MODALISMO

MODALISM. – A Trinitarian heresy that flourished in the 2nd–3rd centuries, consisting essentially in the assertion that in the Most Holy Trinity the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not truly distinct persons, but only different modes of manifestation and operation of a single divine person. It is also called “Sabellianism,” from Sabellius, one of its principal advocates; “Patripassianism,” because, strictly speaking, it concluded that the Father Himself was incarnate, suffered, and was crucified; and “Monarchianism,” because it erroneously interpreted the ancient monotheistic saying that in the faith in divinity the monarchy must be maintained, in the sense of the uniqueness of person rather than of nature. The heresy probably originated in Asia Minor.

Around the years 155–61, St. Justin (Dialogue, 128–29; PG 6, 773ff.) alludes to some who, in his time, so emphasized the unity of God and the inseparability of the Son from the Father that they held not only that the Son is from the Father and cannot be separated from Him, but also that the Father can, at will, emit and then again absorb this His Son. Justin opposed them, insisting on the real distinction of the Son from the Father. About thirty years later, the doctrine is seen being combated by Justin in full development.

Around the years 180–200, a certain **Noetus** spread 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 final part of the *Syntagma* [V. Ch. Martin, in *Rev. d'hist. eccl.*, 38 (1941), pp. 1–23; other notices in *Philos.* [after 222], IX, 7ff.; X, 27; CB, III, *Hippolytus*, pp. 240ff., 283ff.; the other historians depend on Hippolytus, but Epiphanius [*Haer.*, 57; PG 41, 993ff.] sometimes allows for improvement of the 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 interpreted allegorically the Prologue of the Gospel of John (*C. Noet.*, 11; 14; 15), while appealing to Scripture passages that inculcate the unity of God (e.g., Ex. 3:6; Is. 44:6) and the union of the Son with the Father (e.g., Jn. 10:30; 14:9ff.; *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 the same years 180–200, **Praxias** (Tertullian, *Adv. Praxean*) taught essentially identical doctrines; he was a confessor of the faith who came from Asia Minor to Rome (ca. 190–98). Later he went to teach in Carthage, where he was first silenced and apparently converted by Tertullian, but soon resumed his intrigues, for which Tertullian wrote (after 213) his *Adv. Praxean*. For Praxias, the Father and the Son are a single person who, according to the different aspects under which it is considered, is named differently (ibid., 2; 5) and distinguished by different, even opposing, 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 being incarnate and born, made Himself the Son (ibid., 10), because assuming flesh made the Father the 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, i.e., with the Son: *“compassus est Pater Filio”* (ibid., 29). Here too Catholics are accused of Ditheism (ibid., 13), and Scripture is seen only in terms of the affirmations of divine unity and the unity between the Father and the Son (ibid., 20).

At Rome, after Praxias, especially during the pontificate of Pope Zephyrinus (199–217), two disciples of Noetus, **Epigonus** and **Cleomenes**, spread modalism successfully, against whom Hippolytus fought (*Philos.*, IX, 7; 10; 11; X, 27).

Around 217, another modalist, **Sabellius**, came to Rome. Though he was excommunicated by Pope Callistus, he had great success, especially in the Pentapolis (Cyrenaica), where he seems to have gone (he was perhaps of Libyan birth), so that in the East the heresy was chiefly called Sabellianism. **Dionysius**, bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 264), at one time worked hard to combat its influence in Libya (Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, VII, 26; PG 20, 704; Athanasius, *De sent. Dionysii*, 10: ibid. 25, 493). The disciples of Sabellius, developing the doctrine further, gave it greater cohesion, paying special attention also to the Holy Spirit, about which little had been said up to that point. It is in this developed form that the Fathers of the 4th century present modalism (especially Epiphanius, *Haer.*, 62; PG 41, 1525ff.; 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 (υἱοπάτωρ), who takes different names according to the different aspects under which He is considered and in which He manifests Himself (πρόσωπον): as Creator of the world and its manifestation He is called the Word, so that in God the aspect of the Word is permanent, at least as long as the world; as He reveals Himself in the Old Testament, He is Father and Lawgiver; in the Incarnation, He is Son and Redeemer; 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 manifests Himself, and the Son ceases to be when the Holy Spirit acts. In the Godhead there is thus a continual movement (διάλεξις) of expansion (πλάσμα) and retraction (συστοχή). Thus it can be said, in a way, that only the Son suffered. The principal idea from which modalism started is the biblical idea of the unity of God, understood in a philosophical way, with Platonic-Stoic nuances (Monad; expansion and retraction in the Godhead); Scripture as a whole plays a very secondary role in II.
Modalism, far from being able to be presented as a paleo-Christian doctrine, shows its radical opposition to the rule of faith, first in the affirmation that the Father was incarnate—a conclusion that is in fact 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 in which the Son speaks of the subjection of His will to that of the Father, of His prayer, and of His redemptive work in general. The entire character of the Christian religion was thus blurred, with an essential return to the Jewish position.

The reaction that modalism provoked in the responsible circles of the Church’s doctrine in the 2nd–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 mingled—is known above all from the attitude of the Roman pontiffs of that period. Not that they had found in the Trinitarian question a positive theoretical formulation already satisfactory, as would be the *homoousios*, but they opposed modalism simultaneously with Adoptionism and the still imperfect personal explanations of the doctors, who, in their opposition to modalism, so insisted on the real distinction of the persons in God as to represent them as too separate. In this attitude, condemning as heresies Adoptionism and modalism, and rejecting the overly imperfect solutions of the doctors, the popes of the period affirmed, not so much as theologians as judges of the faith, the terms of this faith within which the solution was to be sought.

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Pope Victor I (189–98) and Pope Zephyrinus (198–217), warned by the modalist propaganda in Rome—which they certainly recognized as having some valid points in its opposition to the Logos theory introduced by the apologists—showed more clearly than before that they did not intend to adopt the explanatory theories of the Trinity with their pronounced subordinationist tendencies then prevalent among contemporary theologians. Thus, these popes could appear to the subordinationist and at the time schismatic Hippolytus, as well as to some modern scholars (e.g., A. Harnack), who gave too much credence to Hippolytus’s partisan and passionate accounts, as favoring modalism. However, when due allowance is made for Hippolytus’s assertions, there is insufficient evidence to support this view.