ONENESS IN EARLY CHURCH HISTORY

by David Bernard

      What is the nature of God? What is the relationship of Jesus Christ to God? These two questions are fundamental to Christianity. The traditional answer of Christendom is given by its doctrine of the trinity. In the first few centuries of Christianity, however, this formulation was by no means the definitive one. In fact, The New Catholic Encyclopedia states that in the second century A.D. "a Trinitarian solution was still in the future" and that Trinitarian dogma "was not solidly established. . .prior to the end of the 4th century."1
"From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church's living faith, principally by means of Baptism. It finds its expression in the rule of baptismal faith, formulated in the preaching, catechesis, and prayer of the Church. Such formulations are already found in apostolic writings, such as this salutation." "The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all"-II Corinthians 13:13
(I Corinthians 12:4-6; Ephesians 4:4-6)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 249.
      There were many explanations of the nature of God and Christ, several of which enjoyed widespread acceptance. One of the most important of these was modalistic monarchianism, which affirmed both the absolute oneness of the Godhead and the divinity of Jesus Christ.
   Though not as well as Trinitarianism
   According to the church historian Adolph Harnack, modalistic monarchianism was the most dangerous rival to trinitarianism in the period from 180 A.D. to 300 A.D. He concludes from passages in Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Origen that modalism was the official theory in Rome for almost a generation, and that it was at one time "embraced by the great majority of all Christians."2
Unless these passages specifically stated thus, and were written by a Bishop of Rome, this conclusion is meaningless. Further, no Bishop of Rome has ever set forth any doctrine that completely contradicted a previous doctrine of the Church. Since Modalism and Trinitarianism contradict one another completely, It's clear Modalism was never an official doctrine of the Church.
      Despite its evident importance, it is difficult to arrive at a complete description of what modalistic monarchianism really was. Some of the more prominent modalists were Noetus, Praxeas, Sabellius, Epigonus, Cleomenes, Marcellius of Ancyra, and Commodian. At least two Roman Bishops (later classified as Popes), Callistus and Zephryinus, were accused of being modalists by their opponents. It is difficult to obtain accurate information about these men and their beliefs because existing historical sources were all written by their trinitarian opponents who were intent upon disproving the doctrine of their antagonists.
      Undoubtedly, the modalists' doctrine was misunderstood, misrepresented, and distorted in the process. It is impossible, therefore, to find a precise description of the beliefs of a statements about these various men, it is possible to arrive at a fairly good understanding of modalism. For example, there were possibly some differences in the theologies of Noetus, Praxeas, Sabellius, and Marcellius; how serious is difficult to determine. It is certain, however, that each maintained the full deity of Jesus Christ while admitting of no distinction of persona in the Godhead.
      The modalistic doctrine is usually explained simply as the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are only manifestations, or modes of the one God (the monarchia), and not three distinct persons (hypostases). It should be distinguished from dynamic monarchianism (also known as Arianism, after Arius, who began it) which also upheld the oneness of God, but did so by claiming that Jesus was an inferior, subordinate being. More precisely, modalistic monarchianism is the belief that considers "Jesus as the incarnation of the Godhead" and "the Father incarnate."3
      This view has the obvious advantage of upholding the strong Jewish monotheistic tradition while also asserting the early Christian belief in Jesus as God. At the same time it avoids the paradoxes and mysteries of the trinitarian dogma.

However, the trinitarians argued that it did not adequately account for the Logos, the pre-existent Christ, or the biblical distinction between the Father and the Son.
It doesn't account for the following Scripture,
"For God never said to any angel, 'You are my Son, and today I have begotten you.' But God said it about Jesus. Another time he said, 'I am his Father and he is my Son." And still another time-when his firstborn Son came to earth-God said, 'Let all the angels of God worship him.'"
- Hebrews 1:5-6
In this passage, God states that Jesus is his Son, demonstrating that they are distinct in their relations to each other.
An analysis of modalism reveals how it answers these objections.
      Not only did the modalistic monarchians have a different concept of God from that of the trinitarians, but they also had different definitions of the Logos and the Son. Their basic position was that the Logos (the Word in John 1) is not a distinct personal being but is united with God in much the same way as a man and his word.
It is unclear here whether Mr. Bernard means "distinct" (as chosen) or "separate" (as inferred by the context)
It is a power "indivisible and inseparable from the Father," as Justin Martyr described the belief.4 For Marcellus, the Logos is God Himself, particularly as thought of in activity.5 Thus, the trinitarian concept of the Logos as a separate being (based on the philosophy of Philo) was rejected. The modalists accepted the incarnation of the Logos in Christ, but for them that simply meant the extension of the Father in human form.
"According to Philo, the Logos is a mediating principle between God and the world and can be understood as God's Word or the Divine Wisdom, which is immanent in the world. At the beginning of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is identified with the Logos made incarnate, the Greek word logos being translated as "word" in the English Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . ." (John 1:1-3, 14). John's conception of Christ was probably influenced by Old Testament passages as well as by Greek philosophy, but early Christian theologians developed the conception of Christ as the Logos in explicitly Platonic and Neoplatonic terms. The Logos, for instance, was identified with the will of God, or with the Ideas (or Platonic Forms) that are in the mind of God. Christ's incarnation was accordingly understood as the incarnation of these divine attributes."
-"Logos," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 96 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. (c) Funk & Wagnalls Corporation. All rights reserved.
As the incarnation of God's Divine attributes, Jesus is therefore God - not a separate being (according to Philo and John).
      Closely allied with this idea is the modalistic definition of the Son. They maintained that the Son refers to the Father come in the flesh. Praxeas denied the pre-existence of the Son, using the term Son to apply only to the Incarnation.6 The distinction between the Father and the Son is that Father refers to God in Himself, but Son refers to the Father as manifested in the flesh (in Jesus). The Spirit in Jesus was the Father, but Son refers specifically to the humanity of Jesus as well as deity. Plainly, then, the modalists did not mean that Father is interchangeable with Son in terminology. Rather, they meant that the two words do not imply separate hypostases (persons) of God but only different modes of the one God.
Trinitarians do not see the "persons" of the Trinity as separate.
"The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father, the Son is one and the same God."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 262.
      Putting the two concepts of Logos and Son together, we see how the modalists thought about Jesus. Noetus said that Jesus was the Son by reason of His birth, but He was also the Father.7 The modalistic Logos doctrine identified the Spirit of Christ as the Father. The Incarnation was like a final Theophany in which the Father is fully revealed. However, this was not Docetism (the belief that Jesus was a spirit being only), because both Praxeas and Noetus emphasized Jesus' human nature, especially his human frailties and sufferings. As in Trinitarianism, Jesus was "very man and very God"; for the modalists, Jesus was the incarnation of the fullness of the Godhead and not just the incarnation of a separate person called the Son or Logos.
      The actual term is 'true God and true man,' not 'very God and very man.' The second suggests that Christ is either not truly or not fully God.
"The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man." The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 464.
     Again, I must point out that Trinitarians see the persons of the Holy Trinity as distinct, not separate.
      The most common objection made to modalistic monarchianism was that it was Patripassian; that is, it implied that the Father suffered and died. Tertullian was the first to so accuse the modalists. He interpreted modalism to mean that the Father is the same as the Son. But this would mean that the Father died, a clear impossibility. In this way, Tertullian sought to ridicule and refute modalism.
      Later historians, taking Tertullian's argent as truth, have labelled the modalist doctrine as Patripassianism. However, Praxeas explained that while Jesus was the Father incarnate, Jesus died only as to His humanity, as the Son. Sabellius evidently answered the charge of Patripassianism in a similar way.8
      The Whole issue can easily be resolved by realizing that modalism did not teach, as Tertullian assumed, that the Father is the Son, but rather that the Father is in the Son. As Commodian said, "The Father went into the Son, one God everywhere."9 Similarly, Sabellius explained that the Logos was not the Son but was clothed by the Son.10 Other modalists in response to the charge explained that the Son suffered, while the Father sympathized or "suffered with."11 By this they meant the Son, the man Jesus, suffered and died The Father, the spirit of God within Jesus, could not have suffered or died in any physical sense but yet He must have been affected by or have participated in the suffering of the flesh. Accordingly, Zephyrinus said, "I know only one God, Christ Jesus, and apart from Him no other who was born or could suffer. . . . It was not the Father who died but the Son."12
      That one person of God would wear the other (as one would a jacket) implies that they are, in fact, separate when not arranged thus. This contradicts the beliefs of both Modalism and Trinitarianism.
      From these statements, it seems clear that the modalists held that the Father was not flesh but was clothed or manifested in the flesh. The flesh died but the eternal spirit did not. Therefore, Patripassianism is a misleading and inaccurate term to use for modalistic monarchianism.
      The spirit of Christ did not pass away any more than our souls pass into nothingness at our death. Moreso, the Father obviously did participate in Christ's death. For as great as personal sacrifice is, it does not compare to the sacrifice of one's own son.
      Basically, then, modalistic monarchianism taught that God has no distinction of number but of name or mode only. The term Son refers to the Incarnation. This means that the Son is not an eternal nature, but a mode of God's activity made especially for the purpose of salvation of mankind. There is no pre-existent Son, but one can speak of the pre-existent Christ since the Spirit of Christ is God Himself.
Since Christ is God, he is eternal. God is eternal. As the Logos, Christ existed from the beginning (John 1:1).
The Logos is seen as referring to God's activity. Jesus is therefore the Word or activity of the Father clothed in flesh. The Holy Spirit describes what God is, and refers to God's power and action in the world.
To rephrase this so that it is true: 'The Holy Spirit is God's power and action in the world.'
      By claiming that he knows "what God is," Mr Bernard displays actual Conceit. No mortal man can know the mind or substance of God. The Catholic Church believes each person of the Holy Trinity to be of the same substance ("consubstantial"). It makes no claims as to of what that substance is. God is more than we can imagine.
     -Job 11:7-8; 36:26; 37:5; Ecclesiastes 11:5; Isaiah 40:18,28; 45:15.
So, both the terms Logos and Holy Spirit refer to God Himself, in specific modes of activity.
      The effect of modalistic monarchianism is to reaffirm the Old Testament concept of one, indivisible God who can and does manifest Himself and His power in many different ways. Furthermore, Jesus Christ is identified as that one God who has manifested Himself through incarnation in a human body. Modalism thus recognizes the full deity of Jesus, much more than Trinitarianism does, which is exactly what the modalists claimed.13 The fullness and completeness of God is in Jesus.
      In summary, modalistic monarchianism can be defined as the belief that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are manifestations of the one God with no distinctions of person being possible. Furthermore, the one God is expressed fully in the person of Jesus Christ.
      The one God is also expressed fully in the person of the Father and the person of the Holy Spirit.
This doctrine of these persons not being distinct exists only to separate our Pentecostal brethren from us. We all worship the same Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is wrong to let such hair-splitting keep us apart.

For more information, You can read my new article
"Comments on "Answering '60 Questions on the Godhead'"
or
Comments on an Answer to 'Sharing Your Faith with a Oneness Pentecostal'"
and
The Athanasian Creed

and these essays from Catholic Answers
Trinitarian Baptism
God in Three Persons

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