Early Christian Divisions and Groups | Middle East And North Africa

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EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHISMS

Ecumenical Councils
There were three major schisms: 1) the one in the 5th century that split eastern Christendom in two; 2) the one the 11th century that divided the Latin church and the Byzantine church; and 3) the Reformation in the 16th century in which Protestantism arose and split from the Roman Catholic church.

The 5th century schism and the Reformation were similar in character. They were sudden and dramatic and split groups that had shared similar teachings and types of worship. The second was more complex and took longer to unfold.

According to the BBC: In the early centuries of Christianity “there were debates and controversies about the precise interpretation of the faith, as ideas were formulated and discussed. The Council of Chalcedon held in 451 was the last council held whilst the Roman Empire was intact. It gave rise to the Nicene Creed which Christians still say today to affirm their belief in God, Christ and his church. When Rome fell in 476, it meant that Western and Eastern Christians were no longer under the same political rule and differences in belief and practice arose between them. [Source: BBC, June 8, 2009 |::|]

“The differences between Eastern and Western Christianity culminated in what has been called the Great Schism, in 1054, when the patriarchs of the Eastern and Western division (of Constantinople and Rome respectively) were unable to resolve their differences. The split led to the Orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church. The Orthodox church does not recognise the authority of the Roman papacy and claims a Christian heritage in direct descent from the Christian church of Christ's believers.” |::|

Websites and Resources: Early Christianity: PBS Frontline, From Jesus to Christ, The First Christians pbs.org ; Elaine Pagels website elaine-pagels.com ; Sacred Texts website sacred-texts.com ; Guide to Early Church Documents iclnet.org; Early Christian Writing earlychristianwritings.com ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Christian Origins sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC on Christianity bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity ; Candida Moss at the Daily Beast Daily Beast; Christian Classics Ethereal Library www.ccel.org

"Christianities"

Holland Lee Hendrix told PBS: “Christianity, or one would rather say "Christianities," of the second and third centuries were a highly variegated phenomenon. We really can't imagine Christianity as a unified coherent religious movement. Certainly there were some religious organizations.... There were institutions developing in some Christian churches, but only in some. And this was not universal by any means. We know from, for example, the literature recovered at Nag Hammadi, that gnostic Christianity didn't have the kind of clear hierarchy that other forms of Christianity had developed. They still clung to a charismatic leadership model. And so there was a lot of variety in 2nd and 3rd century Christianity.... [Source: Holland Lee Hendrix, President of the Faculty Union Theological Seminary, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]

“There were very different views of Jesus in the various types of Christianity.... Perhaps the starkest contrast was among those who considered themselves as gnostic Christians, and those who considered themselves Christians in the old Pauline view of things. On the one hand, Paul, and Pauline Christianity, would have placed all of the emphasis on Jesus' death and resurrection, and the saving power of that death and resurrection. Gnostic Christianity, on the other hand, would have placed its prime emphasis on the message, the wisdom, the knowledge, the gnosis, that's where the word gnostic comes from, the Greek word for knowledge, the knowledge that Jesus transmits, and even the secret knowledge that Jesus transmits. So one would have on the one hand faith in the saving event of Jesus' life and death, and on the other hand knowledge as the great source of adherence to the Jesus movement on the other hand.

Drive Towards Unity in the Early Christian Church

Constantine was a major figure at the First Council in Nicaea

Professor Wayne A. Meeks told PBS: “The early Christians put a great emphasis upon unity amongst one another, and the odd thing is they seemed always to have been squabbling with one another over what kind of unity they were to have. The earliest documents we have are Paul's letters and what do we find there? He is, ever and again, having defend himself against some other Christians who have come in and said, "No, Paul didn't tell it right. We have now to tell you the real thing." So, it is clear from the very beginning of Christianity, that there are different ways of interpreting the fundamental message. There are different kinds of practice; there are arguments over how Jewish are we to be; how Greek are we to be; how do we adapt to the surrounding culture - what is the real meaning of the death of Jesus, how important is the death of Jesus? Maybe it's the sayings of Jesus that are really the important thing and not his death and not his resurrection. [Source: Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]

“Now, this runs very contrary to the view... which the mainstream Christianity has always quite understandably wanted to convey. That is, that at the beginning, everything was unity, everything was clear, everything was understandable and only gradually, under outside influences, heresies arose and conflict resulted, so that we must get back somehow to that Golden Age, when everything was okay. One of the most difficult things which has emerged from modern historical scholarship, is precisely that that Golden Age eludes us. The harder we work to try to arrive at that first place where Christianity, were all one and everything was clear, the more it... seems a will-o'- the-wisp. There never was this pure Christianity, different from everybody else and clear, in its contours....

Internal Schisms in the Early Christian Church

Professor Wayne A. Meeks told PBS: “The interesting thing about Christianity is that you have diversity from the beginning, and each of the diverse groups feel so keenly about their way of of seeing things that obviously, they'd like everybody else to agree with them.... There seems to be a sense, [among] all of the various parties that somehow, it ought to be one group; it ought to be one people. Obviously, they inherit this from Judaism, the notion that there is one people of God, ... and yet, they're not one, they're different on all kinds of of things. And the drive to obtain the truth and to manifest the truth is so strong that if one group cannot convince the others that their way is right, often times, it seems the only thing they can do is separate, to make sure that the truth is embodied somewhere. And so the very drive for unity produces schism, and... quite ironically, the very existence of all the different schisms is testimony to the sense that there ought to be unity. Source: Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]

“...The notion of Orthodoxy, which is only the flip-side of the notion of heresy, [developed in the second century]. So heresy which... simply means [in Greek], a choice, and is most commonly used to talk about a philosophical school, now takes on a negative connotation for the Christians. [It] first of all implies a schismatic group, a choice, which is different from the mainstream,... and then secondarily, [implies] people have wrong ideas, people who think wrongly about this or that, notably about the identity of Jesus Christ. The other side of that, of course, is our side, which has orthodoxy, that is, right thinking. The great controversies of the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries, which create what we will know as orthodoxy, and in the west, Catholicism, emerge from this very drive to create a a unified body of opinion.

“The early Christians did have turf wars over who had it right and you see this from the very beginning. The Apostle Paul and his opponents in Galatia, who say, "Wait a minute, Paul told you a very simplified gospel, it makes it easy for you to become a member of this new group, but we know, after all, that if you're really going to be a real Christian, first you have to be a real Jew and that means, you have to be circumcised and you have to keep certain regulations out of the Torah. So Paul has not got it right." Paul said, "No, you don't understand how radically new this thing is, which God is doing here." [And] again in Corinth, people come and say, "No no, you don't understand, Paul isn't really quite what he claims to be here and now we're here to put it right." So, from the very beginning, it seems Christianity has different ways of construing what it's all about, which will lead to divisions and lead to conflict.

“Who wins - in some sense, nobody wins, in the sense that the result of this is schisms and ultimately, some very nasty things in the history of the church, eventually the use of force and violence.... History is always written by the victors; if one wanted to be very cynical about it, one would say "All right, the people who finally managed the most power and the most persuasive abilities win out and they write the history, which defines everybody else as a heretic." and one would have to say there's a great deal of truth in that. [On] the other side of it... is that who wins, finally, is the side that embodies the widest support of people [for] their way of symbolizing Christian truth, and so there's there's a kind of strange democracy involved here. Obviously distorted by imperial power from the 4th century on but nevertheless, a strange kind of democracy involved... It is the usage of the local churches that eventually determines which books will be included in the New Testament, for example, and which will not be included, which point of view about Jesus has the widest support and therefore will also gain political power because there are people in various places that support that. It's a very complicated picture, obviously.”

Heresy and Multiple 'Christianities'

Gnostic symbol

Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at odds with established beliefs or customs, particularly in regards to religion. In the early days of Christianity those who departed from the essential beliefs and moral standards of the Christian communities were known as "heretics". The use of the word heresy by Christians was given wide currency by Irenaeus in his A.D. 2nd-century tract “Against Heresies”, which was used describe and discredit his opponents during the early centuries of the Christianity.

Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, a Lecturer in Roman History at King's College, London. wrote for the BBC: “The once entrenched idea that early Christian heresies emerged in opposition to some ancient, permanent orthodoxy, is utterly misleading. There were in fact many different competing 'Christianities' in the first few centuries AD. |“Different groups of Christians battled with the same basic problems of self-definition: what should one believe, and how should one live, to be a proper Christian? There were many different solutions to these big questions of doctrine and practice, and the early church forged a biblical canon, a creed, and doctrine, through conflict and compromise between different groups.[Source: Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Much early Christian doctrine was formulated precisely to combat ideas that were already well-developed, but were perceived to be theologically troubling. Thus groups which had no intention of deviating from the church, but had seen themselves as the true church, found themselves marginalised as heretics. “Looking at obscure Christian and non-Christian sects gives us a good idea of the diversity and character of religious beliefs within and adjacent to Christianity, and also helps us to understand why the Christian church developed in the way it did. |::|

Talcott Parsons wrote in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences: The Gnostic heresy was perhaps most formidable in the eastern area in the early centuries. Derived from Neoplatonism and certain elements stemming from Persian and Egyptian cults, without the correctives of Hebrew and Roman empiricism and realism, it would have deprived Christianity of its leverage over the secular world by denying the reality of nature in favor of a realm of idealistic symbolization. [Source: Talcott Parsons, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1960s, Encyclopedia.com]

The major initial crisis, however, was over the Arian heresy, which in a certain sense was the obverse of the Gnostic heresy. It would essentially have denied the divinity of Christ by making him in substance only “similar” to the Father and thereby have deprived the church of the primary source of its leverage over the world. The church would have been at best divinely legitimized rather than “inspired.” Without the Athanasian victory over Arianism it is hard to see how the church could have maintained its independence under the pressures of institutionalization as the state religion of the Roman Empire.

Manichaean and the Donatist Heresies

Talcott Parsons wrote in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences: The Manichaean and the Donatist heresies were particularly important in the developments from Augustine to the High Middle Ages. The Manichaeans, to whom Augustine at one time belonged, would have destroyed the integration of the divine and human spheres, which was so crucial to the mission of Christ and the church, in favor of a basic metaphysical dualism that saw human life as an unending struggle between the forces of light and darkness. [Source: Talcott Parsons, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1960s, Encyclopedia.com]

The Augustinian doctrine, on the contrary, saw the Christian task as not merely to defeat the forces of evil, but to organize and eventually include the lower and worldly elements in the higher. Although the secular world of his time was only negatively tolerated, Augustine affirmed the potential of Christianization for the “City of Man.”

Finally, the Donatist heresy, although it had presented a major challenge even at the time of Augustine, came to a head at the time of Pope Gregory VII (1020-1085) in the issue of the status of the clergy. It located the religious efficacy of priesthood not in the Holy Spirit as infused in the church but in the state of grace of the priest as an individual. Had it prevailed, it would have destroyed the fundamental collective character of the church, its capacity to serve as the agent of reorganization of secular life in the service of the religious ideal.

Ecumenical Councils

Seventh Ecumenical Counci

First Council of Nicaea In the early years of Christianity a great deal of debate, intellectual energy and soul searching went into resolving the questions of how God and Jesus could both be divine if God was one as Jesus himself said and the fact that Jesus must be both human and divine for him to take the place of human kind and die for their sins. The resolution of these questions shaped how Christianity evolved and defined itself.

Ecumenical Councils were called to settle theological issues. Constantine inaugurated the ecumenical movement. He called first general ecumenical council, in Nicaea in A.D. 325 to settle questions of doctrine, combat heresy and work out disputes between different sects. The six Ecumenical Councils that followed — Constantinople 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451, Constantinople 553, Toledo 598, Constantinople 680 and Nicaea 787 — further defined the doctrines of the church.

At the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 several sects were forced to split from the Christian church. At the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 it was declared that God alone could be worshiped and saints were given respect and veneration. At the council in 1054, the Catholic and Orthodox churches split.

Early Christian Sects

From its inception, Christianity has been divided by different practices and different interpretations of religious texts. In the early centuries, their were many Christian groups floating around and councils were held to define unified beliefs. Sects that failed to accept the agreed upon doctrines were kicked out of the mainstream church which became Catholicism. In one analogy used in a Time magazine, Christianity had previously been seen as oak tree with branches such as Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism at the top but now is seen more as a mangrove with branches at the top and numerous trunks with names like Gnosticsm, Ebionism and Marcionism. Scholars debate their significance: some simply dismiss them as “2nd century rubbish.” Other say they made important contributions to the devolvement of mainstream Christianity.

Many small early sects were regarded as heretical. These included the Montanists (a 2nd century movement founded by self-proclaimed prophet, Montanus, who said he received messages directly from God and these were more important than the teachings of Jesus); the Arianists (a 4th century movement that called Christ a semi-divine being); and the Monarchianists (a movement with strong beliefs about monotheism). There were also groups like the Sethians and Valentinians. The Carpocratioans were a sect that allegedly engaged in ritualized spouse swapping. Much of what we know about them comes from the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.

Armenian Church

Right Hand of St. Gregory
the Illuminator
In the early years of Christianity there was the Armenian Church, the Byzantine church and several smaller factions. Armenians call their church the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Armenians are said to be the first people to collectively adopt Christianity and Armenia is described as the first Christian kingdom. According to legend the first Christian Armenian church was founded by the saints Bartholomew and Thadaeus on the first century. The Armenian Church has been in Jerusalem since the A.D. forth century. It has been one of the oldest continuous presences in Jerusalem yet never wielded much political power.

The Armenian adopted Christianity, the story goes, after King Tiridates III was converted by the missionary Saint Gregory the Illuminator. According to legend, Saint Gregory was imprisoned by King Tiridates III, who was a pagan before his conversion. In A.D. 301 the king was turned into a pig by demons. After being asked by king's sister to help, Gregory cast out the demons. Thankful to be a human being again, Tiridates converted himself and the people in his kingdom to Christianity. Many Armenians think this is based on real event that took palce between A.D. 301 and 330

King Tiridates made Christianity the state religion and took measures to stamp out folk religion and Zoroastrianism. In the decades that followed the Bible was translated into the Armenian language and written down with Armenia script.

The Armenian church was originally subordinate to the Byzantines in Constantinople but it broke away at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 to follow the Monophysite doctrine. In A.D. 451 the Armenian church became a sanctioned church with its headquarters near present-day Yerevan.

Gnosticism

Gnostics were Christian mystics who emerged between around A.D. 100 in Egypt and christianized a pagan sun festival around A.D. 120-140. Influenced by Plato and other Greek philosophers, they viewed things in dualistic terms such as between the goodness of the spirit and the evil of the earth and between a real world and false world. Gnosticism may have originally been a Christian adaption of the Greek philosophy. “ Gnosis”is the Greek word for knowledge. Much of what we know about the Gnostics comes from the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.

Professor Elaine H. Pagels told PBS: “The term gnosticism is often used as a sort of umbrella term to cover the people that the leaders of the church don't like. It covers probably a huge variety of points of view. And yet there is a theme; the way I connect text that we think of as gnostic is the sense that the divine is to be discovered by some kind of interior search, and not simply by a savior who is outside of you. [Source: Elaine H. Pagels, The Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion Princeton University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]

Carl A. Volz wrote: “The name, derived from gnosis (knowledge) given to a complex religious movement which in its Christian form comes into clear prominence in the 2nd century. It is now generally held that Christian gnosticism had its origins in trends of thought already present in pagan religious circles. In Christianity, the movement appeared at first as a school (or schools) of thought within the Church; it soon established itself in all the principal centers of Christianity; and by the end of the 2nd century the gnostics had mostly become separate sects. In some of the later books of the NT (e.g. I John and Pastorals) forms of false teaching are denounced which appear to be similar to, though less developed than, the gnostic systems of teaching of 2nd C. [Source: Carl A. Volz, late professor of church history at Luther Seminary, web.archive.org, martin.luthersem.edu]

Coptic Orthodox Church

Coptic icon of Saint Paul the Hermit and Saint Anthony the Great

“The Coptic Orthodox Church is the main Christian Church in Egypt, where it has between 6 and 11 million members, and is one of the oldest churches outside the Holy Land. It is one of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, a group which includes the Ethiopian Church, the Syrian Jacobite Church, the Syrian Church of India, and the Armenian Church. The Oriental Orthodox Group has around 60 million members worldwide. [Source: BBC, June 25, 2009 |::|]

The Coptic Church developed separately from other churches. The Coptic Church's clerical hierarchy had evolved by the sixth century. A patriarch, referred to as the pope, heads the church. A synod or council of senior priests (people who have attained the status of bishops) is responsible for electing or removing popes. Members of the Coptic Church worldwide recognize the pope as their spiritual leader. The pope, traditionally based in Alexandria, also serves as the chief administrator of the church. The administrator's functionaries includes hundreds of priests serving urban and rural parishes, friars in monasteries, and nuns in convents. [Source: Helen Chapin Metz, ed. Egypt: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1990 *]

Joshua Hammer wrote in Smithsonian Magazine, “The Coptic branch of Christianity dates to the first century A.D. when, scholars say, St. Mark the Evangelist converted some Jews in Alexandria, the great Greco-Roman city on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Copts are an integral part of Egypt’s business, cultural and intellectual life. Yet they have long suffered from discrimination by the Muslim majority. Violent incidents have increased alarmingly during the wave of Islamic fanaticism that has swept the Middle East.” [Source: Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2011]

Nestorians, Assyrian Christians and Jacobites

The term “Nestorian” is used to describe both a religion and Syriac-speaking linguistic minority. The Nestorians were based primarily in what is now Iraq and southern Turkey. They had a great school in Edessa (present-day Urfa in south-central Turkey). Their early followers included Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Persians and Arabs. After they became Christianized they were called “East Syrians” to distinguish them from the “West Syrians” — Monophysites or the Jacobites.

Nestorian Christianity today is largely extinct but at one time it was quite a powerful Christian sect and was at the center of important doctrinal controversies. The Nestorians emphasized the duality of being between man and divine. They were regarded as heretics by other sects for their belief that there were two separate persons in the incarnate Christ and their denial that Christ was in one person both God and man. They went on to argue that Mary was either the mother of God (a blasphemous concept to many Christians) or the mother of the man Jesus; but she couldn't have it both ways.

Assyrian Christians belong to an independent Christian church and are the remnants of the Nestorian Christians (See Separate Article). Also referred to as Chaldeans, Nestorians and Surayi, they have traditionally spoken an Aramaic dialect and were originally based in villages in the mountains that divide Turkey, Iran and Iraq, primarily along the Great Zab River and in the Sapna Valley in northern Iraq and around Lake Urmia in Iran. They now live primarily in Iraq.

Assyrian Christians can be further divided into Assyrian Nestorians and Assyrian Jacobites. The distinction is based primarily on religious differences with the Nestorians generally associated with the eastern part of their homeland and the Jacobites the western part. The Assyrians have been referred to as Aramaean, Aramaye, Ashuri, Ashureen, Ashuraya, Ashuroyo, Aturaya, Jacobite, Kaldany, Kaldu, Kasdu, Malabar, Maronite, Maronaya, Nestorian, Nestornaye, Oromoye, Suraya, Syrian, Syriani, Suryoye, Suryoyo and Telkeffee.

Jacobites are followers of a branch of Christianity known as the Jacobite Church. There are about a half million Jacobites. They live mostly in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey, with a few living in settlements in Lebanon and Syria. About 200,000 live in Turkey, another 200,000 live in Iraq and Syria. There are also some in Damascus, Mosul. Diyabakir and Harput.

Winners and Losers in Early Christianity

Manicheans

Harry Sidebottom wrote in The Telegraph: So why did Christianity win, and why that specific brand? Scholars have long gone off the idea that Christianity fulfilled people’s emotional or spiritual needs as paganism did not, and its appeal to the poor and downtrodden didn’t turn it into a state religion. In truth, it might be down to a series of lucky historical accidents. [Source: Harry Sidebottom, The Telegraph, February 25, 2024]

Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe of Kings College wrote for the BBC: “As Christianity became more distant from its Jewish roots, different groups of Christians competed vigorously to establish their set of scriptures, their creed, and their practices, as those of the single, true, Christian church. |::| “It is a cliché that history is written by the winners, but in the case of early Christian history it is particularly true. [Source: Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

The 'losers' were commemorated by their contemporaries only as heretics and sinners. But the memory and even existence of some of these groups has endured. Gnosticism never disappeared, despite being anathematised by the church and banned by emperors. A version of it can be found among the Mandaeans of Iraq today. |::|

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Christian Origins sourcebooks.fordham.edu “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); King James Version of the Bible, gutenberg.org; New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org , Frontline, PBS, Wikipedia, BBC, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Live Science, Encyclopedia.com, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, Business Insider, AFP, Library of Congress, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024