New Thought
A form of philosophy based on the progressive ability of mankind, which its adherents have collected into a more or less definite system, though they deny the applicability of that term. Its fundamental ideas are: that God is omnipresent and immanent in all created things that man is a divine soul “a microcosm of God” […]
Nestorius; Nestorianism
Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople (5th century), while combating the Arians, came to accept the view that in Christ the two natures stand for two personalities which are united in one moral person. This doctrine had previously been prevalent in the School of Antioch where it was held by Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia […]
NESTORIUS AND THE CHALDEAEANS
After a prolonged and protracted struggle which frequently involved the use of military force and resulted in civil war in many areas of the empire, Arianism disappeared, at least formally, from the intellectual scene of the age, and Nestorius of Constantinople taught, apparently in an attempt to rectify the damage done by the Arian schisms, […]
Naturism
Term designating the worship of nature, which, according to the claim of some modern philosophers, e.g., Tylor, Spencer, and Reville, was the primitive form of religion and the basis and source of all existing forms. There are three phases of Naturism as a theory of religion. Ethnographic Naturism holds that there is human life in […]
Montanists
Schismatics of the 2nd century, named from Montanus, a Phrygian, who, c.156, shortly after his conversion to Christianity, proclaimed himself a prophet of the “Spirit.” He called the people to gather in the plain of Pepuza, there to live a more spiritual life in preparation for the second coming of Christ which he said was […]
Monophysites; Monophysitism
(Greek: monos, single; physis, nature) An heretical sect which arose in the 5th century, teaching that there was but one nature in Christ, as a reaction against Nestorianism. Nestorius had held that in Our Lord there was both a human hypostasis or person and a divine. Some early Monophysites, prominent among whom was Eutyches, archimandrite of a […]
Monophysites
The pendulum never seems to cease its swing. No sooner had Nestorius been condemned in his attempt to correct for the errors of Arius by postulating two persons and two natures, than someone else took the pendulum once again to the other extreme, postulating that Our Lord had only one person – but also only […]
Monarchianism
A heretical system, begun about the 2nd century, which so distorts the monarchy (monarchia) of God as to deny the distinction of Persons in the Trinity. It takes the three following forms: (1) Crass Monarchianism absolutely denies any distinction of Persons in the Trinity and concludes naturally that the Father became incarnate and died on […]
Marcionites
I. LIFE OF MARCION Marcion was son of the Bishop of Sinope in Pontus, born c. A.D. 110, evidently from wealthy parents. He is described as nautes, nauclerus, a ship owner, by Rhodon and Tertullian, who wrote about a generation after his death. Epiphanius (Haeres., XLII, ii) relates that Marcion in his youth professed to lead […]
Marcion
Born c.110. Founder, in Rome in 144, of a sect called the Marcionites. Amazed at what he considered the opposition between the Old and New Dispensations, Marcion rejected the former and declared the Apostles had been in error in linking the New Covenant with the Old. He claimed to be interpreting true Christianity as taught […]