I will forever remember being at dinner in Vietnam in 2019 with Richard Dawkins & Jana Lenzova, his lovely partner, and having both of them confused at the statement that Peter was not the first Pope & having to legitimately defend my statement to their disbelief. I was a bit shocked the great Atheist himself had never even pondered how regurgitated Orthodoxy even became the viewpoint? - I suppose I had never really thought about what most others believe regarding Orthodoxy or if a casual observer or lay Christian even thinks as to how an Orthodoxy would even be established. If you take the time to truly think it out, no matter what ideology or religion - nothing is a unified, concrete authority with nuanced views out of the gate, let alone as time continues to expand such things. Humans interpret differently, and we have different skillsets that allow us to reach different conclusions. Nor is an organization of such nuanced views born overnight.
I grew up Protestant. First a Free Will Baptist, my “salvation” at age 5, and next as a Southern Baptist at age 11. I had a relative who was a preacher for a Missionary Baptist church, I knew friends that were Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Even a Jehovah’s Witness. ALL of them believing to be the “original” Church and gospel message from the writings of the New Testament. Each having their own theological argument as to why with a sprinkle of some historical arguments. All of them wrong of course, but my point here being everyone thinks they believe the correct interpretation - otherwise they would not believe it. Reality on the other hand?
To the surprise of probably most casual observers and lay Christians, the reality of pinning down early doctrines of the “Orthodox” Church” is not an easy undertaking - this is in large due to the terms that were formulated, and how they are still used today outside of academia from the normal pulpit. Scholars for the past 80 years or so have been convinced that we cannot understand the relationship of early Christian “orthodoxy” and “heresy” either by what these terms literally mean (based on their etymologies) or, relatedly, by how they have been understood over the centuries by Christian scholars. The terms literally refer to the “right belief” and to “false belief,” and historically scholars have thought that orthodoxy represented the beliefs taught by Jesus to his disciples, and that heresies were corruptions of that original belief by willful and demon-inspired false teachers. In modern times, we know that is not true, and our critical analysis is a bit more advanced. That should also be obvious by Paul’s writings themselves, which are essentially rebuttals and disputes that he has with various churches, criticizing them of various practices or theologies - or even more notably, Paul disputes with the apostles in Jerusalem. Galatians makes it clear that even from the writings of Paul, our earliest source, that there is some sort of division among the church which he calls false teachings.
In his book, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934), Walter Bauer, a well known Biblical Scholar in academia, was one of the firsts to point out the tricky situation of calling views “orthodox” or “heresy” by modern faith standards does not give you the “orthodoxy” of said time, and restricts the valuable historic value of the shifting and expanding theological views in early Christianity that did rise and fall out of favor. Bart Ehrman has since pinned the term “Proto-Orthodoxy” to discuss the views of various sects before a true “Orthodox” establishment arises by the fourth century. To make a final clarification, this is not to say these views are theologically right, nor to say they’re wrong either; true historians do not take a stance on theological correctness. The goal is to simply describe historical phenomena in the struggle among competing Christian views as they arise and form throughout early Christianity. Taking Bauer for example, early church historian Eusebius argued and popularized that by definition, “orthodoxy” always preceded heresy, asserting that one particular view was and always had been the majority view among Christians, that it had been taught by Jesus to his disciples and passed on by them to their successors.
This one, true orthodoxy entailed the theological beliefs that Eusebius and his Christian cohort themselves subscribed to: there is one God, who created all things; Christ his son is both completely human and divine; salvation comes only by his atoning sacrifice; and so on. Bauer’s book flipped that on it’s head, which it was meant to do so. Bauer looked at the earliest evidence of Christian belief in several key locations of the Roman empire — Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Rome – and he extensively showed that in most of these places, the earliest evidence shows that the form of Christianity that was originally dominant was in fact a form of Christianity that was later declared heretical. And so the earliest evidence of Christianity in Egypt indicates that it was originally Gnostic; the earliest in Syria was Marcionite; and so on. “Heresy” is not necessarily, therefore, a later corruption of the orthodox truth. In some places it was the “original” form of the religion.
It is important to understand the varying perspectives and theological views that later were deemed heretical; it shows that there indeed was a lot of diversity among early Christian thought, and that in turn helps shed light on certain textual redactions or interpolations. Understanding that diversity existed before any sense of orthodoxy helps one read texts more independently, through varying scopes, without presuming some modern sense of theological validity.
From the surviving documents of the period, there appear to have been five major competing Christologies (understandings of who Christ was) throughout the Christian church, and this will briefly cover the four majors. Docetism, the subject of this post, understood Christ to be a fully divine being and therefore not human; Adoptionism understood him to be a fully human being and not actually divine; Separationism understood him to be two distinct beings, one human (the man Jesus) and the other divine (the divine Christ); Modalism understood him to be God the Father become flesh. The fifth view is the one the “won out,” the Proto-orthodox view that Christ was both human and divine, at one and the same time, that he was nonetheless one person and not two persons, and that he was distinct from God the Father, both of them being God but there being only one God. Aka the Trinity, and the predominant basis of all Christian faiths today. Though as it should be apparent, it was a complicated set of debate. But by later theological standards, rather basic.
Docetism
Docetism derives its name from the Greek word “DOKEO,” which means “to seem” or “to appear.” It is not clear whether the proponents of a docetic view called themselves this, but it seems rather unlikely. It is more probably a term used *of* them by their theological enemies, (similar to how the term Christian was born in Antioch) who mocked them for saying that Christ was not really a human being, but only “seemed” to be one. He was, for them, instead, fully divine, a deity who came to the earth only in the “appearance” of human flesh. Not to confuse this form with some Gnostics who held some such views, and there were almost certainly some unnamed groups that held to it – including an unnamed group attacked already in the New Testament book of 1 John as well as another one attacked in the letters of Ignatius - if you hold, as a host of scholars do, that they are distinct groups being attacked. But it is a view probably best known in the writings of the infamous teacher and theologian of the second century, Marcion. There are many, many things about Marcion’s system of belief that we would love to know that we simply do not. The main reason is that Marcion’s own writings have not been passed down to us from antiquity, and that should not be surprising, given several other groups of Christians considered Marcion to be an arch-heretic - an evil representative of the Devil come to deceive the faithful. They censored his writings and simply refused to copy them. That was the easiest way to destroy books in antiquity. You didn’t have to have a public book-burning because if the book was not copied, it would not survive.
Scholars know of two books from Marcion. The first was his own composition, the Antitheses, a book that appears to have laid out in stark contrast the differences between the God of the Jews who gave the Law and the previously unknown God of Jesus who provided salvation. Marcion claims he learned of this contrast from the writings of the apostle Paul, his hero, who did indeed differentiate between his “gospel” and the law. His second book was his canon of Scripture, an edited collection of ten of Paul’s letters and a version of the Gospel of Luke. Because we don’t have either writing, we have to reconstruct them based on the sparse quotations of and references to them in the writings of Marcion’s opponents, above all the fiery Tertullian, a Latin-speaking Christian apologist from around 200 CE. Tertullian did have access to Marcion’s works and attacked them viciously in his five-volume book “Against Marcion.”
It is very difficult to extract actual quotations from Marcion out of this refutation. There are scholars who have devoted years of their lives to trying to do so, and anyone can probably imagine the problems. Tertullian never gives lengthy quotations from either the Antitheses or from Marcion’s biblical canon. Rather he only provides short quotations here and there, making a number of highly allusive references. Moreover, he does so in a highly charged polemical context; which effects everything. Who would trust a heated opponent to present their views accurately, fairly, or fully? To give an equivalent, it would be like trying to reconstruct Bernie Sanders platform from any news source during the 2016 Primary, or trying to reconstruct Hillary Clinton’s from Alex Jones as the source.
Tertullian was no less vitriolic than Trump, so using his writings is a tricky endeavor, but as scholars with all the linguistic skills (e.g., in both Latin and Greek) have worked very hard on the issue to shed light, entire careers mind you; one of the problems is that scholars simply can’t know some of the very important features of what Marcion actually thought and said. Let’s detail just two examples.
First, his understanding of Christ. It is relatively clear that Marcion had a docetic Christology. As stated before, there were groups of ancient Christians, including the Marcionites, who thought that Jesus was not a real flesh and blood human being but only “seemed” to be one. He actually was divine. And if he was God, he couldn’t be a real material human any more than a human can be a rock. They are different things.
The reason Marcion thought this is pretty clear: he believed this material world was created by a lower, inferior, harsh divinity. To be born as a human means to belong to this material world. But Jesus could not belong to this material world. That would make him belong to the creator. So he did not have a real flesh-and-blood body. It was all an appearance. He was a divine being who came into the world without being born. Apparently Marcion thought Jesus descended from heaven in the appearance of an adult in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius. There was no birth, no childhood, no young adulthood. Jesus just appeared from above.
That much seems pretty clear. But there is another aspect of Marcion’s understanding of Christ that is perplexing. Sometimes it seems as though Christ was an actual manifestation of the previously-unknown God here on earth. That he was God come in the appearance of the flesh. There are other times when it seems as though he were a divine being sent from God. I’m not sure which Marcion held to be true. I suspect it’s the latter, but I’m not sure there is definitive evidence in either direction.
And that relates to my second puzzle, an even more important one: Marcion’s understanding of the death of Jesus. This is a bit more complicated. Marcion appears to have thought that Jesus’ death was accepted as a payment for sin by the Creator God, so that others who had sinned could be released from his righteous condemnation. Fair enough. But how is that supposed to work exactly if Jesus did not really have a human body and so could not really shed blood and die? If Jesus’ death was a substitutionary sacrifice that satisfied the demands of the righteous giver of the Law, but Jesus in fact was never sacrificed because he did not actually have blood to shed or a body to die, then how would that satisfy the creator God? Is it that Jesus “fooled” the Old Testament God, by “seeming” to shed blood and die? That the Creator also thought Jesus was a real flesh and blood human being so that when he appeared to die for the sake of others, he found that acceptable? Unfortunately we have nothing to gain insight from.
What scholars have concluded about Marcion is that he was active around 140-150 CE. Marcion was a devoted Pauline disciple, who for Marcion, was the only apostle who really and truly understood the full meaning of the gospel of Christ. It was the theological differentiation between the “law” and the “gospel” that drew Marcion to Paul, who insisted that a person was made right with God not by following the Jewish law, but by believing in his gospel message about Christ. Marcion pressed this differentiation to what he saw to be a logical extreme. The law of the Jews and the gospel of Christ were fundamentally at odds with one another. And that, for Marcion, was because the God who gave the law in the Old Testament was not the same god who provided the gospel of salvation through Jesus. There were, in fact, two different gods in a literal sense. This was the inspiration for his book “The Antitheses” where he tries to make his case with scripture. In sharp contrast to the Jewish Christians east of the Jordan, Marcion maintained that Paul was the true apostle, to whom Christ had especially appeared after his resurrection to impart the truth of the gospel. Paul, according to Marcion, had begun as a good Jew intent on obeying the Law to the utmost, but the revelation of Christ showed him beyond doubt that the Jewish Law played no part in the divine plan of redemption. For him, Christ himself was the only way of salvation. Marcion argued that Paul’s writings effectively set the gospel of Christ over and against the Law of the Jews, and that the apostle had urged Christians to abandon the Jewish Law altogether.
For Marcion and his followers, the differences between the religion preached by Jesus (and his apostle Paul) and that found in the Jewish Scriptures were plain to see. Whereas the Jewish God punishes those who disobey, they claimed, the God of Jesus extends mercy and forgiveness; whereas the God of the Jews says “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” the God of Jesus says to “turn the other cheek”; and whereas the Old Testament God tells the Israelites to conquer Jericho by slaughtering its entire population—men, women, and children— the God of Jesus says to love your enemies. What do these two Gods have in common? According to the Marcionites, nothing. For them, there are two separate and unrelated Gods, the God of the Jews and the God of Jesus.
Marcionite Christians maintained that Jesus did not belong to the wrathful and just God of the Jews, the God who created the world and chose Israel to be his special people. In fact, Jesus came to save people from this God. Moreover, since Jesus had no part in the Creator, he could have no real ties to the material world that the Creator-God made. Jesus therefore was not actually born and did not have a real flesh-and-blood body. How, then, did Jesus get hungry and thirsty, how did he bleed and die? According to Marcionites, it was all an appearance: Jesus only seemed to be human. As the one true God himself, come to earth to deliver people from the vengeful God of the Jews, Jesus was never born, never got hungry or thirsty or tired, never bled or died. Jesus’ body was a phantasm.
Suggested Scholarship
Adolf Von Harnack, History of Dogma, Vol. I (pp. 266-281)
Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
Gilles Quispel, Marcion & the Text of the NT, Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 52, No. 4, pp. 349-360
J.J. Clabeaux, A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul. A Reassessment of the Text of the Pauline Corpus attested by Marcion.
U. Schmid, Marcion und seen Apostolos: Rekonstrukion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe
Adoptionism (Dynamic Monarchianism)
New Testament scholars know of multiple groups and individuals during the first three centuries of Christianity who were known, or at least accused, to support an “adoptionistic” Christology. This being a position where Christ was not by nature a divine being but was, instead, completely a human being, one who had only been “adopted” by God to be his son, therefore achieving divinity after that anointment. Thus he was the Son of God, then, by adoption or election, not by nature. Jesus did not pre-exist his birth, and his birth was normal, meaning they believed his parents had sexual relations and he was a literal human offspring. Later, God made him his own son. It is also argued by some prominent scholars that some such view was the very earliest understanding of Jesus in evidence in the New Testament writings, and even more than that, that this was the original Christology, held by Jesus’ own followers immediately upon their “realization” that he had been raised from the dead. For the original disciples of Jesus, it was at the resurrection that Jesus became the Son of God. But again, in many instances it is impossible to show that they really did hold such views. All we have, in virtually every case, not literally all, are what their “proto-orthodox" opponents said about them. In other words, we have to take their enemies’ word for representing the views accurately. Very roughly speaking, we know of two major groups that were believed to promote an adoptionistic Christology in the second and third centuries. One of the groups was strictly Jewish and the other gentile. The strictly Jewish group, which may have been a variety of groups, goes by various names, but is often simply called the Ebionites. (sometimes Monarchians)
To be redundant, scholars do not have any clearly Ebionite writings, rather scholars know and rely on what their opponents said about them. Which even that is difficult to make sense of, but there are scholars who have devoted careers to figuring it out by trying (often without great success) to make sense of what the Patristic sources say about them, so there has been progress.
The Patristic sources include comments found in the writings of such early prominent Christians such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Jerome. These are perhaps the most famous of the proto-orthodox heresiologists, who attacked “heretical” teachings in order to set people straight along the path of “orthodoxy.” They are of varying degrees of reliability, which scholars have extensively shown by comparing what they say about their enemies with what their enemies were saying about themselves – for example, seeing what Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius say about Gnostics in light of the Gnostics’ own writings, such as those of the Nag Hammadi Library. The scholarly assumption – which is reasonable enough, I would argue – is that if these heresy-hunters got a lot of things wrong about the groups that we can check them on (Gnostics), they probably got a lot of things wrong about the groups we cannot check them on (Ebionites).
Scholars are not sure where the Ebionites termed their name from; some of the church fathers claimed that they were a group that followed the teachings of a man named Ebion, there is no evidence for this claim though. It is more likely that the name comes from the Hebrew word “EBYON” which means “poor.” The fathers who accept this particular interpretation claimed that they were called this because they were “poor in faith.” More likely the members of this group took Jesus seriously when he said that his followers should sell their possessions and give to those in need. These people, in this view, really were poor. Seems more likely that a mockery name stuck, like happens often in history.
It is probably not safe to label every Jewish Christian from the early Church an Ebionite. This may have been simply one group among many, as well variant groups of Ebionites, with different beliefs. But the church fathers, at least, say that among the beliefs of one (or more) of these groups were that followers of Jesus needed to be Jewish, which meant converting and following the Jewish law if a Gentile wants to enter. They claimed that had been the original version of Christianity. And they claimed to have acquired their understanding of the faith from none other than James, the brother of Jesus, the head of the church in Jerusalem.
Because of their views, they considered the apostle Paul to be an arch-heretic; he had taught that gentiles must not be circumcised and were not to follow the requirements of the law, and that was completely contrary to the teachings of Jesus himself. The Ebionites may have had a variety of written authorities for their views – there are several non-canonical Gospels thought to have been used by one or another Jewish Christian groups (including the Gospels according to the Hebrews; the Gospel of the Nazarenes; and the Gospel of the Ebionites) – but they especially latched on to the Gospel of Matthew, which still today is often touted as the most “Jewish” of our four canonical Gospels – it does say, for example, that the followers have to keep the Jewish law even *better* than the scribes and Pharisees, down to its very details (5:17-20, a passage that many readers today conveniently bypass).
The Ebionites’ version of Matthew, however, probably lacked chapters 1-2. That’s because these chapters tell the story of Jesus’ virgin birth, and the Ebionites (or some of them) did not believe Jesus was born of a virgin. He was born of the sexual relations of Joseph and Mary. He was fully human. But because of his superior righteousness, God bestowed an (incredible, astounding) favor on him. At his baptism, God “adopted” him to be his own son, as the voice from heaven declared: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” Whether or not there were Jewish-Christians who held this view, there were obviously “proto-orthodox" Christians who *thought* there were.
There was another group known, or presumed, to have an Adoptionalistic Christological view that was not in the least Jewish, but was wholly Gentile. This group emerged in second century Rome and was called the Theodotians, named because the founder of their sect was named Theodotus. He was a cobbler by trade, but he obviously found time for theological exegesis. Theodotians claimed no Jewish roots; they did not follow the Torah, nor practice circumcision, nor revere Jerusalem. But in other respects they match and overlap: they similarly believed that Jesus was completely and only human, born of the sexual union of his parents, a man who, on account of his superior righteousness, came to be adopted as the Son of God at his baptism. They also maintained that their views were apostolic, advocated by the disciples of Jesus and transmitted through true believers down to their own day.
The patristic sources provide a relatively sparse testimony to the views of Theodotus the Cobbler, which is somewhat surprising given his distinction as the “first” to claim that Christ was a “mere man” (Eusebius, Church History V, 28). Of his two principal disciples, Theodotus the Banker and Artemon, little more is known than that they perpetuated their leader’s heresy with intellectual rigor and, as a result, were evidently separated from the Roman church. As might be expected, later heresiological sources supply additional anecdotal material, resting more on pious imagination than on solid evidence.
The earliest accounts are provided by (the heresiologist Hippolytus and an anonymous source quoted by the church historian Eusebius) are contemporaneous with their opponents, and despite their differences, provide a basic sketch that coheres with later portrayals. Theodotus the Cobbler came to Rome from Byzantium in the days of Pope Victor (189–198 c .e.). He claimed that Christ was not himself divine, but was a “mere man.” Because Jesus was more pious than all others, at his baptism he became empowered by the Holy Spirit to perform a divine mission. According to the report of Hippolytus, Theodotus denied that this empowerment actually elevated Jesus to the level of divinity, although some of his followers claimed that Jesus did become divine in some sense, either at his baptism or at his resurrection.
The anonymous source quoted by Eusebius reports that Theodotus’s followers insisted that the view of Jesus as fully human but not (by nature) divine was the majority opinion in the Roman church until the time of Victor’s successor Zephyrinus, who “mutilated the truth.” The author of the fragment argues quite to the contrary that the belief in Jesus’ full divinity is attested both in Scripture and in a wide range of ancient Christian authors, naming in support Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, Irenaeus, and Melito. Moreover, the author insists that Victor himself had excommunicated Theodotus for his heretical views, a claim that became standard heresiological fare in later times.
This anonymous source also attacks Theodotus’s followers for their adoptionistic views, although, as one might expect, it provides some evidence that their theology developed over time. In particular it denounces these trouble-makers for preferring secular learning (syllogisms and geometry) to the rule of faith, and secular scholars (Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Galen) to Christ. Furthermore, as scholars have found, it accuses them of corrupting their texts of Scripture in order to make them conform to their own views. Scholars have very little hard evidence that the Theodotians *did* alter their copies of Scripture to accommodate their theological views. But scholars have good evidence that scribes who *opposed* the adoptionists did so in light of their own views, which is a whole different topic in itself.
Suggested Scholarship
Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.
Ehrman, Bart D.; Pleše, Zlatko (2011). "The Gospel of the Ebionites". The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations
Ehrman, Bart, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
Van Voorst, Robert E. (1989). The Ascents of James: History and Theology of a Jewish–Christian Community.
Paget, James Carleton (2010). "The Ebionites in recent research". Jews, Christians, and Jewish–Christians in Antiquity
Modalistic Monarchianism (Sabellianism)
In a nutshell, Modalism is the belief that God manifests himself in three separate entities, but is still one God. Similar to how I can function as a Brother, a Son, and a Father. The distinction from Trinitarian doctrine here being that God manifests himself separately, or different “modes”. So Jesus would be the incarnation of God acting in that role, same for the Holy Spirit - the Trinitarian doctrine states that there is One being externally existing in three persons. (which is still a paradox)
During the time of Jesus, when the vast majority of everyone in the Roman Empire was “pagan” – that is “polytheist” – Jews stood out, obviously, as different. Everyone else understood that there were lots of gods, lots and lots of gods, thousands of gods. These gods deserved to be worshiped. Jews, on the other hand, maintained that for them, at least, there was only one God. Probably most Jews (it’s hard to know for sure) thought the pagan gods simply didn’t exist but were the figment of popular imagination. There was in fact just one, the Creator of all things. Some Jews, though, thought the other gods existed. They simply were not to be worshiped by Jews. The first position, that there is in fact only one God, no others, is what I would call monotheism. The other position, that only one of the many gods is to be worshiped, could be called monolatry (the worship of only one God). Closely connected to this latter view is the concept of henotheism: that’s the view that there are numerous gods, but only one of them is supreme and worthy of complete devotion. So some Jews in Jesus’ day were monotheists; some were henotheists; and almost all were monolatrists.
I address this point of Judaism to expand on the thought behind Modalism; the early modalists were valiant to uphold the aspect of monotheism in their religion. Nevertheless, their idea of monotheism as one undifferentiated single monad (unipersonal) was a radical and distorted view. Modalism attempted to answer the question of how one could truly hold to monotheism and yet maintain the deity of Jesus Christ. The first known vocal proponent of Modalism was Noetus of Smyrna in around AD 190 (Kelly, 1978: 120), but there is evidence of a modalistic idea pre-existent to Noetus. About thirty years before him, Justin Martyr made an interesting statement in his First Apology (63, in Richardson, 1970: 284-85): “For they who affirm that the Son is the Father, are proved neither to have become acquainted with the Father, nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God.” Nevertheless, the first person historically identified for introducing Modalism was Noetus, who so enticed Heresiologists in Christian community that Hippolytus devoted an entire work against him entitled, Against the Heresy of One Noetus (in Roberts and Donaldson, 1994: vol. 5:223-31). From the start, Noetus’s position was clear: “If therefore I acknowledge Christ to be God, He is the Father Himself, if He is indeed God; and Christ suffered, being Himself God; and consequently the Father suffered, for He was the Father Himself” (Against Noetus 1, in Roberts and Donaldson, 1994: vol. 5:223; emphasis added). Basically, Noetus did not like the idea of the Father suffering, for he found it impossible for the Divine to suffer.
Hippolytus also reports that Noetus claimed he was Moses and that Aaron was his brother. In response to the presbyters who criticized him, Noetus asked, “What evil, then, am I doing in glorifying Christ?” (Against Noetus 1, in Roberts and Donaldson, 1994: vol. 5:223). The heresies of both Noetus (Modalism) and Theodotus (Adoptionism) were the product of a misunderstanding of Scripture—namely, assuming God to be unipersonal.
The second leading modalist was Praxeas. The identity of Praxeas is difficult to determine. Some have even speculated that Praxeas was really Callistus the Roman bishop (A.D. 217-22) since Hippolytus accused him of helping to promote Modalism. All the same, whoever Praxeas was, he and his Modalism were sternly refuted, primarily by the brilliant Latin church theologian from Carthage, Tertullian (cf. Kelly, 1978: 121-22). We referred above (Chapter 3, 3.3.2) to Against Praxeas and Tertullian’s response to the modalizing of John 10:30. It is worth mentioning here that Tertullian was the first church father in the West to use the word “Trinity” (Lat. trinitas) in reference to the three Persons of the Godhead[1] against the Modalism of Praxeas: “Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit three …” (Against Praxeas 2, in Roberts and Donaldson, 1994: vol. 3:598). Tertullian was a man utterly enthralled with perpetuating and defending the church’s rule of faith against the crass Modalism of Praxeas (Against Praxeas 1, in Roberts and Donaldson, 1994: vol. 3:597)
A few decades later, a Libyan priest named Sabellius brought new light and popularity to Modalism. The modalistic arguments of Sabellius were by far more refined and sophisticated than that of his predecessors. He came to Rome toward the end of Zephyrinus’s reign (A.D. 198-217). After enjoying the confidence of the Bishop Callistus, he was attacked fiercely by Hippolytus, and eventually excommunicated by Callistus (Kelly, 1978: 121). Rejecting the concept of the ontological Trinity, Sabellius postulated his own version of an “economic Trinity.” He saw God as one indivisible substance, but with three fundamental activities, or modes, appearing successively as the Father (the creator and lawgiver), as the Son (the redeemer), and as the Holy Spirit (the maker of life and the divine presence within people) (Kelly, 1978: 121-22). Subsequently, the term “Sabellianism” included all sorts of speculative ideas attached to the original ideas of Sabellius and his followers. He traveled to Rome, where he gained many devoted followers on account of his craftiness and cerebral arguments. Particularly, Sabellius taught successive or developmental Modalism, in which the modes are successive, starting with the mode of the Father in creation, then the Son for the task of redemption, and after, the Holy Spirit for regeneration.
Sabellius embraces the Holy Spirit in his speculation, and reaches a trinity, not a simultaneous trinity of essence, however, but only a successive trinity of revelation. The Father reveals himself in the giving of the law or the Old Testament economy (not in the creation also, which in his view precedes the trinitarian revelation); the Son, in the incarnation; the Holy Ghost, in inspiration ... The revelation of the Son ends with the ascension; the revelation of the Spirit goes on in regeneration and sanctification.
Arius (Arianism) vs Athanasius (Trinitarian) - Foundations of Orthodoxy in the 4th century
The first three centuries of early Christianity has been covered so far, and as the most devout would assert - there has “long” been “orthodoxy” by this point, which is clearly nonsense - given the amount of material we have showing very vocal and passionate disputes, but by the 4th century things were converging to a more “Orthodox” Christology thanks to the help of Constantine, not that he cared about any theological implications. The main dispute between Trinitarianism and Arianism is if the Son has always existed next to the Father or was the Son begotten at a certain time in eternity past - or is the Son equal to the Father or Subordinated to the Father - these are the primary doctrines that fell into dispute.
Because both Athanasius and Arius and their followers had a tremendous amount of influence being connected with the schools of Alexandria—counterparts to modern universities or seminaries—their theological views spread rapidly, especially in the eastern Mediterranean for Arius. Arius taught that Jesus Christ was both divine and holy, and that he was sent to earth for the salvation of mankind; however, Jesus Christ was not equal to God the Father, who is infinite & of primordial origin, nor is Jesus equal in rank. Arius also taught that God the Father and the Son of God were not equal to the Holy Spirit, who Arius understood to be a manifestation of the power of God the Father. Under Arianism, Christ was instead not consubstantial with God the Father since both the Father and the Son under Arius were made of "like" essence or being, but not of the same essence or being. (Heteroousian vs Homoian vs Homoiousian vs Homoousian)
In the Arian view, God the Father is Almighty, and the Son of God still holds divinity, but is not Almighty (Isaiah 46:9). God the Father sent Jesus to earth for salvation of mankind (John 17:3). Ousia is essence or being, in Eastern Christianity, and is the aspect of God that is completely incomprehensible to mankind and human perception. It is all that subsists by itself and which has not its being in another, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all being uncreated.
According to the teaching of Arius, the pre-existent Logos and thus the incarnate Jesus Christ was a begotten being; only the Son was directly begotten by God the Father, before ages, but was of a distinct, though similar, essence or substance from the Creator. His opponents argued that this would make Jesus less than God and that this was heretical. Much of the distinction between the differing factions was over the phrasing that Christ expressed in the New Testament to express submission to God the Father. The theological term for this submission is kenosis. This Ecumenical council declared that Jesus Christ was a distinct being of God in existence or reality (hypostasis), which the Latin fathers translated as persona. Jesus was God in essence, being, and/or nature (ousia), which the Latin fathers translated as substantia.
At the Council of Nicaea in 325, the Trinitarian (Proto-orthodox) view won by vote thanks largely to Athanasius, but that did not stop the controversy, nor the spread and continued practice of Arianism well into the 6th century. After the excommunication of Arius, Athanasius seems to have had a much more difficult time. Today, Jehovah’s Witnesses are the closest thing to an Arian thought.
Conflict with Arius and Arianism as well as successive Roman emperors shaped Athanasius' career. In 325, at the age of 27, Athanasius began his leading role against the Arians as a deacon and assistant to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria during the First Council of Nicaea. In about 319, when Athanasius was a deacon, a presbyter named Arius came into a direct conflict with Alexander of Alexandria. It appears that Arius reproached Alexander for what he felt were misguided or heretical teachings being taught by the bishop. Arius' theological views appear to have been firmly rooted in Alexandrian Christianity, and his Christological views were certainly not radical at all. He embraced a subordinationist Christology which taught that Christ was the divine Son (Logos) of God, made, not begotten, heavily influenced by Alexandrian thinkers like Origen, and which was a common Christological view in Alexandria at the time.Support for Arius from powerful bishops like Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia, further illustrate how Arius's subordinationist Christology was shared by other Christians in the Empire. Arius was subsequently excommunicated by Alexander, and he would begin to elicit the support of many bishops who agreed with his position. Patriarch Athanasius spent over 17 years in five exiles ordered by four different Roman Emperors, not counting approximately six more incidents in which Athanasius fled Alexandria to escape people seeking to take his life.
There are numerous councils to point to, with numerous nuanced Christologies that one could examine and expand upon, but it is this major controversy, which leads to succeeding councils and meetings - that ultimately establishes the true core foundations of what we could consider “modern orthodoxy”.
Suggested Scholarship
Kannengiesser, Charles "Athanasius of Alexandria vs. Arius: The Alexandrian Crisis", in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity), ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring (1986), 204–215.
Schaff, Philip (1867). History of the Christian Church: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity, AD 311–600. 3rd. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson.
Haas, Christopher. "The Arians of Alexandria", Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 47, no. 3 (1993), 234–245.
Ehrman, Bart. “How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee” , HarperOne
Special credit to Dr Ehrman. Although not all of this post stems from an Ehrman book or post - the majority certainly does.