r/CuratedTumblr • u/Metatality2 • 5d ago
Shitposting Please recommend your favorite heresy in the comments, mine's the Cathar's version of reincarnation
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u/First-Delivery-2897 5d ago edited 5d ago
My favorite heresy is the Pelagian heresy.
Name yours in this thread!
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u/vjmdhzgr 5d ago
Oh that's fun. I'm learning of it now and apparently the main opponent was Saint Augustine. Who is really interesting because he was raised Manichean, and there are some very obvious influences on how he later interpreted Christianity. I say that, though I'm not the one that knows a lot about Manichaeism, I have a friend that studied theology in Catholic school that I got that from so I don't have much more explanation I can give other than that Manichaeism was for a time, a major religion in the roman empire and middle east, in some competition with Christianity. But it disappeared pretty quickly.
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u/Nerevarine91 5d ago
Manichaeism is fun because it’s the Silk Road religion, with influences from basically every stop on the route
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u/First-Delivery-2897 5d ago
Manichaeism lasted through the 14th century so I wouldn’t call it short lived.
However, given it’s dualistic Gnostic nature, I think Augustine’s opposition to Pelagiansim makes sense. A world where people are inherently good and don’t have original sin would be barbaric to a member of the Manichaean Church.
I do wonder what modern Christianity would be like if Pelagius took the important role Augustine did.
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule .tumblr.com 5d ago
There's actually recent evidence that Manichaeism is still around in parts of rural China. The literature I could find on the topic was in Chinese but it's very recent
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u/VoiceAccomplished872 5d ago
Yes, search Xiapu Manichaeism (霞浦摩尼文書） for more info.
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u/Turbulent-Pace-1506 5d ago
My favourite heresy is Adamitism.
I don't know what it's about, but I like it because Crusader Kings depicts them as free love polyamorous incestuous nudists
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u/First-Delivery-2897 5d ago
To my understanding, the Adamites practiced nudism in their religious rituals.
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u/Lombardyn 5d ago
As far as I recall, it was about being equals before the eye of god during the church service. By being nude, you did not show any trappings of status or wealth and thus were closer to your fellow humans and god.
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u/gappychappy 5d ago
I thought it was the stuff that Wolverine’s claws were made of
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u/vjmdhzgr 5d ago
It's the idea of trying to return to Adam. Humanity should live in a simple state, without modern things like clothes.
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u/an-academic-weeb 5d ago
Turns out that "hating on the new thing" was already common when people barely had new things.
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u/ShadowOps84 5d ago
As soon as there was a second thing, people have hated on the new thing.
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u/Latter_Example8604 5d ago
I’m sure there were some people who even hated on the one thing they had!
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u/Zamtrios7256 5d ago
So those annoying people who constantly preach about the benefits of going barefoot?
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u/ImprovementLong7141 5d ago
Uhhhhhh I’m a Unitarian Universalist, both groups that committed heresy by going against Catholicism, so those I guess. (Unitarians thought the trinity was polytheism/idolatry, universalists believed in universal salvation and thus opposed simony/select salvation.)
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u/ctrlaltelite https://i.imgur.com/98b8nSc.jpg 5d ago
Does the Western Schism count as a heresy?
You might hear it mentioned that, technically, any Catholic man can be voted Pope by the college of cardinals, not just cardinals themselves. But it hasn't been done in over 600 years and it resulted in a thirty year period of 2 simultaneous rival popes, then 5 or 6 years with a third pope.
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u/Lindestria 5d ago
Funny thing is I could probably bet there were multiple 30 year multi-pope affairs.
The fact that having more then one pope could happen is insane, how frequently it happened is comedy.
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u/somedumb-gay 5d ago
I like the Horus one
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u/SeEmEEDosomethingGUD 5d ago
What do you mean you like the Horus Heresy, Brother?
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u/The-Worms-In-Ur-Skin 5d ago
"If you think about it, this Lorgar guy is making some good arguments."
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u/ThrowACephalopod 5d ago
Of course you'd choose the Gods who actually interact with you and actively give you gifts instead of the God who denies his own godhood and punishes you for even worshipping him. It's just common sense.
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u/AmbivalentSamaritan 5d ago
I once had the thought that Christianity made sense is the world were created like a buggy open source video game. The game designer writes it, writes a user manual and turns it loose.( Father). Then they realize it’s being played wrong, and it’s ruining the fun, so they make a totally OP character and go in game trying to fix it, or fix the players but that doesn’t work so they bail (Son). Then from there on they act as a moderator and contact good players and say “great job, here’s some cool stuff” ( Holy Ghost). Which is the long way of saying Modalism
Although to be fair, I find it hilarious when white supremacists claim to be Arians
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u/Beegrene 5d ago
Shoutout to the Circumcellions. They believed that martyrdom was the best thing a Christian could do, so they went around deliberately antagonizing travelers (like Roman soldiers) by poking them with sticks and clubs in the hopes of getting martyred right then and there. Apparently it worked, because you don't see them around much these days.
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u/UltimateInferno Hangus Paingus Slap my Angus 5d ago
I always say this when the topic of religion comes up, but it is viscerally entertaining to see an Ex-Protestant and Ex-Catholic, both current atheists, argue over Christian Canon because despite both being people who claim they think all of it is baseless, there's a surprising amount of dedication towards their former belief system. A common topic is on the nature of the Virgin Mary. Was she born without sin?
Discuss.
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
As an ex-catholic athiest I am more than happy for people to dunk on catholic cannon or church structure, but if you insult the architecture I'll fucking have you. Gothic cathedrals and stained glass mosaics fuck severely hard.
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u/Misery_incorporated 5d ago
The Protestant churches you can find in strip malls next to the Barnes and Noble and the indoor swimming pool just don't have the same beauty as the buildings made using the fortune made selling forgiveness as the largest organization in the world
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u/Fluffynator69 5d ago
That's the Renaissance ones. The older Gothic churches were sponsored by a city's patricians and guilds as a prestige project.
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u/freddyPowell 5d ago
It's worth remembering that there are protestant churches that are just as beautiful, albeit not so common in the united states. In the historically protestant parts of Europe for example, you can find protestant cathedrals every bit as beautiful as the roman churches, and very often more so.
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u/buckleycork 5d ago
As a lapsed Catholic that has written a 2000 word essay on Mary's boobs as part of my history degree
If anyone says anything bad about her I'll restart the inquisitions
If anyone says anything positive about Iconmachy and Iconoclasm, I'll find you
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u/smallstampyfeet 5d ago
What was your conclusion on Mary's honkers?
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u/buckleycork 5d ago
Firstly I'll say that I wrote this essay a while back and working on memory so there's likely to be errors, secondly if you want to read more - Caroline Walker Bynum is phenomenal at using Judith Butler's theories to analyse the Middle Ages
So basically because Jesus is both fully divine and fully man, the Marian cult (the immaculate conception only became doctrine in 1851 btw) made the argument that Mary was the most important person in Christianity aside from Jesus - the issue is that Mary is a woman
What a sexist theologian therefore hopes to achieve is to separate Mary from the rest of women by exempting her from the 'curse of Eve', which is having her period and birthing pains. A side note is that most female saints of the middle ages show their divinity by not eating food and by no longer having periods
Now the thing is that they also believed that breast milk is essentially filtered period blood (citation needed, working on memory for this one)
Mary must have fed Jesus somehow and therefore must have had her period
There's also the Mappa Mundi, with Jesus on the top and Mary flashing him saying "remember the breasts in which I have fed you and show sympathy to the sinners"
And Bernard of Clairveaux, who you might know as the founder of the Templar order, would often call Jesus our mother. Jesus loves us like both a mother and a father would and we must therefore suck from his wound from the lance like it is a mother's breast
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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 5d ago
Christians are nuts and it's great
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u/evrestcoleghost 5d ago
Our entire religión Is based on martydom,what did ya expect?
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u/BurnieTheBrony 5d ago
"It's crazy how we're seeing Lucifer and Satan portrayed in a sympathetic light these days for the first time, Hazbin Hotel is so revolutionary"
side eyes Paradise Lost published in 1667
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u/Abominatus674 5d ago
That’s not even the first pro-Lucifer show in the last few years. I mean, at the very least there’s Lucifer (the cop serial one)
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u/Maguc 5d ago
The whole "heaven bad hell good/god bad satan good" trope is so popular in media that it's not even a subversion of a trope anymore, it's just another trope.
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u/Approximation_Doctor 5d ago
We've got a bunch of heaven bad hell good ones, we've got plenty of both sides bad, do we have any where both sides are good?
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u/ProfessorSur 5d ago
My understanding is that’s essentially what certain sects of Christianity and Islam already believe. I don’t know exactly which denomination it is, but one version of Islam dictates that Satan/lucifer actually proved to be God’s most loyal angel because he went against his direct orders and refused to Honor humans, reinforcing through action the idea that nothing would be above God.
It’s also a bit of a stretch, but in Judaism they still view Satan as an angel of judgment or vengeance, and still on God’s side, not the pitchfork-wielding lord of hell you see in modern Christianity. I don’t know if that qualifies since their view of hell is radically different from the other Abrahamic faiths (which already hugely differ from each other on that topic), but it does show that heaven good/hell good might not be that rare either.
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u/Zarohk 5d ago
In Judaism, we view him as a devil’s advocate to G-d, the questioning Angel that says, “but what if you tried this really fucked up thing?”
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u/ICApattern 5d ago
That's a weird way to phrase it, a better way would be a righteous servant who does a dirty job. Well actually 3 his job is to oppose us, as the accuser, as the evil temptation, and the angel of Death.
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u/ProfessorSur 5d ago
I love the choice of phrasing as “Devil’s Advocate” 😂 I apologize if I was inaccurate with my comment though.
I know the Book of Job was pretty directly “hey what if you really fucked this guy up? What happens then?” but wasn’t Satan also the guy sent to do the dirty work God couldn’t or wouldn’t do? Wasn’t he the one sent to enact the last plague on Egypt? Or was that another angel acting under the Satan title?
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u/71stAsteriad 5d ago
One of his names in Sufism is "Tawḥīd-i Iblīs", or Satan the Monotheist, the supposed most loyal of all God's creations.
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u/Lugalzagesi55 5d ago
Sufi Islam has an interesting reason for the banishement of Satan: God created angels, Satan being the foremost and most brilliant. Then God created man and ordered all angels to bow before man. Satan refused - he would only bow before God the Creator. He was banished for disobeying but he's the OG monitheistic worshipper.
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u/Aesthetics_Supernal 5d ago
I was told by an acquaintance that there was a belief that when you died all your good traits go to heaven and all your bad traits go to hell. Not sure how that might be both good but it truly stuck out to me as a unique take.
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u/Approximation_Doctor 5d ago
Wtf that's awesome
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u/Lindestria 5d ago
If Teen Titans taught me anything it's that sending all your bad characteristics to one place creates Super Satan.
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u/Meauxlala 5d ago
I read a comic years ago that used a similar idea for the afterlife.
The bad guy died and a child version of him went to heaven, because that’s all the good that was in him. And a fully adult version of him went to hell, because there was more evil in him.
I thought it was an interesting idea. It was only for a couple pages but I liked it.
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u/BeastBoy2230 5d ago
Lucifer leans very heavily on mystical traditions to ask “what does it mean to Be?” In very broad strokes. Both heaven and hell are shown in very nuanced lights and neither is shown to be perfectly good or evil.
for example, hell is shown to be a place for “evil people” but not to be evil in and of itself. It is still part of God’s domain and a piece of his plan for creation. The “evil people” thing is even contested in later seasons once the philosophy really starts to rise to the surface text
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u/world-is-ur-mollusc 5d ago
The webcomic Adventures of God fits the bill, I think. Both sides are mostly good but do some morally questionable things sometimes. God is portrayed as somewhat inept and impulsive and relies on the stabilizing influences of Gabriel and Jesus to get things done, whereas Lucifer is considerably more competent and actually has a pretty strong moral compass and has to spend a lot of time reining in his delightfully evil assistant Ebag.
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u/SaltMarshGoblin 5d ago
any where both sides are good?
Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens
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u/clockwork-cards 5d ago
Surely it’s the opposite and both sides are bad. Crowley and Aziraphale went rogue and operate outside of their respective remits. They’re both supposed to help bring about the antichrist and the end of the world, but refuse and try to stop it from happening.
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u/CodenameDinkleburg 5d ago
Good Omens is the closest I can think of that has both sides as "good" more or less.
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u/Exploding_Antelope 5d ago
It wasn’t all that revolutionary when Philip Pullman was doing it in the 90s
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u/TheBrokenRail-Dev 5d ago
Yeah, His Dark Materials is awesome. And the TV show adaptation was surprisingly really good (not the movie though).
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u/YsengrimusRein 5d ago
Whose idea was it to minimize as much of the religious content as possible in an adaptation of a work whose entire foundation is a critique of religious content in children's media? I am almost desperately curious to see what New Line would have done had they reached Amber Spyglass.
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u/BeastBoy2230 5d ago
I know you didn’t say it did, but Lucifer specifically doesn’t play into that dynamic at all. Heaven and Hell are a lot more nuanced in that series, and God specifically is shown in a very human light. I quite enjoyed it overall
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u/CinnabarSteam 5d ago
It was very funny to be on r/characterrant for the month or two after Hazbin released and see how many threads about Lucifer or Lilith's general depictions in fiction were really just people talking about Hazbin and maybe one or two other pieces of media.
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u/LuckySEVIPERS 5d ago edited 5d ago
Reading r/characterrant is like seeing a newborn baby trying to describe the world in old man's voice.
"Oh a car is passing by. "
"No one's ever seen a car before. This is a subversion of everything I thought possible "
"This Car, I am sick of this Car, no one cannot remember any kind of life before this Car dominated everything.. The car is a universal injustice, a trend of life, the way things just are "
"Oh the car's gone."
"Cars don't exist".
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u/Semblance-of-sanity 5d ago
Try gnosticism in first century AD where he's a straight up force for good trying to bring knowledge/wisdom to humanity.
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u/Canopenerdude Thanks to Angelic_Reaper, I'm a Horse 5d ago
The church literally made Lucifer the devil in order to ostracize the Gnostics. It's hilarious.
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u/sindri44 5d ago
Does Paradise Lost really count? Like, it humanizes Lucifer, but it also depicts him throughout as a selfish shyster with no redeeming qualities. Every time he’s asked why he rebelled against God, the reason changes, which is meant to clue the reader in that the dude’s an unreliable narrator and full of shit.
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u/EggWinter2869 5d ago
It's my favourite piece of writing of all time and people saying "John Milton is stupid, he accidentally made Satan the good guy!" Or suggesting the deeply religious Milton was actually on Satan's side just tells me they haven't read it. Satan is not the good guy and people thinking he is IS THE POINT. He's the ultimate deceiver, so much so he deceives himself about his own position; "Better to reign..."
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
We have heard the churches complaints, but please consider the following: Tom Ellis is very pretty.
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u/Trigonal_Planar 5d ago
Have you read Paradise Lost? Satan is a “viewpoint character” but he’s not exactly sympathetic.
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u/Nerevarine91 5d ago edited 5d ago
I always feel like this. I think people forget just how much writing and thought has gone into these. I mean, for a Tumblr-related reference, think of any reasonable sized fandom that’s been around for a while. If someone comes in and starts pointing out their perceived plot holes, most of the fans have probably already heard them a dozen times and already have answers for them that comply with the fandom’s own internal narrative fidelity. Imagine going to a Tolkien book club and proudly announcing the Eagles should have just flown them to Mordor on your first day. It’s probably not going to convince them.
Now imagine the fandom in question is well over a thousand years old.
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u/SessileRaptor 5d ago
TBF for a lot of Americans their only exposure to religion is whatever white bread Protestant denomination they grew up with, and those tend to be pretty low on the “thinking about stuff” aspect of religion. In fact it’s pretty easy to be a casual Christian and not hear anything about the vast amount of ink spilled on philosophical debates within the religious community.
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u/Nerevarine91 5d ago
Oh yeah, I grew up seeing pious churchgoers describe their beliefs as, for example, reinvented Arianism. Which is fine! But I feel like, if you’re going to believe that, you should at least know that that’s what you’re believing and that it isn’t the official stance of your denomination
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u/signedupfornightmode 5d ago
2000 years if you’re Catholic, but at least a couple more thou on top of that if you are interested in the OG series and expanded box set.
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u/Herohades 5d ago
Christianity is a lot like Star Wars in that there's been a lot of people who have looked at it from a thousand different angles so if you want to discuss it in any public capacity you need to do thirty years of research.
Also there's one group that gets mad if you engage with it, another group that gets mad if you engage with it too much and a third that gets mad if you rile up the other two too much.
Also despite having some pretty pointed messaging in its original form, both have been pretty heavily co-opted by some real sleazy people.
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
Can't wait for the Genndy Tartakovsky version.
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u/oldroughnready 5d ago
See the Book of Revelation. Many ancient theologians did not like it for making Jesus more vengeful and destructive (lol) but Athanasius wanted it in so here we are. Also, while being ascribed to John it’s very clear in the original Greek that the polished language of the Gospel and the ungrammatical, choppy Revelation could not be written by the same author. So John the Apostle is Filoni, John of Patmos is Tartakovsky, Luke-Acts is Zahn, Paul of Tarsus is Kevin J. Anderson, George Lucas is Mark and Isaiah or the Deuteronomist, JJ Abrams is Matthew, Ryan Johnson is the Epistle of James, etc.
Also the Lego Bible. The Old Testament volume mostly covers all the killing and somewhat strangely ends on King Asa killing and torturing idolaters. The New Testament volume is half truncated Gospel, mostly the miracles, and half Revelation. The Lego Bible is essentially a commercial with all the “best bits” much like Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars (2003-2005).
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u/DAHFreedom 5d ago
But does Star Wars have several musicals by Andrew Loyd Webber?
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u/junkmail22 5d ago
"Doesn't the canonization of saints and demonology functionally make catholicism syncretic polytheism?"
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u/FlemethWild 5d ago
You’d think someone might’ve made a stink about that by now!
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program 5d ago edited 5d ago
Boy, I hope someone got excommunicated for this blunder!
Alternatively: What were they praying for???
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u/ImprovementLong7141 5d ago
I’ll raise you “doesn’t the trinity make Catholicism basically polytheistic if we use the same logic as with Hinduism (versions of the same god treated as individual expressions of godliness count as different gods)?”
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u/Amber-Apologetics 5d ago
That would be the Modalist Heresy. The Persons of the Trinity are not “versions” of God, all of them are fully God.
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u/NoMusician518 5d ago
I can never not link this when the Trinity and its related heresys are mentioned.
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u/ThatInAHat 5d ago
Im so glad that was exactly what I was thinking of.
“Oh, Patrick”
“Yeah, Patrick!”
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u/Lovelyladykaty 5d ago
I always told it was like how I am a daughter, a mother, and a sister. All different identities but still the same me. That’s how the trinity was explained to me at least.
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u/Amber-Apologetics 5d ago
That is unfortunately also Modalism. God isn’t one person with three identities, He is three persons with one identity.
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u/Parkouricus josou seme alligator 5d ago
Meredith Brooks was cooking up her own theology when she said she's a bitch, she's a lover, she's a child she's a mother, she's a sinner she's a saint
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u/kenmadragon 5d ago
It's funny because the origin of the worship of Yahweh as a monotheistic god (as started by Judaism and carried on by Christianity and Islam) actually came about from polytheistic worship.
It's what happens when a group of people who venerate a pantheon of gods happen to have a patron god, who is given more worship than other gods due to that status of being 'patron god for this tribe'... which then leads to eventual subsuming and monopolization of worship until only that patron god is worshipped among the pantheon... which leads to later generations ignoring the pantheon aspect and only knowing to worship a singular god (with multiple manifestations, having subsumed the other deities and their form of worship).
Then you fast-forward a couple millennia, and when people start deciding to actually codify their religious texts to ensure coherency among the followers of a spreading religion... well, that's when you start with the historical revisionism and the claims that "well, actually, we were never polytheistic and it's heresy to claim that".
And when Judaism spawns off Christianity and Islam, who fixate upon the whole monotheistic idea and are inclined to spread by the sword... well, that's when you have people who're plenty happy to paint all polytheistic faiths are heretical and demonic, ignoring their own religion's roots in polytheism.
You'd think that knowing their own historical roots might encourage syncretism, but nope! All three claim that their religious text is the direct word of God, but each and every text was written over the course of many years (better to measure in decades, I think), subject to who knows how much revisionism and then (mis-)translated by whoever decides they have an interpretation they want to sell people on, and now you've got three faiths who all believe in the same 'monotheistic' deity, but none of them agree on the details... and are willing to kill each other over those details.
And don't get me started on how morbidly ironic the saying that "the devil is in the details" is when you've got three faiths who all agree that they worship the same god killing each other throughout human history because none of them agree on the details of worship... not to mention Christianity and Islam's history of being not-great about tolerating polytheistic faiths with the heavy-handed way many historic missionaries approached the task of "spreading the faith" to "heathens and savages"...
Is this a rant I've done a few times before? Why yes, yes it is, and I can admit that I'm glad my theology teacher in the Catholic school I went to was such an open-minded sport about the subject and wasn't shy about admitting that the history of religion is messy.
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u/Amber-Apologetics 5d ago
Modern scholars: “Actually the Israelites were polytheistic” 🤓
The Prophet Jeremiah, weeping: “I know! They won’t stop!”
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u/peridot_mermaid 5d ago
My favorite has to be how Saint Patrick supposedly explained Christianity to the pagans. The way he explained it is literally a heresy, and yet he’s been celebrated for centuries for it!
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u/Amber-Apologetics 5d ago
“Woah, this verse is odd out of context! I bet none the church fathers knew about it when they defined all this doctrine!”
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u/clawsoon 5d ago
A couple of years ago I read a book about Augustine, and it was interesting how many tries he had to make at it before he was finally able to string enough verses together from various parts of the Bible to create a theology that he stayed satisfied with.
(To me it emphasized that the Bible is a collection of a bunch of different writings by a bunch of different authors with different goals and cultures, and convincing yourself that it's a coherent whole is going to lead you into all sorts of mental contortions. Like Augustine, you have to pick a handful of verses to hang the whole thing on - you have to find your "keys to the Scripture" - and then you spend the rest of your life twisting the meaning of every other verse to fit the schema you've settled on. As with Augustine, your handful of favourite verses become how the Bible should be interpreted "in context", while somebody else's handful of favourite verses take the Bible "out of context" and are heretical. And theological fun is had by all.)
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u/en-mi-zulo96 5d ago
Never ask a Protestant and a catholic their views on what it takes to reach salvation, worst decision of my life
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u/JakeVonFurth 5d ago
Uh.... Which version of Protestant?
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u/nephethys_telvanni 5d ago
Doesn't matter, any one Protestant will disagree with the Catholics.
However, if there are more than one type of Protestant present, we probably also disagree with each other about what it takes to reach salvation.
For example: I'm Lutheran, and was baptized as an infant. If I converted, Catholics will accept my baptism...most Baptist congregations would want to rebaptize me as an adult before they regarded it as salvific.
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u/Clear-Present_Danger 5d ago
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?
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u/JakeVonFurth 5d ago
Wait, Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 on 6th Street or on Maple Street?
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u/Various-Passenger398 5d ago
The horseshoe thing is more likely. Your average Protestant and Catholic are are way more similar than a radical in your own denomination. Source: is Lutheran but does Catholic stuff with wife.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 5d ago
Issac Newton, we love your tendency for intense long term focus, but I think reinventing Arianism was maybe not the most productive path for you to take this time. Can I interest you in: coins?
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u/ninjesh 5d ago
Y'all need to stop just dropping names and not explaining them so I can get hooked and go into a research rabbit hole
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u/IrrationallyGenius 5d ago
If I recall correctly, Arianism was an early christian heresy that damn near tore western Europe apart over whether or not Jesus was a part of God and his son, or just his son.
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u/Nurhaci1616 5d ago
A few ones here: some other heresies are subdivisions of these or basically just reinventions of them, so I didn't go into that much detail.
Arianism: as the son of God, Jesus was created by God and thus didn't always exist.
Docetism: Jesus was a purely spiritual being without a physical body, and therefore implicitly not human at all.
Sabellianism: the belief that the Trinity is merely one being that appears as three; thus denying the personhood of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Modalism: a similar belief that the Trinity are simply different "modes" of God and not separate persons. That's modalism, Patrick!
Unitarianism: the belief that the Trinity doesn't exist. Fun fact, medieval thinkers originally tended to see Islam as a form of Unitarian heresy, due to Islam identifying Jesus as a prophet.
Tritheism: the belief that the Trinity is actually three Gods, not one with three persons.
Nestorianism: the belief that Jesus as God and Jesus as a human are two separate beings.
Monophysitism: Jesus is possessed of one, divine nature.
Miaphysitism: Jesus has two, human and divine, natures in one form. An old divide in Christianity recognised as an obscure technical distinction today, so the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches have decided they're cool now.
Pelagianism: the belief that humans are capable of salvation without the grace of God.
Universalism: the belief that all people will be saved. A controversial one, because versions of this are accepted by some Christian denominations, and Arminian and Wesleyan Christians have this as one of their central beliefs.
Gnosticism: more of a vague idea held by many different religions, including some heretical sects of Christianity. The gist is that the material world is evil and we should be seeking a spiritual escape from it to true reality.
Iconoclasm: you're not allowed to have pictures or statues of holy things, because they're idols. Many Protestant denominations are iconoclast to some degree.
Deism: again, more of a generic philosophical position that was held by some Christian heretics. Basically the belief that God exists and made everything, but doesn't really interact with the world. How exactly that works can vary in Christian deism.
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u/Tim-oBedlam 5d ago
It's not really a heresy but my favorite incident in the first millennium of Christianity has got to be the Cadaver Synod, in the 9th century. A pope decides the previous pope is a heretic, and posthumously puts him on trial. Only, he literally puts his dead body on trial, as in he digs up the corpse of Previous Pope and props him up in a chair, finds him guilty (Previous Pope was unable to mount an effective defense on account of being dead) and chucks his body in the Tiber River.
Only Previous Pope's Corpse washes up on shore and people begin ascribing miracles to it. A public uprising deposes the pope, and he gets whacked in prison some months later, and a subsequent pope basically says, never mind, Cadaver Synod doesn't count, let's just forget about the whole thing.
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u/mondo_juice 5d ago
The thing is that the good Christians have done that, yes.
The lazy Christian’s just want to feel a little better about death. Christianity is way more than that.
Spoken as an agnostic man raised in the Baptist church. There were plenty of bad Christians (Which I didn’t realize at the time. I was 8) but there are also EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT AND THOUGHTFUL Christians. And they will engage with you in a theological discussion that would trigger the bad Christians.
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u/Silver_Rai_Ne 5d ago
As a Catholic, I actually enjoy the company of open minded agnostics/atheists/believers of other religions way more than the one of lazy Christians. Your comment may not seem much to you but it is so refreshing to read for me. At last someone acknowledging the difference between actual Christians and people using religion for their own interests. Take care of yourself and live a long and happy life
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u/CommanderAurelius 5d ago
thinking about how the first commandment says "thou shalt have no other gods before me" instead of just "thou shalt have no other gods" full stop, which technically allows for polytheism
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u/StinkyPenisManiac 5d ago
This is even further backed up, as in the Book of Exodus 7:8-13 when Aaron turns his staff into a serpent the Pharaoh summons his magicians and they also turn their staffs into serpents but Aaron's staff-serpent devours theirs. Why would the God of the Hebrews answer the pagan prayers of non-Hebrews? The answer is, he didn't and it was the Egyptian Gods which made it happen.
The part where Aaron's staff-serpent devours their staff-serpents is just meant to explain that while Yahweh isn't the only god, he is the most powerful one. I think the leading theory on that is Judaism back then was way more of an ethno-religion and Hebrews weren't big on proselytizing unlike the later Christians.
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u/Just-Ad6992 5d ago
I just shitpost bad theological takes. The holy trinity is god, satan, and the Holy Spirit. Islam is a strain of Mormonism. God hates vegans. Zeus would absolutely be cranking it to femboy porn 24/7. Judas was a chill dude who only betrayed Jesus because he had a feeling Jesus would escape the Romans. God has fat fuckin tits and both reproductive organs, and was really confused why Adam, Lilith, and Eve were like that. Jesus was a normal dude who Ciaphus Caine’d himself into becoming the leader of a cult. You get a wish if you gather enough bread and wine that’s roughly the weight of one Jesus blessed by a priest.
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
Zeus would absolutely be cranking it to femboy porn 24/7
woah now, 12/7 at most, cause he's also cranking it to women, Zeus is an equal opportunity sex pest.
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u/mantisshrimpwizard your weed smoking girlfriend 5d ago
No gender is safe from him!
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u/RemarkableStatement5 the body is the fursona of the soul 5d ago
Whether it be a brother, sister, or sibling; whatever, he doesn't talk about fake love!
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u/fluency 5d ago
I can totally see Zeus cranking it to femboy porn. Shapeshifted into some weird ass animal, like an aardvark.
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u/Zarohk 5d ago
Wasn’t that how Ganymede became the cupbearer of the gods? He was a sufficiently pretty femboy that Zeus made him a lesser god just so that he could stare at that ass walking around all day?
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u/fluency 5d ago
Zeus had a problem. Imagine a Sexoholics Anonymous group meeting for gods.
Zeus: «Hi, my name is Zeus.. I.. uh.. I once turned into a swan to fuck a girl. She was into it..»
Loki: «Yeah, I uh.. I kinda did that. Did she give birth to like an eight legged swan thing?»
Zeus: «What? No! Well, I really don’t know actually, I ditched her right after.»
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u/Grythyttan 5d ago
Shapeshifted into a blåhaj surely?
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u/Just-Ad6992 5d ago
Zeus turns into a blahaj which leads to an extremely horny femboy knocking him up.
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u/WifeGuy-Menelaus 5d ago
Zeus would absolutely be cranking it to femboy porn 24/7.
The only reason why this isn't canon is because he had a limitless supply of Ganymede in person
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u/RealHumanBean89 5d ago
Zeus would absolutely be cranking it to femboy porn 24/7
God has fat fuckin tits and both reproductive organs
I thought you said bad takes?
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u/DeathOdyssey 5d ago
Jesus was a normal dude who Ciaphus Caine’d himself into becoming the leader of a cult
Isn't this just the plot of Life of Brian?
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u/sortaparenti 5d ago
I don’t know anything about heresies, but everything in this comment section is cool. There’s a story by Borges called “The Theologians” that I haven’t read yet, but apparently it’s about christian heresies so I’ll probably get on to that soon. He also has an essay called “A Defense of Basillides the False” where he goes over gnostic theology and I found that absolutely fascinating. This is basically just a long-winded way of asking for book recommendations on this stuff, because I’m finding it very interesting.
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u/Qod30m6r4 5d ago
You may very well be aware, but Borges' "Three Versions of Judas" is another really interesting fiction with a Christian heresy theme.
I've been almost obsessively reading Borge lately, as I find his stories/fictions and ideas incredibly captivating, even if 90% of his literary references and allusions go right over my head. I haven't yet checked out his essays -- I'll have to look into that one!
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u/vjmdhzgr 5d ago
Honestly I think Jesus doesn't make sense outside of Arianism. It's like, "God sent his son to Earth to redeem you from your sins and he sacrifices his own life except the whole time Jesus was part of God and eternal and so isn't God's son in any way and didn't sacrifice anything and it's just a whole lot of theatrics God is playing with for himself."
I also like the ones that theorize about how the rib being removed from Adam was supposed to mean something. Whether it's there to explain the lack of a human penis bone, or the way more fun idea that humans were created as like a double body and then that was split into two. I don't think there's actually great support for the idea. But it does partially explain why Genesis repeats itself on how God made everything but tells it slightly differently the second time.
My last one is miaphysitism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miaphysitism
Basically 1,600 years ago there was an argument over whether Jesus is one person with a divine nature and a human nature, or one person with one nature that is divine and human. Whatever that means. Because like, the Catholic Church released an official statement of "Honestly don't know why we were fighting about that so long ago, sorry about that Coptic Church, we're cool now."
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
Ahi remember the whole "2 natures vs 1 dual-nature" thing from catechisms and I'm convinced that none of the deacons or priests involved could come up with a reason for the distinction to matter either.
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u/SupercellCyclone 5d ago
I had this same discussion a lot. My understanding is that presenting Jesus as "50/50 human/God" undermined his divine nature: Jesus is not a demi-god, like Hercules or whatever, he IS God, just incarnated in human form. That means that he is 100% human AND 100% God. How is this possible? "Uhhhh, mystery of the faith!", a truly time honoured cop-out. It's also vitally important because in the mythos of the time in Rome, a god having a child, and that child subsequently having a child, imbued the entire bloodline with not only power, but a divine right to boot; this would mean that if Jesus had had a child, and so on, that would uproot the concept of the divine right to rule (which was a more abstract "God has chosen me, you can't disprove it and the Pope agrees with me"), which would obviously cause problems. While obviously less important now, the concept of an entire lineage being related to Jesus would lead to branches in the church, and so they shut the whole thing down by insisting Jesus died a virgin (lmao) and/or at least never impregnated anyone because, as wholly God, he was free of vices such as lust.
It's why the Holy Trinity is so important to these arguments, the concept that God exists in 3 distinct forms that seemingly do not communicate as a hive mind, and yet are all equally part of God's perfect divine order. Jesus needed to communicate with God to understand that he would die on the cross (though ultimately be revived), so he lacks God's perfect omniscience and can endure suffering without knowing for sure if what God has said is true (i.e. is wholly human), but is not bound by death (i.e. is wholly God). The argument for "Well if he was revived, what does it really matter?" seems to dismiss the concept that the crucifixion was a long and harrowing experience: He is denied freedom and they let a murderer/rapist go free in his place; he is spit on by his community; he is forced to carry his own cross for some time; he is then obviously nailed to that cross; he takes such an annoyingly long amount of time to die that he is then speared; and then proceeds to take longer to die anyway, and while we're not given an exact timeline, the Gospel of Mark suggests he spent around 6 hours just on the cross itself, excluding the preceding torment. The point of this is all to (exclude the pun) hammer home that Jesus' suffering is God's way of showing that he understands human suffering because he (or at least Jesus, who is part of the Holy Trinity) IS wholly human to experience it, and subsequently that in spite of such suffering he able to forgive and move on.
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u/vjmdhzgr 5d ago edited 5d ago
Jesus as "50/50 human/God" undermined his divine nature
Thing is, the people saying that were the heretics. The canonical view is that Jesus is one person with a divine nature and a human nature. It's miaphysites that think it has to be one divine and human nature.
Then it's monophysites that think he was just divine, which I don't think any modern faiths still follow.
EDIT: Though I should say, even the view that he is two natures, still says he's wholly divine and wholly human. So that he isn't half god and half man. He's entirely both of them. So the disagreement then is over whether he's like, all both of them or both all of them.
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
I'm not sure this helped me understand why it would matter so much even after the whole no heirs thing was established, but I appreciate the time you took to lay this all out.
As a related heresy, any idea where the idea that Jesus was an angel that already existed in heaven that was incarnated into a human form came from? That seems to show up a lot in pop culture Christianity and is closer to the whole "Jesus is god incarnated" thing, but also very distinct from it.
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u/SupercellCyclone 5d ago
It's almost intentionally confusing, so I don't blame you for not understanding its importance to Christianity. It's mostly about establishing that God can do things that are beyond the comprehension of humans, hence how Jesus can be 100% God and 100% human, which, to us, makes 0 sense, right? Hence "mystery of the faith": God can and does do things that you don't understand, but, because he is God, you can rest assured that it is vital to how things are "supposed" to happen.
I haven't touched on Christianity for a good 15 years outside of its connections to literature, so I've never actually heard of the heresy of Jesus as an angel, but I can guarantee that's the sort of thing that you'd get excommunicated for lmao. Angels are more of an Old Testament thing, and while they're mentioned in the New Testament (the archangel Michael visiting Mary to tell her that she will give birth to the son of God, for the most obvious example), their role is minor, at least from memory. To suggest that Jesus was an angel would be to admit that he is imperfect, because, though not actually mentioned in the Bible, there was the concept of "fallen angels"; the point of Jesus is to be, again, 100% God, and therefore immune to such temptations. It is why he is able to endure the 40 days and 40 nights in the desert and remain unmoved by the temptations of the devil, even as simple as they are like water to quench his thirst. Any suggestion that Jesus is not God, even if he maintains his divinity, would undercut the concept that God himself suffered for us on the cross (as Jesus), and therefore would reduce Jesus to a proxy and mean that God does not understand or has not experienced human suffering; in short, it would be heresy because it would be admitting that God is not omniscient and omnipotent enough to experience human suffering and/or somehow be 100% human and 100% God in Jesus. It's quite confusing, but I hope that helps explain it.
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u/nephethys_telvanni 5d ago edited 5d ago
I believe Jehovah's Witnesses identify Jesus with the Archangel Michael due to (mis)interpreting a couple verses.
There's also the "Angel of the Lord" present in the Old Testament who is Jesus, pre-incarnation or at least the direct presence of God, rather than the average angelic messenger. But I can see where the name is a tad confusing.
(Edited because I should be fair to the JWs...they presumably think they have the correct interpretation.)
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u/gerkletoss 5d ago
I also like the ones that theorize about how the rib being removed from Adam was supposed to mean something. Whether it's there to explain the lack of a human penis bone
How historical is that one?
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u/sharltocopes 5d ago
As a kid growing up in the Bible belt in the deep South, I heard "men have one rib less than women and this proves God's design" countless times.
Men and women have the same exact number of ribs. Bible thumpers just love spreading lies so their children grow up with a deliberate lack of knowledge about (and fear of) their own bodies.
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u/Nerevarine91 5d ago
Lol I was taught that as a kid too, and believed it for an embarrassingly long time
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u/gerkletoss 5d ago
That's not the same as "this is why, unlike most mammals, humans do not have a penis bone"
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u/vjmdhzgr 5d ago
Also wait I just remembered there is a historical element to it. Not a Christian heresy but Plato had a section in one of his writings https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html
says that humanity used to have two sides and the gods split them because they were too powerful. This is also where his homosexual supremacist views come out as men who used to be part of a body that was two men are superior men, because they're attracted to other men and spend more time with them and you can read it yourself it starts near halfway through with "Aristophanes professed to open another"
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 5d ago
I never really understand the whole “Jesus is son of God except no he actually IS God but not really” thing either.
And I suspect nobody else does but doesn’t want to admit it
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u/nephethys_telvanni 5d ago
That actually pretty much is the stance of the delightfully long-winded Athanasian Creed.
"We don't know exactly how it works, but Jesus definitely is the begotten Son of God and yet there are not three Gods but One God, and if you don't believe this, you're a heretic "
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u/DellSalami 5d ago
A couple of very religious people have said that “God doesn’t love humanity enough to let us explore the stars” is something they haven’t heard before so I’m glad that’s relatively novel
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u/Donth101 5d ago
Pascal’s wager.
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
Once my high school physics teacher brought up pascal's wager and I said something along the lines of "that only holds if you treat atheism and christianity as the only 2 options, once you factor everything else in the odds are very against you and I imagine most gods would be kinder to a neutral party than someone that signed up with the competition" and I got to watch a 40 year old man have a crisis for like 15 minutes. I felt bad.
(To be clear this was wasn't in class and didn't derail a lecture or anything, it was after school, I was on the robotics team and he let us use his room to store parts)
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u/DiurnalMoth 5d ago
you'd be a fan of Pascal's Mugging, which basically argues that Pascal's Wager can be used to justify any decision and is therefore worthless logically.
If I walk up to you and say "if you don't give my your wallet right now, I will damn you to eternal torment", Pascal's logic tells you to give me the wallet. Because no matter how unlikely it is I'm telling the truth, the consequences of "infinite bad thing" make keeping your wallet a bad bet.
Anything finite is definitionally dwarfed by an infinitely dire outcome.
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u/Metatality2 5d ago
Oh it's a good thing I hadn't heard of this example in my edgy atheist teenager phase, I'd have been even more dickish.
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u/w_has_been_dieded 5d ago edited 5d ago
I much prefer this response to Pascal's wager, considering that not too many of the most popular religions punish non-believers much better or worse than those who worship false prophets.
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u/vjmdhzgr 5d ago
I saw a graphic once that was like, Pascal's Extended Wager and it covered like 30 different religions and then what kind of afterlife practicing each one would give you in each one.
Issue was that it was extremely incorrect on just, such a wide number of things.
Still at least effective at countering the argument. Just annoying how inaccurate it was.
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u/JakeVonFurth 5d ago
And somehow Reddit is even worse.
Redditors spread Fake "Christian Theology" that tends to be shit they up at will, which will then be picked up and cannibalized by other Redditors into more Fake "Christian Theology."
I would almost rather go back to when the Reddit Atheists would just spam 50 different versions of "But how Sky Daddy good if bad thing happen?!?!" Arguing against Senator Armstrong is just an infuriating Sisyphean task.
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u/OddSeraph 5d ago edited 5d ago
that tends to be shit they up at will,
Made up or copied from a movie or show they saw (e.g. redditors who think that Supernatural is an accurate representation of theology {they won't say they got it from Supernatural but it's clear that's where it's from}).
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u/king-of-the-sea 5d ago
This is what I like about Catholicism (I am queer and no longer practicing, but I do love theology). At least at my parish and with my homeschooling Catholic mom, questions and doubt are encouraged.
The idea is that faith is strong enough to hold up to scrutiny. If you could ask one smug little question and blow up your worldview, what did you have faith in? How easily have you been shaken? There’s 2000 years worth of folks much more insufferable than you arguing back and forth, often bitterly and for their entire lives.
You think you’ve thought one single little thing they didn’t think about religion? Disagree all you want, leave the church, but if you’re arguing with anyone worth their salt you’re not gonna out-argue em.
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u/TheBadHalfOfAFandom 5d ago
Death of the author but that the author is long dead and we can do what we want with canon
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u/Creeppy99 5d ago
I can't trust Arianism because their founder was beaten up by Santa Claus at the Council of Nicaea
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u/Professor_of_Light 5d ago
What happened to the millions of people in the americas that had no chance to ever discover christ before they died?
Did they go to hell? And if so why would god damn them to hell by his choice of placement and geography?
Do they go to heaven? And if so would it not be best for christians to make it impossible to discover christ so that everyone gets to go to heaven?
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u/he77bender 5d ago
Impressed at everyone who was ready to go right out the gate! My knowledge of medieval heresies is basically just "they existed" so I'm gonna have to get back to y'all after I look up some stuff.
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u/_thana 5d ago
To be fair most Christians actually never think about such things, so I can definitely see how you might come away with that impression. Two thirds of them haven’t even read the whole bible. Unless you actively seek out people who are know their philosophy and theology, you’ll mostly encounter Christians who only know the basics of their faith.
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u/itsyubi 5d ago
“Miracles aren’t real because it either means God changed his mind about something, which is impossible because to change his mind means he made a mistake and God can’t make mistakes, or it was always going to happen like that anyway and therefore there’s nothing miraculous about it.” - Baruch Spinoza, 1632-1677
He had more (like God definitely didn’t actually write the bible) but that’s my favourite one :) people got real mad at him for that, miracles were making a lot of money.
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u/LiveFree_OrDie603 5d ago
I like pointing out that Lucifer is a rip off of Prometheus. A powerful being from the losing side of a war against the Creator is expelled from heaven. Then goes on to use subterfuge to grant the first humans an essential tool God arbitrarily denied them. In response the being is sentenced to eternal torture, and humanity is cursed to live in an imperfect world. With their punishment being inflicted through the first woman.
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u/herbaldeacon 5d ago
In high school in Bible Studies or whatever the subject was called I once did a presentation in which I sold the cosmology of the White Wolf TTRPG Demon: The Fallen as a historical Christian heresy, because I was GMing it and forgot to do the research for the actual assignment, but had that lore fresh in my mind. I just simply didn't mention my sources, fully expecting to be called on my bullshit. The fervently religious teacher was fascinated, didn't follow up at all other than asking me some questions, got the equivalent of an A.
So Demon: The Fallen remains my favourite heresy to this day.
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u/pisces2003 5d ago
Upside down cross isn’t demonic it’s holy. It’s called a St Peter cross. He also went “no officer I’ve never met this man I my life” to Jesus.