HERESY SERIES: PART 7
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QUESTION: What is easier to understand theologically, a single God consisting of three persons or a single-person God that can present Himself in three different ways? What are the theological problems of a single-person God who presents Himself in three different ways?
MONARCHIANISM is a category of heresies that deny that God consists of three persons. That is, Monarchianism denies trinitarian theology. There are two basic forms of Monarchianism. The first is called Dynamic Monarchianism, where Jesus is born a normal human, is infused with God’s power at His baptism, and then is adopted by God into divinity upon the resurrection. Dynamic Monarchianism is also referred to as Adoptionism. The second basic form of Monarchianism is called Modalistic Monarchianism, or simply Modalism. It holds that the One God simply reveals himself in three ways: sometimes as God the Father, sometimes as God the Son, and sometimes as God the Holy Spirit. This form of Monarchianism was first taught by Praxeas, but was more famously taught by Sabellius, which is why it is also referred to as Sabellianism. Our reading is from Tertullian’s work, Against Praxeas, where Tertullian argues against the modalistic form of Monarchianism and vigorously defends trinitarian theology.
READING: Manifold are the ways in which the devil has shown his enmity to the truth. He has at length striven to shatter it by defending it. He claims that there is but one God, the all-powerful Creator of the universe, in order to make a heresy even out of that one. He says that the Father Himself descended into the virgin, that He likewise was born of her, and Himself suffered; even that He Himself is Jesus Christ. […] In truth, however, it is [Satan] who has been a liar from the beginning, he and any man he has privily sent of his own accord, such as Praxeas. For it was Praxeas who first, from Asia imported this kind of perversity to Roman soil. [Tertullian, Against Praxeas, ¶1]
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