This post contains links to articles and brief extracts at BartEhrman.com. See the list of 22 heresies here that contains sources and dates..
Christian History – Category at BartEhrman.com
Pelagianism: History, Definition, & Beliefs (Heresy Series)
Also see the page at this site with a summary of Marina’s great article.
Pelagianism: History, Definition, & Beliefs (Heresy Series) Written by Marko Marina, Ph.D. Author | …
The term Pelagianism (definition: the belief that human beings can choose good without the necessity of divine grace) takes its name from Pelagius, a real historical figure. He was a British monk, theologian, and moral teacher active in the late 4th and early 5th centuries.
Timeline – Born second half of the 4th century and died after the Council of 431 CE.
Nestorianism: History, Definition, & Beliefs (Heresy Series)
Nestorianism: History, Definition, & Beliefs (Heresy Series) Written by Joshua Schachterle, Ph.D Author | …
While Nestorius agreed that Christ was both God and human, he interpreted this as meaning that there were essentially two persons—one divine, the other human—within the one body of Jesus. Vehement opposition to this idea would lead to his and his doctrine’s condemnation,…
Timeline – Born ca. 386 CE in Roman Syria and died after 451 CE.
Also see the page at this site with a summary of this great article.
Docetism: Definition, History, & Beliefs (Heresy Series)
Docetism: Definition, History, & Beliefs (Heresy Series) Written by Joshua Schachterle, Ph.D Author …
Among the earliest theological controversies in the emerging Christian faith was Docetism—a belief that questioned the very humanity of Jesus Christ. Docetism wasn’t just a theological curiosity—it was part of a broader struggle in the early Church to define who Jesus was and how divine truth interacted with flesh and blood.
The Council of Nicaea officially rejected Docetism by affirming in the Nicene Creed that Jesus “became man,” was crucified, “suffered, and was buried.” While Docetism persisted for centuries, it eventually disappeared by the end of the first millennium.
Also see the page at this site with a summary of this great article.
Timeline – 1 John and 2 John, written in the late 1st century (???) oppose Docetism, and it did not disappear until the end of the first millennium.
Arianism: What is the Arian Heresy in Christianity?
Arianism: What is the Arian Heresy in Christianity? Written by Marko Marina, Ph.D. Author …
See the AI summary on this site here. Extracts are below.
Into this long and complex history entered a modest priest from Alexandria named Arius, whose teaching would ignite one of the fiercest controversies the Christian world had ever seen. His attempt to make sense of Jesus’ relationship to God (to define how the Son could be divine without compromising the Father’s supremacy) set off decades of theological and political turmoil that would culminate in the Council of Nicaea — commonly misspelled “Nicea.”
His slogan, as later remembered by his opponents, was said to be “there was a time when the Son was not.” In this account, Arius demoted Jesus to a subordinate, semi-divine status, greater than the rest of creation but less than God. The controversy that erupted around him was presented as the Church’s first great internal crisis, forcing bishops across the empire to define the doctrine of the Trinity.
Recent scholarship has moved decisively away from this simplified portrait. As Marilyn Dunn and others have argued, the traditional picture of Arius owes more to Athanasius’ rhetorical construction than to Arius’ own writings or intentions.
The historical Arius, Dunn reminds us, wasn’t an innovator seeking to downgrade Jesus but a conservative priest attempting to defend what he saw as the integrity of Christian monotheism.
His surviving letters show a man deeply concerned about language that blurred the distinction between Father and Son, fearing that such formulations came dangerously close to the emanationist theologies of Valentinian Gnosticism and the dualistic cosmology of Manichaeism, two popular and competing movements in his day.
Arius’ opposition to the term homoousios (“of the same substance”) stemmed from his desire to avoid any notion that the Son was a physical extension or portion of the Father’s being, an idea that, to him, echoed precisely those heresies the Church had long sought to reject.
Died in 373 CE.
