Monarchians
MONARCHIANS
The same as the Patripassians: which see.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
Monarchians
Heretics of the second and third centuries. The word, Monarchiani, was first used by Tertullian as a nickname for the Patripassian group (adv. Prax., x), and was seldom used by the ancients. In modern times it has been extended to an earlier group of heretics, who are distinguished as Dynamistic, or Adoptionist, Monarchians from the Modalist Monarchians, or Patripassians [Sabellians].
I. DYNAMISTS, OR ADOPTIONISTS
All Christians hold the unity (monarchia) of God as a fundamental doctrine. By the Patripassians this first principle was used to deny the Trinity, and they are with some reason called Monarchians. But the Adoptionists, or Dynamists, have no claim to the title, for they did not start from the monarchy of God, and their error is strictly Christological. An account of them must, however, be given here simply because the name Monarchian has adhered to them in spite of the repeated protests of historians of dogma. But their ancient and accurate name was Theodotians. The founder of the sect was a leather-seller of Byzantium named Theodotus. He came to Rome under Pope Victor (c. 190-200) or earlier. He taught (Philosophumena, VII, xxxv) 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. They did not admit that this made Him God; but some of them said He was God after His resurrection. It was reported that Theodotus had been seized, with others, at Byzantium as a Christian, and that he had denied Christ, whereas his companions had been martyred; he had fled to Rome, and had invented his heresy in order to excuse his fall, saying that it was but a man and not God that he had denied. Pope Victor excommunicated him, and he gathered together a sect in which we are told much secular study was carried on. Hippolytus says that they argued on Holy Scripture in syllogistic form. Euclid, Aristotle, and Theophrastus were their admiration, and Galen they even adored. We should probably assume, with Harnack, that Hippolytus would have had less objection to the study of Plato or the Stoics, and that he disliked their purely literal exegesis, which neglected the allegorical sense. They also emended the text of Scripture, but their versions differed, that of Asclepiodotus was different from that of Theodotus, and again from that of Hermophilus; and the copies of Apolloniades did not even tally with one another. Some of them “denied the law and the Prophets”, that is to say, they followed Marcion in rejecting the Old Testament. The only disciple of the leather-seller of whom we know anything definite is his namesake Theodotus the banker (ho trapezites). He added to his master’s doctrine the view that Melchisedech was a celestial power, who was the advocate for the angels in heaven, as Jesus Christ was for men upon earth (a view found among later sects). (See MELCHISEDECHIANS). This teaching was of course grounded on Hebrews, vii, 3, and it is refuted at length by St. Epiphanius as Heresy 55, “Melchisedechians”, after he has attacked the leather-seller under Heresy 54, “Theodotians”. As he meets a series of arguments of both heretics, it is probable that some writings of the sect had been before Hippolytus, whose lost “Syntagma against all heresies” supplied St. Epiphanius with all his information. After the death of Pope Victor, Theodotus, the banker, and Asclepiodotus designed to raise their sect from the position of a mere school like those of the Gnostics to the rank of a Church like that of Marcion. They got hold of a certain confessor named Natalius, and persuaded him to be called their bishop at a salary of 150 denarii (24 dollars) a month. Natalius thus became the first antipope. But after he had joined them, he was frequently warned in visions by the Lord, Who did not wish His martyr to be lost outside the Church. He neglected the visions, for the sake of the honour and gain, but finally was scourged all night by the holy angels, so that in the morning with haste and tears he betook himself in sackcloth and ashes to Pope Zephyrinus and cast himself at the feet of the clergy, and even of the laity, showing the weals of the blows, and was after some difficulty restored to communion. This story is quoted by Eusebius II (VI, xxviii) from the “Little Labyrinth” of the contemporary Hippolytus, a work composed against Artemon, a late leader of the sect (perhaps c. 225-30), whom he did not mention in the “Syntagma” or the “Philosophumena”. Our knowledge of Artemon, or Artemas, is limited to the reference to him made at the end of the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata (about 266-268), where that heretic was said to have followed Artemon, and in fact the teaching of Paul is but a more learned and theological development of Theodotianism (see Paul of Samosata).
The sect probably died out about the middle of the third century, and can never have been numerous. All our knowledge of it goes back to Hippolytus. His “Syntagma” (c.205) is epitomized in Pseudo-Tertullian (Praescript., lii) and Philastrius, and is developed by Epiphanius (Haer., liv. lv); his “Little Labyrinth” (written 139-5, cited by Eusebius, V, 28) and his “Philosophumena” are still extant. See also his “Contra Noetum” 3, and a fragment “On the Melchisedechians and Theodotians and Athingani”, published by Caspari (Tidskr. für der Evangel. Luth. Kirke, Ny Raekke, VIII, 3, p. 307). But the Athingani are a later sect, for which see MEDCHISEDECHIANS. The Monarchianism of Photinus (q. v.) seems to have been akin to that of the Theodotians. All speculations as to the origin of the theories of Theodotus are fanciful. At any rate he is not connected with the Ebionites. The Alogi have sometimes been classed with the Monarchians. Lipsius in his “Quelenkritik des Epiphanius” supposed them to be even Philanthropists, on account of their denial of the Logos, and Epiphanius in fact calls Theodotus an apopasma of the Alogi; but this is only a guess, and is not derived by him from Hippolytus. As a fact, Epiphanius assures us (Haer. 51) that the Alogi (that is, Gaius and his party) were orthodox in their Christology (see MONTANISTS).
II. MODALISTS
The Monarchians properly so-called (Modalists) exaggerated the oneness of the Father and the Son so as to make them but one Person; thus the distinctions in the Holy Trinity are energies or modes, not Persons: God the Father appears on earth as Son; hence it seemed to their opponents that Monarchians made the Father suffer and die. In the West they were called Patripassians, whereas in the East they are usually called Sabellians. The first to visit Rome was probably Praxeas, who went on to Carthage some time before 206-208; but he was apparently not in reality a heresiarch, and the arguments refuted by Tertullian somewhat later in his book “Adversus Praxean” are doubtless those of the Roman Monarchians (see PRAXEAS).
A. History
Noetus (from whom the Noetians) was a Smyrnaean (Epiphanius, by a slip, says an Ephesian). He called himself Moses, and his brother Aaron. When accused before the presbyterate of teaching that the Father suffered, he denied it; but after having made a few disciples he was again interrogated, and expelled from the Church. He died soon after, and did not receive Christian burial. Hippolytus mockingly declares him to have been a follower of Heraclitus, on account of the union of the opposites which he taught when he called God both visible and invisible, passible and impassible. His pupil Epigonus came to Rome. As he was not mentioned in the “Syntagma” of Hippolytus, which was written in one of the first five years of the third century, he was not then well known in Rome, or had not yet arrived. According to Hippolytus (Philos., IX, 7), Cleomenes, a follower of Epigonus, was allowed by Pope Zephyrinus to establish a school, which flourished under his approbation and that of Callistus. Hagemann urges that we should conclude that Cleomenes was not a Noetian at all, and that he was an orthodox opponent of the incorrect theology of Hippolytus. The same writer gives most ingenious and interesting (though hardly convincing) reasons for identifying Praxeas with Callistus; he proves that the Monarchians attacked in Tertullian’s “Contra Praxean” and in the “Philosophumena” had identical tenets which were not necessarily heretical; he denies that Tertullian means us to understand that Praxeas came to Carthage, and he explains the nameless refuter of Praxeas to be, not Tertullian himself, but Hippolytus. It is true that it is easy to suppose Tertullian and Hippolytus to have misrepresented the opinions of their opponents, but it cannot be proved that Cleomenes was not a follower of the heretical Noetus, and that Sabellius did not issue from his school; further, it is not obvious that Tertullian would attack Callistus under a nickname.
Sabellius soon became the leader of the Monarchians in Rome, perhaps even before the death of Zephyrinus (c. 218). He is said by Epiphanius to have founded his views on the Gospel according to the Egyptians, and the fragments of that apocryphon support this statement. Hippolytus hoped to convert Sabellius to his own views, and attributed his failure in this to the influence of Callistus. That pope, however, excommunicated Sabellius c. 220 (“fearing me”, says Hippolytus). Hippolytus accuses Callistus of now inventing a new heresy by combing the views of Theodotus and those of Sabellius, although he excommunicated them both (see CALLISTUS I, POPE). Sabellius was apparently still in Rome when Hippolytus wrote the Philosophumena (between 230 and 235). Of his earlier and later history nothing is known. St. Basil and others call him a Libyan from Pentapolis, but this seems to rest on the fact that Pentapolis was found to be full of Sabellianism by Dionysius of Alexandria, c. 260. A number of Montanists led by Aeschines became Modalists (unless Harnack is right in making Modalism the original belief of the Montanists and in regarding Aeschines as a conservative). Sabellius (or at least his followers) may have considerably amplified the original Noetianism. There was still Sabellianism to be found in the fourth century. Marcellus of Ancyra developed a Monarchianism of his own, which was carried much further by his disciple, Photinus. Priscillian was an extreme Monarchian and so was Commodian (“Carmen Apol.”, 89, 277, 771). The “Monarchian Prologues” to the Gospels found in most old manuscripts of the Vulgate, were attributed by von Dobschütz and P. Corssen to a Roman author of the time of Callistus, but they are almost certainly the work of Priscillian. Beryllus, Bishop of Bostra, is vaguely said by Eusebius (H. E., VI, 33) to have taught that the Saviour had no distinct pre-existence before the Incarnation, and had no Divinity of His own, but that the Divinity of the Father dwelt in Him. Origen disputed with him in a council and convinced him of his error. The minutes of the disputation were known to Eusebius. It is not clear whether Beryllus was a Modalist or a Dynamist.
B. Theology
There was much that was unsatisfactory in the theology of the Trinity and in the Christology of the orthodox writers of the Ante-Nicene period. The simple teaching of tradition was explained by philosophical ideas, which tended to obscure as well as to elucidate it. The distinction of the Son from the Father was so spoken of that the Son appeared to have functions of His own, apart from the Father, with regard to the creation and preservation of the world, and thus to be a derivative and secondary God. The unity of the Divinity was commonly guarded by a reference to a unity of origin. It was said that God from eternity was alone, with His Word, one with Him (as Reason, in vulca cordis, logos endiathetos), before the Word was spoken (ex ore Patris, logos prophorikos), or was generated and became Son for the purpose of creation. The Alexandrians alone insisted rightly on the generation of the Son from all eternity; but thus the Unity of God was even less manifest. The writers who thus theologize may often expressly teach the traditional Unity in Trinity, but it hardly squares with the Platonism of their philosophy. The theologians were thus defending the doctrine of the Logos at the expense of the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the Unity of God, and the Divinity of Christ. They seemed to make the Unity of the Godhead split into two or even three, and to make Jesus Christ something less than the supreme God the Father. This is eminently true of the chief opponents of the Monarchians, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Novatian. (See Newman, “The Causes of Arianism”, in “Tracts theol. and eccles.”) Monarchianism was the protest against this learned philosophizing, which to the simplicity of the faithful looked too much like a mythology or a Gnostic emanationism. The Monarchians emphatically declared that God is one, wholly and perfectly one, and that Jesus Christ is God, wholly and perfectly God. This was right, and even most necessary, and whilst it is easy to see why the theologians like Tertullian and Hippolytus opposed them (for their protest was precisely against the Platonism which these theologians had inherited from Justin and the Apologists), it is equally comprehensible that guardians of the Faith should have welcomed at first the return of the Monarchians to the simplicity of the Faith, “ne videantur deos dicere, neque rursum negare salvatoris deitatem” (“Lest they seem to be asserting two Gods or, on the other hand, denying the Saviour’s Godhead”. – Origen, “On Titus”, frag. II). Tertullian in opposing them acknowledges that the uninstructed were against him; they could not understand the magic word oikonomia with which he conceived he had saved the situation; they declared that he taught two or three Gods, and cried “Monarchiam tenemus.” So Callistus reproached Hippolytus, and not without reason, with teaching two Gods.
Already St. Justin knew of Christians who taught the identity of the Father and the Son (“Apol.”, I, 63; “Dial.”, cxxviii). In Hermas, as in Theodotus, the Son and the Holy Ghost are confused. But it was reserved for Noetus and his school to deny categorically that the unity of the Godhead is compatible with a distinction of Persons. They seem to have regarded the Logos as a mere name, or faculty, or attribute, and to have made the Son and the Holy Ghost merely aspects of modes of existence of the Father, thus emphatically identifying Christ with the one God. “What harm am I doing”, was the reply made by Noetus to the presbyters who interrogated him, “in glorifying Christ?” They replied: “We too know in truth one God; we know Christ; we know that the Son suffered even as He suffered, and died even as He died, and rose again on the third day, and is at the right hand of the Father, and cometh to judge the living and the dead; and what we have learned we declare” (Hippol.; “Contra Noetum”, 1). Thus they refuted Noetus with tradition – the Apostles’ Creed is enough; for the Creed and the New Testament indeed make the distinction of Persons clear, and the traditional formulas and prayers were equally unmistakable. Once the Monarchian system was put into philosophical language, it was seen to be no longer the old Christianity. Ridicule was used; the heretics were told that if the Father and the Son were really identified, then no denial on their part could prevent the conclusion that the Father suffered and died, and sat at His own right hand. Hippolytus tells us that Pope Zephyrinus, whom he represents as a stupid old man, declared at the instance of Callistus: “I know one God Christ Jesus, and besides Him no other Who was born and Who suffered”; but he added: “Not the Father died, but the Son”. The reporter is an unsympathetic adversary; but we can see why the aged pope was viewing the simple assertions of Sabellius in a favorable light. Hippolytus declares that Callistus said that the Father suffered with the Son, and Tertullian says the same of the Monarchians whom he attacks. Hagemann thinks Callistus-Praxeas especially attacked the doctrine of the Apologists and of Hippolytus and Tertullian, which assigned all such attributes as impassibility and invisibility to the Father and made the Son alone capable of becoming passible and visible, ascribing to Him the work of creation, and all operations ad extra. It is true that the Monarchians opposed this Platonizing in general, but it is not evident that they had grasped the principle that all the works of God ad extra are common to the Three Persons as proceeding form the Divine Nature; and they seem to have said simply that God as Father is invisible and impassible, but becomes visible and passible as Son. This explanation brings them curiously into line with their adversaries. Both parties represented God as one and alone in His eternity. Both made the generation of the Son a subsequent development; only Tertullian and Hippolytus date it before the creation, and the Monarchians perhaps not until the Incarnation. Further, their identification of the Father and the Son was not favourable to a true view of the Incarnation. The very insistence on the unity of God emphasized also the distance of God from man, and was likely to end in making the union of God with man a mere indwelling or external union, after the fashion of that which was attributed to Nestorius. They spoke of the Father as “Spirit” and the Son as “flesh”, and it is scarcely surprising that the similar Monarchianism of Marcellus should have issued in the Theodotianism of Photinus.
It is impossible to arrive at the philosophical views of Sabellius. Hagemann thought that he started from the Stoic system as surely as his adversaries did from the Platonic. Dorner has drawn too much upon his imagination for the doctrine of Sabellius; Harnack is too fanciful with regard to its origin. In fact we know little of him but that he said the Son was the Father (so Novatian, “De. Trin.” 12, and Pope Dionysius relate). St. Athanasius tells us that he said the Father is the Son and the Son is the Father, one is hypostasis, but two in name (so Epiphanius): “As there are divisions of gifts, but the same Spirit, so the Father is the same, but is developed [platynetai] into Son and Spirit” (Orat., IV, c. Ar., xxv). Theodoret says he spoke of one hypostasis and a threefold prosopa, whereas St. Basil says he willingly admitted three prosopa in one hypostasis. This is, so far as words go, exactly the famous formulation of Tertullian, “tres personae, una substantia” (three persons, one substance), but Sabellius seems to have meant “three modes or characters of one person”. The Father is the Monad of whom the Son is a kind of manifestation: for the Father is in Himself silent, inactive (siopon, hanenerletos), and speaks, creates, works, as Son (Athan., 1. c., 11). Here again we have a parallel to the teaching of the Apologists about the Word as Reason and the Word spoken, the latter alone being called Son. It would seem that the difference between Sabellius and his opponents lay mainly in his insisting on the unity of hypostasis after the emission of the Word as Son. It does not seem clear that he regarded the Son as beginning at the Incarnation; according to the passage of St. Athanasius just referred to, he may have agreed with the Apologists to date Sonship from the creative action of God. But we have few texts to go upon, and it is quite uncertain whether Sabellius left any writings. Monarchianism is frequently combated by Origen. Dionysius of Alexandria fought Sabellianism with some imprudence. In the fourth century the Arians and Semi-Arians professed to be much afraid of it, and indeed the alliance of Pope Julius and Arhanasius with Marcellus gave some colour to accusations against the Nicene formulas as opening the way to Sabellianism. The Fathers of the fourth century (as, for instance, St. Gregory of Nyssa, “Contra Sabellium”, ed. Mai) seem to contemplate a more developed form than that known to Hippolytus (“Contra Noetum” and “Philosophumena”) and through him, to Epiphanius: the consummation of creation is to consist in the return of the Logos from the humanity of Christ to the Father, so that the original unity of the Divine Nature is after all held to have been temporally compromised, and only in the end will it be restored, that God may be all in all.
Our chief original authorities for early Monarchianism of the Modalist type are Tertullian, “Adversus Praxean”, and Hippolytus, “Contra Noetum” (fragment) and “Philosophumena”. The “Contra Noetum” and the lost “Syntagma” were used by Epiphanius, Haer. 57 (Noetians), but the sources of Epiphanius’s Haer. 62 (Sabellians) are less certain. The references by Origen, Novatian, and later Fathers are somewhat indefinite.
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JOHN CHAPMAN Transcribed by Anthony A. Killeen Aeterna, non caduca
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XCopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Monarchians
is a name given to those Christians of the early Church who denied the distinction of persons in the divine nature. They insisted on the divine. unity, which they thought was infringed by the common and orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Monarchiam tenemus was their frequent assertion when comparing themselves with the orthodox fathers, whom they accordingly charged with Tritheism. Yet it is apparent that the Monarchians did not properly use the term at least not in the catholic sense, as maintaining that there is only one , source or fountain of Deity, the Father, which sense implies the existence of the Begotten Son and Proceeding Spirit as distinct Persons; nor in the sense of unity, for unity can only be asserted when there is plurality (in which lies the misuse of the term by the Unitarians); nor, again, in the sense of God’s sole government, which affirms nothing concerning the existence or non- existence of a distinction of Persons in the Godhead; but they used it .in the sense of simple oneness, from which oneness they argued that the Godhead is so simple a being as to be a solitary, single Hypostasis. That this was the meaning in which they used the term is apparent on the very face of the controversy. Thus Tertullian goes on to assert that monarchia means nothing else than singulare et unicum imperium.
The Monarchians are generally credited as the adherents of Praxeas, a writer of the Grecian school. They were sometimes called Patripassians, because their views led to the conclusion that, if the union between God the Father and his Son Jesus were so intimate as they affirmed, then the former must be supposed to have suffered with the latter all the afflictions of his life and death. Praxeas held that the Word of God (Jesus Christ) meant nothing more than the word of his mouth the emissions of his voice, to which distinct agency had been metaphorically ascribed. These heretics considered that the doctrine of the Church with respect to the personality of the Son was a disparaging representation of Christ, whom they held to be the supreme God himself, and who, in a way he had never (done besides, had revealed himself in human nature, and had appeared in a human body. They taught that God was to be considered in two different relations: 1, the hidden Being, as he was before the Creation the Father; and, 2, in so far as he revealed himself, the Son of the Logos; and it was only in virtue of these considerations that Christ, as the most perfect revelation of God the Father, was called the Son of God. They maintained that this doctrine was most eminently calculated to dignify Christ. (See, however, below.) The Monarchians received both the Old and New Testaments, and held doctrines somewhat resembling modern Unitarianism.
This general class, however, comprehended many who differed more from each other than they did even from those reputed orthodox, and who, indeed, had nothing in common but a great zeal for Monotheism, and a fear lest the unity of God should be endangered by the hvpostases of the Alexandrian fathers. Thus Theodotus, Artemon, and Paul of Samosata were placed by the side of Praxeas, Noetus, Beryllus of Bostra, and Sabellius, between whom and themselves, on every essential point of Christian doctrine, there was an unmistakable opposition. Monarchianism is generally supposed to have originated about the end of the 2d century. It seems to us, however, that this heresy may be traced to the very earliest times of Christianity. Justin Martyr expressly denounces it, and his notice guides us to its source. for he finds the heresy to exist both among Jews and Christians. He condemns the Jews for thinking that, when God was said to have appeared to the patriarchs, it was God the Father who appeared. Such, he says, are justly convicted of knowing neither the Father nor the Son; for they who say that the Son is the Father are convicted of neither understanding the Father nor of knowing that the Father of the universe has a Son, who, being the first-born Logos of God, is likewise God (First Apol. chapter 63). In the Dialogue with Trypho he handles the same topic, and extends the charge to Christians. I am aware that there are some who wish to meet this by saving that the power which appeared from the Father of the universe to Moses, or Abraham, or Jacob, is called an Angel in his coming among men, since by this the will of the Father is made known to men; he is also called Glory, since he is sometimes seen in an unsubstantial appearance; sometimes he is called a Man, since he appears under such forms as the Father pleases; and they call him the Word, since he is also the bearer of messages from the Father to men. But they say that this power is unseparated and undivided from the Father, in the same manner that the light of the sun when on earth is unseparated and undivided from the sun in heaven, and when the sun sets the light is removed with it; so the Father, they say, when he wishes, makes his power go forth, and when he wishes he brings it back again to himself (Dial. c. Tryph. cc. 127, 128).
It appears, then, there were persons in Justin’s time who called themselves Christians, but who believed that the Son was merely an unsubstantial energy or operation of the Father (see Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. Song of Solomon 2, qu. 4, 4; Burton, Bampt. Lect. note 103). Now in this the Jews had deserted the better teachings of their earlier rabbins; for these ascribed a divine personality to the angel of the Presence, and the doctrine of the holy and undivided Trinity subsisted, though in a less developed form, in the synagogue of old (see Mill, Panth. Prin. part 2, page 92 sq.). The cause of this declension in doctrine was, that opposition to the Incarnate Word, when he really appeared, seemed to have predisposed them to accept a heathen philosophy, and to represent the Logos as Philo did as the manifest God not personally distinct from the concealed Deity. This error found its way into Christianity through the Gnostics, who were largely indebted to the Platonic school of Alexandria. It appears as the foundation of the system of Simon Magus, who taught that the originating principle of all (which he asserted to be Fire, for God is a consuming fire) is of a twofold nature, having a secret part and a manifest part, corresponding, as Hippolytus remarks, to the potentiality and energy of Aristotle. If this be nothing else than Philo’s representation of the Logos, there is some sure ground for the notion that Simon held the heresy afterwards called Sabellian.
Burton rejects the notion, inasmuch as the doctrine of emanations is not to be confounded with the theory of Sabellius; but Hippolytus (whom Burton did not possess) shows that the Logos, in Simon’s theory, employed certain portions of the divine fulness, which portions he called AEons; and that the Logos, although Simon uses the word Begotten, is really the manifest God not personally distinct from the concealed Deity (see Burton, Bampton Lect. note 46). Although, therefore, the doctrine of emanations is not to be confounded with the doctrine of Sabellius, it had in its original form, as constructed by Simon, a foundation of Sabellianism. Traces of Sabellianism are found even in the later schools of Gnostics, and the later Sabellianism approached to an emanation theory. A resemblance has been noticed between the tenets of Valentinus and those of Sabellius (Peturius, Dogmz. Theol. II, 1:6; Wormius, Hist. Sabel. 2:3), and Neander is inclined to think that Marcion may have adopted some of the Patripassian doctrines in Asia Minor (Clhurch Hist. 1:796; Burton, Bampton Lect. note 103). The leading tenet of the Monarchians thus appears to have been introduced into Christianity principally through the Alexandrian Jews and the Gnostics. It may also have been derived immediately from heathen philosophers, as in the case of Noetus it is ascribed by Hippolytus immediately to Ieraclitus, SEE NOETIANS.
But whatever its origin in its development, Monarchianism must be carefully distinguished among two opposite classes claiming to be Monarchians: the rationalistic or dynamic Monarchians, who denied the divinity of Christ, or explained it as a mere power (); and the patripassian Monarchians, who identified the Son with the Father, and admitted at most only a modal trinity, a threefold mode of revelation. The first form of this heresy, says Schaff, involved in the abstract Jewish monotheism, deistically sundered the divine and the human, and rose little above Ebionism. The second proceeded, at least in part, from pantheistic preconceptions, and approached the ground of Gnostic docetism. The one prejudiced the dignity of the Son, the other the dignity of the Father; yet the latter was by far the more profound and Christian, and accordingly met with the greater acceptance.
1. The Monarchians of the first class saw in Christ a mere man, filled with divine power; but conceived this divine power as operative in him, not from the baptism only, according to the Ebionitish view, but from the beginning; and admitted his supernatural generation by the Holy Ghost. To this class belong:
(1) The Alogians, a heretical sect in Asia Minor about A.D. 170, of which very little is known. SEE ALOGIANS.
(2) The Theodotians, so called from their founder, Theodotus, who flourished near the close of the 2d century. He denied Christ in a persecution, with the apology that he only denied a man; but still held him to be the supernaturally begotten Messiah. He taught that Jesus was born of the Virgin according to the will of the Father, and that at his baptism the higher Christ descended upon him. But this higher Christ Theodotus conceived as the Son of him who was at once the Supreme God and the Creator of the world, and not (with Cerinthus and other Gnostics) as the son of a deity superior to the God of the Jews. SEE THEODOTIANS.
(3) The Artemonites, or adherents of Artemon, who came out somewhat later at Rome with a similar opinion, declaring the doctrine of the divinity of Christ an innovation, and a relapse to heathen polytheism. They asserted that until the time of Victor, bishop of Rome, their doctrine was the reigning one in the Roman Church, and that it was first proscribed by Victor’s successor, Zephyrinus (after A.D. 200). This was an unreasonable charge, but may have been made possible by the indefiniteness of the earliest formulas of the Christian Church. The Artemonites were charged with placing Euclid and Aristotle above Christ, and esteeming mathematics and dialectics above the Gospel. SEE ARTEMONITES.
(4) Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch in the second half of the 3d century, who denied the personality of the Logos and of the Holy Ghost, and considered them merely powers of God, like reason and mind in man; but granted that the Logos dwelt in Christ in larger measure than in any former messenger of God; and taught, like the Socinians in later times, a gradual elevation of Christ, determined by his own moral development, to divine dignity (a ). His overthrow by the emperor Aurelius in 272 decided the fall of the Monarchians, though they still appear at the end of the 4th century as condemned heretics, under the name of Samlosatenians (q.v.), Paulianists (q.v.), and Sabellians (q.v.).
2. The second class of Monarchians, called by Tertullian Patripassians (as afterwards a branch of the Monophysites was called Theopaschites), together with their unitarian zeal, felt the deeper Christian impulse to hold fast the divinity of Christ; but they sacrificed to it his independent personality, which they merged in the essence of the Father.
(1) The first prominent advocate of this class of Monarchians, rather than the founder of Monarchianism, was Praxeas, of whom we have already spoken above. Noetus of Smyrna, who differed but little from Praxeas, is frequently recognised as the leader of a branch of this class; and Callistus (pope Calixtus I), who adopted and advocated the doctrines of Noetus, as the leader of a third branch. Those who strictly followed him were called Callistians, in distinction from the direct followers of Noetus, who were called Noetians (q.v.). Noetus taught (according to Hippolytus, Philos. 9:7 sq.) that the one God who created the world, though in- himself invisible, had yet from most ancient times appeared from time to time, according to his good pleasure, to righteous men; and that this same God had himself become also the Son, when it pleased him to submit to being born; he was consequently his own son, and in this identity of the Father and the Son consisted the monarchia of God. An associate and disciple of Noetus was Epigonus, who brought the doctrine he professed to Rome; and his pupil, again, was Cleomenes, who defended the doctrine of Noetus in the time of bishop Zephyrinus, the successor of Victor. With this Cleomenes, according to Hyppolytus, Callistus, the successor of Zephyrinus, was on terms of friendship, and was of like opinions. Callistus declared the Son to be merely the manifestation of the Father in human form; the Father animating the Son, as the spirit animates the body (Joh 14:11), and suffering with him on the cross. The Father, says he, who was in the Son, took flesh and made it God, uniting it with himself, and made it one. Father and Son were therefore the name of the one God, and this one person () cannot be two; thus the Father suffered with the Son. After the death of this pope, Patripassianism virtually disappeared from the Roman Church.
(2) The stepping-stone from simple Patripassianism to what we shall presently deal with as Sabellian modalism constitutes the doctrine advanced by Beryllus of Bostra, in Arabia. From him we have only a somewhat obscure and very variously interpreted passage in Eusebius (H.E. 6:33). He denied the personal preexistence ( , i.e., a circumscribed, limited, separate existence), and in general the independent divinity ( ) of Christ, but at the same time asserted the indwelling of the divinity of the Father ( ) in him during his earthly life.
(3) The Sabellian modalism had its starting-point in the views evolved by Sabellius (q.v.), who flourished in the beginning of the 2d century. He differed from the orthodox standard mainly in denying the trinity of essence and the permanence of the trinity of manifestation; making the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost only temporary phenomena, which fulfil their mission and return into the abstract monad. He differed from the other Monarchians by embracing the Holy Ghost in his speculation, and thereby reached a trinity; not a simultaneous trinity of essence, however, but only a successive trinity of revelation. He starts from a distinction of the monad and the triad in the divine nature. His fundamental thought is that the unity of God, without distinction in itself, unfolds or extends itself ( ) in the course of the world’s development in three different forms and periods of revelation (, not in the orthodox sense of the term, however, but in the primary sense of mask, or part [in a play.]), and, after the completion of redemption, returns into unity. The Father reveals himself in the giving of the law or the Old- Testament economy (not in the creation also; this, in his view, precedes the trinitarian revelation); the Son, in the incarnation; the Holy Ghost, in inspiration. He illustrates the trinitarian relation by comparing the Father to the disk of the sun, the Son to its enlightening power, the Spirit to its warming influence. His view of the Logos, too, is peculiar. The Logos is not identical with the Son, but is the monad itself in its transition to triad; that is, God conceived as vital motion and creating principle the speaking God ( ), in distinction from the silent God ( ). Each is another , and the three together are only successive evolutions of the Logos or the worldward aspect of the divine nature. As the Logos proceeded from God, so he returns at last into him, and the process of trinitarian development () closes (comp. Baur. Gesch. d. Dreieinigkeitslehre, on this point). Athanasius traced the doctrine of Sabellius to the Stoic philosophy; and it must be confessed that in the Pythagorean system also, in the Gospel of the Egyptians, and even in the pseudo-Clementine homilies, there are kindred ideas. But, notwithstanding these, it is now generally conceded that Sabellius was in all respects original in the propounding of his theory of the Trinitarian doctrine. Says Schaff (Ch. Hist. 1:293): Sabellius is by far the most original, ingenious, and profound of the Monarchians. His system is known to us only from a. few fragments, and some of these not altogether consistent, in Athanasius and other fathers. It was very fully developed, and has been revived in modern times by Schleiermacher .(Ueber den Gegensatz. der Sabellianischen u. Athkanasianischen Vorstellung v.d. Trinitat) in a peculiarly modified form. Since the writing of the above by Dr. Schaffthe general Monarchian view of the incarnation has been revived by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, who in his Life of Christ (N.Y. 1871, 8vo), volume 1, denies the union of the human and divine nature in Christ, and asserts that he was God dwelling in and subject to the infirmities and limitation of the human flesh a view which he supports largely from chapter 2 of Hebrews. SEE ARIANS; SEE INCARNATION; SEE MONOPHYSITES; SEE PATRIPASSIANS; SEE SABELLIANS; SEE UNITARIANS.
From this cursory glance at the history of Monarchianism, there is apparent an endeavor to escape from the revolting tenet of Patripassianism, and to retain or supply that which the nature of man almost instinctively requires a superhuman mediation and atonement. The working of these two motives, as the Monarchian adopted either the Arian or the Patripassian alternative, is very remarkable; inasmuch as the return to catholicity appears to be much easier in the school which adopted the former alternative. Where Patripassianism was at once and decisively rejected, it was open to the Monarchian to satisfy the need for a mediator by magnifying the divine element in our Lord, which at first he considered to be only the highest degree of prophetic grace, and passing through stages of Arianism and semi-Arianism to approach nearer and nearer to the truth. Whereas, when Patripassianism had been adopted, and the need was felt for freeing the mind from-a tenet at which one shudders, it was only done by diminishing the divine nature in Christ, through the stages of supposing it to be a portion of the divine fulness, then an emanation from the Godhead. The result was a deliberate Psilanthropism. Regarding the heresy itself of pseudo-Monarchianism, the main points for consideration are the following: First, an eternal mind must needs have in it from eternity an or , a notion or conception of itself, which the schools term verbum mentis: nor can it be conceived without it. This Word in God cannot be. as it is in us, a transient, vanishing accident, for then the divine nature would indeed be compounded of substance. and accident, which would be repugnant to its simplicity; but it must be a substantial, subsisting Word (Bull, Cath. Doct. concerning the blessed Trinity).
The Monarchians denied this ( ). Denying this, they denied also that substantial vinculum caritatis in which the Father and the Son are one . Secondly, thus is destroyed that which we attribute to God, i.e., his self-sufficiency and most perfect bliss and happiness in himself alone, before and without all created beings. For this we: cannot well conceive without acknowledging a distinction of persons in the Godhead. The Monarchians, it is clear, denied this individual society of the Trinity (comp. Blunt, Dict. of Sects, Heresies, etc., page 332). See Mohler, Athanasius der Grosse (Mainz, 1827), book 1 (Der Glaube der Kirche der drei ersten Jahrh. in Betreff der Trinit. etc.), pages 1-116; Baur, Die christl. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit u. Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung (Tub. 1841-43, 3 volumes), 1:129- 341; Meier, Die Lehre von der Trinitat in ihrer hist. Entwickelung (Hamb. 1844, 2 volumes), 1:45-134; Dorner, Entwickelungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi (1839; 2d. ed. Stuttg. u. Berl. 1845-56, 2 volumes), 1:122-747; Lange, Gesch. d. Lehrbegriffes der Unitarier vor der nicanischen Synode (Leips. 1831); Schleiermacher, Werke, 1:2, pages 485- 574; Vogt, Lehre des Athanasius von Alexandrius (Bremen, 1861); Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, 1:62 sq., 116 sq., 131 sq.; Mosheim, Comment. Ecclesiastes Hist. (see Index); Milman, Hist. of Christianity, and Latin Christianity, 1:70-73; Pressense, Early Years of Christianity, Heresy, and Christian Doctrine (N.Y. 1873, 12mo). chapter 5; Neander, Hist. Dogmas (see Index in volume 2), and Ch. Hist. volume 1; Ueberweg, Hist. Philos. 2:30611; Ebrard, Dogmengesch. volume 1; Hase, Ch. Hist. page 98 sq., 196, 704; Schaff, Ch. Hist. volume 1, 81 and 83.