"had appeared among men as man, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judea, though he did not suffer." According to the system of Saturninus (Iren. i. 24), the Saviour was without birth, without body, and without figure, and appeared a man in phantasm, not in truth. According to Basilides, as reported by Irenaeus (i. 24), Christ or Nous is not distinguished from Jesus, but is said to be an incorporeal power, who transfigured Himself as He willed; that He appeared on earth as man and worked miracles, but that He did not suffer; that it was Simon of Cyrene, who, being transfigured into the form of Jesus, was crucified, while Jesus Himself, in the form of Simon standing by, laughed at His persecutors, and then, incapable of being held by them, ascended up to Him Who had sent Him, invisible to them all. The Docetism here described is strenuously combated in the Ignatian Epistles in their Greek form, esp. in ad Trall. 9, 10, and ad Smyrn. 2. In these the writer emphasises the statements that our Lord was truly born, did eat and drink, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified, and truly rose from the dead; and he expressly declares that these statements were made in contradiction of the doctrine of certain unbelievers, or rather atheists, who asserted His sufferings to be but seeming. This polemic is absent from the Syriac Ignatius, and an argument has hence been derived against the genuineness of the Greek form. But in order to make the argument valid, there ought to be proof that the rise of Docetism was probably later than the age of Ignatius, whereas the probability seems to be quite the other way. Saturninus holds such a place in all heretical lists, that he must be referred to the very beginning of the 2nd cent., and, as he taught in Antioch, may very possibly have been encountered by Ignatius. Polycarp also (Ep. 7) uses the words of I. John iv. 3 in such a way as to shew that Docetism was in his time troublesome.
In the forms of Docetism thus far described there is no evidence that there was involved any more subtle theory than that the senses of the spectators of our Lord's earthly life were deceived. The Docetism of Valentinus was exhibited in a more artificial theory, which is fully set forth in our art. s.v. It appears that Valentinus was only partly docetic. He conceded to Jesus the possession of a real body capable of really affecting the senses, but held that that body was made of a different substance from ours and was peculiar as regards its sustenance by earthly nutriment (Letter to Agathopus, ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 7, 451). Irenaeus, however (v. 1, 2, and more fully iii. 22), insists that the Valentinian doctrine did not practically differ from pure Docetism; for that if our Lord had not taken substance of flesh in the womb of the Virgin He could not have been the real man Who suffered hunger and thirst and weariness, Who wept at the grave of Lazarus, Who sweat drops of blood, from Whose wounded side came forth blood and water.
The Docetism of Marcion differed from that of preceding Gnostics. With them the great stumbling-block had been the sufferings of Christ, and accordingly it is the reality of Christ's passion and death that their antagonists sought to establish. Marcion, on the contrary, was quite willing to acknowledge the proof of our Lord's love exhibited in His sufferings and death, but it was repulsive to him to own His human birth, which according to his view would have made our Lord the debtor and the subject of the Creator of the world. Accordingly, while Basilides had admitted a real birth of the man Jesus, Valentinus at least a seeming birth in which the body elsewhere prepared was ushered into the world, Marcion would own no birth at all, and began his gospel with the sudden announcement that in the 15th year of Tiberius Christ[1] came down (by which we are to understand came down from heaven) to Capernaum, a city of Galilee (Tert. adv. Marc. iv. 7). Marcion's disciple Apelles so far modified his master's doctrine that he was willing to own that Jesus had a solid body, but denied that there had been a birth in which He had assumed it (Tert. de C. C. 6); and he held that of this body our Lord made only a temporary use, and that when He had shewn it to His disciples after His resurrection He gave it back to the elements from which He had received it (Hipp. Ref. vii. 38, 260). Something of this kind seems to have been also the view of the sect known as Docetae.
The fourth book of the dialogue against the Marcionites (Origen, i. 853) contains a polemic against Docetism which is represented as defended by Marinus the disciple of Bardesanes, who adopts the Valentinian notion that our Lord had come διὰ Μαρίας, not ἐκ Μαρίας, and who maintains that His earthly body was only such as the angels had temporarily assumed who ate and drank with Abraham. One argument on the orthodox side is used by several Fathers, and the form of words in which each has expressed himself has been much discussed in modern controversy. It occurs here in the form "If Christ were without flesh and blood, of what sort of flesh and blood are the bread and wine, the images (εἰκόνας) with which He commanded that the memorial of Him should be made?" (cf. Ign. ad. Smyrn. 7; Iren. iv. 18, v. 2; Tert. adv. Marcion. iv. 40). Of later heretics, the most considerable who maintained a Docetic theory are the Manicheans. In the controversy with them the orthodox had exactly the same points to establish as in the controversy with Marcion, viz. that Christ had come into the world, not merely as sent by the Father, but as really born of the Virgin; that He was truly incarnate, and did not assume the form of a body merely as did the angels whose appearances have been recorded; that He was circumcised, baptized, tempted; that His death was a real one, as was necessary in order that His resurrection also should be real (see in particular the disputation between Augustine and Faustus). With regard to the disputes in the 6th cent. concerning our Lord's body, see Julianus (47) of Halicarnassus, and D. C. B. (4-vol. ed.) under Corrupticolae and Phantasiastae. It is well known that Mahommed
- ↑ There is a well-recommended various reading, "Deum" instead of "eum"; but Epiphanius (Haer. 42, p. 312) would scarcely have passed this over in silence had he found it in his Marcion.
