Heresy of the Week: Bardaisanitism

Sorry for the delay this week--the life of motherhood...

This week's heresy is considered to be a basis for two of the most well-known Gnostic sects--Valentinianism and Manichaeism.

Bardaisanitism (also known as Bardesanitism) is a 2nd and 3rd century Gnosticism heresy. They believed that the good God gave man absolute free will to work out his own Salvation through gnosis, and who allowed the world to be good and evil, light and dark. Even inanimate objects were considered to have a measure of liberty or freedom. Ultimately for salvation, light must overcome dark in whatever man or object. They believe that in 6,000 years from when they lived, the world would end and be replaced by a world without evil. They believed the sun, moon, planets and starts were also living beings. Astrology and the Zodiac were of importance to them. They believe that the Holy Ghost is feminine. They also denied that Christ had a body (Monophysitism), and held a Docetist view that Christ was not born of a woman. Bardaisanitism was considered influential over Valentinianism and then Manichaeism. They were considered to be obscene and overtly sexual.

Heresy of the Week: Docetism

This week's heresy takes parts from Adoptionism and Gnosticism.  I suppose they get props for creativity.

Docetism is a heresy of the Monophysitism family that purports Jesus only seemed to be human, but that His human body was only a phantasm—that His body was either absent or illusory. Docetists deny Jesus’ humanity, and were condemned as heretical at the 451 Council of Chalcedon. There are essentially two kinds of Docetists: one believes that Christ was so divine, He could not have had a body since God lacks a material body, and therefore He cannot have physically suffered; the other says that Jesus was a man, but Christ a separate entity who entered Jesus at the Baptism and left Him upon His death on the cross (quasi-Adoptionism). The dualistic, and therefore Gnosticism, side of Docetism was that matter is evil and God would not stoop to be clothed in something evil (more in line with the first kind of Docetism), and that God, being perfect and infinite, could not suffer and therefore, even if He had a human body, He could not have been made to suffer and die for our sins (more in line with the second kind of Docetism).