Lord against its denial by a certain group in the Church at that time. These were the Gnostics. There were two groups among them, each with a different take on the Person of our Lord. Without going into detail, both denied the physical Person of Christ, claiming that had He actually had a physical body, He could not have been God. They taught that all matter was evil. Consequently, they denied the Incarnation, “God becoming man,” and as such, they denied the Cross as well as having any validity.