Early Heresies in the Church

A heresy is a blatant denial of a truth by a person who has been baptized of the faith and Scriptures taught by the Church. Heresies are serious sins that make wounds in the unity of the Church by creating different teachings about the faith. These ideas contradict the teachings of the Church and are usually formed by individuals who have a misunderstanding of the teachings. Some of the early heresies in the Church included Gnosticism, Nestorianism, and Arianism. These heresies threatened to break the unity of the Church, but the Church was able to keep the One Mark of the Church by the guidance and teaching of the Holy Spirit.

Gnosticism means "knowledge" in Greek and this refers to the Gnostics' idea that they had a secret knowledge of God that only they could know.Gnostics primarily believed that there were two gods; one god was good and the other god was evil. This not only completely contradicts the teaching of the Church, but it also goes against monotheistic aspect of the Church. This was proven wrong by the Church teaching that there is only one and omnibenevolent God who can only create good. However, what he creates has free will and that is when evil can enter the world. For example, we as humans have free will and can choose to sin or not to sin; when we choose to sin, we go against God's will which makes evil enter the world.\

Nestorianism, was a heresy that was created by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius. Nestorius believed that Christ was to separate beings; one divine and the other one was human. He believed that all the miracles and other supernatural actions done by Christ was his divine self and that all of his suffering, including his death on the cross was his human self. This is false because it denies the fact that Mary was the Mother of God and gives no purpose for the resurrection. Christ is one divine person with two natures, human and divine. This is called the hypostatic union

Arianism was created by Arius who believed that Christ was a kind of demigod or super human. He believed Christ was chosen by God to save mankind but he thought that Christ was not God. This completely denied the existence of the Blessed trinity. These was settled by the Nicene Creed which proclaimed that Christ was the son of God and showed the belief in the Blessed trinity.