Heresy: Synopses of some documents 3

Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, 02 November 2003

The Book of John the Evangelist

The book of John the Evangelist might be the John's gospel that the Cathars were said to have particularly revered. M R James gives a version derived from the Archives of the Inquisition at Carcassonne, having this annotation in Latin: “This is the secret book of the heretics of Concoreze, brought from Bulgaria by their bishop Nazarius, full of errors.” James notes that “in its Latin dress the book can hardly be older than the twelfth century. The original might have been of the sixth or seventh.”

The book is related in the first person by John, the so-called beloved disciple. He says he asked “our Lord Jesus Christ” while he lay on his breast at the last supper various questions which Christ answered candidly. Satan descended into the lower levels of the cosmos and decided to take them over, which he did by fiat “to be like unto the Most High”. He declared:

All these things are mine: if ye will hearken unto me, I will set my seat in the clouds and be like the Most High, and I will take the waters from this upper firmament and gather together the other places of the sea, and thereafter there shall be no water upon the face of all the earth, and I will reign with you world without end.

Satan then took the role of the Demiurgos and made the lower realms as they are now, making the angels who had followed him his ministers. He made man in his likeness, and commanded an angel of the third heaven to enter into the body of clay, and similarly made woman infused with a second level angel. The pair he placed in paradise, forbidding them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the Devil in the form of a serpent seduced them.

John asked of the idea that God had made paradise, but Christ said foolish men said it in their deceitfulness. God only made things out of the Holy Spirit. John asked how a man in the flesh can attain spirituality. Christ answered that those angels that had fallen lusted after flesh and so were given a fleshly body, but were nevertheless still born of the spirit. Satan had been granted seven ages to reign, so each angel condemned to the flesh had seven lifetimes to escape from it. But he had deliberately confused men by sending Enoch with seventy books of false teaching like sacrifice, and had the sovereignty over men. He said to them:

Behold that I am your god and beside me is none other god.

The true God had sent Christ into the world to make known unto men the evil device of the devil. God sent an angel before Christ, by name Mary, to receive him. He entered by the ear and came forth by the ear. Elijah was sent by Satan as John the Baptist to destroy the Christ, who baptized by the Holy Ghost, and told he would recognize him by a dove. Here Christ explains to John the difference between baptism by water and baptism “unto forgiveness of sins”.

By the baptism of water can no man see the kingdom of heaven: for I am the bread of life that came down from the seventh heaven and they that eat my flesh and drink my blood, they shall be called the sons of God.

John asked the Lord what “to eat my flesh and drink my blood” meant, but the answer is missing and so is the next question. Cathars had no Eucharist it seems and so the answer must have been mystical. The answer to the missing question is the Lord's prayer which was the way to get a hearing from God, but did not work for fallen angels. John asked the Lord: How do all men receive the baptism of John, but thine not at all? And the Lord answered: Because their deeds are evil and they come not unto the light.

The disciples of John marry and are given in marriage; but my disciples neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But I said: If, then, it be sin to have to do with a woman, it is not good to marry. And the Lord said unto me: Not every one can receive this saying (cf Mt 29:11-12).

The last question and answer was about the final judgement, and the reply was fairly standard belief, except that those who sought gain in the wicked world needed to be judged, while the righteous were commended for their patience. In reward for their“ good works” they enjoyed glory in a kingdom for which there shall be no end for ever and ever, while the unrighteous suffered anguish in the everlasting fire.

M R James thinks the account of the Last Judgement is too orthodox and conventional to square with the rest of the book. He thinks it has been inserted from another source. It does not tie in with the Cathar idea, featured by contemporary critics, that there is no punishment outside the world we live in, which is Hell itself. Unfortunately, this is the longest answer in the book, and such a serious adulteration has to cast doubt on much of the rest. It looks like a hybrid.

The Apparelamentum. General Confession Liturgy

From the Lyons Ritual. This is scarcely Cathar at all.

We have come before God and before you and before the ordinances of the Holy Church that we may receive pardon and penance for all our sins in thought, word and deed from our birth until now, and we ask of God mercy, and of you that you pray for us to the Holy Father of Mercy that He forgive us.

Let us worship God and declare all our sins and numerous offences in the sight of the Father, the Son and the honoured Holy Spirit, of the honoured Holy Gospels and the honoured Holy Apostles, by prayer and faith and by the salvation of all the upright and glorious Christians and blessed ancestors asleep and here present. For their sake, we ask you, Holy Lord, to pardon all our sins.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

For numerous are the sins by which we daily offend God, night and day, in thought, in word and deed, wittingly and unwittingly, and especially by the desires the evil spirits bring to us in the flesh which clothes us.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

Whereas, we are thought by God's Holy Word as well as by the Holy Apostles and the preaching of our spiritual brothers to reject all fleshly desire, and all uncleanness, and to do the will of God by doing good, we, unworthy servants that we are, not only do not do the will of God as we should, but more often give way to desires of the flesh and the cares of the world, to such an extent that we wound our spirits.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

We go with those who are of the world, mixing with them, talking and eating with them, and sinning in many things so that we wound our brothers and our sisters.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

By our tongues, we fall into idle words, vain talk, mockery and malice, detraction of our brothers and sisters whom we are not worthy to judge nor to condemn their faults. Among Christians we are sinners.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

The penance which we received we have not observed as we ought to have done, neither the fasting nor the prayer. We have wasted our days and hours. While we are saying the Holy Prayer our senses are diverted to carnal desires and worldly cares, so that, at this moment, we hardly know what we can offer to the Father of the Just.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

The Errors of the Waldenses

Reinerius Saccho, Of the Sects of Modern Heretics, listed the errors of the Waldenses. The enumerated list of the errors, given by Sacchoni, is:

1. They say that the Romish Church, is not the Church of Jesus Christ. It apostatized under Sylvester, when the holy was poisoned,
2. they say they are the church of Christ, because they observe both in word, and deed, the doctrine of Christ, of the gospel, and of the apostles,
3. they are the Church of Jesus Christ,
4. all vices and sins are in the church, and that they alone live righteously,
5. scarcely anyone in the church, but themselves, preserves the evangelical doctrine,
6. they are the true poor in spirit, and suffer persecution for righteousness and faith,
7. the Church of Rome is the Harlot in the Apocalypse, on account of its superfluous decoration which the Eastern Church does not regard,
8. they despise all the statutes of the Church, because they are heavy and numerous,
9. the Pope is the head of all errors,
10. the Pope and all bishops, are homicides on account of wars,
11. the prelates are scribes, and the monks, Pharisees,
12. we are not to obey prelates, but only God,
13. no one is greater than another in the church:

    All ye are brethren (Mt 23:8),

14. no one ought to bow the knee before a priest.

    See thou do it not. (Rev 19:10; 22:9, the Angel says to John)

15. tithes are not to be given, because first fruits were not given to the church,
16. the clergy ought not to have possessions,

    The priests and all the tribe of Levi, shall not have part and inheritance with the people of Israel, because they eat the sacrifices, and they shall receive nothing else. (Dt 18:1-2)

17. the clergy, and monks, ought not to have prebends,
18. the bishops and abbots ought not to have royal rights,
19. the land, and the people, are not to be divided into parts,
20. it is a bad thing to found and endow churches and monasteries,
21. wills are not to be made in favour of churches,
22. no one ought to be a tenant of the church,
23. no one is to be forced into belief.
24. They condemn all the clergy for idleness, saying that they ought to work with their hands as the apostles did,
25. they reprobate titles of dignity such as Pope, bishops,
26. they make no account of all ecclesiastical offices,
27. they care nothing for ecclesiastical privileges,
28. they despise the immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons and things,
29. they condemn councils, synods, and assemblies,
30. they say that all parochial rights are invention,
31. they say that monastic rules are the traditions of the Pharisees.
32. They condemn all the sacraments of the Church. As to baptism, they say that the catechism is nothing,
33. and that the ablution which is given to infants profits nothing…
34. they condemn the sacrament of marriage, saying that married persons sin mortally if they come together without the hope of offspring,
35. they disregard compaternity,
36. they despise the degrees of affinity, carnal and spiritual, and the impediments of orders, and of public decency, and of ecclesiastical prohibition,
37. they say that a woman after child-bearing does not require benediction, or introduction,
38. they say that the church has erred in prohibiting the marriage of the clergy, while even those of the east marry,
39. they say that the continent do not sin in kisses and embraces.
40. The sacrament of unction, they reprobate, because it is only given to the rich, and because several priests are required for it,
41. they say that the sacrament of orders is nothing,
42. they say that every good layman is a priest, as the apostles were laymen,
43. that the prayer of an evil priest does not profit,
44. they deride the clerical tonsure,
45. that Latin prayer does not profit the vulgar,
46. they make it a matter of ridicule that illegitimate persons and wicked sinners are raised to eminence in the church,
47. they say that every layman, and even woman ought to preach:

    I would that ye spake in tongues, that the church might receive edification (1 Cor 14:5),

48. and, whatever is preached which cannot be proved by the text of scripture they consider as fabulous…
49. they say that the doctrine of Christ and the apostles is sufficient for salvation without the statutes of the church,
50. that the tradition of the church is the tradition of the Pharisees,
51. that there is more made of the transgression of a human tradition than of a divine law.

    Why do ye transgress the commands of God by reason of your traditions? (Mt 15:3)

52. they reject the mystical sense in the holy Scriptures, principally as it regards the sayings and doings delivered in the Church by tradition; as that the cock upon the steeple signifies a doctor.

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History