Docetism

Docetism (from the Greek δοκεῖν dokein " seem " ) is a doctrine that is based on the view that the matter is low and evil and the Christ confers only an apparent body. So Jesus is from docetic view always remained God, because his physical existence have not touched its essence.

The view of various early Christian groups that all matter is impure, why Christ could not accept any material form, was fought in the 1st letters of John ( 4:3). The sources are both Hellenistic ideas, like the idea of Plato saw who considered the matter as inferior, and the Judeo-Christian monotheism, which took exception to the incarnation and the suffering of God.

Docetism later went on Gnosticism and Manichaeism. Since many Gnostic teachings are also docetically, it took a long time, that the Docetism of Gnosticism arose or is not identical with it.

Examples of Docetism

• Kerdon believes that Christ was only a mirage ( in phantasmate ) in the world, was not born and have only supposedly suffered (quasi passum ).

• Saturnilus taught that Christ unborn, formless and incorporeal and was only apparent ( putative ) was human.

• Marcion says that Christ appeared as a man, although he was not a man, and that he had really taken neither birth nor infirmities, but only in appearance.

• From Basilides ( 133 ) reported Irenaeus of Lyons the idea that Simon of Cyrene, assume the figure of Jesus and died in his place on the cross, while this was even made ​​invisible and as " non-physical force " ( virtus incorporalis ) ascended to the Father.

• Valentinus wrote: " Jesus ate and drank in a special way, without dropping out the food again. So great was the power of his ability to retain the excretion that the food did not spoil in him, for he was himself incorruptible and without decay. "

• In the Apocalypse of Peter, a Nag Hammadi text, Peter looks over the apparent body of Jesus on the cross, a merry laughing figure, the " living Christ ".

• In another form of Docetism Luke made ​​use of by Cerinthus, the divine Christ of an ordinary man (Jesus) as a medium to which he descended at the baptism in the Jordan ( " You are my beloved son, I have begotten thee. " 3.22 EU), and he left before the crucifixion again ( " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ").

• The Roman Church condemned by Tertullian Docetism, as they just looked at the suffering and death on the cross as a central part of their salvation faith.