Early Christianity · Part 5 · Other strands · B1–B2
Other Strands: Docetists, Ebionites and Montanists
Part 5 of Early Christianity: some Christians said that Jesus only seemed to have a body; some said he was a human messiah who kept the Law of Moses; some said that God was still speaking through new prophets. Who were they, what did they ask, and why did they lose? The third conditional: if they had won, Christianity would have…
Syria, Judaea and Asia Minor, about 100 – 250 CE
The Gnostics and Marcion were not the only Christians whose ideas were rejected. In the second century, three other groups gave very different answers to three great questions. Was Jesus a real human being, with a real body? Was he God, or a man chosen by God? Had God finished speaking, or were there still prophets?
As before, most of what we know comes from their opponents, who wrote to refute them and sometimes gave them names they would not have used themselves. The losers in a debate rarely write its history.
Each group lost the argument, but each asked a question that the winners had to answer.
The Docetists take their name from the Greek dokein, “to seem”. They taught that Jesus only seemed to have a human body and only seemed to suffer, because, they believed, a divine being could not be born, feel pain or die. Around 110 CE, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, wrote angry letters against people who said that Christ suffered “only in appearance”. Docetism was not one organised church, but an idea that appeared in many groups, including some Gnostics.
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