The enemy began attacking the Gospel almost immediately after Jesus’ ascension. His first assault was persecution (torture, death, imprisonment, social/financial ostracism).
Then the satan attacked using three major doctrinal errors aka heresies. Each one attacks a different part of Christ’s finished work. All of the heresies listed below represent human inability to accept divine mysteries.
- Judaizing
- Arianism
- Gnosticism
Judaizing: Adding Rules to Grace
Judaizing arose among early Jewish believers who struggled to accept how Gentiles could be made right with God without keeping the Law of Moses.
From a human perspective, their frustration is understandable. They had spent their lives observing dietary restrictions, holy days, circumcision, and countless other requirements. Then these Gentiles began entering God’s family through faith in Christ — without first becoming Jews.
Paul confronted this error head-on in Galatians. His message can be summarized in a simple equation:
Grace + Works = Works
The moment we add human performance as a condition for salvation, grace is no longer grace. Rules may shape conduct, but they cannot create spiritual life.
Tragically, this ancient heresy refuses to stay dead and buried. That doctrinal zombie keeps climbing out of its grave, shambling into churches, and looking for immature and biblically illiterate brains to eat. Tragically, it succeeds more than it fails.
Every Christian system that bases a believer’s standing with God on rule-keeping has swallowed some version of that same error.
Arianism: Denying Christ’s Deity
Here, Arianism refers neither to white supremacy (Aryanism) nor the major opposing philosophy to Calvinism (Arminianism). The term comes from a guy back in the 4th century named Arius.
Arius asserted that Jesus is a created being, rather than eternal God pre-existent with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This contradicts the essential Christian doctrine that Jesus was and is 100% human while simultaneously being 100% God.
Historic Christianity proclaims the opposite: Jesus is eternally God while also being fully human. The Council of Nicæa condemned Arius and Arianism in AD 325; the resulting Nicene Creed affirms the Church’s belief in Christ’s full deity.
Emperor Constantine (more on him later!) was baptized by an Arian bishop as an Arian disciple, so his claims of being a Christian convert lack credibility, especially in light of his persecution of those who espoused trinitarian theology, such as Athanasius.
The most pervasive modern-day expression of the Arian heresy is found in The Church of Latter-Day Saints aka Mormonism.
Gnosticism: Denying Christ’s Humanity
If Arianism attacks Christ’s deity, gnosticism tends to go after His humanity, though admittedly some gnostics deny His deity as well.
Gnostics regard physical matter as inherently evil. From that premise, some concluded Jesus was a divine emanation Who could not have possessed a genuinely human body. Others claimed Jesus was merely a human who attained enlightenment through esoteric knowledge (gnosis) and taught his disciples to do the same.
Rather than grace through faith in Christ, all gnostics believe gnosis is what enables the redemption of the human spirit. Their systems emphasize secret knowledge and enlightenment to know or gain access God. Most of their texts deal with enlightenment rather than sin and repentance. Almost all of the non-canonical “gospels” written in the 2nd century AD (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Apocryphon of John, etc.) as championed by the likes of Dan Brown and other fantasy authors of his ilk were philosophically gnostic and one of many reasons why they were rejected by the aforementioned First Council of Nicæa.
Gnosticism finds its modern-day religious expression in the mind-science cults and the New Age movement, but not in any denomination proclaiming itself to be Christian (at least that I am aware of as of this writing). Famous folks embracing gnosticism in varying degrees include psychiatrist Carl Jung, philosopher Albert Camus, and occultist Aleister Crowley as well as writers Allen Ginsberg, Herman Melville, Hermann Hesse, and Philip K. Dick.
In Summary
All three heresies share one strategy: diminish Jesus and redirect attention toward human achievement. Different packaging. Same poison. Every cult system ever invented proclaiming itself to be “Christian” incorporates one or more of these 3 basic heresies to some degree or another.
Thanks for reading!
Part 1: Fig Leaves or Grace? Part 3: Who is Supposed to Do the Ministry? Return to the Series Index
