The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets

by Eleazar Lord

[CHAPTER XXIII.]

Continuation of the subject of the foregoing Chapter—Reference to the Heresies, respecting the Creator, of the three first and ensuing centuries.

The heresy of the Gnostic philosophers, like that of the geologists of the present day, had to do with the question of a creator and creation as its starting theme. “They boasted,” says Mosheim, “of being able to restore mankind to the knowledge of the true and supreme Being, [i. e., the Deity, as superior to the evil being, regarded by them as creator,] which had been lost in the world, and foretold the approaching defeat of the evil principle, i. e., the Devil, to whom they attributed the creation of this globe.” Their Unitarianism, like that of later times, could tolerate the notion of divine creatures, a created creator; but they could not allow that such a world as this was or could have been created by the true Supreme Being.

“The Gnostic doctrine,” adds the author above quoted, “concerning the creation of the world by one or more inferior beings of an evil, or at least an imperfect nature, led that sect to deny the divine authority of the books of the Old Testament, whose accounts of the origin of things so palpably contradicted this idle fiction. Through a frantic aversion to those books, they lavished their encomiums upon the Serpent, the first author of sin, and held in veneration some of the most impious and profligate persons of whom mention is made in sacred history.”

Those boasters furnished a notable example for all pretenders to philosophy and rationalism in religion, who take reason for their guide, and deem it competent to determine what it is proper for the Supreme Being to do; who or what kind of being it is most proper should be the creator of such a world as this; at what time, in what manner, of what materials, and for what ends the world should be created; and whether the Mosaic record should be wholly rejected, or only so far as this subject, that of miracles, inspiration, the universality of the Deluge, the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and a few others, are concerned.

The controlling influence to which the heretics and theorists of the first centuries were manifestly subject, was that of their philosophy. Assuming that their philosophical dogmas were true and founded in the nature of things, they argued, as do our modern geologists, from their assumptions, that the Scriptures must be consistent with them; and since they were not taught in Scripture, nor consistent with the apparent import of the language of Scripture, they found it necessary to imagine an occult, allegorical, tropical, or spiritual meaning, couched under the forms of the natural language. Thus Origen held “that, under cover of the words, phrases, images, and narratives of the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit had concealed the internal reasons and grounds of things; that in the body of Holy Writ [so he denominates the proper sense of the words] there was a soul, Essenees, that of a double sense in Holy Scripture;” and to confirm his philosophical notions by the authority of the sacred oracles, by “bending the sense of Scripture to suit his purpose, eliminated from the Bible whatever was repugnant to his favorite opinions.” Ibid. 165.

“It is very certain that the Jews, and among them the Pharisees especially, and Essenees, before the birth of our Saviour, believed that in the language of the Bible, besides the sense which is obvious to the reader, there is another more remote and recondite, concealed under the words of Scripture.” Murdock’s Commentaries of Mosheim, II. 166.

Essene es account of the doctrines of Cerinthus, a Gnostic Jew, who, about the close of the first century, appeared as the leader of those who sought to merge Christianity in Judaism, indicates the confusion and uncertainty which then, probably to a great extent, perplexed the minds of the Jewish and Gentile proselytes to the Christian faith. “He taught that the Creator of this world, whom he considered also as the sovereign and lawgiver of the Jewish people, was a being endowed with the greatest virtues, and derived his birth from the Supreme God; [thus conceding that the Jehovah of the Old Testament was the same as the Christ;] that this being fell, by degrees, from his native virtue, and his primitive dignity; [referring, no doubt, to the withdrawment of the Messenger Jehovah, the Creator, with the visible Shekina, from the temple, and his apparent abandonment of the Jewish people, as they themselves considered;] that the Supreme God, in consequence of this, determined to destroy his empire, [meaning, probably, that as he no longer appeared as the protector of the Jews, but rather as their enemy, he was to be superseded,] and sent upon earth for this purpose one of the ever-happy and glorious æons, whose name was Christ; that this Christ chose for his habitation [alluding to the doctrine, then extensively prevalent, of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of one being into another] the person of Jesus, a man of the most illustrious sanctity and justice, the son of Joseph and Mary, and descending in the form of a dove, entered into him while he was receiving the baptism of John in the waters of Jordan; that Jesus, after his union with Christ, opposed himself with vigor to the God of the Jews, [i. e., He whom the Jews originally worshipped as their Creator and Lawgiver, the Angel Jehovah, now fallen,] and was, by his instigation, seized and crucified by the Hebrew chiefs; that when Jesus was taken captive, [i. e., by the instigation of Jehovah the Creator,] Christ ascended upon high, so that the man Jesus alone was subjected to the pains of an ignominious death. Cerinthus required of his followers that they should worship the Father of Christ, even the Supreme God, in conjunction with the Son; [i. e., the æon whom he calls Christ;] that they should abandon the Lawgiver of the Jews, whom he [from his knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, or of the Chaldee paraphrases] looked upon as the Creator of the world; that they should retain a part of the law given by Moses, but should, nevertheless, employ their principal attention and care to regulate their lives by the precepts of Christ,” [i. e., the glorious æon.] To encourage them to this, “he promised the resurrection of the body;” [i. e., though he denied the death, and therefore the resurrection of Christ, he held to that of man at the second coming;] and held “that Christ will one day return upon earth, and, renewing his former union with the man Jesus, [i. e., by then raising him from the dead,] will reign with his people in the land of Palestine during a thousand years.” Cent. I. part 2, chap. 5, sec. 16. There can be no mistake as to the source of what is correct in this creed, nor as to the state of mind in which its stupendous errors were conceived and propagated.

Marcion, Basilides, and others among the Gnostic leaders of the Asiatic and Egyptian sects in the second century, held, in respect to a creator and creation, sentiments very similar to those of Cerinthus. The Valentinians, a very numerous sect, were taught by Valentine their chief, as is recorded in Mosheim, “That the Creator of this world,” whom, in common with most of the heretics of that period, he took to be a creature, “came by degrees to imagine himself to be God alone, or, at least, to desire that mankind should consider him as such.” He therefore “sent forth prophets to the Jewish nation, to declare his claim to the honor that is due to the Supreme Being.” The Patripassians asserted the unity of God in such a manner as to exclude all distinction of Persons; and in this respect they were imitated by the Sabellians of the ensuing century.

The leading features of nearly all the heresies of the first three centuries, especially those which were widely diffused and long perpetuated, whether invented by minds imbued by the Oriental philosophy or with hereditary Jewish opinions and prejudices related to the Creator and the works of creation. The best of them were in that particular, for substance, like the heresy of Arius in the fourth century, who taught “that the Son was the first and noblest of these beings, whom God the Father had created out of nothing, and was the instrument by whose subordinate operation the universe was made.” The Council of Nice, convened in 325 to suppress this heresy, appears scarcely to have checked its progress; and during the protracted discussions and contests which ensued, and which agitated both the eastern and western divisions of the Church, there is probably no single instance of a simple scriptural statement respecting the Trinity, and the Person and work of the Mediator, except in the case of such as dissented and seceded from the Established Church, and were persecuted by all parties in that Church. The attention of those whom the Councils called orthodox, in distinction from heretics, was absorbed by attempts to explain the inexplicable questions in controversy. They sought in this way to answer and confound their opponents. The heretics nowhere in these controversies bring into view anything scriptural, anything better than Paganism, with respect to a Mediator; nor could they, consistently with the nature of the dogmas and opinions which they contended for.