welcome back today we're discussing the heresy of docitism which is considered to be one of the earliest heresies to occur in the church and even the New Testament docitism was a belief that started in the late first century A.D if not early second century docitism is tied to gnosticism so there is no specific place in which disbelief spread from is sort of formed from multiple locations over time based on this as well there is no one leader to this belief like many other heresies certain groups seem to have adopted this belief in such places such as North Africa or Egypt and even Israel had its fair share of gnostic docetus foreign stems from gnosticism these groups believe that salvation came from achieving a greater sense of gnosis or an English knowledge much of gnosticism itself comes from platonic philosophy which held that things such as matter and the material world are evil and they can hold your spirit back from achieving great knowledge based on this dosages held a low view of the material world as they saw as evil therefore they rejected the idea that Jesus actually came in the flesh and was human they believed he simply looked human in appearance only similar to a ghost or a spirit-like creature this is where they get their name from as the Greek word for docitism is dokin which means to seem or to appear therefore situations in the gospels where Jesus was crucified and suffered were in appearance only they believed he did not actually suffer or even die the earliest potential account we have of docitism comes from the New Testament in the late first century A.D many scholars believed that in first John chapter 4 verse 1 to 3 the author is attacking the belief of docitism and that Christ did not come in the flesh John says this beloved do not believe every Spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God for many false prophets have gone out into the World by this you know the spirit of God every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God whether you believe the author of this text to be the Apostle John or not is not the point the point is to show that docitism was a belief attacked very early on in the church Ignatius of Antioch row around 107 A.D in accordance with tradition Ignatius was a disciple of the Apostle John by 107 a.docetism had grown some popularity so Ignatius writes against their beliefs when he says stop your ears therefore when anyone speaks to you at any variance with Jesus Christ who was descended from David and was also of Mary who was truly born in a in drank he was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate he was truly crucified and truly died in sight of beings in heaven and on Earth and under the Earth he was also truly raised from the dead notice ignatius's usage of truly in this verse he does this as many dosages would twist the wordings of scripture to make their points Ignatius as well talks about how they reject many Christian practices when he says they abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they confess not the Eucharist to be the Flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins in which the father of his goodness raised up again Justin Martyr who wrote some of the first apologetical works in the 140s A.D says this about the docetus beliefs that the father wished his son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes and they may not say that he being the Son of God did not feel what was happening to him and Afflicted on him what's interesting about these quotations is it shows us the major Church fathers in the first and second centuries attacked docitism as they truly saw it as a perversion of the Christian beliefs there were a couple attacks written by these dosages the most notable is that of the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Judas which were composed in around the late 2nd Century A.D which is about a hundred years after the original gospels were written both go into great detail about the idea of matter and the world being evil as well as in the gospel of Peter the idea that Jesus never even died on the cross or suffered is presented the gospel of Peter has also much to say in terms of anti-Semitism as they blame the Jews for Jesus's death as if almost to say the Romans were innocent in this case along with the majority of Gnostic beliefs by the 5th and 6th Century a.docetism eventually died out at the council in Isaiah all Gnostic Christian beliefs were rejected as they didn't believe they aligned with scripture from 325 A.D and on the Catholic Orthodox Church became more uniform in terms of beliefs and docitism was finally rejected and eventually deemed a complete heresy thank you for watching if you enjoyed the video please like And subscribe and if you want to see similar heresy-based videos let me know in the comments below as always God bless