ADOZIANISMO
### I. General Notion
In a broad sense, it is the error of those who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, either in reality or through the formulas they employ, affirming that He is the adopted Son of God by grace. There is thus a real and a verbal adoptionism. Real adoptionism was upheld by heretics of the early centuries: Cerinthus, the Ebionites, Theodotus of Byzantium (called the Tanner), Theodotus the Banker, Artemon, and Paul of Samosata. Verbal adoptionism appeared in Spain toward the end of the 8th century with Elipando, archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, bishop of Urgell.
The term "adozionismo" is nevertheless used principally to denote Spanish (verbal) adoptionism, and it was only after the publication of A. Harnack’s *History of Dogma* (*Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte*, I, Freiburg in Br. 1886) that it became improper to call the primitive heretics mentioned above "adoziani" instead of classifying them as a special category of Monarchians: the dynamic Monarchians (v. MONARCHIANISM). Between primitive adoptionism and Spanish adoptionism stands the Nestorian adoptionism of Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Nestorius. For this adoptionism, which, while sharing many points in common with the two typical forms, represents an original type, see the entries DIODORUS OF TARSUS; NESTORIUS and NESTORIANISM; THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA.
Adoptionism in itself is a Christological error and pertains to the problem of the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ. Real adoptionism is the rationalist solution to this problem.
### II. Primitive Adoptionism and Its Principal Representatives
Already at the end of the 1st century, the Gnostic Cerinthus (v.) denied the divinity of Jesus, His virginal conception, and saw in Him nothing more than a man, superior to others in justice and wisdom. In his system, Christ is distinct from Jesus. A little later, the Jewish-Christians of Syria, known as Ebionites (v.) or Ebionaeans, spoke of Jesus as did Cerinthus. However, as Eusebius of Caesarea attests (*Hist. ecc.*, III, 27, 2), some of them admitted His miraculous birth. Toward the end of the 2nd century, rationalist adoptionists proper appear with Theodotus of Byzantium, called the Tanner, and his namesake Theodotus the Banker. Traces of adoptionism are indeed found in the *Shepherd of Hermas*; but if Hermas expresses himself poorly regarding the person of Jesus and His relationship with God, it is not at all due to a rationalistic tendency, but rather to simple ignorance.
Theodotus the Tanner, a native of Byzantium, a wealthy and educated man, had apostatized during a persecution. To conceal his fault, he took refuge in Rome under Pope Victor (193–203). According to a somewhat unreliable anecdote reported by St. Hippolytus, when a compatriot reproached him for his apostasy, he allegedly replied: “I have not denied God, but a man.” It is certain that Theodotus denied the divinity of Jesus Christ and, although he admitted His miraculous birth from a virgin, he saw in Him nothing more than a man of superior holiness to whom God had entrusted the mission of saving mankind. At His baptism on the banks of the Jordan, Christ—otherwise called the Holy Spirit—had descended upon Him in the form of a dove and had communicated to Him the power to perform miracles. But for all that, He had not become God.
Theodotus and his followers sought to prove their doctrine from Sacred Scripture: they were literati and scholars who argued according to the rules of Aristotle. Excommunicated by Pope Victor, Theodotus organized in Rome a small schismatic community, more like a school than a Church. Among the disciples of Theodotus the Byzantine, St. Hippolytus, who had combated the sect in many of his works, pointed out another Theodotus, a banker by profession, a certain Asclepiodotus, and a Roman confessor named Natalis, who, for a salary, agreed to serve as bishop of the sect. But the latter, after terrifying visions, did not persevere in the error and went to ask forgiveness from Pope Zephyrinus. Theodotus the Banker, in addition to his master’s doctrine, added strange speculations about Melchizedek, whom he declared superior to Jesus and whom he seemed to confuse with the Holy Spirit, calling him “a certain great power” (Δύναμίν τινα μεγάστην), the celestial virtue of the principal grace, mediating between God and angels and even men, spiritual and Son of God (πνευματικός καί υιός Θεού).
The last distinguished Theodotian in the West was Artemon or Artemus, a contemporary of St. Hippolytus (d. 235), who probably outlived him. His relations with the sect are obscure, if judged from the anonymous treatise directed against him, which Eusebius (*Hist. ecc.*, V, 28, 3) cites at length, which Theodoret (*Haer. fab.*, III, 4, 5) calls the *Little Labyrinth*, and which various authors attribute to St. Hippolytus (cf. Adhémar d’Alès, *La théologie de saint Hippolyte*, Paris 1906, pp. XXXIII-IV). According to this treatise, Artemon claimed that his doctrine had been that of the Roman Church before Zephyrinus (202–218). Did he ignore the condemnation of Theodotus by Pope Victor, or was he dogmatizing on his own account, without any special connection with the Theodotian sect? What is known is that the Council of Antioch in 268, which condemned Paul of Samosata, regarded Artemon as the precursor of Paul and the father of his heresy, which consists essentially in the denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Paul of Samosata, in fact, was the type of the rationalist adoptionist, who reduces Christian dogma to the level of pure reason and interprets the data of Revelation accordingly.
### III. Spanish Adoptionism
The error of those who attributed to the Incarnate Word two filiations, one natural as Son of God, and one adoptive as man. It was upheld at the end of the 8th century by two Spaniards: Elipandus (v.), archbishop of Toledo, Felix (v.), bishop of Urgell, who made not a few disciples among their followers.
First agitated by Elipandus around 782, this heresy was embraced and developed by Felix, who became the true theologian of the sect. Both intended to remain within orthodoxy and not only fully admitted the dogma of the Trinity—which distinguished them from primitive adoptionism—but also rejected Nestorian heresy and proclaimed that the Word had united Himself hypostatically to human nature, remaining one person.
In reality, and almost against their will, they taught the Nestorian hypostatic dualism through the way in which they expressed themselves. By admitting two filiations in Jesus, they were led to distinguish in Him the Son of God by nature, who was the Word, and the Son of adoption by grace, who was the man Jesus. Like the Nestorians, they indeed affirmed that there was only one Son of God, but, with their terminology, they declared equivalently that there were two. Moreover, one might almost hear Theodore of Mopsuestia, the father of Nestorianism, when reading the profession of faith of Elipando: «Quia non per illum qui natus est de Virgine visibilia [Deus] condidit, sed per illum qui non est adoptione sed genere, neque gratia sed natura» (in PL 16, 917). Likewise, Felix writes: «Qui susceptus est cum eo qui suscepit connuncupatur Deus – impassibilis in suo, passibilis in alieno» (passage cited by Alcuino, in Adversus Felicem, VII; VIII, 3; V, 2).
The Adoptionists, like the Nestorians, forgot that the idea of filiation and of son is inseparably linked to the idea of person and not to the idea of nature, and, not clearly distinguishing the notions of nature and of person, they formed for themselves an heretical concept of the hypostatic union, which, despite themselves, transpired from the way in which they spoke of the two natures. It is therefore rightly that the Church condemned them as heretics, whatever certain Protestant historians of the dogma, such as Walch and Baur, and the Jesuit theologian Gabriel Vázquez, may have said.
The history of the Adoptionist controversy is very complicated. Much was discussed about its origins. It may be supposed that Nestorian books penetrated into Spain translated into Arabic; in any case, the first germs of the error are discernible in a letter written before 782 by Elipando to Bishop Migezio, an unknown figure who seemed imbued with Sabellianism. In the following years, the theory of the two filiations spread both in the part of Spain subjected to the Moors and in that subjected to Charlemagne, where Felix of Urgel, questioned by Elipando around 790-91, became its defender. As early as 785, Pope Hadrian I had sent the Spanish bishops a dogmatic letter to refute it (PL 158, 373-486). Upon learning of the new heresy, Charlemagne resolved to uproot it from his states and as early as 792 convened a council at Ratisbon, where Felix had to appear as the accused. Having made his retraction, he went to Rome and renewed it there. He was, however, insincere, for upon his return to Spain he left his diocese to go to Saracen territory, probably to Toledo, where, in agreement with Elipando and other bishops, his partisans, he organized the struggle against orthodoxy. A letter was sent to the bishops of Gaul and one to Charlemagne. The latter informed the Pope and convened a great council at Frankfurt, where Hadrian I was represented by some legates. The Italian bishops refuted the heresy, basing themselves on Sacred Scripture, while the bishops of Gaul, Aquitaine, and Germany presented in separate writings the proof of tradition. Then was added the letter of Hadrian I to Charlemagne, in which, in the form of an exhortation, he masterfully summarized the two writings of the council members (794).
All these documents were sent to the Spaniards, who, however, did not yet yield. Felix of Urgel continued to polemicize with Alcuino until a Roman council in 799 excommunicated him. Paulinus, Patriarch of Aquileia, in the synod he held in Friuli (796), did likewise and wrote three books against him. The heresiarch finally yielded to the entreaties of Charlemagne’s envoys and, appearing before the synod convened at Aachen in the autumn of 799, made his third abjuration, after which he was no longer permitted to return to his diocese. Retiring to Lyon under the supervision of Leidrad, bishop of the city, he died in 818, having addressed to the priests of Urgel and to his former partisans a profession of faith in which he disavowed his former conduct. A writing found among his papers after his death would, however, cast doubt on the sincerity of his retraction. As for Elipando, he seems to have persisted in his ideas until his death, which occurred in 809.
The heresy did not long survive the Council of Aachen, at least not in the Spanish March, which was part of the Frankish empire. In 800, Alcuino wrote to Arno of Salzburg that 20,000 clerics and laity had been brought back to orthodoxy by the delegation that Charlemagne had sent to that region (in PL 100, 329). There were, however, some Adoptionists still in Saracen Spain even around the middle of the 9th century.
The heresy is one destined to reappear periodically. Abelard and his school revived it in the 13th century in a new form; in the 14th century, some subtle theologians wished to make of Jesus Christ, considered as man, the adopted son of the Most Holy Trinity, and certain modern theologians sometimes speak of Jesus Christ as if He had a human personality.