Montanism
Whenever I hear ‘Montanism’ all I can think of is poor Vasily Borodin in ‘The Hunt for Red October’ uttering with his dying breath, ‘I would have liked to have seen Montana.’ Poor Vasily, who only wanted to live in Montana, marry a round American woman and drive a pickup truck... or maybe even a ‘recreational vehicle’. Sadly, it was not to be for Vasily, shot by the cook (who we all knew was up to something, the way the camera lingered on him in that one scene).
However, our task is not to analyze film adaptions of Tom Clancy novels but to look at the early Christian heresy of Montanism. Named after its founder, Montanus, it flourished in the 2nd century, usually referring to itself as the “New Prophecy”. Montanus, a former pagan priest, along with two women, Prisca and Maxamilla, would be taken away in ecstatic visions and claim ‘new’ revelations granted to them by the Holy Spirit. They emphasized ascetism and moral perfection. For example, they not only forbade marriage after divorce but after the death of a spouse as well. They believed that apostles and prophets could forgive sins, as well as those who would become martyrs. They believed women could be bishops and presbyters but their view of those offices were much less elevated than what orthodoxy understood them to be. They also forbid women from wearing any ornaments and all virgins had to wear a veil.
Fundamentally, they believed that new revelations could supersede not only Scripture, but the words of Jesus Himself! You have to remember that at this time, the canon of Scripture was not yet fixed. While there was general agreement as to what constituted Scripture, the Septuagint for the Old Testament and the books of our New Testament, there were also epistles by early church fathers such as St Polycarp and St Clement, poems like ‘The Shepherd of Hermas’ being read throughout different churches. There were also a great many ‘false’ gospels and forged epistles, such as the gospel of Thomas which features stories that later found themselves added to the Koran as well as such as the ‘Cherry Tree Carol’.
But the fundamental issue at hand is whether it was true what Jesus says on the cross, ‘It is finished’ (Jn 19:30) or whether there is more to be accomplished, more to be done? Even the Acts of the Apostles can be seen as a working out of what Jesus had promised in sending the Holy Spirit to His followers, the epistles as a wrestling with the implications for the Church, and even John’s Apocalypse is more a revelation of the reality of Christ than a wholly new message.
Not so with the Montanists. Their prophets didn’t even speak as God’s mouthpiece as the prophets of old who introduced their prophecies with, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ rather the Montanists would be carried away in an ecstatic frenzy and say, ‘I am the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!’ Thus, every new utterance out of their mouth could alter or contradict what had come before. There was no fixed point, no rock, no cornerstone but the claim of the prophet and the willingness of adherents to follow.
To be sure, their zeal seemed sincere. They were not cultists setting up themselves to be worshiped. They were harsh in their asceticism, unwilling to compromise with the pagans surrounding them but whenever some says ‘I am God’ we should be wary, especially if they claim to not be themselves when they say it. Another good sign is when someone claims that the ‘New Jerusalem’ just so happens to be right there, where the so-called prophet is based, as did Montanus regarding the town of Pepuza in Phrygia.
But the battle against Heresies such as Montanism did have one important effect, it spurred the far-flung Churches to come together and authorize the canon of Scripture, those writings which should be included in the Bible and those that should not. Nearly as important was the development of our great Creeds. The undivided Church set down the Creeds as a guardrail against heresy; within these bounds one may engage in fruitful theological study and contemplation but outside of these broad boundaries lies heresy.
It should be noted that the writings of Polycarp and Clement are not heretical. It was decided by the compilers that because they were a generation removed from the Apostles, that they should not be included in scripture. However, their writings are still of great benefit.