Nicolaitans and Early Christian Heresy
Early Christians usually described the Nicolaitans as a false teaching tied to sexual sin and idol food. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and the Apostolic Constitutions all connect the name with corrupt conduct, while Revelation 2:6, 2:14, and 2:15 are the key Bible passages. The strongest evidence is direct, repeated, and consistent, though some writers give only short summaries or repeat the same point in different words.
129 early-church witnesses · 203 source quotations · compared with Scripture
What did early Christians believe about the Nicolaitans and Early Heresy?
Early Christian writers treated the Nicolaitans as a real false teaching tied to sexual immorality and eating food offered to idols, and they linked that warning to Revelation 2. Irenaeus says they were an early heretical group, while Tertullian, Hippolytus, and the Apostolic Constitutions repeat that they were associated with loose living and corrupt doctrine.
The main evidence is broad and steady across the 2nd and 3rd centuries, though some later passages are repeated wording or polemical summaries rather than fresh details. The Bible passages that matter most are Revelation 2:6, 2:14, and 2:15, which condemn the deeds and doctrine of the Nicolaitans and connect the issue with idolatry and sexual sin. There is also nearby early Christian evidence that the church should reject heresy, avoid false teachers, and keep to one baptism and one faith.
Many more early Christian quotations, Bible passages, and source links are gathered below so you can study the evidence for yourself.
Key Takeaways
- Revelation 2 condemns the deeds and doctrine of the Nicolaitans, not just the name.
- Irenaeus says they were an early heretical group linked with false knowledge and moral corruption.
- Tertullian and Hippolytus repeat that the Nicolaitans were known for uncleanness, adultery, and idol meat.
Questions Answered by the Sources
What does Revelation say about the Nicolaitans?
Revelation directly says the Nicolaitans’ deeds and doctrine were hated, making the book the central Bible passage for the topic. The related Balaam and Jezebel warnings in the same chapter reinforce the theme of false teaching tied to sexual immorality and idolatry.
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Irenaeus, Against Heresies: Book I Direct teaching
The Nicolaitanes are followers of Nicolas, who was one of the first seven ordained to the diaconate by the apostles. They live lives of unrestrained indulgence. The character of these people is clearly described in the Apocalypse of John, where they are depicted as teaching that it is acceptable to commit adultery and to eat food sacrificed to idols. Therefore, the Word has spoken of them in this way: "But you have this, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate."
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Irenaeus, Against Heresies: Book III Supporting witness
1. John, the disciple of the Lord, preaches this faith, and seeks, by the proclamation of the Gospel, to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men, and a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans, who are an offset of that “knowledge” falsely so called, that he might confound them, and persuade them that there is but one God, who made all things by His Word;
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Tertullian, Against All Heresies Supporting witness
Enough it is for us that this heresy of the Nicolaitans has been condemned by the Apocalypse of the Lord with the weightiest authority attaching to a sentence, in saying Because this you hold, you hate the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which I too hate.
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Tertullian, On Modesty Direct teaching
... to repentance, a heretical woman who had taken upon herself to teach what she had learned from the Nicolaitans. For who doubts that a heretic, deceived by a false baptismal rite, upon discovering his mischance, and expiating it by repentance, both attains pardon and is restored to the bosom of the Church? Therefore even among us, as being on a par with a heathen, indeed even more than a heathen, a heretic likewise is purged through the baptism of truth from each character, and admitted to the Church. Or else, if you are certain that that woman, after a living faith, subsequently fell away and turned heretic, so that you may claim pardon as the result of repentance, not, as it were, for a heretical sinner, but, as it were, for a believing sinner: let her, I grant, repent; but with the view of ceasing from adultery, not, however, in the prospect of restoration to church fellowship as well. For this will be a repentance which we too acknowledge to be due much more than you do; but which, for pardon, we reserve to God.
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Tertullian, On Modesty Supporting witness
For (the angel of the Thyatirene Church) was secretly introducing into the Church, and urging justly to repentance, an heretical woman, who had taken upon herself to teach what she had learned from the Nicolaitans.
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Apostolic Constitutions, Apostolic Constitutions Supporting witness
and others abhor some kinds of food: some are impudent in uncleanness, such as those who are falsely called Nicolaitans.
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Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies Supporting witness
And when the disciples (of Nicolaus) continued to offer insult to the Holy Spirit, John reproved them in the Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered unto idols.
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Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies Supporting witness
(But Nicolaus) departed from correct doctrine, and was in the habit of inculcating indifferency of both life and food.
More related quotations from this section 7 shown
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Apostolic Constitutions, Apostolic Constitutions Supporting witness
...f absurd teachings: Cerinthus, Marcus, Menander, Basilides, and Saturnilus. Some of these teach the doctrine of many gods. Some teach only three, but they are opposed to one another, without beginning, and always existing with one another. Some teach an infinite number of gods, including unknown ones. Some reject marriage, and their teaching is that it is not appointed by God. Others hate certain kinds of food. Some are shameless in uncleanness, such as those who are falsely called Nicolaitans. And Simon, meeting me, Peter, first at Caesarea Stratonis, where the faithful Cornelius, a Gentile, believed in the Lord Jesus through me, tried to pervert the word of God. With me there were the holy children, Zacchaeus, who had once been a tax collector, and Barnabas, and Nicetas and Aquila, brothers of Clement, the bishop and citizen of Rome, who was the disciple of Paul, our fellow apostle and fellow helper in the gospel. I spoke with him before them three times about the true Prophet and about the monarchy of God. And when I had overcome him by the power of the Lord and had silenced him, I drove him away into Italy.
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Irenaeus, Against Heresies: Book III Supporting witness
..., by proclaiming the Gospel, to correct the error spread by Cerinthus and earlier by those known as Nicolaitans. These groups promoted a false "knowledge," claiming there is more than one God: one who created everything through His Word, and another as the Father of the Lord. They alleged that the Creator's Son was distinct from Christ, who remained impassible, descending upon Jesus, the Son of the Creator, and then returned to His Pleroma. They also claimed that Monogenes was the beginning, while Logos was the true son of Monogenes, and that this creation is not from the primary God but by a distant power separate from the divine and hidden realms. John, desiring to end such doctrines and establish the truth in the Church that there is one Almighty God who created everything through His Word, both visible and invisible, shows that this Word also provided salvation to humanity. He begins in the Gospel with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the da
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Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians (Long Version) Supporting witness
If any one confesses these things, and that God the Word did dwell in a human body, being within it as the Word, even as the soul also is in the body, because it was God that inhabited it, and not a human soul, but affirms that unlawful unions are a good thing, and places the highest happiness in pleasure, as does the man who is falsely called a Nicolaitan, this person can neither be a lover of God, nor a lover of Christ, but is a corrupter of his own flesh, and therefore void of the Holy Spirit, and a stranger to Christ.
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Hermas, The Shepherd (Pastor) Background
...re, restrain yourself from all wickedness, and do what is good." "What, sir," I said, "are the evil deeds from which we must restrain ourselves?" "Listen," he says: "from adultery and sexual immorality, from unlawful feasting, from wicked luxury, from indulging in many kinds of food and the extravagance of riches, and from boastfulness, haughtiness, insolence, lies, backbiting, hypocrisy, remembering wrongs, and every kind of slander. These are the deeds that are most wicked in human life. Therefore, the servant of God must restrain himself from all these deeds. For he who does not restrain himself from these cannot live to God. Listen now to the deeds that go along with these." "Are there, sir," I said, "any other evil deeds?" "There are," he says, "and many of them too, from which the servant of God must restrain himself: theft, lying, robbery, false witness, cheating, wicked desire, deceit, vainglory, boastfulness, and all other vices like these. Do you not think these are truly wicked? They are extremely wicked for the servants of God. The servant of God must restrain himself from all of these. Restrain yourself, then, from all these things, so that you may live to God, and
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Tertullian, On Modesty Background
...he belly for meats: God makes a full end both of the one and of the others; but the body is not for fornication, but for God." For God said, "Let Us make man in Our image and likeness." And God made man; in the image and likeness of God He made him. The Lord is for the body, yes; for the Word was made flesh. Moreover, "God both raised up the Lord, and will raise up us through His own power," because of the union of our body with Him. And accordingly, "Do you not know your bodies to be members of Christ?" Because Christ too is God's temple: "Overturn this temple, and I will in three days' space resuscitate it." Taking away the members of Christ, shall I make them members of a harlot? "Do you not know, that whoever is agglutinated to a harlot is made one body? For the two shall be made into one flesh." But "whoever is agglutinated to the Lord is one spirit." Flee fornication. If it can be revoked by pardon, in what sense am I to flee it, only to become an adulterer again? I shall gain nothing if I do flee it. I shall be one body with the one to whom by communion I shall be agglutinated. "Every sin which a human being may have committed is extraneous to the body; but whoever fornic
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Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata (Miscellanies) Background
He who in this way is joined to the harlot, that is, to conduct contrary to the Covenant becomes another body, not holy, and one flesh, and has a heathenish life and another hope.
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Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata (Miscellanies) Background
Quæ cum ita se habeant, vitii erat depulsio atque expurgatio, in medium apostolorum circumactio uxoris, cujus dicebatur laborare zelotypia: et continentia a voluptatibus, quæ magno studio parari solent, docebat illud, abuti carne, hoc est, exercere carnem.
How did early Christians describe the Nicolaitans?
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Ignatius describe the Nicolaitans as an immoral or heretical movement and urge believers to reject them. Some sources connect them with indulgence, impurity, and a false teaching opposed to apostolic doctrine.
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Revelation 2:6 Direct teaching
But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
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Revelation 2:15 Direct teaching
Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.
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Revelation 2:14 Background
But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.
Did early Christians treat Nicolaitan teaching as heresy?
The supplied sources consistently place the Nicolaitans among heresies that the church must avoid. Early writers use them as an example of false doctrine, separation from the church, and teaching that contradicts apostolic faith.
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Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata (Miscellanies) Supporting witness
We have already mentioned Marcion of Pontus, one of those who are led away by heresy. Because of the struggle he undertook against the Creator, he refuses the use of worldly things. If this is even to be called self-control, then the Creator himself is the cause of his self-control. Thinking that he is opposing the Creator, this giant fighting against God is unwillingly self-controlled, while he attacks creation and the work of God. If they use the Lord’s saying to Philip, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you follow Me,” Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:60, then let them consider this also: Philip too had the same bodily form, yet he did not have a polluted corpse. How then, though he had flesh, did he not have a corpse? Because he had risen from the tomb. When the Lord put his faults to death, he lived to Christ. We also remember the wicked teaching from the school of Carpocrates about the sharing of women. But when we were speaking about the saying of Nicolas, we passed over this point. They say that he had a beautiful wife, and after the Savior’s ascension, when the apostles reproached him for jealousy, he brought the woman into their midst and allowed whoever wished to marry her. For
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Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata (Miscellanies) Supporting witness
Since these things have been shown, let us now bring forward the Scriptures that oppose the heretical sophists. And let us explain the rule of self-control that must be kept according to the Word, that is, according to reason. Whoever understands which Scripture stands against each heresy will, by applying it at the right time, refute those who invent teachings contrary to the commandments. And to begin again from the highest point, the law itself, as we said before, first cried out, "You shall not desire your neighbor's wife," Exodus 20:17, before the Lord joined to it His voice in the New Testament, saying in His own person, "You have heard the law commanding, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say, 'You shall not desire,'" Matthew 5:27-28. For that the law wanted men to make moderate use of their wives, and only for the begetting of children, is clear from this: it does not allow a man who has no wife to have relations at once with a captive woman. But if he has once desired her, it allows her, after her hair has been cut, to mourn for thirty days. If even then his desire does not fade, then he is to give attention to having children, since the impulse that rules him, after
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Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies Supporting witness
And how Callistus, mixing the heresy of Cleomenes, the disciple of Noetus, with that of Theodotus, created another newer heresy, and what kind of life this heretic lived.
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Cyprian, Epistles Supporting witness
...es Christ before men and is baptized in his own blood? And yet even this baptism does not benefit a heretic, even if he has confessed Christ and been put to death outside the Church, unless the supporters and defenders of heretics say that heretics who are killed in a false confession of Christ are martyrs, and give them the glory and crown of martyrdom contrary to the testimony of the apostle, who says in 1 Corinthians 13:3 that it profits them nothing even if they are burned and killed. But if not even the baptism of public confession and blood can profit a heretic for salvation, because there is no salvation outside the Church, how much less will it help him if, in a hiding place and a cave of robbers, stained by the contamination of adulterous water, he has not only failed to put off his old sins, but has even piled up newer and greater ones. Therefore baptism cannot be shared by us and by heretics, since neither God the Father, nor Christ the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the faith, nor the Church itself, is shared with them. And therefore those who come from heresy to the Church must be baptized, so that those who are prepared, in the lawful, true, and only baptism of the
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Cyprian, Seventh Council of Carthage Supporting witness
...ter, sanctified in the Church by the prayer of the priest, washes away sins, if it is infected with heretical teaching like a cancer, it piles up sins. Therefore we must strive with all peaceful strength, so that no one infected and stained with heretical error may refuse to receive the one true baptism of the Church. By it, whoever is not baptized will become a stranger to the kingdom of heaven. Privatianus of Sufetula said: Let the one who says that heretics have the power to baptize first say who founded heresy. For if heresy is from God, it too may have divine pardon. But if it is not from God, how can it either have the grace of God, or give it to anyone?
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Cyprian, Epistles Supporting witness
He forbade anyone coming from any heresy to be baptized in the Church. That means he judged the baptism of all heretics to be valid and lawful. And although particular heresies have their own particular baptisms and different sins, by keeping communion with the baptism of them all, he gathered up the sins of them all and piled them into his own bosom. He also ordered that nothing should be changed except what had been handed down. But who is really the innovator? Is it the one who, keeping unity, claims for the one Church the one baptism? Or is it not plainly the one who, forgetting unity, accepts the lies and corruptions of a profane washing? "Let nothing be changed," he says, "let nothing be maintained except what has been handed down." From where does that tradition come? Does it come down from the authority of the Lord and of the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and letters of the apostles? For God bears witness and warns that the things written must be done, saying to Joshua the son of Nun, "This Book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it" Joshu
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Cyprian, Epistles Supporting witness
...m a certain Felix, whom he himself had formerly appointed as a pseudo-bishop outside the Church, in heresy. But Jovinus and Maximus were also there as companions of that proven heretic. They had been condemned for wicked sacrifices and for crimes proved against them by the judgment of nine bishops, our colleagues, and last year they were also excommunicated again by many of us in a council. And with these four there was also joined Repostus of Suturnica, who not only fell himself in the persecution, but by sacrilegious persuasion threw down the greater part of his people as well. These five, along with a few others who had either sacrificed or had guilty consciences, joined together in wanting Fortunatus as a false bishop for themselves, so that, since their crimes matched, the ruler might be like those who are ruled.
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Anonymous, Treatise Against the Heretic Novatian Supporting witness
But now, from the time when he began to practise that heresy of Cain which only delights in slaying, he does not even of late spare himself.
More related quotations from this section 1 shown
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Cyprian, Seventh Council of Carthage Supporting witness
Felix of Bagai said: Just as, when the blind leads the blind, both fall into the ditch, so when a heretic baptizes a heretic, both fall into death. Therefore a heretic must be baptized and made alive, so that we who are alive may not hold communion with the dead.
Common Questions
What did early Christians think the Nicolaitans taught?
They usually said the Nicolaitans taught a wrong way of life, tied to sexual immorality and eating food offered to idols.
Which Bible verses mention the Nicolaitans?
Revelation 2:6 and 2:15 mention the Nicolaitans directly, and Revelation 2:14 gives nearby context about idol food and sexual sin.
Did early Christian writers treat the Nicolaitans as heretics?
Yes. Writers like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus describe them as a false and corrupt group.
Source Index for the Nicolaitans and Early Heresy
The guided sections above show the strongest quotations. This compact index highlights 154 ranked source links from 203 compiled sources for deeper study.
Source index 154 ranked links shown
Early Christian Writings 80 shown of 129
Primary-source quotations from early Christian writers and church documents.
Bible Passages 74 included
Related Bible passages saved for comparison with the early Christian quotations.