ADOZIANISM. - I. GENERAL NOTION. - In a broad sense it is the error of those who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, either really or by the formulas they employ, affirming that he is the adoptive son of God by grace. There is therefore a real a. and a verbal a. The real a. was upheld by heretics of the first centuries: Cerinthus, the Ebionites, Theodotus of Byzantium called the Tanner, Theodotus the Banker, Artemon and Paul of Samosata. The verbal a. appears in Spain toward the end of the 8th century with Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, bishop of Urgel.
The term "a." is nevertheless used principally to indicate the Spanish (verbal) a., and only since the publication of A. Harnack's History of Dogmas (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, I, Freiburg im Breisgau 1886) has the custom prevailed of calling the primitive heretics to whom we alluded Adoptionists, instead of making of them a special category of monarchians: the dynamic monarchians (v. MONARCHIANISMO). Between the primitive a. and the Spanish a. there is, moreover, the Nestorian a. of Diodore of Tarsus, of Theodore of Mopsuestia and of Nestorius. For this a., which, although having many points in common with the two typical a., represents an original form, see the entries DIODORO DI TARSO; NESTORIO e NESTORIANISMO; TEODORO DI MOPSUESTIA.
The a. taken in itself is a Christological error and refers to the problem of the union of the divinity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. The real a. is the rationalist solution of the problem.
II. PRIMITIVE ADOZIANISM AND ITS MAIN REPRESENTATIVES
Already at the end of the 1st century, the Gnostic Cerinthus (v.) denied the divinity of Jesus and his virginal conception, and saw in him nothing but a man, superior to others in righteousness and wisdom. In his system, Christ is distinct from Jesus. A little later, the Jewish Christians of Syria, distinguished by the name of Ebionites (v.), or Ebionites, speak of Jesus as Cerinthus does. However, as Eusebius of Caesarea testifies (Hist. eccl., III, 27, 2), some of them admitted his miraculous birth. At the end of the 2nd century the rationalist Adoptionists properly so called 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 on the person of Jesus and his relations with God, it is not at all out of a rationalistic tendency, it is out of simple ignorance.
Theodotus the Tanner, a native of Byzantium, a rich and educated man, had apostatized during a persecution. To hide his fault he took refuge in Rome, under Pope Victor (193-203). According to a not very reliable anecdote, reported by St. Hippolytus, to a fellow countryman who reproached him for his apostasy, he is said to have replied: "I have not denied God, but a man." What is certain is that Theodotus denied the divinity of Jesus Christ and, although he admitted his miraculous birth from a virgin, he saw in him nothing but a man of superior holiness, to whom God had entrusted the mission of saving men. 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 work miracles. But he had not for this reason become God.
Theodotus and his followers sought to prove their doctrine from Sacred Scripture: they were men of letters and scholars, who argued according to the rules of Aristotle. Excommunicated by Pope Victor, Theodotus organized in Rome a small schismatic community, more resembling a school than a Church. Among the disciples of Theodotus the Byzantine, St. Hippolytus, who had combated the sect in many of his books, pointed to another Theodotus, of the banker class, a certain Asclepiodotus, and a Roman confessor by the name of Natalius, who agreed, in return for a stipend, to serve as bishop of the sect. But the latter, following terrifying visions, did not persevere in the error and went to ask forgiveness from Pope Zephyrinus. Theodotus the Banker, to the doctrine of his master, added bizarre speculations on Melchizedek, whom he declared superior to Jesus and whom he seemed to confuse with the Holy Spirit, calling him the great power (Δύναμιν τινε μεγίστην), the heavenly virtue of the principal grace, mediator between God and the angels and also men, spiritual and son of God (ενεμιστικὸς καὶ υἱὸς Θεοῦ).
The last distinguished Theodotian in the West is Artemon or Artemas, a contemporary of St. Hippolytus (d. 235) whom he probably survived. His relations with the sect are obscure, if they are judged from the anonymous treatise directed against him, which Eusebius cites at length (Hist. eccl., V, 28, 3), 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. XXXII-IV). According to this treatise, Artemon claimed that his doctrine had been that of the Roman Church before Zephyrinus (202-18). Was he ignorant of the condemnation of Theodotus by Pope Victor, or was he dogmatizing on his own account, without special relation to the Theodotians? What is known is that the Council of Antioch of 268, which condemned Paul of Samosata, considers 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 lowers Christian dogma to the level of pure reason and interprets the data of Revelation in this way.
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III. SPANISH ADOZIANISM
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, and Felix (v.), bishop of Urgel, who made no small number of disciples among their intimates.
First stirred up by Elipandus around 782, this heresy was embraced and developed by Felix, who became the true theologian of the sect. Both the one and the other intended to remain within orthodoxy and not only fully admitted the dogma of the Trinity — which distinguished them from primitive adoptionism — but rejected the Nestorian heresy and proclaimed that the Word had united Himself hypostatically to human nature, remaining a single person.
In reality, and almost in spite of themselves, they taught the Nestorian hypostatic dualism by the way in which they expressed themselves. In 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, by their terminology, they declared equivalently that there were two. Moreover, one almost has the feeling of hearing Theodore of Mopsuestia, the father of Nestorianism, when one reads the profession of faith of Elipandus: « 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 conuncupatur Deus - impassibilia in suo, passibilia in alieno » (passage cited by Alcuin, in Adversus Felices, 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 distinguishing clearly the notions of nature and of person, they formed a heretical concept of the hypostatic union, which shone through, in spite of themselves, in the way they spoke of the two natures. It is therefore with good reason that the Church condemned them as heretics, whatever certain Protestant historians of dogma, such as Walch and Baur, and the Jesuit theologian Gabriel Vázquez may have said about it.
The history of the Adoptionist controversy is quite complicated. Much was discussed about its origins. One may suppose that Nestorian books penetrated into Spain translated into Arabic; in any case the first seeds of the error are discernible in a letter prior to 782, written by Elipandus to Bishop Migecius, 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 subject to the Moors and in that subject to Charlemagne, where Felix of Urgel, questioned by Elipandus around 790-91, became its defender. As early as 783 Pope Adrian I had sent the Spanish bishops a dogmatic letter to refute it (PL. 138, 373-486). Having learned of the new heresy, Charlemagne set his mind on extirpating it from his States and as early as 792 had a council assembled at Regensburg, where Felix had to appear in the guise of the accused. Having made his retraction, he went to Rome, and there renewed it. He was not sincere, however, since, having returned to Spain, he left his own diocese to go into Saracen territory, probably to Toledo, where, in agreement with Elipandus and other bishops, his partisans, he organized the struggle against orthodoxy. One letter was addressed to the bishops of the Gauls and one to Charlemagne. The latter informed the Pope of it and assembled a great council at Frankfurt, where Adrian I had himself represented by some legates. The Italian bishops refuted adoptionism by relying on Sacred Scripture, while the bishops of the Gauls, of Aquitaine and of Germany presented the proof from tradition in separate writings. There was then added the letter of Adrian I to Charlemagne, in which, in the form of an exhortation, the two writings of the members of the council were masterfully summarized (794).
All these documents were sent to the Spaniards, who, however, still did not yield. Felix of Urgel continued to polemicize with Alcuin, until a Roman Council of 799 excommunicated him. Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, did likewise in the Synod he held in Friuli (796) and wrote three books against him. The heresiarch ended by yielding to the entreaties of Charlemagne's envoys and, appearing before the Synod assembled at Aachen in the autumn of 799, made his third abjuration, after which he was no longer permitted to return to his diocese. Having retired to Lyon under the surveillance of Leidrad, bishop of that city, he died there in 818, after 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 Elipandus, it appears that he persevered in his ideas until his death, which occurred in 809.
The heresy did not long survive the Council of Aachen, at least in the Spanish March, which was part of the Frankish empire. In 800 Alcuin wrote to Arno of Salzburg that 20,000 clerics and laymen had been brought back to orthodoxy by the delegation that Charlemagne had sent into that region (in PL. 100, 329). Nevertheless some Adoptionists are found in Saracen Spain even around the middle of the 9th century.
Adoptionism is an error destined to reappear periodically. Abelard and his school revived it in the 13th century under a new form; in the 14th some subtle theologians wished to make Jesus Christ, considered as man, the adoptive son of the Most Holy Trinity, and certain modern theologians sometimes speak of Jesus Christ as if He had a human personality.