Compendium of Heretical Fables

Contents

Whole work staged (Books 1-5, 90 sections, about 40,000 words of the Greek; the OCR loses some lines and the chi/kappa confusion is frequent).

Reading pages: 0.1–1.6 · 1.7–1.25 · 1.26–3.6 · 4.1–4.12 · 4.13–5.2 · 5.3–5.7 · 5.8–5.10 · 5.11–5.17 · 5.18–5.22 · 5.23–5.27 · 5.28–5.29

1. 0.1Theodoret opens Book 1: as soon as the apostles began sowing the gospel, the devil sowed heresies among them under the Christian name.
2. 0.2Theodoret recalls that heresies began in the apostles' lifetime, as Paul's Letters to Timothy show, and that God turned most of their followers into wheat, while a few remnants of Valentinians, Marcionites and Manichees remain.
3. 0.3Theodoret introduces Book 3: Christ foretold false teachers, who are known by their fruits, and their teachings have withered while the church stands on the rock.
4. 0.4Theodoret introduces Book 4: the devil, seeing the earlier heresies rejected, devised new ones about the incarnation.
5. 0.5Theodoret introduces Book 5, his summary of true doctrine, as the contrast of light with darkness and of God's teaching with the devil's.
6. 1.1Theodoret tells of Simon Magus, his clash with Peter in Samaria and Rome, and his doctrine of the infinite power, Helen as First Thought, angels as world-makers, and salvation by grace without works.
7. 1.2Theodoret describes Menander, Simon's successor, who called himself Savior; the text then lists the writers who refuted these heretics and introduces Satornilus and Basilides.
8. 1.3Satornilus taught an unknown Father, seven world-making angels, a Christ who only seemed to appear, two natural kinds of people, and that marriage is of the devil.
9. 1.4Basilides taught a chain of emanations, 365 heavens, world-making angels, a Christ who did not suffer while Simon of Cyrene was crucified in his place, and the secret names Kaulakau and Abrasax.
10. 1.5Carpocrates taught that Jesus was an ordinary man of pure soul and that souls transmigrate in order to commit every sin; Theodoret quotes Irenaeus against him.
11. 1.6Prodicus taught that women are common and made promiscuity a mystic rite; Theodoret quotes Clement of Alexandria's denunciation.
12. 1.7Theodoret summarizes the Valentinian myth of the thirty Aeons, Wisdom's fall and Achamoth, the origin of the world from her passions, the Valentinian Savior, and salvation by knowledge alone.
13. 1.8Secundus, a successor of Valentinus, split the Ogdoad into right and left and added Light and Darkness.
14. 1.9Marcus the magician likened the Aeons to the letters of the alphabet and used a baptismal formula naming the unknown Father, Truth, and the one who descended on Jesus.
15. 1.10The Askodrupitai rejected visible sacraments, teaching that redemption is knowledge alone, and so did not baptize.
16. 1.11The Archontics wrote revelation books of seven heavens ruled by archons, rejected the sacraments as belonging to Sabaoth, and anointed the dead to pass the powers unseen.
17. 1.12The Colorbasians gave varying accounts of the origin of the Savior from the Aeons.
18. 1.13The Barbeliotes or Borborians taught a chain of emanations from Barbeloth, a world made by a First Ruler born of Wisdom, and practiced rites too shameful for Theodoret to describe.
19. 1.14The Sethians or Ophites taught a God called Man, a fallen Wisdom, seven heavenly sons, a boastful serpent-shaped ruler, a Christ distinct from Jesus, and worshiped a serpent at their eucharist.
20. 1.15The Cainites honored Cain, Esau, Korah, the Sodomites and Judas, used a Gospel of Judas, and dedicated their sins to angels.
21. 1.16The Antitactae held that a creature of the good God sowed evil and its laws, and so broke the commandments, adultery included, on principle.
22. 1.17The Peratae taught a threefold world and a threefold Christ who came down to restore to heaven what had come from it, while this world perishes.
23. 1.18Monoimus the Arab based his heresy on arithmetic; the rest of the chapter is lost.
24. 1.19Hermogenes taught that God made the world from eternal matter and that Christ's body was laid up in the sun; Theophilus and Origen wrote against him.
25. 1.20Tatian, Justin's disciple, founded the Encratites, who rejected marriage, meat and wine, and composed the Diatessaron, which Theodoret removed from the churches of his diocese.
26. 1.21Severus continued Tatian's teaching; his Encratites rejected Paul's letters and Acts.
27. 1.22Bardesanes of Edessa, influenced by Valentinus, wrote in Syriac against fate and against Marcion; his son Harmonius followed him, and Ephrem refuted both.
28. 1.23Florinus and Blastus fell into heresy and Irenaeus wrote against them; Theodoret begins to sum up the heresies from Simon onward.
29. 1.24Theodoret sets out the two-gods teaching of Cerdo and Marcion, their rejection of the Old Testament and of Christ's real humanity, Marcion's mutilated Luke, and a Marcionite who would not wash in the Creator's water.
30. 1.25Theodoret lists Apelles and other Marcionite teachers and the writers who refuted Marcion.
31. 1.26Theodoret outlines Mani's life and dualist myth of Light and Matter, the Manichaean cosmology, ethics and docetic Christ, and names the writers who refuted him.
32. 2.1Theodoret describes two groups of Ebionites, Law-keeping Christians who used a single Gospel and rejected Paul, one denying and one confessing the virgin birth.
33. 2.2The Nazoraeans honored Christ as a righteous man and used the Gospel of Peter.
34. 2.3Cerinthus taught a world made by lesser powers, a human Jesus on whom Christ descended and from whom he withdrew before the passion, and a sensual thousand-year earthly kingdom; John fled the bath where he was.
35. 2.4Artemon taught that Christ was a mere man born of a virgin and claimed that the apostles had taught the same.
36. 2.5Theodotus the cobbler taught Artemon's doctrine; Theodoret retells from an anonymous treatise the story of the confessor Natalius, scourged by angels until he repented, and how the sect tampered with the Scriptures.
37. 2.6The Melchizedekians held Melchizedek to be a great divine power after whose image Christ came to be.
38. 2.7The Elkesaites taught a Christ who passes from body to body, practiced astrology and magic, rejected Paul, and promised forgiveness through a book fallen from heaven.
39. 2.8Theodoret tells how Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, taught that Christ was a mere man, was examined by synods at Antioch, exposed by the presbyter Malchion, deposed, and expelled by Aurelian.
40. 2.9Sabellius taught that Father, Son and Spirit are one person with three names, acting as Father in the law, as Son in the incarnation, and as Spirit with the apostles.
41. 2.10Marcellus of Ancyra taught that the Word is an extension of the Father's Godhead that will be drawn back into God after the dispensation, and the Spirit a further extension.
42. 2.11Photinus repeated Sabellius in other words; Theodoret notes Diodore's refutation and rejoices that these heresies have vanished while the gospel fills the earth.
43. 3.1Following Clement, Theodoret tells how a misunderstood act of the deacon Nicolaus gave rise to the Nicolaitans' wife-sharing, though Nicolaus himself lived chastely.
44. 3.2Montanus called himself the Paraclete, honored the prophecies of Priscilla and Maximilla above the Gospel, dissolved marriages and imposed new fasts; Theodoret names his refuters.
45. 3.3Noetus, following Epigonus and Cleomenes, taught that the one God and Father was born of the Virgin and suffered on the cross, being called Son or Father as need required.
46. 3.4The Quartodecimans kept Pascha on the fourteenth day of the moon on whatever weekday it fell, used apocryphal Acts, and like the Novatianists rejected repentance for the lapsed.
47. 3.5Novatus, a Roman presbyter, refused repentance to those who lapsed in persecution, was expelled under Cornelius, extorted episcopal ordination, and founded the Cathari, who later also excluded the twice-married and omitted the chrism.
48. 3.6Nepos taught an earthly millennium; Theodoret notes that these middle heresies have nearly vanished while the church fills the earth as Isaiah and the Psalms foretold.
49. 4.1Theodoret describes Arius's envy of Alexander, his doctrine that the Son is a changeable creature and that Christ had no human soul, his altered doxology, his condemnation at Nicaea and his sudden death at Constantinople.
50. 4.2Eudoxius of Germanicia avoided the council, went to Constantinople and seized its see.
51. 4.3Theodoret tells how Eunomius, sheltered by Eudoxius, was exposed at Cyzicus and deposed, then founded the Eunomians, who called the Son a creature, claimed to know God's essence as God does, and replaced triple-immersion baptism with single and partial forms.
52. 4.4Theodoret lists Arian splinter groups: the Psathyrians, who equated creating and begetting, the Kyrtians or Pithecians, and the Doulians, who called the Son the Father's slave.
53. 4.5Macedonius, intruded into the see of Constantinople in place of Paul, taught that the Son is of like substance with the Father and blasphemed the Holy Spirit; his followers were called Pneumatomachi.
54. 4.6Theodoret describes the Donatists who sought violent death as martyrdom, with the story of a young man who tricked them, and then the Meletian schism in Egypt and its odd practices.
55. 4.7The Meletians sang hymns with clapping, dancing and bells, and Athanasius opposed them.
56. 4.8Apollinaris sometimes taught degrees within the Trinity and held that the Word took a body and an irrational soul but no human mind, the Godhead taking the mind's place.
57. 4.9Followers of Apollinaris split: Polemon taught a fusion of Godhead and body, others a body from heaven.
58. 4.10Audaeus gave God human form; his followers left the church over the sins of clergy and granted quick absolution to those who walked between rows of sacred and apocryphal books confessing faults.
59. 4.11The Messalians or Euchites held that only prayer, not baptism, expels the indwelling demon, claimed bodily visions of the Trinity, and were exposed by Flavian of Antioch and condemned by Letoius and Amphilochius.
60. 4.12A hostile account of Nestorius: his rise at Antioch, his promotion to Constantinople, his rejection of the title Theotokos, his deposition at Ephesus and his exile to the Oasis.
61. 4.13Eutyches denied that the Word took a human body from the Virgin; Theodoret replies from 1 Cor 15 that Christ's bodily resurrection is the pledge of ours.
62. 5.1Theodoret begins his summary of true doctrine: Old and New Testaments agree that there is one God, invisible, infinite, uncircumscribed and eternal, against the Gnostic and Manichaean myths.
63. 5.2Theodoret sets out the doctrine of the one only-begotten Son, eternal and consubstantial with the Father, against Valentinus, Arius and Eunomius, from the Gospels, Paul and the images of radiance, stamp and word.
64. 5.3Theodoret teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, is uncreated and of the divine nature, as shown by the Gospels, Paul, Pentecost, Acts 5 and the baptismal formula; a fragment on the Hebrew divine names follows.
65. 5.4Theodoret shows from the Psalms, the Prophets, the patriarchs, Job, John, Paul and Acts that the one God made all things, against Basilides, Cerinthus and others.
66. 5.5Against eternal matter, Theodoret argues from Scripture that God created heaven, earth, light and the human soul out of nothing, and that all he made is very good.
67. 5.6Against the Valentinian Aeons, Theodoret explains that in Scripture an “aeon” is a span of time, not a being, and that God is before all ages.
68. 5.7Theodoret teaches that angels are bodiless, sexless, countless creatures of God who sing his praise, serve his plan, guard nations and individuals; the “sons of God” of Gen 6 were Seth's descendants, not angels.
69. 5.8Theodoret argues that the devil and demons are creatures made good, who fell by their own free choice through pride, as Paul, the Gospels, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 show, and so are justly punished.
70. 5.9Theodoret teaches that the Trinity formed man, the body from the elements and the soul, rational and immortal, created after the body and not preexisting, against Gnostic, Manichaean, Platonic and medical theories.
71. 5.10Theodoret teaches God's providence over all things against Diagoras, Epicurus, Aristotle, fate and Mani, distinguishing true goods (the virtues) from the neutral fortunes of life that can be used well or badly.
72. 5.11Theodoret sets the church's teaching on the incarnation against the heresies: the one Word became man, taking a complete human body and rational soul, was named Jesus and Christ after the incarnation, and through his righteousness, as Romans 5 shows, grace overcame sin and death.
73. 5.12Theodoret argues that the Word took a real human body, which hungered and suffered by his permission, as Isaiah, Jacob's blessing and Hebrews show.
74. 5.13From Jesus' growth in wisdom, his laying down of his soul, his troubled soul and his agony in Gethsemane, Theodoret proves that the Son took a rational human soul.
75. 5.14Theodoret shows from Christ's own words, the promises to Abraham, Judah and David, and the Apostle's letters that the Word took a complete human nature as seed of Abraham and son of David.
76. 5.15Theodoret shows from the risen Christ's wounds, 1 John and Peter's Pentecost sermon that Christ raised the very nature he assumed, while his Godhead, never separated from it, suffered neither death nor change.
77. 5.16Against Marcion's division of a just Creator from a good Christ, Theodoret shows that the gospel's commands (on anger, lust, oaths and divorce) are stricter than the law's, and that the law itself commands kindness to enemies, the poor and a captive wife.
78. 5.17Against Marcion, Theodoret teaches that one God gave both covenants: a natural law written in all, then laws suited to each age, culminating in the gospel's more perfect commands, while the Old Testament, though its rites are no longer kept, still trains in virtue.
79. 5.18Theodoret teaches that baptism not only forgives past sins but gives the Spirit, adoption and a share in Christ's death and resurrection, which is why even infants are baptized.
80. 5.19Against Marcion, Cerdo and Mani, Theodoret defends the bodily resurrection from the meaning of the word, the analogy of conception and the seed, the words of Christ, Paul's letters and the prophets, especially Ezekiel's dry bones.
81. 5.20Theodoret argues that a just judgment requires the resurrection of the body, since body and soul sinned or practiced virtue together, and rejects transmigration in Pythagoras, Plato, Mani and the Gnostics.
82. 5.21Theodoret teaches that the promised kingdom is not an earthly millennium of feasts and sacrifices, as Cerinthus held, but eternal life free from sin, where the righteous will shine like the sun.
83. 5.22Theodoret shows from the Gospels, Daniel, Isaiah, the Psalms, Malachi and Paul that Christ will come a second time in glory to judge, and that the first coming prepared for the second.
84. 5.23Theodoret describes the Antichrist, the devil acting through a human being who will claim to be Christ and God before the second coming, from Daniel and 2 Thessalonians, and explains why God permits him.
85. 5.24Against heretics who condemned marriage, Theodoret shows from Christ's words on eunuchs and Paul's counsel in 1 Corinthians 7 that virginity is a free counsel to a better life, never a law, while marriage is no sin.
86. 5.25Theodoret defends marriage against its heretical accusers from creation, God's blessing, the patriarchs, Christ's presence at Cana and his teaching on divorce, and Paul's instructions in 1 Corinthians 7 on conjugal rights, separation and mixed marriages.
87. 5.26Theodoret shows from 1 Corinthians 7, Romans 7 and 1 Timothy 5 that Paul permits a second marriage after a spouse's death, against the Novatianists.
88. 5.27Theodoret shows from Paul's letters and the Old Testament that sexual immorality and licentiousness are forbidden, against Basilides, Carpocrates, Epiphanes and Prodicus, who made license a mystical rite.
89. 5.28Against the Novatianists, Theodoret shows from the prophets, Paul's dealings with the Corinthian offender and the Galatians, Christ's parables, Peter's denial and the Lord's Prayer that sins after baptism can be healed by repentance with tears, fasting and prayer, though communion must not be granted hastily.
90. 5.29Theodoret ends the work: the church, unlike the Encratites, makes abstinence from wine and meat a free choice, not a law, as Paul and Christ's own practice show, and he urges readers to compare heretical and divine doctrines.