DOCETAE, a name applied to those thinkers in the early Christian Church who held that Christ, during his life, had not a real or natural, but only an apparent to appear) or phantom body. The name is first used by Theodoret (Ep. 82) as a general description, and by Hippolytus (Philosophumena, viii. 8-1 1), Clement of Alexandria and others, as the name of a distinct sect. It must, however, be regarded as a type of Christology. The origin of the heresy is to be sought in Greek, Alexandrine and Oriental speculations about the imperfection or rather the essential impurity of matter. Traces of a Jewish Docetism are to be found in Philo ; and in the Christian form it is generally supposed to be combated in the Johannine Epistles (I. ii. 22, iv. 2, v. 6, 20; II. 7) and more formally in the epistles of Ignatius (Ad Trall. 9 f ., Ad Smyrn. 2, 4, Ad Ephes. 7; cf. Polycarp, Ad Phil. 7). It differed much in its complexion according to the points of view adopted by the different authors. Among the Gnostics and Manichaeans it existed in its most developed type, and in a milder form is to be found even in the writings of the orthodox teachers.
The more thoroughgoing Docetae assumed the position that Christ was born without any participation of matter; and that all the acts and sufferings of his human life, including the crucifixion, were only apparent. They denied, accordingly, the resurrection and the ascent into heaven. To this cla,> belonged Dositheus, Saturninus, Cerdo, Marcion and their followers, the Ophites, Manichaeans and others. Marcion, for example, re garded the body of Christ merely as an "umbra," a "phantasma." His denial (due to his abhorrence of the world) that Jesus was born or subjected to human development, is in striking contrast to the value which he sets on Christ's death on the cross. The other, or milder school of Docetae, attributed to Christ an ethereal and heavenly instead of a truly human body. Amongst these were Valentinus, Bardesanes, Basilides, Tatian and their followers. They varied considerably in their estimation of the share which this body had in the real actions and sufferings of Christ. Docetism springs from the same roots as Gnosticism (q.v.).