The same heresy, more fully developed, appears in the second century under the name of
Ebionism.- The opposite extreme is a false Gentile Christianity, which may be called the Paganizing
or Gnostic heresy. It is as radical and revolutionary as the other is contracted and reactionary. It
violently breaks away from the past, while the Judaizing heresies tenaciously and stubbornly cling
to it as permanently binding. It exaggerates the Pauline view of the distinction of Christianity from
Judaism, sunders Christianity from its historical basis, resolves the real humanity of the Saviour
into a Doketistic illusion, and perverts the freedom of the gospel into antinomian licentiousness.
The author, or first representative of this baptized heathenism, according to the uniform testimony
of Christian antiquity, is Simon Magus, who unquestionably adulterated Christianity with pagan
ideas and practices, and gave himself out, in pantheistic style, for an emanation of God.^864 Plain
traces of this error appear in the later epistles of Paul (to the Colossians, to Timothy, and to Titus),
the second epistle of Peter, the first two epistles of John, the epistle of Jude, and the messages of
the Apocalypse to the seven churches.
This heresy, in the second century, spread over the whole church, east and west, in the
various schools of Gnosticism. - As attempts had already been made, before Christ, by Philo, by the Therapeutae and the
Essenes, etc., to blend the Jewish religion with heathen philosophy, especially that of Pythagoras
and Plato, so now, under the Christian name, there appeared confused combinations of these opposite
systems, forming either a Paganizing Judaism, i.e., Gnostic Ebionism, or a Judaizing Paganismi.e.,
Ebionistic Gnosticism, according as the Jewish or the heathen element prevailed. This Syncretistic
heresy was the caricature of John’s theology, which truly reconciled Jewish and Gentile Christianity
in the highest conception of the person and work of Christ. The errors combated in the later books
of the New Testament are almost all more or less of this mixed sort, and it is often doubtful whether
they come from Judaism or from heathenism. They were usually shrouded in a shadowy mysticism
and surrounded by the halo of a self-made ascetic holiness, but sometimes degenerated into the
opposite extreme of antinomian licentiousness.
Whatever their differences, however, all these three fundamental heresies amount at last to
a more or less distinct denial of the central truth of the gospel—the incarnation of the Son of God
for the salvation of the world. They make Christ either a mere man, or a mere superhuman phantom;
they allow, at all events, no real and abiding union of the divine and human in the person of the
Redeemer. This is just what John gives as the mark of antichrist, which existed even in his day in
various forms.^865 It plainly undermines the foundation of the church. For if Christ be not God-man,
neither is he mediator between God and men; Christianity sinks back into heathenism or Judaism.
All turns at last on the answer to that fundamental question: "What think ye of Christ?" The true
solution of this question is the radical refutation of every error.
Notes.
"It has often been remarked that truths and error keep pace with each other. Error is
the shadow cast by truth, truth the bright side brought out by error. Such is the relation
between the heresies and the apostolical teaching of the first century. The Gospels indeed,
(^864) Acts 8:10: ἡ Δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ καλουμένη Μεγάλη.
(^865) 1 John 2:23; 4:1-3.
A.D. 1-100.