Pre-chalcédoniennes Christologies

As of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, the first disciples are posed a whole range of questions, among which two prevail: is

which the mode of relation between Jesus and that which it names his Father of the Sky?
Comment God does it communicate with his creatures?

Various groups, sometimes very structured, try to bring answers to these questions.

" Judeo-Christians

The old Judéo-christianisme is a recent formulation indicating of the Christians of Jewish origin who recognized the messianity of Jesus, which recognized or not the divinity of Christ but all continue to observe the Torah| S. Mimouni, the judéo old Christianity, tests histories 1998

According to this definition, it should be admitted that the Judeo-Christians did not form a homogeneous group.

It is advisable to note initially that the group of the Apôtres, including by including Paul there, is made up exclusively of Juifs having recognized as a Jesus de Nazareth, after his death and its resurrection, the Messiah, the Saver, and even the " Wire of Dieu" , expressions which one frequently meets in the apostolic writings which were gathered under the term of New Testament. However, of living even of Jesus, the " grecs" , therefore goïm, were attracted by its personality. The small incipient Church thus started to incorporate these goïm, initially by making them become Juifs, then (following the " council of Jerusalem " ) by incorporating them directly by the baptism. These first " Judéo-Chrétiens" are called " nosrim" (nazaréens) or " minim " (heretics) by the Jews of the synagog.

The first group of Judeo-Christians is the Eglise of Jerusalem , directed initially by Jacques the Juste then by Siméon. Its christology does not differ from those of the other apostles.

Other Judéo-Chrétiens groups however existed, in various places, often gathered under the generic name d'" Hébreux" by the Greek or Latin authors posterior.

The Nazaréens , established in Palestine, were not distinguished from the " Pagano-Christians that by the rigorous observance of the " mitsvoth " Jewish. Probably near to the Church of Jerusalem, their christology was " orthodoxe".

The Ebionites (" Pauvres") were a group less homogeneous than Nazaréens. Established in Palestine, but also as far as Syria, all the communities did not have an identical christology. so some, like Nazaréens, recognized its messianity, its birth virginal and its divinity, others on the contrary did not admit that its " messianité". Like Nazaréens, they were rigorous observers of the rules of the Judaism.

It is advisable to also note the existence of the Elkasaïtes in Syria and Mésopotamie. Believing in the reincarnation, they admitted the messianity of Jesus.

See the article on the Judéo-nazaréisme

First Fathers

The gnostic ones

development

The elaborate answers are varied during the first 2 centuries. The difficulty of knowing these answers well is due to the fact that they are known only via those which condemned those which professed them, i.e the heresiologists of IIe century. An entry in these way of thinking was opened as from 1947, date of discovered papers of Nag Hammadi.

Among questionings and more interesting, whose evolution is perceptible as one moves away from the contemporaneity of Jesus, let us announce:

Ignace d' Antioche (35-107) insists on the reality of the terrestrial life of Jesus.
Justin of Nablus (Justin Martyr 105-135) resorts at the end Logos, borrowed from the Greek philosophy, which means the divine reason which penetrates and controls the world.
the Manicheism, considering that on the one hand God and the Good and on the other hand the World and the Evil are radically separated, cannot admit a Jesus who is at the same time God and man. Against this separation, Irenee of Lyon (120-140) affirms that God wants to share his life with the man and that thus the nature of the man opposite but is not voluntarily adapted to that of God and that all that is recapitulated as a Jesus, God and man.
Origène (185-254) tries to include/understand how the human nature is linked with divine nature as a Jesus. For him, Jesus cannot be really man without human heart; divine nature could not be linked directly with the body.
the Docétisme in IIe and IIIe century develops the idea that the humanity of Jesus is only one appearance. Its posterity will be found, later, in the thought of Eutychès (378-453) whose several churches monophysites
will be claimed the Adoptianisme: God adopts the Jesus man like Fils, only at the time of his baptism. This christology is pressed on a version of Luc 3,22, present in certain manuscripts, which quotes psalm 2,7: “You are my Son, me today, I generated you”, instead of “You are my beloved Son; in you I put all my affection”.

gnosis

Under the name of gnostic was joined together quite different doctrines, in fact, all the condemned doctrines. It is advisable however to distinguish:

a gnosis pre-Christian woman whose Philon of Alexandria and its therapeutists would be the principal representatives.
Of the Christians in the broad sense of the term, i.e. people who knew the Jewish tradition, which had heard of Jesus, and who, if they often interpreted its incarnation in a very personal way, believed more or less in its divinity like with the extraordinary character of its teaching. They lived in the hellénisée part of the Roman Empire of the East.

Initiated with the religious philosophy of the Greeks, i.e. with the néo- Platonisme, the Monothéisme of Ground Invictus or with that of the Masters of Plotin (like Ammonius Saccas), with the religions with Mystery S. the desire to safeguard at all costs the Transcendence, the purity, the kindness of God constitutes essence, the heart of their doctrines. The gnostic ones made broad loans with the religions with mysteries, especially in esoteric developments and the development of a design of knowledge.

some Masters

Valentine of Alexandria

Valentine was originating in Alexandria which, like Basilide, known as that the Passion of Christ had of another goal only to operate the discrimination of the things confused before.

The doctrines of Valentine are especially known to us by the quotations of the heresiologists, by fragments joined together under the title of Extracts of Théodote , like by some of the discovered texts with Nag Hammadi.

For better marking the transcendence of God, Valentiniens call it sometimes foreign God, sometimes remote God, sometimes unknown God (cf Paul with Athens). They place this God at the top of a divine universe called Plérôme, or place of Plenitude. This Plérôme is consisted éons or, celestial powers which maintain between them the very complex reports/ratios. Valentiniens profess a Dualisme transcendantal instead of a dualism Métaphysique or dualism of the principles as in the Manicheism.

The Dualisme of the first gnostic ones is more radical: the world for them is entire side of darkness; it was created by a power left the Plerome. If it did not create it itself, God at least allowed his creation.

The theory valentinienne of the hello rests very whole on the idea of Rédemption. Christ, element pneumatic (of the Spirit), incarnated herself. Because it has neither psychic heart, nor hylic heart and that it is of a perfect transparency and an essential condition of the gnosis, and safety. It wakes up the pneumatic element in the hearts with knowing the gnosis, at the same time release and knowledge; it is the true birth about which Paul had spoken. One will find some of these ideas, later, at certain Cathares currents.

Jesus was primarily for them that which reveals true God and not the Messiah announced by the Old Testament. Jesus had taken well the form of a Esclave, as it is known as in the extracts of Théodote, but this form was for him only one appearance. Jesus had not really suffered. He had not really died. Christ was celestial éon. (Cf theory of the emanation S)

“All the gnosticism is paradox, and it is what one should not forget to include/understand it. Above all, it is as paradox which should be included/understood the docetism, i.e. this negation of the humanity of the Christ, who initially appears to be with the Christianity so much of force and value. The docetism expresses obviously the will to deny the apparent one, the immediate one: not, he did not suffer; not, he was not man; not, he did not die. But it should be heard as follows: while suffering, he did not suffer; all the man who it was, he was God; while dying, he did not die. It is only as one can explain apparent contradictions of the gnostic ones. Marcion, for example, taught at the same time the docetism and that Christ had really suffered.” Simone Pétrement

Marcion of Sinope (85-160)

Marcion was a realistic spirit and by there, perhaps deeper than Valentine. It is only the large gnostic ones which had a durable influence, the only one which could have given to the Church an orientation different from that it took. characterize its doctrines:

" A major thought dominates the Christianity of Marcion and kept it away of any rationalist system, it is the thought which laws reigning daN S nature and in the history, that the acts of justice this ordinary are contrary with the acts of the divine mercy, and which the humble faith and the love of the heart are the opposite of the virtue orgueilleuse." A. v. Harnack, Marcion and Marcionitisme

Marcion judges the Old Testament very severely, that it even went until supporting that good God, the Father whom Christ had called upon, was not to be confused with YHWH. Its adversaries tried to make a fanatic of it; wire of a bishop of the Bridge, it was not very probable.

Its interpretation such as it is presented in the letter of Ptolémée to Flora , watch of a concern of the nuances regrettably absent from the texts of the heresiologists:

“Because if law has not be given by God perfect itself, as we already said, and certainly not either by devil (what it is not even allowed to say), the legislator must be a third which exists beside these two others. It is the demiurge and the creator of this entire world and all that it contains. Because it is, in its gasoline, different from both others and is held in the middle of them, one could call justifiably it the intermediary. If perfect God is good in his gasoline, as it is it indeed, (because our Saver said that there was one good God, his Father, that it revealed) and if the being who is by Adversaire nature bad and malicious, is characterized by the injustice, then that which is between perfect God and the devil, and which is neither good nor undoubtedly bad or unjust, could strictly speaking be called just, because he is also the referee of the justice which depends on him.” A. Harnack, Precise summary of the history of the dogmas, Paris, Fischbacher, 1893

Bardesane d' Edesse (154-222)

See: Bar-Daïssan, Nestorianisme, Monophysisme, Monothélitisme and Monoenergisme

See too

Christologie, Christologie of Paul
Gnosis

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