compiled by Jason Guenther

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism

Docetism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


In Christianity, Docetism is the belief, regarded by most theologians as heretical, that Jesus did not have a physical body; rather, that his body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion.

This belief is most commonly attributed to the Gnostics, who believed that matter was evil, and hence that God would not take on a material body. This sort of statement, however, is rooted in the idea that a divine spark is imprisoned within the material body and that the material body is in itself an obstacle, deliberately created by an evil lesser god (the demiurge) for this purpose, that prevents man from seeing his divine origin. Humanity is, in essence, asleep.

Docetism could be further explained as the view that, because the human body is temporary and the spirit is eternal, the body of Jesus therefore must have been an illusion and his crucifixion as well. It could be compared to how a Buddhist speaks about illusion: illusion is everything that is temporary, not everything that is not real. Even so, saying that the human body is temporary has a tendency to undercut the importance of the belief in resurrection of the dead and the goodness of created matter, and is in opposition to this orthodox view.

Docetism was rejected by the ecumenical councils and mainstream Christianity, and largely died out during the first millennium A.D. Catharism, and other surviving gnostic movements, incorporated docetism into their beliefs, but the movement was destroyed by the genocide of the Albigensian Crusade.

Islam also teaches that Jesus's crucifixion was an illusion ("… They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to seem so to them..." (Qur'an, 4:157).

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm

Docetae


(Greek Doketai.)

A heretical sect dating back to Apostolic times. Their name is derived from dokesis, "appearance" or "semblance", because they taught that Christ only "appeared" or "seemed to be a man, to have been born, to have lived and suffered. Some denied the reality of Christ's human nature altogether, some only the reality of His human body or of His birth or death. The word Docetae which is best rendered by "Illusionists", first occurs in a letter of Serapion, Bishop of Antioch (190-203) to the Church at Rhossos, where troubles had arisen about the public reading of the apocryphal Gospel of Peter. Serapion at first unsuspectingly allowed but soon after forbade, this, saying that he had borrowed a copy from the sect who used it, "whom we call Docetae". He suspected a connection with Marcionism and found in this Gospel "some additions to the right teaching of the Saviour". A fragment of apocryphon was discovered in 1886 and contained three passages which savoured strongly of Illusionism. The name further occurs in Clement of Alexandria (d. 216), Strom., III, xiii, VII, xvii, where these sectaries are mentioned together with the Haematites as instances of heretics being named after their own special error. The heresy itself, however, is much older, as it is combated in the New Testament. Clement mentions a certain Julius Cassianus as ho tes dokeseos exarchon, "the founder of Illusionism". This name is known also to St. Jerome and Theodoret; and Cassianus is said to be a disciple of Valentinian, but nothing more is known of him. The idea of the unreality of Christ's human nature was held by the oldest Gnostic sects and can not therefore have originated with Cassianus. As Clement distinguished the Docetae from other Gnostic sects, he problably knew some sectaries the sum-total of whose errors consisted in this illusion theory; but Docetism, as far as at present known, as always an accompaniment of Gnosticism or later of Manichaeism. The Docetae described by Hippolytus (Philos., VIII, i-iv, X, xii) are likewise a Gnostic sect; these perhaps extended their illusion theory to all material substances.

Docetism is not properly a Christian heresy at all, as it did not arise in the Church from the misundertanding of a dogma by the faithful, but rather came from without. Gnostics starting from the principle of antagonism between matter and spirit, and making all salvation consist in becoming free from the bondage of matter and returning as pure spirit to the Supreme Spirit, could not possibly accept the sentence, "the Word was made flesh", in a literal sense. In order to borrow from Christianity the doctrine of a Saviour who was Son of the Good God, they were forced to modify the doctrine of the Incarnation. Their embarrassment with this dogma caused many vacinations and inconsistencies; some holding the indwelling of an Aeon in a body which was indeed real body or humanity at all; others denying the actual objective existence of any body or humanity at all; others allowing a "psychic", but not a "hylic" or really material body; others believing in a real, yet not human "sidereal" body; others again accepting the of the body but not the reality of the birth from a woman, or the reality of the passion and death on the cross. Christ only seemed to suffer, either because He ingeniously and miraculously substituted someone else to bear the pain, or because the occurence on Calvary was a visual deception. Simon Magus first spoke of a "putative passion of Christ and blasphemously asserted that it was really he, Simon himself, who underwent these apparent sufferings. "As the angels governed this world badly because each angel coveted the principality for himself he [Simon] came to improve matters, and was transfigured and rendered like unto the Virtues and Powers and Angels, so that he appeared amongst men as man though he was no man and was believed to have suffered in Judea though he had not suffered" (passum in Judea putatum cum non esset passus -- Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I, xxiii sqq.). The mention of the demiurgic angels stamps this passage as a piece of Gnosticism. Soon after a Syrian Gnostic of Antioch, Saturninus or Saturnilus (about 125) made Christ the chief of the Aeons, but tried to show that the Savior was unborn (agenneton) and without body (asomaton) and without form (aneideon) and only apparently (phantasia) seen as man (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., XXIV, ii).

Another Syrian Gnostic, Cerdo, who came to Rome under Pope Hyginus (137) and became the master of Marcion, taught that "Christ, the Son of the Highest God, appeared without birth from the Virgin, yea without any birth on earth as man". All this is natural enough, for matter not being the creation of the Highest God but of the Demiurge, Christ could have none of it. This is clearly brought out by Tertullian in his polemic against Marcion. According to this heresiarch (140) Christ, without passing through the womb of Mary and endowed with only a putative body, suddenly came from heaven to Capharnaum in the fifteenth year of Tiberius; and Tertullian remarks: "All these tricks about a putative corporeality Marcion has adopted lest the truth of Christ's birth should be argued from the reality of his human nature, and thus Christ should be vindicated as the work of the Creator [Demiurge] and be shown to have human flesh even as he had human birth" (Adv. Marc., III, xi). Tertullian further states that Marcion's chief disciple, Apelles, sightly modified his master's system, accepting indeed the truth of Christ's flesh, but strenously denying the truth of His birth. He contended that Christ had an astral body made of superior substance, and he compared the Incarnation to the appearance of the angel to Abraham. This, Tertullian sarcastically remarks, is getting from the frying pan into fire, de calcariâ in carbonariam. Valentinus the Egyptian attempted to accommodate his system still more closely to Christian doctrine by admitting not merely the reality of the Saviour's body but even a seeming birth, saying that the Saviour's body passed through Mary as through a channel (hos dia solenos) though he took nothing from her, but had a body from above. This approximation to orthodoxy, however, was only apparent, for Valentinus distinguished between Christ and Jesus. Christ and the Holy Ghost were emanations from the Aeons together proceeded Jesus the Saviour, who became united with the Messias of the Demiurge.

In the East, Marinus and the school of Bardesanes, though not Bardesanes himself, held similar views with regard to Christ's astral body and seeming birth. In the West, Ptolemy reduced Docetism to a minimum by saying that Christ was indeed a real man, but His substance was a compound of the pneumatic and the psychic (spiritual and ethereal). The pneumatic He received from Achamoth or Wisdom, the psychic from the Demiurge, His psychic nature enabled him to suffer and feel pain, though He possessed nothing grossly material. (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., I, xii, II, iv). As the Docetae objected to the reality of the birth, so from the first they particularly objected to the reality of the passion. Hence the clumsy attempts at substitution of another victim by Basilides and others. According to Basilides, Christ seemed to men to be a man and to have performed miracles. It was not, however, Christ, who suffered but Simon of Cyrenes who was constrained to carry the cross and was mistakenly crucified in Christ's stead. Simon having received Jesus' form, Jesus returned Simon's and thus stood by and laughed. Simon was crucified and Jesus returned to his father (Irenaeus, Adv. Char., 1, xxiv). According to some apocrypha it was Judas, not Simon the Cyrenean, who was thus substituted. Hippolytus describes a Gnostic sect who took the name of Docetae, though for what reason is not apparent, especially as their semblance theory was the least pronounced feature in their system. Their views were in close affinity to those of the Valentians. The primal Being is, so to speak, the seed of a fig-tree, small in size but infinite in power; from it proceed three Aeons, tree, leaves, fruit, which, multiplied with the perfect number ten, become thirty. These thirty Aeons together fructify one of themselves, from whom proceeds the Virgin-Saviour, a perfect representation of the Highest God. The Saviour's task is to hinder further transference of souls from body to body, which is the work of the Great Archon, the Creator of the world. The Saviour enters the world unnoticed, unknown, obscure. An angel announced the glad tidings to Mary. He was born and did all the things that are written of him in the Gospels. But in baptism he received the figure and seal of another body besides that born of the Virgin. The object of this was that when the Archon condemned his own peculiar figment of flesh to the death of the cross, the soul of Jesus--that soul which had been nourished in the body born of the Virgin--might strip off that body and nail it to the accursed tree. In the pneumatic body received at baptism Jesus could triumph over the Archon, whose evil intent he had eluded.

This heresy, which destroyed the very meaning and purpose of the Incarnation, was combated even by the Apostles. Possibly St. Paul's statement that in Christ dwelt the fullness of the Godhead corporaliter (Colossians 1:19, 2:9) has some reference to Docetic errors. Beyond doubt St. John (1 John 1:1-3, 4:1-3; 2 John 7) refers to this heresy; so at least it seemed to Dionysius of Alexandria (Eusebius, H. E., VII, xxv) and Tertullian (De carne Christi, xxiv). In sub-Apostolic times this sect was vigorously combated by St. Ignatius and Polycarp. The former made a warning against Docetists the burden of his letters; he speaks of them as "monsters in human shape" (therion anthropomorphon) and bids the faithful not only not to receive them but even to avoid meeting them. Pathetically he exclaims: If, as some godless men [atheoi], I mean unbelievers, say, He has suffered only in outward appearance, they themselves are nought but outward show. why am I in bonds? Why should I pray to fight with wild beasts? Then I die for nothing, then I would only be lying against the Lord" (Ad Trall. x; Eph., vii, xviii; Smyrn., i-vi). In St. Ignatius' day Docetism seems to have been closely connected with Judaism (cf. Magn viii, 1 x, 3; Phil, vi, viii). Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians re-echoes I John, iv 2- 4; to the same purpose. St. Justin nowhere expressly combats Docetic errors, but he mentions several Gnostics who were notorious for their Docetic aberrations, as Basilideans and Valentinians, and in his "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew" he strongly emphasizes the birth of Christ from the Virgin. Tertullian wrote a treatise "On the flesh of Christ" and attacked Docetic errors in his "Adversus Marcionem". Hippolytus in his "Philosophoumena" refutes Docetism in the different Gnostic errors which he enumerates and twice gives the Docetic system as above referred to.

The earlier Docetism seemed destined to die with the death of Gnosticism, when it received a long lease of life as parasitic error to another heresy, that of Manichaeism. Manichaean Gnostics started with a two-fold eternal principle, good (spirit) and evil (matter). In order to add Christian soteriology to Iranian dualism, they were forced, as the Gnostics were, to tamper with the truth of the Incarnation. Manichees distinguished between a Jesus patibilis and a Jesus impatibilis or Christ. The latter was the light as dwelling in, or symbolized by, or personified under, the name of the Sun; the former was the light as imprisoned in matter and darkness; of which light each human soul was a spark. Jesus patibilis was therefore but a sign of the speech, an abstraction of the Good, the pure light above. In the reign of Tiberius Christ appears in Judea, Son of the Eternal Light and also Son of Man; but in the latter expression "man" is a technical Manichaean term for the Logos or World-Soul; both anthropos and pneuma are emanations of the Deity. Though Christ is son of man He has only a seeming body, and only seemingly suffers, His passion being called mystical fiction of the cross. It is obvious that this doctrine borrowed from that of the Incarnation nothing but a few names. Scattered instances of Docetism are found as far West as Spain among the Priscillianists of the fourth and the fifth century. The Paulicians in Armenia and the Selicians in Constantinople fostered these errors. The Paulicians existed even in the tenth century, denying the reality of Christ's birth and appealing to Luke, vii, 20. God, according to them, sent an angel to undergo the passion. Hence they worshipped not the cross but the Gospel, Christ's word. Among the Slavs the Bogomilae renewed the ancient fancy that Jesus entered Mary's body by the right ear, and received from her but an apparent body. In the West a council of Orléans in 1022 condemned thirteen Catharist heretics for denying the reality of Christ's life and death. In modern theosophic and spiritist circles this early heresy is being renewed by ideas scarcely less fanstastic than the wildest vagaries of old.

http://www2.evansville.edu/ecoleweb/articles/docetism.html

"Docetism" is the name given a variety of christological tendencies whose unifying characteristics are subject to considerable scholarly debate. Ancient theologians argued against the position that Christ only seemed to suffer; this usage draws on the term's etymology (Greek dokein = "to seem") and is the most common referent of "docetism" in contemporary scholarly discussions. This was not, however, what the church's heresiologists specified as a salient characteristic of docetism. The heresiologists named as Docetists those who believed that Christ's divinity was irreconcilable with his actually having been physically born. Some ancient theologians may have called themselves Docetists, but they do not seem to have subscribed to any of the above doctrines. Finally, it should be noted that some contemporary theologians use "docetic" to describe christologies that lack sufficient historical grounding. The confusion of these (and other) usages impel Norbert Brox to describe "docetism" as "a problematic designation" (Brox 301).

Possible Early Signs of Docetism

The locus classicus of docetic christology in the early church appears in the Johannine literature's tendency to depict a Jesus who was in control of all the contingencies of his situation, who knew what was in people's hearts, who referred to his ignominious execution as a "glorification." Ernst Kaesemann puts the matter forcefully:

In what sense is he flesh, who walks on the water and through closed doors, who cannot be captured by his enemies, who at the well of Samaria is tired and desires a drink, yet has no need of drink and has food different from that which his disciples seek? He cannot be deceived by men, because he knows their innermost thoughts even before they speak. He debates with them from the vantage point of the infinite difference between heaven and earth. He has need neither of the witness of Moses nor of the Baptist. He dissociates himself from the Jews, as if they were not his own people, and he meets his mother as the one who is her Lord. He permits Lazarus to lie in the grave for four days in order that the miracle of his resurrection may be more impressive. And in the end the Johannine Christ goes victoriously to his death of his own accord (Kaesemann 9). 

Kaesemann's assessment of John's theology is subject to question--certainly many passages stress Jesus' actual carnality--but whether John is sponsoring incipient docetism or trying to oppose it, the Johannine literature (which is usually estimated to have come from the end of the first century) manifestly wrestles with the problem of incarnational theology. At the same time, there is no record of an early theologian assessing John or his opponents as "docetic."

The first witnesses to the use of dokein in what is ostensibly a context relevant to christological controversy are [G] Ignatius's letters to the Trallians [DOC] and Smyrnans [DOC] (c 110-115 CE). Ignatius mocks those who claim that Christ appeared to suffer (to dokein auton peponthenai; Tral. 10:1; Smy 2; cf. 4:2). The "godless unbelievers" against whom Ignatius polemicizes may well be docetists; his use of "to seem" suggests as much. All the same, there is no explicit evidence that "docetist" was a term in current circulation at Ignatius's time; lacking an explicit warrant for linking Ignatius' opponents to a party called Docetists, scholars ought to exercise caution in identifying the two.

Docetists and Presumed Docetists

The first use of "docetist" as an identification of a particular group occurs in Serapion's condemnation of the Gospel of Peter (c 190 CE). Eusebius reports that Serapion forbade use of the Gospel of Peter on the basis of its docetism. Serapion does not, however, specify what aspects of Peter might be docetic; he simply alerts the congregation at Rhossus that with the help of the successors of those who originated a particular heresy, whom we call Docetists, he was able to sort out the orthodox parts of Peter from fragments that the heretics had added (Eusebius, EH VI.xii). Jerry McCant has argued that none of the extant fragments of the Gospel of Peter bears a distinctly docetic stamp (but McCant's argument suffers from the lack of a sound definition of docetism as a criterion). [G] Clement of Alexandria also knew of a group known as Docetists without explaining what they believed; he simply observes that their name derives from their doctrine (early third century; Stromateis VII.xvii). Clement did opine that the founder of docetism was Julius Cassian, but this assessment seems to be grounded in Cassian's belief that birth is an evil (Strom. III.xvii). Clement associates Cassian with [G] Marcion and Valentinus on this basis; but historians of dogma usually do not regard the claim that birth is evil as distinctively docetic.

Somewhat earlier, [G] Irenaeus had attacked a variety of Gnostic teachings that are commonly identified with docetism in his Adversus Haereses (late second century). Michael Slusser cites seven passages in which Irenaeus opposes docetic-like heresies (Slusser 169; he omits mention of Cerinthus). The gnosticism of Simon Magus taught that Jesus had been an incarnation of Simon himself, and that though he had seemed to suffer, he had not in fact suffered (Adv. Haer. I.xxiii.2). Basilides evidently taught that the Nous took human form as Jesus in order to make the unborn, nameless Father known. Since the Nous was inhabiting Jesus, he--the Nous--could not actually suffer and die, but changed places with Simon of Cyrene, who was transfigured to resemble Jesus, and was crucified while the actual Jesus/Nous stood aside and laughed (Ad. Haer. II.xxiv.4). Cerinthus taught that the Christ descended on Jesus of Nazareth at his baptism and departed from him before his passion, so that although Jesus was physically born, suffered and died, the Christ remained spiritual and untouched by suffering (Adv. Haer. I.xxvi.1). Marcion and others likewise taught that the Word/Christ descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove, and ascended to the Pleroma before suffering; Valentinians, that the Christ apparently was born of Mary, but that he simply emerged from her "as water [passes] through a tube." However, Irenaeus emphasizes that none of these teachers believed that the Word became flesh (Adv. Haer. III.xi.3, xvi.1, xviii.3-6; cf. also III.xxii.1-2). Irenaeus implies that Marcion and others held that Jesus "was a man merely in appearance" (Adv. Haer. IV.xxxiii.2, 5, V.1.2).

Though these scattered references amount collectively to a clear sign that some of Irenaeus's opponents taught that Jesus' divinity was incompatible with full humanity, the most striking aspect of the whole array of allusions is that nowhere does Irenaeus refer to these false teachers as Docetists--although the term was available to Serapion and Clement only a few years later. Though Slusser suggests that Irenaeus condemns his opponents "as docetic" (169), a more precise formulation would stress that Irenaeus condemns his theological opponents without accusing them of docetism. Irenaeus' free use of designations for numerous theological parties makes his silence with respect to docetism all the more striking.

Most helpful is Hippolytus' Refutation of All Heresies (early third century), since [G] Hippolytus seems to know of a group who call themselves Docetists, and he provides a summary of their teachings. They subscribe to an ontology of three Aeons from one primal Pleroma. These Aeons together generated a Savior in the Virgin Mary; this offspring was equal to the Aeons, except that he was generated while they were not. The Docetists' Savior put on human flesh in order to redeem humanity; when he washed in the Jordan, he received a promise of a spiritual body along with the human body he received from Mary. Thus when the carnal body suffered and died, the Savior redeemed the flesh by means of the flesh, though he himself had stripped off his mortal body. This testimony from Hippolytus is all the more helpful since Hippolytus also knows of the Basilideans, Cerinthians, Marcionites, and so on--though he evidently does not consider them Docetists.

The result of all this doctrinal excavation is thus perplexing. The earliest sources indicate that some parties held that Jesus had only appeared to suffer; these are never explicitly styled "docetists." Later sources likewise know of an apparently-human christology, but also of a party called Docetists. The latter hold doctrines that are patently Gnostic in orientation, including their abhorrence of the idea that the Christ should suffer; but the "apparentness" of Christ's suffering is eclipsed by the complicated Gnostic cosmologies intertwined with the particular christological issue in question here. Moreover, there are numerous texts (such as the Acts of John) whose christologies are possibly docetic, though they do not claim that title and are not accused of docetism by ancient heresiologists.

The matter is all the more confusing when one considers contemporary scholars' inclination to accuse their adversaries of docetism. Few, if any, contemporary interpreters subscribe to the elaborate Gnostic version of Hippolytus' docetic opponents, nor do they advocate the surrogate-identity christology in which Jesus only seemed to have been born, or deftly avoided crucifixion by a last-minute change of identity. The contemporary critics are not complaining about a recrudescence of these anomalous beliefs, but are protesting against christologies constructed without an adequate basis in a historical reconstruction of Jesus' identity.

In the face of this array of docetisms, Michael Slusser suggests that "docetism" be defined in accordance with the broad historical use of that term; he approves of F. C. Baur's definition of docetism ("the human appearance of Christ is mere illusion and has no objective reality"), though he cautions that the word "appearance" should be construed as referring to Christ's whole earthly career, rather than to his countenance or the mode of his arrival (Slusser 172). Norbert Brox--concerned to differentiate ancient docetism from modern christological problems--suggests that the term "docetism" be reserved for cases where a doctrine deliberately distinguishes Jesus' manifestation from his essence: "Docetism lies at hand where a christology claims: Jesus was different from what he seemed to be" (Brox 309). Both of these definitions strain to accommodate the diverse data they address, but it is unlikely that any single definition of docetism will satisfy the many conflicting accounts of what constituted ancient docetism. Though Brox more self-consciously distinguishes ancient docetism from related modern phenomena, both he and Slusser propose definitions that would, if followed rigorously, provide helpful clarity to the discussion of this elusive topic.