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190 - Monarchian

Monarchianism is a Christian heretical doctrine of the 2nd and 3rd centuries opposed to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; it strongly maintained the essential unity of the Deity and was intended to reinforce monotheism in Christianity. Monarchians were divided into two groups, the Adoptionists, or Dynamic Monarchians, and the Patripassians, or Modalistic Monarchians. The word, Monarchiani, was first used by Tertullian as a nickname for the Patripassian group (adv. Prax., x), and was seldom used by the ancients. In modern times it has been extended to an earlier group of heretics, who are distinguished as Dynamistic, or Adoptionist, Monarchians from the Modalist Monarchians, or Patripassians.

190 - Theodotian / Adoptionists / Dynamic Monarchians

The type of teaching represented by Theodotus and Paul of Samosata is commonly designated by German writers Dynamistic Monarchianism, as distinguished from the Modalistic Monarchianism of Noetus, Praxeas, Sabellius, and Beryllus. In the one case the man Jesus is regarded as energized and exalted by the Divine Spirit, in the other the incarnation is regarded as only a mode of the Divine activity and manifestation.

All Christians hold the unity (monarchia) of God as a fundamental doctrine. By the Patripassians this first principle was used to deny the Trinity, and they are with some reason called Monarchians. But the Adoptionists, or Dynamists, have no claim to the title, for they did not start from the monarchy of God, and their error is strictly Christological. An account of them must, however, be given here simply because the name Monarchian has adhered to them in spite of the repeated protests of historians of dogma.

Their ancient and accurate name was Theodotians. The founder of the sect was a leather-seller of Byzantium named Theodotus. He came to Rome under Pope Victor (c. 190-200) or earlier. He taught (Philosophumena, VII, xxxv) that Jesus was a man born of a virgin according to the counsel of the Father, that He lived like other men, and was most pious; that at His baptism in the Jordan the Christ came down upon Him in the likeness of a dove, and therefore wonders (dynameis) were not wrought in Him until the Spirit (which Theodotus called Christ) came down and was manifested in Him. They did not admit that this made Him God; but some of them said He was God after His resurrection.

It was reported that Theodotus had been seized, with others, at Byzantium as a Christian, and that he had denied Christ, whereas his companions had been martyred; he had fled to Rome, and had invented his heresy in order to excuse his fall, saying that it was but a man and not God that he had denied. Pope Victor excommunicated him, and he gathered together a sect in which we are told much secular study was carried on. Hippolytus says that they argued on Holy Scripture in syllogistic form. Euclid, Aristotle, and Theophrastus were their admiration, and Galen they even adored.

Dynamistic Monarchianism was applied by Epiphanius (c. 375) to those who in the second century opposed the Logos (Word) doctrine of John's Gospel. They are said to have rejected not only the fourth Gospel, but the Johannean Apocalypse and the Johannean Epistles as well. Epiphanius relates that they-not only denied the eternity of the Logos as a person of the Godhead, but attributed the Johannean Gospel and Apocalypse to Cerinthus, who is elsewhere represented as the arch-enemy of the Apostle John. They sought to show that the Christology of the fourth Gospel was contradictory to that of the Synoptic Gospels, which, they claimed, know nothing of the eternal sonship. They are represented as having arisen in opposition to the Montanistic prophecy.

The first representative of Dynamistic Monarchianism whose views have been recorded is Theodotus of Byzantium, who sought to propagate his views in the Roman church, about 190. According to an anonymous writer, Theodotus held to the supernatural birth of Jesus, but insisted that he was a " mere man " until his baptism, when the Holy Spirit came upon him and bestowed upon him Divine attributes. This form of doctrine, known in the later times as Adoptionism, was condemned by the Roman Church.

Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch (260 onward), was for some time a sort of viceroy to Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. About 269 he was excommunicated by a great provincial synod, after years of bitter controversy. After the fall of Zenobia (272), the Emperor Aurelian sustained the party that had the approval of the Italian bishops, and excluded Paul from the use of ecclesiastical property. His views were widely propagated in Mesopotamia and Armenia, and his name was probably perpetuated in the great Paulician body, who have kept alive his form of doctrine till the present century. Like Theodotus and his followers he insisted on the absolute unipersonality of God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, one person. Logos and Wisdom are attributes or faculties of God. Christ was begotten of Mary by the Holy Spirit, and at his baptism was energized by the divine Logos (Word). Yet he refused to identify Christ with the Logos. Thus he regarded Jesus as a divinely begotten man, energized by the Holy Spirit (or the Logos) and so exalted to Divine dignity and honor. Of his efficiency as the Saviour of men he seems to have entertained no doubt.