Heresies of the Ancient Church Revived

 

I don't know of anything in our Lord Jesus Christ that the devil has not assailed. Accordingly he has to start again from the beginning and rake up the old errors and heresies. Sabellius was the first; he said that Christ is God and that there is only one person in the Godhead. This is the earliest and most subtle heresy, that there is only one person, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then followed the Patripassians, who did not disagree particularly with the Sabellians. Afterward the Arians distinguished among the persons but declared that the Son was not God from eternity but was only called God, just as princes are called gods. The Manicheans followed by attacking the humanity of Christ and saying that he was a phantom who did not have a real body. Later the Photinians appeared and said that Christ indeed had a real body but lacked a soul. Thus the devil assailed Christ from stem to stern. There was nothing left to attack, and so the devil has to start all over again from the beginning.


Martin Luther
Table Talk (Between April 20 and May 16,  1532)
Luther Works Vol. 54, pp. 36-36