Mani and Gnosticism

Mani (~216 - ~277 A.D.) was a Persian born in Babylon to a noble and religious family.  He was exposed to various religions as a child, including paganism, gnosticism, and an heretical Christian/Jewish sect called the Elcesaites.  By age 12 he claimed to have his first angelic visit and by age 24 he had a second revelation.  He espoused his doctrines to the Persian King Sapor I (or Shapur I) in 242 A.D. and was promptly run out of town.  He traveled through northern India and Turkestan founding communities that followed his new religion and had some success.  A few years later he got a favourable hearing from the Persian king's brother and once again got a chance to espouse his beliefs to Sapor.  Once again he became a fugitive and continued travelling and writing epistles to his communities to firmly establish his doctrines.  Sapor eventually imprisoned Mani, but Sapor died in 274 whereon Mani was granted release under the new but short-lived king.  The third king renewed Sapor's persecution of Mani's religion and had him crucified in either 276 or 277 A.D.

Manichaeism had some adherents in the western Roman Empire, but its main successes were in the near and far east.  Persia, India, Tibet, and even China had numerous Manichaen churches.  The Chinese Manichaens were still in existence as late as the 14th century.  In some areas, Manichaeism became more popular than any other religion, including the indigenous pagan beliefs.

Manichaeism's Beliefs

Mani cobbled together his religion from pieces of a number of different faiths.  He claimed that Jesus, Buddha, and Zoroaster's teachings were all incomplete and that he had been granted revelation that completed what other faiths were lacking.  He called his beliefs the "religion of light" but it was most commonly known by his name instead.

Manichaeism was essentially gnosticism.  At its heart was dualism, meaning good and evil forces battling it out in the cosmos.  The spirit world is good; the physical world is evil.  The spirit who created the world was the evil power, and therefore the Jewish and Christian God was deemed to be Satan in Mani's religion.

There were all kinds of expectations laid out for believers, but he established a sort of clergy and laity distinction.  Those who were committed to living out the requirements fully were called the "Elect" while the remaining attendees were called "Hearers."  The Elect were similar to priests or monks, expected to remain celibate, become vegetarians, and avoid all menial work and trades.  The Hearers, which made up 99% of the Manichaens, were responsible for feeding, caring for, and honouring the Elect with bended knee.  Mani's churches had equivalent holidays to other major religions, such as a festival at spring timed to coincide with the Christian Easter celebrations.

While not having anything to do with Christian doctrine in the least, some Christians were attracted to Manichaeism and church leaders taught strongly against its heresies.  For example, Augustine wrote an entire book dedicated to countering Manichean teachings, called De Moribus Manichaeorum.  

Novatian and the First Church Split

The first significant church split occurred with the Novatians in Rome in 251 A.D. and quickly spread throughout the empire. Splits had occurred in the church before this, but it had always involved heresy such as with the Marcionites.  The Montanists tried to stay within the Catholic Church but were forced out, and while they were not exactly heretical, they had error mixed in with their desire for renewal and it muddied their situation.  Not so with the Novatians.  There was no heresy involved, just a disagreement over a theological issue.  They intentionally elected a separate bishop and created separate churches and they continued to be orthodox in all their doctrines.  That's what makes this situation such an interesting precedent in the history of the church.  It allows us to see the original response of the Catholic Church to a disagreement over theology and how that response changed over the centuries.

Novatian (~200-258 A.D.) was baptized on his death bed and then unexpectedly recovered.  He was a priest in Rome when Fabian, the Bishop of Rome, was martyred in 250 A.D.  Because of the intense persecution, the role of bishop was left vacant for a year.

When the persecution subsided with the death of Emperor Decius (his coin pictured) in June 251 A.D., a question arose among the churches all over the empire about those believers who had "lapsed" and sacrificed to idols in order to escape death.  Should they be admitted back into the church or not?  If yes, what should the process be for readmitting them?  Should all be readmitted or just those who relapsed under extreme torture?  Should the church practice forgiveness or should the church treat them as unbelievers?

During this same time, the churches were also dealing with the grief for those believers who had remained faithful in the face of persecution and lost their lives.  Believers honoured the memory of the martyrs by celebrating their "birthdays" into eternal life.  In Carthage, some believers felt the martyrs had access to incredible supernatural power when they faced death and that their excess merit was sufficient to cover the failures of others.  They even urged their bishop, Cyprian, to issue a blanket pardon for all those who had lapsed and sacrificed to idols based on this alleged power of the martyrs.  It was the earliest seeds of the modern Catholic practice of venerating saints.

Cyprian rightly declined this request on the basis that martyrs do not have the power to forgive sins.  However, the question of readmission of lapsed believers was a sticky one.  The traditional approach was that any serious sins such as apostasy resulted in believers being permanently excommunicated from the church.  Cyprian proposed a new and more moderate approach that they be readmitted based on the seriousness of the sin.  Leniency should be shown for those who failed during the worst kinds of physical torture, while those who willingly went to sacrifice to idols should be punished severely.  Additionally, sufficient remorse should be evident on the part of the lapsed.

This approach led the church leaders to establish a graded system of "penance," or actions that demonstrated repentance based on the seriousness of the sin.  After the required acts of humility and the required time had elapsed, the person was declared absolved of their sins by the bishop, readmitted to the church and could participate once again in the sacraments.

While there was agreement with Cyprian's solution among some churches and leaders, support was not unanimous.  Novatian in Rome led the opposition on the basis that only God can forgive men from their sins, especially serious sins like apostasy or murder.  Cyprian had simply moved that supposed power of forgiveness away from martyrs and gave it to the bishops instead, and Novatian argued it belonged to neither.  Further, the church had taught clearly against sacrificing to idols before and during the persecution.  They encouraged believers to face death with courage.  Now those same leaders were welcoming back those who had failed that test.  Wasn't this dishonouring the sacrifice of those martyrs who had proven faithful to Christ?  How would you feel if those martyrs included your family members?  Why hadn't those same church leaders taught this during the persecution?  Wouldn't that have avoided a lot of unnecessary deaths?  Did this mean the church leaders were admitting their previous teachings were wrong?  One can imagine the strong emotions that must have been present on both sides of the debate.  It was not a theoretical exercise -- it had intensely practical implications for each congregation.

Another priest in Rome named Cornelius took Cyprian's position and argued that bishops did in fact possess the power to forgive sins.  This set the stage for a showdown when the election for Bishop of Rome took place.

The majority of bishops sided with Cornelius and he was elected Bishop of Rome in 251 A.D.  However, Novatian and those who agreed with his position on the lapsed were not content to accept this change in church practice.  Just because a new bishop decrees a new practice in the church, did that mean the believers who disagreed with him had to adopt that practice even if it was contrary to the Scriptures?  What options did they have?

As a result, some priests in the Catholic Church elected Novatian bishop in open defiance of Cornelius.  We don't have any versions of this process from Novatian, only from his enemies, so it's unclear how much of their version of events is embellished, but Novatian may have engineered his election using some priests who were not entirely aware of what they were doing.  However, Novatian had a significant following and they immediately began establishing new churches under his leadership and appointed new bishops in other cities.  Suddenly there was a parallel network of churches and church leaders all over the Roman Empire.

While it is possible the Novatian schism was caused in part by a personality clash between Cornelius and Novatian, it could not be the main cause.  Cornelius was martyred just two years after becoming bishop, Novatian was martyred 5 years after that, and Cyprian was martyred the same year as Novatian.  By 258 A.D. all of the original players in the schism were gone from the scene, but Novatian churches continued to exist for centuries.  It is much more likely that the schism was primarily caused by differences of theology rather than of personality.

Initially the Catholic leaders called the Novatians a schism (meaning division) which is what they were, but over time leaders such as Cyprian changed their tone and declared them heretics.  Their only heresy was that they refused to acknowledge the power of the church to absolve sins.  This is strange, because that was a new teaching in Novatian's lifetime that was adopted by the Catholic Church leadership even though it had no Scriptural basis.  (Tertullian had opposed a similar issue decades earlier when a Bishop of Rome declared an adulterer forgiven.)  Novatian was declared a heretic because he did not accept a newly-invented doctrine that had been voted for by a majority of Catholic bishops and priests.  The definition of heresy now became anything contrary to what the Catholic Church taught.  Spiritual truth was determined by democratic vote.  Those in the majority were orthodox, while those in the minority were heretics.  It had nothing to do with what the Bible taught.  There was no room for multiple opinions on any matter of church life.  This definition of heresy has been used by the Catholic Church down to the present day.

In this short period of church history, the Catholic Church invented a brand new sacrament.  Instead of just baptism and communion, there was now penance and absolution of sins.  The church had gotten into the business of setting the price for and dispensing forgiveness of sins.  It began with trivial punishments and outward signs of humility, but it would be a small step in later centuries to make that price for forgiveness purely monetary -- indulgences would be the logical conclusion of this doctrine, and it would be one of the driving causes for the Protestant Reformation.

The Novatians called themselves "Cathars" from the Greek word for "pure," so in a sense they were the first Puritans.  Some of their churches also re-baptized converts from the Catholic Church, so in a sense they were the first Anabaptists.  They strongly opposed the teaching that the Catholic Church could absolve sins and they expected that Christians' lives should show evidence of their faith in how they behave.  Their bishops were admired for their Godly behaviour and Constantine invited the Novatian bishop from Constantinople to the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.  The bishop approved all the decrees that the council put forward but refused union with the Catholic Church.

Since the Catholic Church declared them to be heretics, Novatians were persecuted on and off for centuries, sometimes having their church buildings closed or confiscated and at other times being reluctantly tolerated.  The last reference to them is in Alexandria, Egypt around 600 A.D.

The Novatians were essentially orthodox in all the foundational doctrines of Christianity, but they rejected the un-Biblical ordinances that the Catholic Church had begun to adopt.  Their punishment was excommunication from the Catholic Church, but they didn't seem to care.

Marcion: The Man Who Rewrote the Bible to Fit His Heresy

Marcion (85-160 A.D.) was the son of a bishop in Pontus, on the shores of the Black Sea in northern Turkey.  He struggled with reconciling the God of the Old Testament with Jesus of the New Testament and concluded they must describe two separate gods.

Marcion showed up in Rome sometime around 140 A.D. and became a generous member of one of the congregations there.  In July 144 A.D., he was given a hearing with that city's church leaders about his belief system.  He did not win a lot of friends that day.  They were shocked, promptly rejected his views as heretical, excommunicated him from the church, and even returned the money he had given to the church.

From that point, Marcion went on a church planting spree all over the Roman empire.  After his death, these Marcionite churches continued to spread.  By the 4th century they had fizzled out in the western empire, but continued to exist in Syria until the 10th century.

The early church leaders and theologians were largely unanimous in opposing Marcion's teachings.  Tertullian, who was sympathetic to the Montanists, vigorously opposed Marcion.  In fact, he wrote a 5-volume treatise against his teachings.  While Marcion's own writings have not survived, one can infer his main doctrines from the works of his opponents like Tertullian.

Marcion's book was called Antitheses (Contradictions) and he described what he considered to be irreconcilable contradictions between the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.  He resolved it by deciding there must be two separate gods:  one who is good and who sent Jesus, and another who is just and cruel, who created the world, and who is described in the Old Testament.  To his credit, Marcion recognized that the Bible didn't support his theology in the least, but instead of concluding his theology was wrong, he concluded the Bible was wrong!  He promptly threw out the entire Old Testament, all of the Gospels except for portions of Luke, and a large part of the remainder of the New Testament.  He only kept 10 of Paul's epistles, and freely modified them when they didn't suit his purposes.

While he taught that Jesus was only spirit and not human (hence the need to get rid of the Christmas story in Luke), Marcion did not seem to share any other gnostic doctrines that were causing problems for the early church.  His particular brand of heresy was unique.

Despite Marcion's shameless arrogance in molding Scripture and God to meet his preconceived ideas, he did help speed up a process in the orthodox churches that had already begun:  the establishment of a canon of authentic and accepted books.  As Marcion rejected various books, churches clarified which books they accepted as authoritative.  As Marcion edited and modified books, churches preserved and reproduced the original versions of those books with greater urgency.  Marcion unknowingly helped establish and preserve the Bible that he so desperately tried to get rid of and modify.

While an ancient heresy like Marcion's may appear irrelevant to the church today, there are a few who are still drawn to his doctrines.  (See this website for one example, but don't believe everything you read there!)  The idea of creating God in one's own image is still very much in vogue.

As Broadbent states (p. 38), "Any error may be founded on parts of Scripture; the truth alone in based on the whole."