i just simply wanted to read it out of curosity, but if it has hersey in it like kwdayboise said then id rather not read it so my mid doesnt get confused, but out of curosity do y’all have any examples as whats heretical about it? God bless
Just as a fun aside, I learned the word “heresy” comes from the word “selecting” – referring to people who select certain parts of the Gospel while ignoring the rest. I’ve met many people, Catholic and Protestant, who are quite adept at this.
In the second century, when the AoP was written, there was a sect called the Encratites. Their celibacy extended to completely abstaining from marriage, wine and meat. Despite Simon Magus being a Gnostic (and Peter having battles with him) the Encratite tendencies in the book were also considered heretical – their level of abstention and celibacy formed by a Gnostic/Docetic misunderstanding of the creation of matter. Their belief was that some forms of matter were evil by nature. The older Catholic Encyclopedia says:
Rejecting marriage, they implicitly accuse the Creator, Who made both male and female. Refraining from all 'empsucha (animal food and intoxicants), they are ungrateful to Him Who created all things. “And now”, continues Irenaeus, “they reject the salvation of the first man [Adam]; an opinion recently introduced among them by Tatian, a disciple of Justin. As long as he was with Justin he gave no sign of these things, but after his martyrdom Tatian separated himself from the Church. Elated and puffed up by his professorship, he established some teaching of his own. He fabled about some invisible aeons, as the Valentinians do; and proclaimed marriage to be corruption and fornication, as Marcion and Saturninus do, but he made the denial of Adam’s salvation a specialty of his own.”
So they were not just celibate, they believed marriage was evil.
When you know what the basis of a heresy is, it’s sometimes interesting to read books like Acts of Peter, just to get an idea of where your own thinking might go astray. Plus, the battles between Peter and Simon Magus are pretty epic.
