CHRISTOLYTES. – (From Greek χριστός = “Christ” and λύω = “I separate”). Name of an obscure sect of heretics who lived between 650 and 750, whose existence is attested to us solely by St. John Damascene (Harees, XCIII: PG 94, 757) and by Constantine Copronymus in a passage cited by Nicephorus of Constantinople (Antirrhetica, I, 34: PG 100, 288).
They held that Jesus Christ, after His resurrection, had abandoned both soul and body and ascended to heaven with divinity alone: the Incarnation was thus reduced to a merely temporary union of the person of the Word with human nature. Theodore of Christ reports that some Euchites professed doctrines of this kind (Dial., II: PG 83, 164-65): it is not impossible that these were the same Christolytes spoken of by the Damascene. In that case, these heretics would have to be placed around the middle of the 5th century.