MODALISMO. - Trinitarian heresy that flourished in the 2nd-3rd centuries, consisting essentially in asserting
that in the Most Holy Trinity the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not persons truly distinct from one another, but only different ways in which a single divine person manifests and acts. It is also called "sabellianism," from Sabellius, one of its main proponents; "patripassianism," because, strictly speaking, it had to conclude that the Father Himself actually became incarnate, suffered, and was crucified; "monarchianism," because it understands the ancient monotheistic saying that in the faith in divinity one must maintain the monarchy in a heretical sense of the uniqueness of person, and not merely of nature. The heresy probably originated in Asia Minor.
Around the years 155-61, St. Justin (Dialogue, 128-29: PG 6, 773 ff.) alludes to some who in his time insisted so much on the unity of God and the inseparability of the Son from the Father, as to believe not only that the Son is the δυνάμεις of the Father, who cannot be separated from Him, but also that the Father can at will emit and then reabsorb this δυνάμεις of His. Justin insists against them on the real distinction of the Son from the Father. Some thirty years later, the doctrine fought by Justin is seen in full development.
Around the years 180-200, a certain NOETUS was spreading it in Smyrna (Hippolytus of Rome, Hom. contra haeresim Noeti [ca. 200-10]: PG 10, 804-29, critical ed. by P. Nautin, Paris 1949; the work probably constituted the last part of the Syntagma [V. Ch. Martin, in Rev. d'hist. eccl., 38 [1941], pp. 1-23; further information in Philos. [after 222], IX, 7 ff.; X, 27: CB, III, Hippolytus, pp. 240 ff., 283 sq.; the other historians depend on Hippolytus, but Epiphanius [Haer., 57: PG 41, 993 ff.] sometimes allows one to improve his text). Noetus said: if Christ is God, He is the Father Himself, otherwise He would not be God; the Father was born, suffered, and died (C. Noet., 1-2). He accused Catholics of ditheism and allegorically interpreted the prologue of the Gospel of John (C. Noet., 11; 14; 15), while appealing to the passages of Scripture that inculcate the uniqueness of God (e.g., Ex. 3, 6; Is. 44, 6) and the union of the Son with the Father (e.g., Is. 10, 13; 14, 8 sq.; Philos., IX, 10; X, 27). Noetus was examined and then condemned by the "presbyters" of Smyrna (ca. 200), who opposed him with the simple rule of faith (C. Noet., 1).
Around these same years 180-200, PRAXEAS (Tertullian, Adv. Praxean), a confessor of the faith who came from Asia Minor to Rome (ca. 190-98), taught essentially identical doctrines. Later he came to teach in Carthage, where, having been reduced to silence a first time and apparently converted by Tertullian, shortly thereafter he resumed his maneuvers, which led Tertullian to write his Adv. Praxean (after 213). For Praxeas, Father and Son are a single person who, according to the different aspects under which he is considered, is named with different names (ibid., 2; 5) and distinguished with different, even opposite attributes, such as visible and invisible, passible and impassible, etc. (ibid., 14; 15). The concept of the Word is rejected, since the Word as such is nothing other than a flatus vocis: vox et sonus oris (ibid., 7). The Father, by incarnating and being born, made Himself a Son (ibid., 10), because assuming the flesh made the Father a Son. In Christ the Son is properly the human element, the flesh; the divine element is the Father (ibid., 27), who, being spirit, could not properly suffer, but "suffered with" the flesh, that is, with the Son: "compassus est Pater Filio" (ibid., 29). Here too Catholics are accused of ditheism (ibid., 13) and Scripture is seen to contain nothing but affirmations of divine uniqueness and of the unity between the Father and the Son (ibid., 20).
In Rome, after Praxeas, especially at the time of Pope Zephyrinus (199-217), modalism was successfully spread by two disciples of Noetus, Epigonus and Cleomenes, whom Hippolytus fought against (Philos., IX, 7; 10; 11; X, 27).
Around 217 another modalist also came to Rome, SABELLIUS, who, although excommunicated by Pope Callistus, had such great success, especially in the Pentapolitana region (Cyrenaica) where he seems to have gone (he was perhaps Libyan by birth), that the heresy was called primarily Sabellianism in the East. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 264), in his time worked hard to combat his influence in Libya (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VII, 26: PG 20, 704; Athanasius, De sent. Dionysii, 10: ibid. 25, 493). The disciples of Sabellius, further evolving the doctrine, gave it greater cohesion, paying special attention also to the Holy Spirit, of which little had been said until then. It is in this evolved form that the Fathers of the 4th century make modalism known (especially Epiphanius, Haer., 62: PG 41, 1052 ff.; Eusebius of Caesarea, C. Marcellum, ed. E. Klostermann [CB, Eusebius, IV], passim; Praeparatio Evang.: PG 21; Basil, Epp. 207; 210; 214; 235: PG 32): God is a single, indivisible person, a Monad (μονάς), Son-Father (νιόπατσος), who takes different names according to the different aspects under which He is considered and in which He manifests Himself (πρόσωπα): inasmuch as He creates the world and manifests Himself in it, He is called the Word, whereby in God the Word aspect is permanent, at least as long as the world; inasmuch as He reveals Himself in the Old Testament, He is Father and lawgiver; in the Incarnation He is Son and Redeemer; inasmuch as He sanctifies souls He is the Holy Spirit. These different modes of manifestation are not only equal to one another, but also transitory: the Father ceases to be when the Son is revealed, and the Son ceases to be when the Holy Spirit comes into action. In the divinity there is thus a continuous movement (διάλεξις) of expansion (πλατυσμός) and retraction (ανατολή). Thus it can be said, in some way, that only the Son suffered. The main idea from which modalism started is the biblical idea of the unity of God, understood in a Judaic way, with Platonic-Stoic nuances (Monad; expansion and retraction in the divinity); Scripture as a whole plays a very secondary role in II.
Modalism, far from being able to be presented as a paleochristian doctrine, shows its radical opposition to the rule of faith, first of all in the assertion that the Father became incarnate—actually inevitable in the system—and in the fact that it neglects the overwhelming scriptural affirmations of the personal distinction between Father and Son, such as those where the Son speaks of the submission of His will to that of the Father, of His prayer and redeeming work in general. The entire character of the Christian religion was thus disfigured with an essential return to the Judaic position.
The reaction that modalism aroused in the responsible spheres of Church doctrine in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, besides the opposition of individual doctors (Tertullian, Hippolytus, Novatian [De Trinitate, 9-28, written before 249], Origen and his disciples)—an opposition of a scientific nature in which the rule of faith and further personal explanatory opinions are mixed—is known first of all from the attitude of the Roman pontiffs of that era. Not that they found in the scientific trinitarian question a positive theoretical formulation that was already satisfactory, as the Nicene homoousios would be, but they simultaneously opposed modalism, adoptionism, and the still-too-imperfect personal attempts at explanation by doctors who, in their opposition to modalism, insisted so much on the real distinction of persons in God as to represent them as too separated. In this attitude of theirs, condemning adoptionism and modalism as heresies and rejecting the overly imperfect solutions of the doctors, the popes of the era affirmed, not so much as theologians but as judges of the faith, the terms of this faith within which the solution had nonetheless to be sought.
Pope Victor (189-98) and Pope Zephyrinus (198-217), warned by the Modalist propaganda in Rome, the well-founded aspects of which they certainly perceived in its opposition to the logos theory inaugurated by the apologists, showed—more than had been the case in the past—that they did not intend to adopt the explanatory theories of the Trinity with their strongly subordinatianist coloring then in vogue among contemporary doctors. These Popes could thus appear to the subordinatianist and then schismatic Hippolytus, as well as to some moderns (e.g., A. Harnack) who gave too much credence in this to the partisan and passionate accounts of Hippolytus, positively favorable to m. But, making due allowance for the assertions of Hippolytus, there is no sufficient proof
The Modalists disappeared during the course of the 3rd century and if some later orthodox authors let slip technically imprecise expressions, their orthodoxy cannot be called into question; whereas if others, Marcellus of Ancyra (v.), renewed a notable part of the Modalist system, they were rejected by the Church as soon as the nature of this position of theirs was sufficiently understood. Therefore, the Arian accusation so often repeated against Catholics that they, in defending the Nicene homoousion, had fallen into Sabellianism, turns out to be baseless.