25. Ереси и расколы

At the very beginning of the Church, various kinds of false teachings began to appear in it. True believers (Orthodox) tried to accept and assimilate the Revelation of God in all its purity, as it is conveyed in its sources - in the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition, and false teachers distorted the teaching of Revelation with an admixture of third-party teachings. Initially, these deviations from the truth concerned the entire structure of Christian teaching, which was distorted by an admixture of either Jewish or pagan views; and then various kinds of heresies began to develop on Christian soil itself. False teachers who distorted Christian teaching by introducing Jewish views into it were called Judaizers and Ebionites (from Hebrew - poor either in means of subsistence or in mental development). Calling themselves Christians, they denied the deity of Jesus Christ, recognizing Him only as a great prophet, and considered observance of the Law of Moses in its entirety necessary for salvation. False teachers who mixed pagan concepts into Christianity were called pagans, or Gnostics. They adhered to pagan errors in the doctrine of two principles - God and matter, about the eternal struggle between them, about the lower deities - eons - ruling between heaven and the world, about blind fate ruling in human affairs. They believed that redemption lay in the liberation of human souls from the bonds of matter; according to their false teaching, to accomplish this work, after unsuccessful attempts on the part of the lower eons, the highest eon was sent from God - Christ, who appeared in a ghostly body (Docetism) or, according to others, united with the holy man Jesus at baptism. In the second century, the errors of the Montanists and the Patripassians appeared almost simultaneously. A certain Montanus, applying to himself the prophecy of the Savior about the sending of the Comforter (John 15, 26; 16, 12–13), declared that he was sent by God to renew the Church. The distinctive features of the Montanist sect were excessive excitement of feelings and self-exaltation, the desire to supposedly restore the discipline and life of the first Christians in the Church, a tendency towards false inspirations and extreme fanaticism in mortification. Infected with pride, they considered only themselves spiritual Christians, while calling everyone else spiritual and carnal people. The Patripassians recognized only one God, who is called the Father, and the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity were revered either as divine powers (dynamists), or only as forms of revelation of a single deity (medalists). According to their false teaching, this one God in Christ became man, was crucified, suffered and died; This is where their name came from - Patripassians. In the third century, the heresies of Paul, who was a bishop in Antioch, called Samosata after his homeland (the city of Samosata), and Sabellius, a presbyter from the city of Ptolemais, arose. The first rejected the doctrine of the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, recognizing Him only as a man filled with special divine wisdom; the second, adhering to the errors of the Patripassians, merged the Persons of the Holy Trinity, teaching that one God appeared in the world either as the Father (gave laws to the Jews), then as the Son (enlightened the world with the Gospel), or as the Holy Spirit (acting in the hearts of believers). In all these errors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, traces of Gnostic heresies are more or less visible; but in the 3rd century a sect appeared that had the claim to restore the ancient pagan religion, namely Zoroaster, and not only distort Christianity, but also completely replace it. The founder of this sect was a certain Manes. A Babylonian by origin, he was baptized in the Christian faith and even elevated to the degree of presbyter, but was soon expelled from it for his adherence to paganism. After this, he traveled a lot, and in Turkestan, confining himself in a cave, he pondered the system of his false teaching. The main features of Manichaeism are the following: 1) Two kingdoms exist independently: light and darkness. 2) For some time they have been fighting among themselves. 3) During this struggle, individual particles of light remained in the darkness, and from this mixture of light and darkness our world arose. 4) Light particles imprisoned in the world of matter constantly yearn for their release. 5) Christ and the Holy Spirit help liberate them and the world soul in general from the bonds of matter; the first lives in the sun and moon, the second in the ether surrounding the earth and other world bodies. 6) There are two souls in a person - good and evil, which are constantly at war with each other. 7) Vice and various kinds of villainy are therefore not a crime at all, but only a misfortune. Along with heresies, schisms appeared in the Church. This is the name given to falling away from church unity due to differences of opinion not on issues of doctrine (what are heresies), but on issues relating to rituals, worship and church administration. Of the schisms of the Ancient Church, the Novatian and Donatist schisms are especially well known. The Novatian schism arose from the hostile relationship of the presbyters (Novatus in Carthage and Novatius in Rome) to the power of their bishops (Cyprian and Cornelius) and focused on the issue of the fallen, that is, those who betrayed the faith during the persecution of Decius. Contrary to the constant practice of the Church and the decrees of local councils, the Novatians demanded that those who had fallen during persecution and, in general, those subjected to mortal sins, be accepted into the Church no other way than through repetition of baptism. The Donatist schism arose in Africa over the decree of the Carthaginian bishop Caecilius. Bishops from Numidia were not invited to his election, who declared this election invalid and, under the influence of one rich woman, Lucilla, elected another bishop to Carthage, named Majorinus. After the death of Majorinus, Donatus was elected by the same party, who was the main culprit of all this unrest and gave his name to the schismatic sect that arose from it. The Donatists reviled the Church, which was allegedly infected with heresies, and they alone arrogated the right to be called the true Church of Christ. Forcibly taking away churches from the Orthodox, they carefully washed them, scraped off a lot of them and burned them, as if they were some kind of uncleanness. In particular, heretics began to worry the Church at a time when external persecution against it ceased and the Christian faith was declared dominant in the Roman Empire. People who sometimes possessed quite significant learning, pharisaically pious, but with unshakable spiritual pride, as a result of some deceived hopes and offended pride, spread their false teachings among believers, found patrons and adherents in the powerful of the world, and sometimes disturbed the peace of the Church for a long time. But, according to the arrangement of God’s Providence, the evil that the heretics inflicted on the Church turned to its good. Regarding these false teachings, Ecumenical Councils were convened, at which the doctrine of the fundamental truths (dogmas) of the faith was clarified and defined, as far as possible; on the other hand, in the struggle against heretics, great saints and teachers rose and became famous, who in their creations revealed the truth of Orthodoxy and serve as the adornment and glory of the Church. You might be interested in: