We are just about to wrap up our series on the heresies that threatened to compromise the witness of the early church. Today, we tackle two heresies in one episode. The first is Montanism. In the mid-100s, a guy named Montanus claimed that the Age of the Spirit had arrived, and new revelation was coming through him and his two female prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla. This new revelation was to stir up what had become a morally compromised and complacent church. This new revelation was not just to support or affirm the Scriptures. It was equivalent to Scripture! It was a wave that swept through the church, threatening to undermine the Gospel itself! Then, almost 200 years later, another movement sprang up. Donatus, a clergyman in North Africa, took offense to the reinstatement of priests and bishops who had buckled under intense persecution. He said they were contaminated, and all of their work was invalidated! This view split the ancient church in two and triggered our old friend Augustine, who spent the last years of his life fighting against it. Successfully, I might add. What do these two heretical movements have in common? Each one claimed to be the true church. The pure church. They were in, and everyone else was out. How did the early church fathers rally against these Christian renegades? That's what we're going to find out! Join us!

Have you ever heard phrases like this? You have everything you need already inside you. God helps those who help themselves. Your breakthrough is just one decision away. If you have, you have just heard America's favorite heresy. It's called Pelagianism, and it's everywhere! In the early 5th century, two men went to war over this question. Can humans save themselves, or do we need God's grace? One was a British monk who wanted Christians to stop making excuses and take holiness seriously. The other was a North African bishop who'd lived a wild life and knew from experience that willpower wasn't enough. Their names: Pelagius and Augustine. The church had to decide: Is salvation something we achieve, or something we receive? The church is still wrestling with that issue today!

We talked about Arianism, which said Jesus was purely a created being. We talked about Gnosticism, which said that everything material is corrupt, and Jesus was a divine created being sent to bring us special knowledge. Last time we talked about Marcionism, which said there were two Gods: the Old Testament God, who was evil, and the New Testament God, who was kind and merciful. Jesus was a created being sent from heaven to overthrow the evil God and introduce us to the good God! Today, we talk about Docetism! In this episode, we discover that there was a faction that abhorred the idea that Jesus could possess any human element at all! He just seemed or appeared to be human! They could not fathom or stomach the idea that Jesus had normal bodily functions, or that He could have been tempted by all the things humans are tempted by! The early Church jumped all over this, because it had huge theological implications, but not before it took off - for several centuries! Was Jesus an illusion? A mystical hologram? Most importantly, did Jesus fart? We answer all of these questions and much more!