ancient heresy. The origins of Modalism are in Asia Minor and it spread to North Africa and Rome. Among its promoters were Noetus and Praxeas in the third century AD. The main theologian of this school was Sabellius (® SABELIANISM). According to the doctrine, the three persons of the Holy Trinity are only manifestations or modalities of God. (® PATRIPASIANISM; MONARCHIANISM.)
Source: Dictionary of Religions Denominations and Sects
The expression “modalism” describes the trinitarian doctrine that was affirmed in the 11th century, according to which the only God manifests himself to us in different “ways”: as Father, as Son and as Holy Spirit. This orientation of thought found a wide diffusion even in official environments, since it protected at the same time the unity of God and the divinity of Christ. The Modalists believed that they could save the unity of God only by rejecting a true distinction between the Father and the Son.
The lack of distinction between the concepts of nature and person served to pave the way for this conception, but also the fact that the title of “Father”, before becoming the “proper” name of a divine person (the Father of Jesus Christ), in common religious parlance and within 11th-century Christianity, was a synonym for “God,” an attribute of the divine nature.
It was Noetus of Smyrna who spread modal thought (end of the second century). For him, “Christ is the Father: the Father is the one who became incarnate, suffered and died” (Hippolytus, Contra Noetum 1).
With this Modalistic or Patripassian conception (the Father who suffers) was joined a Christology of a pneumatic type, which distinguished between Jesus (Son) and Christ (Father). As Tertullian confirms in the Adversus Praxeam (27, 1), the Modalists certainly, although always within a single person, one and the other, the Father and the Son’ saying that the Son is the flesh, that is, the man, that is Jesus: while the Father is the Spirit, that is God, that is, Christ.” It was evidently a distinction of nature, not of person.
Noetus was condemned by the presbyters of the city of Smyrna, but he found a disciple, Epigonus, who spread his doctrine in Rome. For his part, Tertullian, in his Adversus Praxeam (around the year 213), combated the modalism of this unknown character, clearly specifying some terms and concepts that Western theological speculation (“person) acquired in this way”, “ substantia”, “trinitas”…).
L. Padovese
Bibl.: S. del Cura Elena, Modalism, in DCDT 916-922: M. Simonetti, Praxeas, in DPAC, 11, 1828: J M. Rovira Belloso, The humanity of God, Trinitarian Secretariat, Salamanca 1986: A, Orbe , Introduction to the theology of the 11th and 3rd centuries Follow me, Salamanca 1988.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary
1. It is understood by me. in current theology (since the 19th century, perhaps following the philosophy of B. Spinoza) that doctrine which, in the question of the Trinitarian and historical-salvific relationship between the Father and the Son, establishes the divinity of the latter (however it is described more precisely) in a power that is not really but only virtually distinguished from the Father, and thus (against all theologies of the Logos) it does not understand Jesus himself as God, but only as a “manifestation” of the divine.
2. In the history of dogmas the m. It appears for the first time at the beginning of the third century (between 180 and 260 AD) in Asia Minor and Rome, as a form of monarchianism. It arises in connection with the -> gnosis against the background of a growing general tendency to an abstract monotheism, at a time that attends, philosophically, the beginning of -> Neoplatonism (around 210-242 AD), religiously (180-235 AD) at the beginning of a solar monotheism and, politically, to the growing implantation of the imperial cult (Aurelian) to the reigning sovereign as the privileged (“charismatically”) exponent of the universal divine power. Leaning on the old creed, probably under the influence of Jewish monotheism and, in part, due to an antignostic reaction (against Logos theology), Christian theology is now for the first time explicitly faced with the problem of seeing the oneness of God) in their mutual compatibility.
Monarchianism (in its adoptianist or dynamic form of Theodotus the Elder, Theodotus the Younger, and Paul of Samosata) resolves the issue by considering Jesus as a “mere” man, who, although born of the Virgin Mary, was nevertheless only later (in the baptism) was endowed with divine virtue and therefore (thus Theodotus the Elder) cannot be considered theos. Paul of Samosata says more explicitly that this divine force is an impersonal divine attribute, entering into a dynamic, essentially external union with Jesus. The term ómooúsios must signify the identity of the Logos with the first divine person and must not lead to any “personal” difference in the absolute µovapxía of God.
Unlike this way of seeing – which starts from the concrete Jesus and emphasizes his external connection with God -, but remaining within the same aporia, m. (as Modalist Monarchianism in Noetus, Praxeas, and Sabellius) develops his position from the divine monarchy and, emphasizing God’s activity, brings him into an internal relationship with history. Noetus and Praxeas affirm for their part that there is no difference between the person of the Father and the Son (or his divinity) and it can, therefore, be said that the Father himself became man and suffered on the cross (hence the name of patripassianism). Sabellius continues this idea – under the historical-salvific aspect – saying that God manifested himself in different ways, as Father in creation, as Son in incarnation and (here he goes further than Noetus) as Spirit in sanctification. To these different ways of manifesting himself (prosópa) there does not correspond in God himself (who is uiopater) any real difference: the difference of the Father with respect to the Son is that which exists between him and his manifestation, but it is not a reality that is found within. of the divinity.
Ecclesiastical theology reacted strongly against this doctrine (TERTULLIAN, Adversus Praxean; HIPPILITUS, Contra Noetum; NOVATIAN, De Trinitate; ORIGINS, perí arjon). Victor I excommunicated Theodotus the Elder and condemned his monarchianism (EusEBIO, Hist. Eccl. V 28). Sabellius (favored by Zephyrinus?) was excommunicated by Calixtus I: Dz 42a). The council of Antioch in the year 268 condemned Paul of Samosata (EusEBIO, Hist. Eccl. vii 30). Dionysius of Rome, in his letter to Dionysius of Alexandria, rejects Sabellianism, but already combats tritheism (Dz 48ss) and, just as Callistus before against Hippolytus, rejects the markedly subordinacian argumentation. At this time the use of terms is very confusing. Words like hypostasis and omoousios, so important for later orthodoxy, are used to characterize the heterodox position of tritheism or modalism; and Dionysius describes the logos and sophia as dunameis tou theou (Dz 49), a somewhat ambiguous formula for the Alexandrians.
However, already here the front of the future controversy is drawn ( -> Trinity, -> Christology). From now on, m. and Subordinacianism (-3 Arianism) form the extreme poles of the Christian struggle around God. A hasty harmonization of both would underestimate the scope of the problem. Despite many condemnations (Dz 85 60; DS 284; Dz 231 271 705), the m. (exaggerated in its importance by Hamack) remained tenaciously in the West (Priscillianists, Socinians, Abelard) and, through idealist philosophy (Schleiermacher), has also penetrated current theology (existentialist interpretation?), here it probably constitutes the temptation of modern thought.
3. Speculatively with the m. the problem of the internal relationship between the immanent and the transcendent Trinity is raised or, conversely, the question of how the history of -> salvation is metaphysically related to God himself. What is decisive here is not the ontic juxtaposition of God and man, but the depth of the difference in God himself. Because the m. it attenuates this difference too much, it is heretical on the Trinitarian, Christological and soteriological levels.
But if, on the contrary, the relationship between -> God and the world is not to be seen as opposing poles that exclude each other, but in an interdependence of internal conditioning, so that a “more” in God does not diminish but rather it increases the autonomous subsistence of man; then it follows that, to the extent that God opposes himself as distinct, what is different from him, man, must be able to reach God (-> grace and freedom). Therefore, the more real the internal difference of the divine, the more real must be – in the inversion of the relationship just described – the divinization of man.
Hence an “m. Orthodox “has to situate itself in the fundamental mystery of the Christian faith and see its basic position in the possibility that God communicates himself totally and universally (unity grows here in difference). The most radical theology of the Logos is simultaneously the most radical Christology and Christian anthropology; and the history of salvation is thought in the most eschatological way when God himself is its absolute horizon.
And for preaching this would mean that the Christian, in his transcendence towards the other, truly reaches himself and not only in appearance within the dimension of salvation.
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