Heresy and the Scriptural Canon

Scripture

Heresy and the Scriptural Canon

by Presbytera Jeanne Constantinou

Heresy has played an important role in Orthodox history. Whatever threats various heretical movements have posed in the short term, the Holy Spirit has used them, again and again, to bring about the refinement of true Christian doctrine. Had Arius not preached in the 4th century that Christ wasn’t fully God, there would have been no reason to convene the Council of Nicea, and the Church’s fundamental teachings would not have been set down in the Nicene Creed. Saint Athanasius might never have written his brilliant tract On the Incarnation, which remains the best articulation of basic Christology. And if Nestorius hadn’t preached, a century later, that Mary should not be called the “Mother of God,” there would have been no Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, where her title “Theotokos” was affirmed as an accurate expression of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

But this trend has not been limited to the formation of doctrine. Within the first two centuries of Church history, two heretical movements also played a pivotal role in the selection of the Scriptural canon: Gnosticism and Marcionism. By tracing how this happened, we can better understand how the early Christians thought about Scripture and canonicity, and we can also catch a glimpse of how the Holy Spirit works through history—in all its messiness.

Gnosticism

Gnosticism may have been the single greatest threat to the early Church. It was a religious movement that combined elements of Greek philosophy, Christianity, and eastern “mystery” religions. The name “Gnosticism” comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means “knowledge.” Gnostics taught that Jesus was not really human: that is, he seemed to be human, but he didn’t actually have a physical body. Rather, Jesus was one of many “aeons,” or divine spirit beings, who had been produced by the highest divinity, called the “Unknown Father.” Together, the Unknown Father, his wife “Silence,” and the aeons formed the “fullness of divinity” (the Pleroma). The Unknown Father did not create the physical world, because matter was evil and the Pleroma was pure spirit. The creation of the world was a mistake, the action of an inferior divinity who was not part of the Pleroma.

Also, according to Gnostic teaching, human souls were actually divine, but humans were trapped inside their corrupt physical bodies. Gnostics believed Jesus was sent to earth to reveal the secret and heavenly knowledge which souls needed to return to the Unknown Father. When a person died, according to the Gnostics, his soul would be questioned on its path to the afterlife. If the person knew the answers, the soul could rise upward and return to the Unknown Father and the rest of the Pleroma. In this paradigm, salvation had nothing to do with the death and resurrection of Christ, living a moral Christian life, faith in Christ, and so on. Salvation was achieved only by acquiring this secret knowledge, something akin to knowing the “secret passwords” or other mysteries of a secret society.

Gnosticism was popular because it incorporated many beliefs and concepts from Greek philosophy which many people assumed were absolute truths. It also appealed to the vanity and elitism of the Gnostics, who believed they were better than ordinary Christians who did not know the “secrets” and therefore had no hope of salvation. But Gnostic teachings were not supported by the Christian tradition or the Gospels. The Apostolic writings, all of which dated back to the first century, describe Jesus teaching that forgiveness, love, mercy, faith, humility, and following Him to the Cross were necessary for salvation, not “secret knowledge.” The Jesus of the Gospels was fully human: he had a mother, he was born, grew up, and at times was tired, hungry, and thirsty. He suffered, bled, and died, and rose from the dead in the flesh.

Gnostics knew their doctrines could not be defended by citing the Apostolic writings, so what could they do to promote their ideas? They wrote their own gospels and falsely attributed them to Apostles to try to lend Gnostic teachings legitimacy. Gnostics wrote false gospels attributed to Thomas, Peter, and Judas as well as false Pauline Epistles and a false Book of Acts. The Gnostics claimed these writings had always existed and had only been “hidden” (apocrypha, in fact, means “hidden” in Greek). But the earliest of these phony gospels was composed in the mid-second century, long after the Apostles were dead, and most were composed in the third century and later.

Slavonic Gospel

(c. 14th century)

The fake Gnostic gospels never fooled the Church, which knew which writings were from the first century and which had only “suddenly” appeared. The Church also knew which writings were genuine by their content, since Gnostic gospels were drastically different from the true Apostolic writings. The fake gospels emphasized knowledge and secrets rather than purity of heart, faith, and other virtues. But Church leaders began to realize they would need to officially separate the genuine Apostolic scriptures from the counterfeits.

Marcion

The second factor to catalyze the creation of the Christian canon was the preaching of Marcion, a presbyter from Asia who began preaching around the year AD 150. He taught that the God of the Old Testament was not the same God whom Jesus preached. This was a problem, of course, because there is only one God, not two. Marcion also taught that Judaism was a failed religion and argued the Church should reject everything Jewish, including the Jewish Scriptures. Beside the fact that the Savior himself was Jewish, as were all the Apostles, Marcion’s idea posed a practical problem: the Jewish Scriptures were the only official Scriptures the Church had at the time! Marcion also disapproved of most of the Apostolic writings. He only accepted the epistles of Saint Paul and his own edited version of Luke’s Gospel, which left out the portions that did not suit him.

Gospel from Dečani Monastery

Serbia. (c. 14th century)

Marcion’s teachings shocked the Church. Most of the Apostles had been dead for over 100 years. All that remained was their teaching in the form of the oral tradition and the few writings which they had left behind. Now Marcion was rejecting those writings or deliberately corrupting them. How could he even think of doing such a thing? Possibly because in the mid-second century, only the Jewish Scriptures (what we call the “Old Testament”) were considered Scripture by the Christians. If Apostolic writings were not “Scripture,” why couldn’t they be altered? But ironically, Marcion’s threat to reject or alter Apostolic writings is what prompted Christians to change their perception of those very writings: Christians realized that the Gospels were not simply the “memoirs” of the Apostles, but “Scripture” inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Canonization

The selection of a specifically Christian canon would not begin until around 200 and the discussion would last for roughly two centuries before a consensus was reached. But the rise of Gnosticism and Marcion marked a turning point. For approximately 170 years, Christians had considered only the Jewish Bible to be “Scripture,” but in this period they began to think differently about Apostolic writings, to cherish them, seek to protect them, and to recognize those writings as also inspired by the Holy Spirit. Christian writers began to quote from the Apostolic books in the same manner that previously had been used only to cite the Jewish Scriptures. The terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” originated in this period, an indication that Christians had begun regarding the Apostolic writings as not only equal to Jewish Scriptures but as superseding them. Although the Church was challenged by these heretical movements, the Holy Spirit ultimately used them for the benefit of the Church and for the glory of God.

Dr. Jeannie Constantinou teaches Biblical Studies and Early Christianity as a teaching professor at the University of San Diego. She hosts the podcast Search the Scriptures and the call-in show Search the Scriptures LIVE! on Ancient Faith Radio. She is a parishioner at Saint Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church in San Diego, California. Her husband, Rev. Costas Constantinou, is a retired Greek Orthodox priest.