Positions rejected by the early Ecumenical Councils (i.e., "heresies")

 

Ebionitism -- Jesus was not divine, but was a holy man and a prophet, upon whom

the Spirit of God descended at his baptism.

 

Docetism -- Jesus was only divine; his body was only an appearance.  (More a tendency than a particular school of thought)

 

Arianism -- Jesus, as Logos, was a superhuman creature (something like an angel) between God and humans.  At least as interpreted by those who opposed Arius, this was a version of Origen's neo-Platonist interpretation of creation as a process of emanation, in which the Logos and Spirit are something other than the God from whom they emanate.

 

Apollinarianism -- In Jesus the human nous (intellect) was replaced by the divine Logos.  (A divine mind in a human body.)

 

Nestorianism -- Christ was two persons, divine and human, functioning in parallel (in what might be called a moral rather than a hypostatic union). Mary was mother only of the man (not "Theotokos," "God-bearer").

 

Monophysitism -- The union of divine and human natures resulted in a single divine nature; the human nature was extinguished at the moment of conception.  (Also known as Eutychianism, after Eutyches, the first person to formulate the position.)

 

Monothelitism -- The union of the divine and human in Jesus resulted in a person who could be called both human and divine, but who did not have a human will apart from the divine will.  This was a later version of monophysitism; it tried to rescue the monophysite position by restating it in terms of "one will" rather than "one nature."

 

Sabellianism (also known as "modalism") -- Father, Son, and Spirit are not real "hypostases," but "roles" played by God at different times.

 

Gnosticism -- The material world is evil, the creation of an evil demiurge (or "archon").  Salvation comes through secret knowledge (gnosis) of this (brought by Jesus) and is available only to a spiritual elite, those "who have ears to ear."

 

Schematic classification of some of the above

 

Jesus was simply God

Docetism; Monophysitism

 

Jesus was not God but simply a creature

Arianism; Ebionitism

 

The Christ was part man and part God

Apollinarianism; Nestorianism; Monothelitism