Modalism

MODALISM. - A Trinitarian heresy that flourished in the 2nd-3rd centuries and consisted essentially in asserting that in the Most Holy Trinity the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not persons really distinct from one another, but only different modes of manifesting and acting of a single divine person. It is also called "Sabellianism," from Sabellius, one of its principal proponents; "patripassianism," because, by strict logic, it had to conclude that in reality the Father Himself was incarnate, suffered and was crucified; "monarchianism," because it heretically understands in the sense of uniqueness of person, and not only of nature, the ancient monotheistic saying that in faith in the divinity one must maintain the monarchy. The heresy probably arose in Asia Minor.

Around the years 155-61 St. Justin (Dialogue, 128-29: PG 6, 773 ff.) alludes to certain people who in his time insisted so much on the unity of God and the inseparability of the Son from the Father, as to hold not only that the Son is a δύναμις of the Father, which cannot be separated from Him, but also that the Father can at will emit and then again absorb this δύναμις of His. Justin against them insists on the real distinction of the Son from the Father. About thirty years later the doctrine combated by Justin is seen in full development.

Around the years 180-200 a certain NOETUS was spreading it at 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; other notices in the Philos. [after 222], IX, 7 ff.; X, 27: CB, III, Hippolytus, pp. 240 ff., 283 f.; the other historians depend on Hippolytus, but Epiphanius [Haer., 57: PG 41, 993 ff.] sometimes allows its text to be improved). 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 the Catholics of ditheism and interpreted allegorically the prologue of the Gospel of John (C. Noet., 11; 14; 15), while he appealed 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 f.; Philos., IX, 10; X, 27). Noetus was examined and then condemned by the "presbyters" of Smyrna (ca. 200), who opposed to him the simple rule of faith (C. Noet., 1).

Toward the same years 180-200 PRAXEAS taught essentially identical doctrines (Tertullian, Adv. Praxean), a confessor of the faith who came from Asia Minor to Rome (ca. 190-98). Later he came to teach at Carthage, where, reduced to silence a first time and apparently converted by Tertullian, shortly afterward he resumed his machinations, on account of which Tertullian wrote (after 213) his Adv. Praxean. 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 by different and 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, becoming incarnate and being born, made Himself a Son to Himself (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, does not however properly suffer, but "co-suffers" with the flesh, that is, with the Son: "compassus est Pater Filio" (ibid., 29). Here too the Catholics are accused of ditheism (ibid., 13) and in Scripture nothing is seen but the affirmations of the divine uniqueness and of the unity between the Father and the Son (ibid., 20).

At Rome, after Praxeas, especially in the time of Pope Zephyrinus (199-217), two disciples of Noetus, Epigonus and Cleomenes, spread modalism with success, against whom Hippolytus fought (Philos., IX, 7; 10; 11; X, 27).

Around 217 another modalist came to Rome as well, SABELLIUS, who was indeed excommunicated by Pope Callistus, but had such success, especially in the Pentapolis (Cyrenaica), where he seems to have gone (he was perhaps Libyan by birth), that the heresy in the East was called principally Sabellianism. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 264), in his time exerted himself greatly 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, further evolving the doctrine, gave it greater cohesion, paying special attention also to the Holy Spirit, of whom up to this point little had been said. It is under 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, 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 (πρόσωπα): insofar as he creates the world and manifests himself in it he is called Word, so that in God the aspect Word is permanent, at least as long as the world; insofar as he reveals himself in the Old Testament, he is Father and lawgiver; in the Incarnation he is Son and Redeemer; insofar as he sanctifies souls he is the Holy Spirit. These different modes of manifesting himself are not only equal among themselves, but also transitory: the Father ceases to be when the Son is revealed, and the Son ceases to be when the Holy Spirit enters into action. In the divinity there is thus a continuous movement (διάλεξις) of expansion (πλατυσμός) and of retraction (ανατολή). Thus it can be said, in some way, that only the Son has suffered. The principal idea from which modalism started is the biblical idea of the unity of God, understood in a Judaic manner, with Platonic-Stoic nuances (Monad; expansion and retraction in the divinity); Scripture as a whole has in it a very secondary part.

Modalism, far from being able to be presented as a paleo-Christian doctrine, shows its radical opposition to the rule of faith, first of all in the affirmation that the Father was incarnate, in reality 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 redemptive work in general. The whole character of the Christian religion thus came to be disfigured with an essential return to the Judaic position.

The reaction that modalism aroused in the spheres responsible for the doctrine of the Church of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, besides from 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 these had found in the scientific Trinitarian question a positive theoretical formulation already satisfactory, as the Nicene homoousios would be, but they opposed themselves simultaneously to modalism, to adoptionism and to the personal attempts at explanation still too imperfect of the doctors, who, in their opposition to modalism, insisted so much on the real distinction of the persons in God, as to represent them as too separate. In this attitude of theirs, condemning as heresies both adoptionism and modalism, and rejecting the too imperfect solutions of the doctors, the popes of the era affirmed, not so much as theologians as judges of the faith, the terms of this faith within which the solution was in any case to be sought.

Pope Victor (189-98) and Pope Zephyrinus (198-217), put on their guard by the modalist propaganda in Rome, of whose well-founded character in certain of its aspects of opposition to the logos theory inaugurated by the apologists they certainly had a sense, showed, more than had happened in the past, that they did not intend to take upon themselves the explanatory theories of the Trinity of a markedly subordinationist cast in vogue among the contemporary doctors. These popes could thus appear to the subordinationist and then schismatic Hippolytus, as well as to certain moderns (e.g., A. Harnack) who in this gave too much credence to the partisan and passionate reports of Hippolytus, as positively favorable to m. But, making due allowance for the statements of Hippolytus, there is not sufficient proof in this sense. The true tendency of the Roman Curia, moreover, is sufficiently clear in Pope Callistus (217-22), who indeed excommunicated Sabellius, but equally rejected the explanatory theories of Hippolytus as aforesaid, for which reason the same Hippolytus, his bitter personal enemy, accuses him of ignorance and contradiction. Thus the historical truth of the modalist statements that Hippolytus attributes to him (Philos., IX, 12) appears more than problematic; all the more so if one takes into account the fact that another enemy of Callistus, Tertullian, who accuses him of so many failings, never alludes, however, to any connivance on his part with m. Equally very clear is the same tendency in Pope Dionysius (ca. 259-68), who invited Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (d. 258) and disciple of Origen, to justify himself against the accusation of having fallen, in his struggle against Libyan Sabellianism, into the opposite exaggeration, by separating too much the persons of the Trinity (Athanasius, De decretis, 26: PG 25, 461 ff.).

The modalists disappeared in the course of the 3rd century, and if certain later orthodox authors let slip technically imprecise expressions, their orthodoxy cannot be called into doubt; while if others, such as 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. Hence the Arian accusation, so often repeated against Catholics, that they, in defending the Nicene homoousion, had fallen into Sabellianism, proves vain.

Cipriano Vagaggini