MONARCHIANS
450
MONARCHIANS
uted by von Dobschiitz and P. Corsscn to a Roman
author of the time of Callistvis, but they are ahnost
certainly the work of Priseilhan. Berylhis, Bishop of
nostra, is vafiuely said by ICiisebius (11. K., \'I,;i:i) to
have tauglit tlial the .Saviour had no distinct pre-ex-
istencc before the Incarnation, and had no Divinity of
His own, but that the Divinity of the Father dwelt in
Him. Ori(j;en disputed with liini in a council and con-
vinced liini of his error. The minutes of the disputa-
tion were known to Eusebius. It is not clear whether
Berylhis was a jModalist or a Dynainist.
B. Theology. — There was much that was unsatisfac- tory in the theology of the Trinity and in the Christol- ogy of orthodox writers of the Ante-\icene period. The simple teaching of tradition was explained by philosophical ideas, which tended to obscure as well as to elucidate it. The distinction of the Son from the Father was so spoken of that the Son appeared to have functions of His own, apart from the Father, with re- gard to the creation and preservation of the world, and thus to be a derivative and secondary God. The unity of the Divinity was commonly guarded by a reference to the unity of origin. It was said that God from eternity was alone, with His Word, one with Him (as Reason, in vulca cordis, \byo^ ivii.i8eTo%), before the Word was spoken (ex ore Patris, X67os ■Kpo<popiii6%), or was generated and became Son for the jjurpose of creation. The Alexandrians alone insisted rightly on the generation of the Son from all eternity; but thus the Unity of God was even less manifest. The writ- ers who thus theologize may often expressly teach the traditional Unity in Trinity, but it hardly squares with the Platonism of their philosophy. The theo- logians were thus defending the doctrine of the Logos at the expense of the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the Unity of God and the Divinity of Christ. They seemed to make the Unity of the God- head split into two or even three, and to make Jesus Christ sornething less than the supreme God the Fa- ther. This is eminently true of the chief opponents of the Monarchians, TertuUian, Hippolytus, and No- vatian. (See Newman, "The Causes of Arianism", in "Tracts theol. and eccles.") Monarchianism was the protest against this learned philosophizing, which to the simplicity of the faithful looked too much like a mythology or a Gnostic emanationism. The Mo- narchians emphatically declared that God is one, wholly and perfectly one, and that Jesus Christ is God, wholly and perfectly God. This was right, and even most necessary, and whilst it is easy to see why the theologians like TertuUian and Hippolytus opposed them (for their protest was precisely against the Pla- tonism which these theologians had inherited from Justin and the Apologists), it is equally comprehensi- ble that guardians of the Faith should have welcomed at first the return of the Monarchians to the simplicity of the Faith, "ne videantur deos dieere, neque rursum negare salvatoris deitatem" ("Lest they seem to be asserting two Gods or, on the other hand, denying the Saviour's Godhead". — Origen, "On Titus", frag. II). TertuUian in opposing them acknowledges that the uninstructed were against him; they could not under- stand the magic word olKovoyla with which he con- ceived he had .saved the .situation; tlicy declared that he taught two or three Gods, ami cried " Monarchiam tenemus." So Callistus reproached Hippolytus, and not without reason, with teaching two Gods.
Already St. Justin knew of Christians who taught the identity of the Father and the Son (" Apol.", I, 63; "Dial.", c.xx^'iii). In Hermas, as in Theodotus, the Son and the Holy Ghost are confused. But it was re- served for Noetus and his school to deny categorically that the unity of the Godhead is compatible with a dis- tinction of Persons. They seem to have regarded the Xbr/os as a mere name, or faculty, or attribute, and to have made the Son and the Holy Ghost merely as- pects or modes of existence of the Father, thus emphat-
ically identifying Christ with the one God. "What
harm am 1 doing", was the reply made by Noetus to
the presbyters who interrogated him, "in glorifying
Christ?" They replied: " We too know in truth one
God; we know ("hrist; wc know that the Son .suffered
even as He suffered, ami died even as He died, and
ro.se again on the third day, ami is at the right hand
of the Father, and conielh to judge the living and the
dead; and what we have learned we declare" (Hippol.,
"Contra Noetum", 1). Thus they refuted Noetus
with tradition — the Apostles' Creed is enough; for the
Creed and the New Testament indeed made the dis-
tinction of Persons clear, and the traditional formulas
and prayers were equally unmistakable. Gnce the
Monarchian system was put into philosophical lan-
guage, it was seen to be no longer the old t'liristianity.
Ridicule was used; the heretics were told that if the
Father and the Son were really identified, then no
denial on their |)art could jirevent the conclusion that
the Father suttered antl died, and sat at His own
right hand. Hippolytus tells us that Pope Zephy-
rinus, whom he represents as a stupid old man, de-
clared at the instance of Callistus: "I know one God
Christ Jesus, and besides Him no other Who was born
and Who suffered"; but he added: "Not the Father
died, but the Son". The reporter is an unsympa-
thetic adversary; but we can see why the aged pope was
viewing the simple assertions of Sabellius in a favour-
able light. Hippolytus declares that CalHstus said
that the Father siilTered with the Son, and TertuUian
says the same of the Monarchians whom he attacks.
Hagemann thinks Callistus-Praxeas especially at-
tacked the doctrine of the Apologists and of Hippoly-
tus and TertuUian, which assigned all such attributes
as impa.ssibility and invisibility to the Father and
made the Son alone capable of becoming passible and
visible, ascribing to Him the work of creation, and all
operations ad extra. It is true that the Monarchians
opposed this Platonizing in general, but it is not evi-
dent that they had grasped the principle that all the
works of God ad extra are common to the Three Per-
sons as proceding from the Divine Nature; and they
seem to have said simply that God as Father is invisi-
ble and impassible, but becomes visible and passible
as Son. This explanation brings them curiously into
line with their adversaries. Both parties represented
God as one and alone in His eternity. Both made
the generation of the Son a subsequent development;
only TertuUian and Hippolytus date it before the cre-
ation, and the Monarchians perhaps not until the
Incarnation. Further, their identification of the Fa-
ther and the Son was not favourable to a true view of
the Incarnation. The very insistence on the unity of
God emphasized also the distance of God from man,
and was likely to end in making the union of God with
man a mere indwelling or external union, after the
fashion of that which was attributed to Nestorius.
They spoke of the Father as "Spirit" and the Son as
"flesh", and it is scarcely surprising that the similar
Monarchianism of Marcellus should have issued in the
Theodof iaiii.sni of Photinus.
It is impossible to arrive at the philosophical views of Sabellius. Hagemann thought that he started from the Stoic system as surely as his adversaries did from the Platonic. Dorner has drawn too much upon his imagination for the doctrine of Sabellius; Harnack is too fanciful with regard to its origin. In fact we know little of him but that he said the Son was the Father (so Novatian, "De Trin." 12, and Pope Dio- nysius relate). St. Athanasius tells us that he said the Father is the Son and the Son is the Father, one in hypostasis, but two in name (so Epiphanius): "As there are divisions of gifts, but the same Spirit, so the Father is the same, but is developed [irXaruwrai] into Son and Spirit" (Orat., IV, c. Ar., xxv). Theodoret sayshe spoke of one hypostasis and a threefold Trpbauirov, whereas St. Basil says he willingly admitted three
