MONARCHIANISM

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I. The Beginnings of Monarchianism.

Christology of the Early Church (§ 1).

Discrepancies in Primitive Christologies (§ 2).

Meaning of "Monarchian" (§ 3).

Relations to the Catholics (§ 4).

II. The "Alogi" of Asia Minor.

III. Adoptionism in the West.

Theodotus and His Teachings (§ 1).

Successors of Theodotus and Their Exegesis (§ 2).

Melchisedicians (§ 3).

Theodotian Concept of Christ (§ 4).

Artemas; Decay of Western Dynamistic Monarchianism (§5).

IV. Suppression of Adoptionism in the East.

Opponents of Logos-Christology in the East (§ 1).

Paul of Samosata (§ 2).

Paul's Homoousianism and Influence (§ 3).

V. Modalistic Monarchianism in Asia Minor, Rome, and Carthage.

Wide Popularity of Modalistic Monarchianism (§ 1).

Rise of Patripassianism at Rome; Praxeas (§ 2).

Doctrines of the Early Modalists (§ 3).

Later Modalism and Catholic Compromise (§ 4).

Struggle between Hypostatism and Modalism (§ 5).

VI. Modalistic Monarchians in the East; Sabellianism.

Sabellius; Obscurity of the Sources (§ 1).

Relations and Decay of Sabellianism (§ 2).

I. The Beginnings of Monarchianism: Up to the end of the second century the doctrine of the Logos had by no means been definitely fixed, despite the statements of the apologists, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement, and despite the general recognition that Christ must be thought of in the same way as God. There was, there- r. The fore, no strict formulation of the nature Christology and dignity of the Redeemer or of the of the Early being of God. Nor was a comparison

Church. of the two persons even contemplated, for the recognition of the preexistence of the Son had influence on the concept of the God head so long as this preexistent Son was considered a creature, and so long as a plurality of heavenly spirits and personified powers was assumed. The points regarding the personality of the Redeemer generally established and defended between 140 and 180 were derived from the short creed based on Matt. xxviii. 19: the Son of God, the Lord and Savior, born of the Holy Ghost and the virgin. The recognition of the supernatural birth (itself as suming preexistence) marked the delimitation between the strict Judaeo-Christians and those who would merely admire Christ as a second Socrates; while the recognition of his physical birth and true human life formed a barrier against the Gnostics. Even at this early period there existed side by side Christologies which were to form the bases of the Monarchian, Arian, Athanasian, and even Docetic and Gnostic systems; and the same writer uses formulas in which the divinity of the Son is ascribed in one place to special election and endowment by the deity, in a second to the actual indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and in a third to a celestial hypo stasis or an incarnation of the Godhead. There is nothing to show, however, that at that time Christ was regarded as the actual Godhead. He was rather deemed either as the man in whom the Godhead or the Spirit of God dwelt, or-this being doubtless the more general view-as the heavenly Spirit which had become incarnate and manifest. Those who maintained the latter view held that Christ became what he is before his miraculous birth; while those who adhered to the former hypothesis believed that the indwelling of the divine Spirit had taken place at his baptism, it being also possible to assume a progressive filling of the Son of Man with the Holy Ghost.

To the two views here set forth may be referred the various Christologies of the second century; and, although the distinction between them might be glossed over in public worship, the theological dis crepancy was still felt, and even the laity came to take part in the ensuing controversy.

2. Discrepancies

The Bible was cited in support of both in views, although the conditions of the

Primitive time favored belief in the incarnation

Christol- of a special divine being in Christ. ogies. This was confirmed by the interpretation of the theophanies of the Old Tes tament as explained by the Alexandrine school, by the testimony of St. Paul and a series of ancient wri tings, and by the cosmological and theological prin ciples borrowed from the religious philosophy of the period to serve as the basis of a rational Christian philosophy. Assuming the theory of the divine

Logos to explain the origin and history of the world, the establishment of the divine dignity and the di vine sonship of the Redeemer was already fixed.

Nor did this involve any peril to monotheism even when the Logos was allowed to be more than a pro cession from the creative will of God, since the in finite substance of the Godhead might be developed in various subjects and be communicated to vari ous persons without being emptied or divided in essence. Neither was the divinity of Christ im periled by the doctrine that he was the incarnation of the Logos, for the Logos-concept was capable of the most varied interpretation and lent itself to each new development of speculation and exegesis.

It accordingly developed finally into the very an tithesis of its original concept, but until this hap pened, and so long as the Logos connoted either the archetype of the world or the rational law of the universe, it was somewhat mistrusted as a means for establishing the divinity of Christ, for the pious would see in Christ nothing less than the Godhead itself. Athanasius was the first to render this pos sible by his interpretation of the Logos, though he practically put the Logos-doctrine into the back ground; so that from him to Augustine the history of Christology became the history of the replacement of the concept of the Logos by that of the sonship of Christ. The first formal protest against the Logos-Christology in the second century was prompted by a desire to preserve strict monotheism -primarily by the interest in the humanity of the Redeemer-combined with a repugnance to the employment of Platonic and Stoic philosophy in

Christian doctrine. The primary concern of the

Monarchians, who were at first charged with lowering (if not destroying) the dignity of the Redeemer

-a charge they later turned against their oppo-

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nents-was the man Jesus, and then monotheism and the divine dignity of Christ. Hence gradually developed a controversy on the entire theological implication of the first two articles of the rule of faith,.which were suspected of both ditheism and reminiscences of Gnosticism. The beginnings of the struggle, which lasted more than a century and a half, are wrapped in obscurity. It may be regarded as the history of the substitution of the preexistent for the historic Christ and as the replacement of the person of Christ by the mystery of the person, or as the victory of Platonism over Aristotelianism in Christian theology.