Monarchianism

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Monarchianism (also known as monarchism) refers to a heretical body of Christian beliefs that emphasize the indivisibility of God (the Father) at the expense of the other persons of the Trinity. Their name came from their defense of the "Monarchy" (ultimate rulership / unity) of God, which was expounded in a reaction against the Logos theology of Justin Martyr and the apologists, who had spoken of Jesus as a second god. Indeed, some of the earliest Monarchists were called Alogi (a (prefix) + logoi) because they were opposed the seemingly Platonic doctrine of the Logos expounded by the Biblical Gospel of John and later Hellenistic apologists. In a similar manner, many also adopted these teaching in response to the Arian heresy, which they saw as limiting Christ's divinity.

Many theological explanations of the relationship between the Father and the Son were proposed in the 2nd century, but later rejected as heretical by the Church when the doctrine of the Trinity was formally canonized at the First Council of Constantinople, where it was decided that God was one being (homoousious) who consisted of three persons: Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son, and Holy Spirit.

There are two primary understandings of Monarchianism:

• Modalism (or Modalistic Monarchianism) considers God to be a single, undifferentiated Divine Person who interacts with the mortal world via three different "modes": Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son, and Holy Spirit. The chief proponent of this type of monarchianism was Sabellius, whose influence was so great that it that the doctrine is often also called Sabellianism.

• Adoptionism (or Dynamic Monarchianism) holds that God is one wholly indivisible being, and reconciles the "problem" of the Trinity (or at least the problem of Jesus' humanity) by holding that the Resurrected Son was not co-eternal with the Heavenly Father, and that Jesus Christ was adopted by the Father (i.e., granted the status of divinity) in order to allow him to participate in the Divine Plan. Different versions of Adoptionism hold that Jesus was "adopted" either at the time of his baptism or ascension. An early exponent of this belief was Theodotus of Byzantium. This doctrine is a theologically complex form of docetism, a schismatic movement who argued that Jesus was a human who was "possessed" by a spiritual entity.

Modalism

In Christianity, modalism (also known as modalistic monarchianism, modal monarchism, or Sabellianism) is the nontrinitarian belief that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son and Holy Spirit are different modes or aspects of one God (for us only), rather than three distinct persons (in Himself). God was said to have three "faces" or "masks" (Grk. prosopa). The question is: "is God's threeness a matter of our falsely seeing it to be so (Sabellianism/modalism), or a matter of God's own essence revealed as three-in-one (orthodox trinitarianism)?" Modalists note that the only number ascribed to God in the Holy Bible is One and that there is no inherent threeness ascribed to God explicitly in scripture. The number three is never mentioned in relation to God in scripture, which of course is the number that is central to the word Trinity. The only possible exception to this is the Comma Johanneum, a disputed text passage in 1 John known primarily from the King James Version and some versions of the Textus Receptus but not included in modern critical texts. It has been attributed to Sabellius, who taught a form of this doctrine in Rome in the third century.

Hippolytus of Rome knew Sabellius personally and mentioned him in the Philosophumena. He knew Sabellius disliked Trinitarian theology, yet he called Modal Monarchism the heresy of Noetos, not that of Sabellius. Sabellianism was embraced by Christians in Cyrenaica, to whom Demetrius, Patriarch of Alexandria, wrote letters arguing against this belief.

The chief opponent of Sabellianism was Tertullian, who labeled the movement "Patripassianism", from the Latin words pater for "father", and passus from the verb "to suffer" because it implied that the Father suffered on the Cross. It was coined by Tertullian in his work Adversus Praxeas, Chapter II, "By this Praxeas did a twofold service for the devil at Rome: he drove away prophecy, and he brought in heresy; he put to flight the Paraclete, and he crucified the Father."

It is important to note that our only sources extant for our understanding of modalism are from their detractors. Scholars today are not in agreement as to what exactly Sabellius or Praxeus taught. The Catholic Encyclopedia "New Advent" cautions: It is true that it is easy to suppose Tertullian and Hippolytus to have misrepresented the opinions of their opponents.

Tertullian seems to suggest that the majority of believers at that time favoured a modalistic view of the oneness of God. Epiphanius (Haeres 62) about 375 C.E. notes that the adherents of Sabellius were still to be found in great numbers, both in Mesopotamia and at Rome. The second general council at Constantinople in 533 C.E. declared the baptism of Sabellius to be invalid, which indicates that Sabellianism was still extant.
Historic modalism taught that God the Father was the only person of the Godhead, a belief known as Monarchianism. One author has described Sabellius' teaching thus: The true question, therefore, turns on this, viz., what is it which constitutes what we name ‘person’ in the Godhead? Is it original, substantial, essential to divinity itself? Or does it belong to and arise from the exhibitions and developments which the divine Being has made of himself to his creatures? The former Sabellius denied; the latter he fully admitted.

Modalism has been rejected by the majority of Christian churches in favour of Trinitarianism, which was eventually defined as three distinct, co-equal, co-eternal persons.

Both Michael Servetus and Emanuel Swedenborg have been interpreted as a proponents of Modalism, however, neither describes God as appearing in three modes. Both describe God as the One Divine Person, Jesus Christ, who has a Divine Soul of Love, Divine Mind of Truth, and Divine Body of Activity. Jesus, through a process of uniting his human form to the Divine, became entirely One with His Divine Soul from the Father to the point of having no distinction of personality.[3]

Oneness Pentecostalism teaches that the Father (a spirit) is united with Jesus (a man) as the Son of God. However, Oneness Pentecostalism differs significantly by rejecting sequential modalism and by the full acceptance of the begotten humanity of the Son, not eternally begotten, who was the man Jesus and was born, crucified, and risen, and not the deity. This directly opposes Patripassianism and the pre-existence of the Son, which Sabellian modalism does not. Oneness Pentecostalism can be compared to Sabellianism as both are Nontrinitarian, but they do not correctly identify each other.

Adoptionism

As mentioned above, adoptionism (also known as dynamic monarchianism) refers to the eventually anathematized Christian belief that Jesus was born as a typical human (from an ontological standpoint), and that his divinity was gifted to him by God later in his life. By these accounts, Jesus earned the title Christ through his sinless devotion to the will of God, thereby becoming the perfect sacrifice for the redemption of humanity. As such, adoptionists typically point to one of two key points in Jesus' life as the occasion of his theosis: his baptism or his resurrection. By tying the person of Jesus to an initially human referent, adoptionism denies the "preexistence of Christ" (i.e., the belief that he existed since the creation of the universe) and views him as subordinate to the Father, though still acknowledging his divinity.

These beliefs arose among early Christians seeking to reconcile claims of Jesus' divinity with the radical monotheism of Judaism, which led it to become a common theological stance for many of the earliest church fathers and for the majority of the populace. Despite its early prevalence, later theologians concluded that this belief system was incompatible with the developing understanding of the Trinity, which prompted them to declare it a heresy at the end of the 2nd century.

History of adoptionism

In The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart D. Ehrman posits the common academic consensus that adoptionism may date back almost to the time of Jesus, arguing that many passages of scripture were purposefully bowdlerized at a later date to deny textual support for this doctrine. Indeed, the second century saw adoptionism as one of two competing Christological doctrines, with the other being the Logos doctrine (preserved in the Gospel of John), which describes Christ as an eternal divinity that existed in a spiritual form prior to his incarnation.

Historically, there were three waves of Adoptionist speculation (if we exclude the hypothetical beliefs of the primitive church that cannot be determined with certainty). The first, which dates from the 2nd century, differs significantly from the subsequent two (dating respectively from the 8th and the 12th century)—a discrepancy that can be explained by the fact that all later speculations would have been informed by the dogmatic Trinitarian and Christological statements that were ratified at the intervening Ecumenical Councils.

Second century: pre-Nicene Christology

The first known exponent of Adoptionism in the second century is Theodotus of Byzantium. He taught that Jesus was a man born of a virgin according to the counsel of the Father, that He lived like other men, and was most pious; that at His baptism in the Jordan the Christ came down upon Him in the likeness of a dove, and therefore wonders (dynameis) were not wrought in Him until the Spirit (which Theodotus called Christ) came down and was manifested in Him. The belief was declared heretical by Pope Victor I.

The second-century work Shepherd of Hermas also taught that Jesus was a virtuous man filled with the Holy Spirit and adopted as the Son. While Shepherd of Hermas was popular and sometimes bound with the canonical scriptures, it never achieved canonical status.

In the 3rd century, Paul of Samosata, Patriarch of Antioch, promoted adoptionism. He said Jesus had been a man who kept himself sinless and achieved union with God. His views, however, did not neatly fit in either of the two main forms of Monarchianism.

Eight century: Hispanicus error

The second movement of adoptionism, called Hispanicus error, in the late 8th century maintained by Elipandus, bishop of Toledo, Spain in the Caliphate of Cordoba and by Felix, bishop of Urgell in the foothills of the Pyrenees; Alcuin, the leading intellect at the court of Charlemagne was called in to write refutations against both of the bishops. Against Felix he wrote:

"As the Nestorian impiety divided Christ into two persons because of the two natures, so your unlearned temerity divided Him into two sons, one natural and one adoptive"

Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, also fought Adoptionism, which was a cause of controversy between Christians under Muslim rule in the former Visigothic capital of Toledo and the peripherical kingdom.

The doctrine was condemned as heresy by the Council of Frankfurt (794).

12th century and later: neo-adoptionism

A third wave was the revived form ("Neo-Adoptionism") of Abelard in the 12th century. Later, various modified and qualified Adoptionist tenets of some theologians from the 14th century. Duns Scotus (1300) and Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (1320) admit the term Filius adoptivus in a qualified sense. In more recent times the Jesuit Gabriel Vásquez, and the Lutheran divines Georgius Calixtus and Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch, have defended the Adoptionists as essentially orthodox.

References

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This article incorporates some content from the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a publication now in the public domain

• Brown, Harold O. J. Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998. ISBN 1565633652.
• Bunsen, C. C. Hippolytus and His Age. Kessinger Publishing, 2007. Originally published by Longmans, 1852. Partly reproduced online at Google Book Search.
• Chapman, John. "Monarchianism" in the Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.
• Cozens, M. L. A Handbook of Heresies. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1959.
• Ehrman, Bart D. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195102797.
• Hultgren, Arland J. and Haggmark, Steven A. (eds.). The Earliest Christian Heretics: Readings from their Opponents. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996. ISBN 0800629639.
• McGrath, Alister E. Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. ISBN 0631208445.
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. ISBN 0226653714.
• Von Mosheim, J. L. Historical Commentaries on the State of Christianity During the First Three Hundred and Twenty-Five Years from the Christian Era. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006. ISBN 1597527041. Originally published by Trow & Smith Book Manufacturing Co, 1868.
• Wace, H. A Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century C.E. - with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies. Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. ISBN: 1565630572. Selections accessible online at CCEL.org.

External links

All links retrieved October 24, 2007

• Catholic Encyclopedia: Monarchians
• Adoptionism in Catholic Encyclopedia
• Adoptionism in Christian Cyclopedia
• Chapter XI. Doctrinal Controversies, from Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church.
• Christ Apostolic Temple, Inc. Fellowship (CATIF) - a (Apostolic) Christian organization that teaches adoptionism

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