Heresy of Monarchianism (Modalism) and How Catholic Church struggles against it.

The Monarchians properly so-called (Modalists) exaggerated the oneness of the Father and the Son so as to make them but one Person; thus the distinctions in the Holy Trinity are energies or modes, not Persons: God the Father appears on earth as Son; hence it seemed to their opponents that Monarchians made the Father suffer and die. In the West they were called Patripassians, whereas in the East they are usually called Sabellians. The first to visit Rome was probably Praxeas, who went on to Carthage some time before 206-208; but he was apparently not in reality a heresiarch, and the arguments refuted by Tertullian somewhat later in his book "Adversus Praxean" are doubtless those of the Roman Monarchians. By the Patripassians this first principle was used to deny the Trinity, and they are with some reason called Monarchians.

The first 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 because his Heresy, and he gathered together a sect in which we are told much secular study was carried on. Antipope Hippolytus (before allied with Pope St. Zephyrinus and Pope St. Callixtus I) says that they argued on Holy Scripture in syllogistic form.

Beside Praxeas and Theodotus, Noetus (from whom the Noetians) was a Smyrnaean (Epiphanius, by a slip, says an Ephesian). He called himself Moses, and his brother Aaron. When accused before the presbyterate of teaching that the Father suffered, he denied it; but after having made a few disciples he was again interrogated, and expelled from the Catholic Church. He died soon after, and did not receive Christian burial. St. Hippolytus mockingly declares him to have been a follower of Heraclitus, on account of the union of the opposites which he taught when he called God both visible and invisible, passible and impassible. Heraclitus taught that God The Father can came down to Earth in the name of Son or vice versa, God The Father also can be delivered by The Holy Spirit or vice versa. His pupil Epigonus came to Rome. As he was not mentioned in the "Syntagma" of Hippolytus, which was written in one of the first five years of the third century, he was not then well known in Rome, or had not yet arrived. According to Hippolytus (Philos., IX, 7), Cleomenes, a follower of Epigonus, was allowed by Pope Zephyrinus to establish a school, which flourished under his approbation and that of Callistus. Cleomenes was not a Noetian at all, and that he was an orthodox opponent of the incorrect theology of Hippolytus. From this time St. Hippolytus gave a suspicious to Pope St. Zephyrinus if He was sympathetic with Cleomenes who was Noetian. The same writer gives most ingenious and interesting (though hardly convincing) reasons for identifying Praxeas with Callistus; he proves that the Monarchians attacked in Tertullian's "Contra Praxean" and in the "Philosophumena" had identical tenets which were not necessarily heretical; he denies that Tertullian means us to understand that Praxeas came to Carthage, and he explains the nameless refuter of Praxeas to be, not Tertullian himself, but Hippolytus. It is true that it is easy to suppose Tertullian and Hippolytus to have misrepresented the opinions of their opponents, but it cannot be proved that Cleomenes was not a follower of the heretical Noetus, and that Sabellius did not issue from his school; further, it is not obvious that Tertullian would attack Callistus under a nickname.

Sabellius soon became the leader of the Monarchians in Rome, perhaps even before the death of Zephyrinus (c. 218). He is said by Epiphanius to have founded his views on the Gospel according to the Egyptians, and the fragments of that apocryphon support this statement. St. Hippolytus hoped to convert Sabellius to his own views, and attributed his failure in this to the influence of Callistus. Pope Callixtus I, however, excommunicated Sabellius and condemned Monarchianism c. 220 ("fearing me", says Hippolytus). Antipope Hippolytus accuses Pope Callistus I of now inventing a new heresy by combining the views of Theodotus and those of Sabellius, although Pope Callistus I excommunicated them both and declared if they were heretics. Sabellius was apparently still in Rome when Hippolytus wrote the Philosophumena (between 230 and 235). Of his earlier and later history nothing is known. St. Basil and others call him a Libyan from Pentapolis, but this seems to rest on the fact that Pentapolis was found to be full of Sabellianism by Dionysius of Alexandria, c. 260. A number of Montanists led by Aeschines became Modalists (unless Harnack is right in making Modalism the original belief of the Montanists and in regarding Aeschines as a conservative). Sabellius (or at least his followers) may have considerably amplified the original Noetianism. There was still Sabellianism to be found in the fourth century. Marcellus of Ancyra developed a Monarchianism of his own, which was carried much further by his disciple, Photinus. Priscillian was an extreme Monarchian and so was Commodian ("Carmen Apol.", 89, 277, 771). The "Monarchian Prologues" to the Gospels found in most old manuscripts of the Vulgate, were attributed by von Dobschütz and P. Corssen to a Roman author of the time of Callistus, but they are almost certainly the work of Priscillian. Beryllus, Bishop of Bostra, is vaguely said by Eusebius (Church History VI.33) to have taught that the Saviour had no distinct pre-existence before the Incarnation, and had no Divinity of His own, but that the Divinity of the Father dwelt in Him. Origen disputed with him in a council and convinced him of his error. The minutes of the disputation were known to Eusebius. It is not clear whether Beryllus was a Modalist or a Dynamist.

About Theology 

There was much that was unsatisfactory in the theology of the Trinity and in the Christology of the orthodox writers of the Ante-Nicene 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 regard 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 a unity of origin. It was said that God from eternity was alone, with His Word, one with Him (as Reason, in vulca cordis, logos endiathetos), before the Word was spoken (ex ore Patris, logos prophorikos), or was generated and became Son for the purpose 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 writers who thus theologize may often expressly teach the traditional Unity in Trinity, but it hardly squares with the Platonism of their philosophy. The theologians 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 Godhead split into two or even three, and to make Jesus Christ something less than the supreme God the Father. This is eminently true of the chief opponents of the Monarchians, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Novatian. 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 Monarchians 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 Tertullian and Hippolytus opposed Modalism and its followers (for their protest was precisely against the Platonism which these theologians had inherited from Justin and the Apologists), it is equally comprehensible that guardians of the Faith should have welcomed at first the return of the Monarchians to the simplicity of the Faith, "ne videantur deos dicere, 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)

Concerned with defending the absolute unity of God, modalists such as Noetus, Praxeas, and Sabellius explained the divinity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as the one Person who revealing himself in different ways or modes:

1. God revealed as the creator and lawgiver is called "the Father";
2. God revealed as the savior in Jesus Christ is called "the Son";
3. God revealed as the one who sanctifies and grants eternal life is called "the Spirit".

By the 4th century, a consensus had developed in favor of Trinitarianism, and modalism was generally considered a heresy by The Council of Constantinople in 381.

Tertullian when He fought against Praxeas, In his work, Adversus Praxeas, Chapter I, Tertullian wrote "By this Praxeas did a twofold service for the devil at Rome: he drove away prophecy, and he brought in heresy; he put to flight the Paraclete, and he crucified the Father." Likewise Hippolytus wrote,

"Do you see, he says, how the Scriptures proclaim one God? And as this is clearly exhibited, and these passages are testimonies to it, I am under necessity, he says, since one is acknowledged, to make this One the subject of suffering. For Christ was God, and suffered on account of us, being Himself the Father, that He might be able also to save us.... See, brethren, what a rash and audacious dogma they have introduced, when they say without shame, the Father is Himself Christ, Himself the Son, Himself was born, Himself suffered, Himself raised Himself. But it is not so."

Pope St. Zephyrinus the Defender of Church against Monarchianism and Ditheism

 

Pope St. Zephyrinus and Pope St. Callixtus I condemned Any Monarchianism and also Montanism during their life. 

Pope St. Zephyrinus viewed Modalistic Monarchianism like Noetian and Theodotian as pagan concept from Platonism-Aristotelian who holds that God has three modes and can be changed or mutable with many manifestation to change himself, can be suffered, can be died on his Divine nature without considers any True Attributes of God. 

Trimurti concept from Ancient Indian Religion which is younger than Ancient Greek also embraces what Modalistic holds. 

On the whole, then, it is clear that the Catholic church sides with Callistus against the schismatic Antipope Hippolytus who revolted against Pope St. Zephyrinus and the heretic Tertullian. Not a word is said against the character of Callistus since his promotion, nor against the validity of his election, 

Pope St. Callixtus I

Now Hippolytus's own Christology is most imperfect, and he tells us that Callistus accused him of Ditheism. Because St. Hippolytus taught Ditheism, He was viewed as an Antipope and his papacy was Invalid because he revolted against Pope St. Zephyrinus without know more deeply what St. Zephyrinus taught about Three different persons, before his reconciled with Pope Fabian. It is not to be wondered at, then, if he calls Callistus the inventor of a kind of modified Sabellianism. In reality it is certain that Pope St. Zephyrinus and Pope St. Callistus I condemned various Monarchians and Sabellius himself, as well as the opposite error of Hippolytus. This is enough to suggest that Callistus held the Catholic Faith. And in fact it cannot be denied that the Church of Rome must have held a Trinitarian doctrine not far from that taught by Callistus's elder contemporary Tertullian and by his much younger contemporary Novatian--a doctrine which was not so explicitly taught in the greater part of the East for a long period afterwards. The accusations of Hippolytus speak for the sure tradition of the Roman Church and for its perfect orthodoxy and moderation. If we knew more of St. Callistus from Catholic sources, he would probably appear as one of the greatest of the popes.

Antipope Hippolytus (as St. Hippolytus of Rome) was reconciled to the other party at Rome, for, under Pope Fabian (236–250 AD), his body and that of Pontian were brought to Rome. The so-called Chronography of 354 (more precisely, the Liberian Catalogue) . St. Hippolytus when He reconciled and repented, he recognized Papacy of St. Zephyrinus and St. Callixtus II and He acknowledged that himself as an Antipope who taught Ditheism and Schismatic before his repentance. But, his efforts against Sabbelianism and Monarchianism were valued with High Price on Catholic Church and He was canonized on 13 August after some year from his death. 

__________________________________________________

Modern Monarchianism-Modalistic :

With the advent of Pentecostalism Heresy (Pentecostalism is one of thousand Protestant denomimations), the revived theology developed into a central tenet of Oneness Pentecostalism. Oneness Pentecostals teach the divinity of Jesus and understand him to be a manifestation of the Father, the God of the Old Testament, in the flesh, and the Holy Spirit, or God in action. They also baptize solely in the name of Jesus or Jesus Christ; in this way, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are considered titles pertaining to the one God, not descriptions of distinct individuals, and Jesus is seen as the one name for these titles.

Modalistic Monarchianism is accepted within Oneness Pentecostalism and also within Charismatic Churches including Bethel Churches with their baptism formula which sounding a Modalistic/Sabellian form. 

The First Council of Constantinople in 381 in canon VII and the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 in canon XCV declared the baptism of Sabellius to be invalid, which indicates that Sabellianism was still extant. 

St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote - "...how, when God the Father is not known, nay, is even blasphemed, can they who among the heretics are said to be baptized in the name of Christ, be judged to have obtained the remission of sins?" (The Epistles of Cyprian, pg 383) 

St. Hippolytus (A.D. 170–236) referred to them - "And some of these assent to the heresy of the Noetians, and affirm that the Father himself is the Son..." (The Refutation of All Heresies) 

Pope Dionysius, Bishop of Rome from A.D. 259–269 wrote - "Sabellius...blasphemes in saying that the Son Himself is the Father and vice versa." (Against the Sabellians) 

Tertullian states - "He commands them to baptize into the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, not into a unipersonal God. And indeed it is not once only, but three times, that we are immersed into three persons, at each several mention of their names." (Adversus Praxeas) 

In 382 the Council of Rome, with Pope Damasus I presiding, condemned the heresy, stating, "We anathematize those also who follow the error of Sabellius in saying that the same one is both Father and Son" (Tome of Pope Damasus, 2).