Apollinarianism: named after Apollinarius of Laodicea (b. circa 310 ad) who taught that the human mind leads men into sin; therefore Christ (who could not sin) was not a true man but partook of only part of our nature.
Adoptionism: An umbrella term for a number of theories according to which Jesus was a man on whom divine qualities were conferred and who was “adopted” as the Divine Word and Son of God, perhaps at His baptism.
Arianism: condemned at Nicea (325 ad); the views of Arius that if the Father “begat” the Son, He was the first of God’s creation, and in turn created everything else. Christ viewed as demi-god, neither fully God nor fully man.
Docetism: that Christ was not a real man, historical but only seemed to be (from the Gk. dokeo¯, to seem). An influence on Islam, it taught that the divine Christ descended on Jesus at His baptism and left before the cross.
Eutychianism: Eutyches (c. 378-454) acknowledged “two natures” in Christ “before the union” but only one nature after—when, in effect, the human nature was subsumed in the divine. Condemned at Chalcedon (451 ad).
Gnosticism: from Gk. gno¯sis, meaning “knowledge,” a peril in the Church for 150 years. It taught 30 emanations between God and man, of which Christ was one. The Gnostic claimed secret knowledge available only to a few.
Kenoticism: or semi-Kenoticism, where the Son “emptied” (kenoo¯, translated “made Himself of no reputation,” Phil. 2:7) Himself of some or all divine attributes at His birth, making the exhortation of Phil. 2 meaningless.
Monarchianism: Overemphasis in safeguarding the unity of the Godhead; the view that Christ and the Spirit are merely functions of the one God. Tertullian said they “put to flight the Paraclete and crucified the Father.”
Monophysitism: from monos “single” and physis “nature,” the heresy that the incarnate Son had only a single, divine nature, clad in human flesh; also denies that Christ’s body was the same in essence as that of other men.
Nestorianism: Nestorian (Bishop of Constantinople, 428), in attacking the extravagant emphasis on the phrase theotokos (“mother of God”), taught the unity in Christ’s person is a conjunction of will rather than true union.