Three major heresies had made inroads into the church when John wrote toward the end of the first century of the Christian era. The Ebionites denied the deity of Christ—to them He was just another created being. The Docetists denied the humanity of Christ. Believing that He had not come in the flesh, they taught that He was some kind of phantom who had no corporeal being. The Cerinthians denied the union of the two natures of Christ (the human and the divine). Their notion was that “the Christ” descended