began to grow, various “wolves” in sheep’s clothing began to appear among the believers. They
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began to strongly promote their “false doctrines” as early as the opening of the 2 century (AD 100-200). Paul
and Peter wrote their epistles to various churches to condemn and combat some of these teachings, but they
seemed to proliferate throughout Asia Minor.

Of the many false doctrines that were espoused, five stand out as significant:

1. Gnosticism – professed to be based on “knowledge”, but not how we understand the word. Its knowledge
was always a mystical, supernatural wisdom of the universe. Those who followed the teaching were saved
from the evil world of matter. The high, good God is the head of the spiritual world of light (pleroma). The
spiritual light brought salvation; the physical was body was hopelessly doomed to destruction. It was an
amalgamation of Hellenic and Oriental philosophical speculation with Christianity. The Gnostics are similar
to the New Age movement today in the way that they have many varying beliefs but all are somewhat
similar. Some Gnostics also taught that Jesus was an emanation and did not have a physical body. When he
walked on the beach, his apostles saw no footprints.

2. Maronism – Marcion (144 AD) believed Jesus Christ was the savior sent by God, but he rejected the Hebrew
Bible and the God of Israel. He taught that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than
the God of the New Testament. He depicted the Hebrew God of the Old Testament as a tyrant. He wrote
(edited) his own Bible consisting of 10 chapters from the Gospel of Luke and 10 of Paul’s epistles. All other
books of the New Testament and Old Testament were rejected.

3. Docetism - Docetism teaches that Jesus' physical body was only an aberration or an illusion. This idea is a
product of Gnostic philosophy. The Gnostics believed that matter is evil. Therefore, Jesus could not be God
incarnate because a physical body could not be good. Docetism taught that a spiritual Christ entered into the
human Jesus at his baptism and left when He was crucified. They believed that Jesus' main objective was to
deliver us from the dominion of matter (which is evil). This heresy also denies the resurrection because
Jesus' physical body would still be matter. There are some similar variations to this belief.

4. Montanism- Montanus was a Phyrgian Christian who began a new 'prophetic' movement sometime after
275 AD. He traveled with his disciples, Priscilla and Maximilla who he called prophetesses. Montanus
claimed to be the mouthpiece of God. He separated himself from historic Christianity through his views of
spiritual gifts. He believed in prophetic utterance and this soon gave way to new revelations. This sect
claimed to have its revelations delivered directly from the Holy Spirit. This group called themselves 'The New
Prophecy', but church writers referred to them as 'The Phyrgian Heresy'. Another practice that the church
opposed was its use of ecstatic, semiconscious states in its religious practices. This is similar to the ‘falling
out’ experienced by those ‘slain in the Spirit’ today.
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