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In the statement that Jesus Christ "was dead," the Creed affirms the reality of Christ's death in opposition to certain early heretics, the Docetae, who said that His death was not real but only apparent.
One class, the Ebionites, regarded Him as a being essentially human, though begotten of the Spirit, by whom He was anointed above measure; while another, the Docetae, regarded Him as a Divine Being seemingly bearing human form and united with the man Jesus.
At the present hour there are eminent Christian teachers in Europe who are treating the resurrection of the Lord in very much the same way as these early Docetae treated His death as a kind of figure of speech, not to be understood too literally. Against such the Church must lift up the crude facts of the resurrection as St. John did those of the death of the Saviour.
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