Theological Development of Trinitarianism
have direct, immediate communion not with anyone less than the Son and the Father themselves. The Holy Spirit is God Himself within us, Joh. 14:23ff., 1Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 2Cor. 6:16, Gal. 2:20, Col.
3:11, Eph. 3:17, Phil. 1:8,21. Who else can grant us all this, who else can cause God Himself to dwell in our hearts, but One who is
Himself God? Therefore, divine honor is due to Him. He stands alongside the Father and the Son as the cause of all salvation, Mt.
28:19; 1Cor. 12:4-6; 2Cor. 13:13; Rev. 1:4. In His name we are baptized, Mt. 28:19. From Him comes all life and power. He is the Author of our prayers, Zech. 12:10, Rom. 8:15-16. And in contrast, the church is warned not to grieve Him, Isa. 63:10, Eph. 4:30; indeed, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable, Mt. 12:3132.
Theological Development of Trinitarianism In all these moments of revelation, Holy Scripture naturally does not yet offer us a fully developed dogma of the Trinity. However, it teaches that the one name of God unfolds fully in that of Father, Son, and Spirit. It clearly and distinctly affirms that all of God's external works, both in creation and recreation, have a threefold divine cause.
It leaves no doubt that these threefold causes are three distinct subjects standing in personal relation to each other. And thereby, it contains all the data from which theology has constructed the dogma of the Trinity. Philosophy had nothing essential to add to it; even the Logos doctrine is New Testamental. It all awaited the time when the Christian reason would be sufficiently developed to comprehend the
sacred mystery presented here. There is no mention of this in the apostolic fathers.
They echo Holy Scripture without yet understanding the deep meaning and interconnectedness of the truths, and they use expressions that would no longer be defensible in later times. Yet, they are also of the utmost importance for the dogma of the Trinity, insofar as they combat both the Ebionite and the docetic tendencies and, in stronger or weaker terms, affirm the high, nature of Christ, exalted above the angels. The dogma of the Trinity, as is evident from the outset, did not arise from a philosophical reasoning about the Being of God, but from reflecting on the facts of revelation, on the Person and work of Christ. In the dogma of the Trinity, it was from the beginning about the Deity of Christ, about the absolute character of Christianity, about the truth of God's revelation, about the true reconciliation of sins, about the absolute certainty of salvation. In the apostolic fathers, Christ occupies a completely unique place; predicates are ascribed to Him that belong to no creature. He is called Son, unique, only begotten
Son of God, Clement, 1Cor. 36. Ignatius, Rom.1. Eph.20. Smyrn.1.
Diognetus, 9.10. Barnabas, 7.12., the effulgence of God's Majesty, the scepter of His Majesty, Clement, 1 Cor. 16.36. Lord of the earth, to whom everything is subjected, Creator of all things, Judge of the living and the dead, Barn. 7.12. Diogn. 7. Did. Apost. 16. Polyc. Phil.
1.2.6.12, holy, incomprehensible Logos, who as God, wv yeov, was sent to earth, Diogn. 7. and may be called God, Clement, 2Cor. 1.
Ign., Rom. 3. Smyrn. 1. 10. Eph. 1.18.19. And Father (God), Son (Christ), and Spirit are mentioned together, Clement, 1Cor. 46. Ign.
Eph. 9. Magn. 13. There is little mention of the Holy Spirit among the apostolic fathers, but He is nevertheless distinguished from and placed alongside the Father and the Son; only regarding the Shepherd of Hermas, Sim. V 5.6., there is a difference, whether he identifies the Holy Spirit with the Son or distinguishes Him from it.
When in the second century Gnosticism emerges, Christian thought also awakens. The divinity of Christ becomes of doctrinal importance and is therefore expressed much more clearly. Justin Martyr repeatedly attributes the name of God to Christ, even calling Him o yeov, c. Tryph. 34.56.58.113.126, etc., and assigns Him various lofty predicates. He is the Firstborn of creation, the beginning of another race, equipped not with a single charisma but with all the powers of the Spirit, possessing not a mere seed of the Logos, but the entire
Logos, logikou to olon powerful to deify the human race and therefore Himself God, c. Tr. 87. 138. Apol. II 10. 12. He clearly teaches the preexistence of Christ, not merely as a force, but as a Person, c. Tr. 128. Because the Father is hidden, ineffable, transcendent beyond time and space, c. Tr. 127. Apol. II 6., all revelations under the Old Testament and also in the Gentile world are revelations of the Logos, c. Tr. 127. Apol. I 46. 61. 63. Apol. II 10.
13. He even existed at creation; the Word Gen. 1:26 was spoken to Him, c. Tr. 62. However, the immanent relationship between Father and Son is not yet clear in Justin Martyr. It seems that the Logos, though distinct from the Father ariymw all ou gnwmh, was first generated by the Father for and on behalf of creation, not arising from division but nonetheless being produced by the power and will of the Father, like one light kindled by another and like the word issuing from our mouth, Apol. II 6. c. Tr. 61. 100. 128. Therefore, he is called prwtogonov, prwtotokov tou yeou, Apol. I 46. 68.
Generation is called proballein, but mostly gennan, c. Tr. 62.76.129.
Apol. I 23. 2.6, and the Logos is called insofar a gennhma or ergasia, c. Tr.62. 114.129. Justin seeks to maintain the unity of God by stating that the Son is indeed distinct from the Father ariymw all ou gnwmh, c. Tr.56, and subordinate to the Father. The Son is h prwth dunamiv meta ton patera, Apol. I 32; He occupies the second place, deutera cwra, Apol. I 13; He has received everything from the Father, c. Tr.
86, is God and Lord because the Father has willed it, c. Tr. 127, and is
under the Father and Lord's command, c. Tr. 126. Thus, Justin still has an imperfect understanding on several points. The hidden nature of the Father contrasted with the Son, the generation of the Son by the will of the Father and for the sake of creation, the subordination of the Son to the Father, were later rejected by the church. Some have therefore called Justin an Arian, but wrongly so. Firstly, this issue did not exist in Justin's time; and secondly, there are several elements in him that go directly against the views of Arius; he clearly and unequivocally teaches the deity of the Son, stating that the Son is not created but begotten, and clarifies this with the later common metaphors of word and light; he sees the importance of the deity of Christ for the entire work of salvation, for the truth of Christianity.
Therefore, he also repeatedly names the Father, the Son, and the Spirit together as the object of our worship, Apol. 16. 13. 60. 61. 65.
67; and while he assigns the second place to the Son and the third rank to the Spirit, Justin clearly expresses the personality of the Holy
Spirit and His distinction from the Son in these passages. Some have objected to this based on Apol. 133, but this passage teaches nothing else than that Justin does not understand to pneuma in Luke 1:35 to refer to the Person of the Holy Spirit, but to the Logos, an exegesis found in others as well. Furthermore, it is also certain that Justin does not include the Spirit among the angels or in general among the creatures. However, Justin provides almost no insight into the divine nature of the Holy Spirit and His ontological relationship to the Father and Son. The religious significance of the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit was not yet felt. The Spirit is still only understood as the Spirit of prophecy, who inspired the prophets and apostles and empowered
Christ. But Justin has no awareness of a continuous necessary operation of the Holy Spirit in the church. The objective revelation of God in the Logos seems sufficient; the subjective illumination is not perceived in its necessity. Finally, it becomes very clear in Justin
Martyr what kind of influence Greek philosophy has had on Christian
theology. That such an influence has been exerted, and not least on Justin, is denied by no one. However, this influence is most noticeable in those elements of Justin's teaching which were later expelled by the church, namely, in his distinction between the logov endiayeov and proforikov, in his presentation of the Son as deuterov yeov, in his doctrine of the hidden God, in his positioning of the Son outside the divine essence. All other elements, the Logos nature of Christ, preexistence, generation, creation of all things by the Logos, sonship, and the deity of Christ are consciously derived by Justin from Scripture and argued from Scripture.
The deficiencies inherent in the trinitarian doctrine of Justin Martyr are not avoided by the following apologists, Theophilus, Tatian, and Athenagoras. Tatian, in Oratio ad Graecos 5, indeed states that, insofar as all things have their foundation in God, they all exist ideally, as Logos, in Him, but this Logos is brought forth by the will of God and is the first-born work of the Father; according to distribution, not by division. In Theophilus, the Logos exists before creation as the internal Word because He is the mind and intelligence of God, yet He is generated by the Father as the external
Word for the sake of creation. Similarly, Athenagoras, in Legatio pro Christianis 10, teaches that the Logos indeed existed eternally because God is the eternal mind, yet He is the first offspring of the Father because He emanated from God as the idea and energy of things. Just as Theophilus first spoke of a triad in God, so also
Athenagoras associates God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who was active in the prophets and is an emanation of God, proceeding from God and returning to Him, like a ray from the sun, and calls them the object of Christian worship. However, in the distinction of the three Persons, their Unity is not sufficiently maintained. The Father is the one, ungenerated, eternal, invisible
God, and the Son and the Spirit are one with Him not in essence, but in spirit and power.
The next development of the trinitarian doctrine, particularly involving the expulsion of philosophical elements, is owed to three men, each of whom contributed to the construction of Christian dogma. Irenaeus is the powerful opponent of the Gnostic conception of God and the idea of the Logos as the world idea. Occasionally, he shows that he has not entirely overcome the old conception; he still calls the Father the invisible, hidden God in contrast to the Son.
Nevertheless, he vehemently opposes the notion of God as chaos and the emanation of aeons, and upholds the scriptural distinction between Creator and creature. The Logos is as it were divested of its ambivalent nature and entirely transferred to the side of God. The Logos is not a creature but a hypostatic word, preexistent, truly God, and so forth. The distinction between the internal and external Word is also to be rejected. For besides the fact that this distinction detracts from the personality of the Logos and associates His generation with creation, the Logos must not be represented as the understanding and reason of God. God is simple, entirely Spirit, entirely understanding, entirely thought, entirely Logos, so that both the Son and the Father are truly God. The Unity of Father, Son, and Spirit is clearly affirmed by Irenaeus, their divine nature is emphatically maintained, they are consistently mentioned together.
The generation of the Son did not occur in time; the Son had no beginning; He existed eternally with God.
But Irenaeus falls short in indicating how the Unity nevertheless consists of the Trinity and how Father, Son, and Spirit, though sharing one divine nature, are yet distinct. Tertullian supplements and improves upon this. Although he lags behind Irenaeus in overcoming Gnostic dualism, he distinguishes between Father and
Son as between a Deus invisibilis et invisus and a Deus visibilis et visus, adv. Prax. 14.15. In various ways and with various arguments, he argues for that distinction, using the name Logos, the incarnation, the theophanies, and so forth. Indeed, the Logos, in Tertullian, only attains full Sonship and independent personality through the three moments of God's speech, generation, and incarnation, adv. Pr. 6. 7, such that there was a time when the Son was not, adv. Hermog. 3.
But while he goes too far against Patripassianism in the distinction of persons, he tries all the more to maintain the Unity in the Trinity and the Trinity in the Unity. The Three Persons are of one substance, one status, one power, one God. They are distinct in terms of order and economy; Oeconomia sacramentum unitatem in trinitatem disponit.
They are three not in status but in degree, and yet they are one God, from whom these degrees and forms and species are assigned in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just as a ray of the sun is also sun, so there are different species, forms, images, modes in the one and undivided substance. Thus, the three Persons are unum, not unus. The Son is different from the Father, and the Spirit is again another, but the name God and Lord is common to them. They are one God; they cannot be separated. Just as the root and branch, source and stream, sun and ray cannot be separated, so also the Father and the Son. Thus, the Trinity does not nullify the monarchy.
The Son is indeed different from the Father but not divided, separated. There is distinction, distribution, not diversity and division. It is a unity deriving from itself into Trinity, adv. Prax. 2 v.
Thus, Tertullian molds the rigid Latin language to uphold both the unity and the trinity in God equally; both formally and materially, he has been of the greatest significance for the dogma of the Trinity.
Despite not always overcoming subordinationism and not sufficiently distinguishing the ontological, cosmological, and soteriological aspects in the doctrine of the Trinity, he provided the concepts and words necessary for expressing the true meaning of the
dogma of the Trinity. He replaced Logos speculation with filiation, thereby definitively separating ontological Trinity from cosmological speculation. And he was the first to attempt to derive the Trinity of Persons not from the Person of the Father, but from the Being of God.
However, while Tertullian does not yet entirely free the ontological Trinity from the cosmological and soteriological process, it is Origen who conceives of it entirely as an eternal process within the Being of God itself. Generation is an aiwniov gennhsiv, the princ. 12,4. Light cannot exist without shining; likewise, the Father cannot be without the Son, ib. 12.2.4.7.10. There was no time when the Son was not, ib.
12.2.4. c. Cels VIII 12. The Father is not Father before the Son but per filium, the princ. 12.10. There is no separation, acwristov esti tou uiou o pathr, c. Cels. IV 14.16. All divine attributes are common to Father and Son; the Son is one with the Father; we worship the Son not alongside but in God, c. Cels. VIII 12.13. The Son possesses the same wisdom, truth, reason as the Father, He is autosofia, autolhyeia, autologov, c. Gels. V41. However, in order to maintain distinction within this unity and equality, Origen invokes subordinationism and regresses behind Tertullian in deriving the Trinity not from the Being of God but from the Person of the Father.
And thus Origen came to present the Father as o yeov, autoyeov phgh, or riza yeothtoc, megistov epi pasi yeov, as greater than the Son, as the one whole Godhead, above all being, unseen, incomprehensible; and the Son as yeov without article, as eterov tou patrov kai ousian, as much less than the Father as the world is less than the Son.
The church, however, did not follow Origen. It rejected his subordinationism and affirmed at Nicaea the true, full divinity of the Son. This confession was entirely of a religious character. It upheld
the soteriological principle of Christianity. But from now on, the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity changed. Nicaea articulated the distinction within God and taught that Father, Son (and Spirit) were God; from now on, the challenge was to maintain unity within this distinction. Before Nicaea, there was difficulty in moving from the unity of God to a Trinity; now, it was the reverse. Henceforth, the trinitarian dogma acquired its own, independent value, a theological significance. Athanasius, along with the three Cappadocians and Augustine, are those who develop and complete this doctrine in this manner. Athanasius understood better than anyone in his time that Christianity stood or fell with the divinity of Christ and the Trinity.
He dedicated his entire life and all his energies to defending this truth. He fought not for a philosophical problem but for the Christian religion itself, for the revelation of God, the teaching of the apostles, the faith of the church. The Trinity is the heart of Christianity.
Therefore, it is fundamentally distinct from Judaism, which denies the distinction in God, and from paganism, which denies the unity of God, ad Serap. I 28. With Athanasius, the philosophical blending of ontology and cosmology is entirely banished. He rejects the Gnostic dualism between God and the world, adopted by Arius, and all kinds of intermediaries, c. Ar. II 26. The Trinity, he says, has nothing foreign mixed in it; it does not consist of the Creator and something created, but it is entirely and perfectly divine, ibid. Therefore, the Trinity is also eternal. There is nothing contingent in God; He does not become anything; He is eternally everything. Just as the Trinity always was, so it is and remains, and in it the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, ad Serap. III 7. c. Ar. I18. The Father was always Father; unlike us, it belongs to His nature to be Father, decr. nic. syn. 12.
Just as the sun cannot be thought of without light and the source without water, so the Father cannot be thought of without the Son;
God is not agonov; He always speaks, c. Ar. II 2. ad Serap. II 2.
Whoever denies the Trinity makes God a lifeless principle or comes
to the doctrine of the eternity of the world, c. Ar. I 14. And therefore, the generation and existence of the Son are also eternal. There was no time when neither the Father nor the Son existed, c. Ar. I entirely.
This Son cannot be a creature and is not produced by the will of God, but is generated from His essence, c. Ar. I 25. And the same is said, although less frequently and elaborately, of the Holy Spirit, ad Serap.
I 20,21, etc. These Three Persons are truly distinct; they are not three parts of one whole, not three names for one thing. The Father is only
Father, and the Son is only Son, and the Spirit is only Spirit, c. Ar. III 4. IV 1. ad Serap. IV 4,6,7. But in this, he maintains the Unity, so that all three are omoousioi and one upostasiv (at Athanasius almost equivalent to ousia) and have the same attributes, c. Ar. III 3, 4. decr. nic. syn. 19-25; that the Father is the arx and the phgh yeothtov, c.
Ar. IV 1.; that the Three Persons exist in each other, ad Serap. I 14.III 6. c. Ar. III 6, and are one in their operation, ad Serap. I 281. This doctrine of the Trinity of Athanasius is also found essentially, only elucidated by names, images, comparisons, in Basil in his Libri V against Eunomius, in his work de Spiritu Sancto and in many of his letters and homilies, in Gregory Nyss. in his Libri XII c. Eunomium and in his oratio catechetica, and in Gregory Naz. in his 5 Orationes theologicae. John Damascene summarizes the result and is especially aligned with Gregory of Nazianzus. The entire Greek church has accepted this doctrine in the councils, of which it acknowledges the first seven, and deviates from the West only in the filioque.
In the West, after Tertullian and Cyprian, the doctrine of the Trinity was especially vigorously defended and proven from Scripture by Hilary in his 12 books on the Trinity, which, however, contain very little about the Holy Spirit and therefore probably earlier bore the title: On Faith Against the Arians; and then more speculatively and profoundly by Augustine. His 15 books on the Trinity are the deepest writings on this dogma. In them, he not only summarizes what
earlier fathers have said on this subject, but he also treats it independently and introduces significant modifications. Firstly,
Augustine starts not from the Person of the Father but from the one simple, excluding all composition, Essence (essentia) of God, and therefore expresses the absolute Unity of the three Persons more strongly than ever before. Each Person is as great as the entire
Trinity, trin. VIII 1.2. In each Person is the whole, same, Divine Essence, so that there are not three Gods, three Almighties, etc., but only one God, one Almighty, etc., ib. V 8. Therefore, the distinction of the Persons cannot lie in attributes or accidents that one Person would have and the other would not, but only in the relations among them. The Father is and is called the first Person because He stands in a particular relation to the Son and the Spirit, etc., ib. V 5, just as the designation Lord, Creator, etc., indicates God's relation to creatures but does not bring about any change in Him, ib. 16.17.
Secondly, Augustine thus had to reject any opposition that had previously been made between the Father and the Son. The Son, as true God, is no less hidden and invisible than the Father and is perfectly equal to the Father. Any subordinationism is banished.
Augustine goes even further than Athanasius. Athanasius still maintained some subordination, c. Ar. I 59, but Augustine has overcome all thought as if the Father were the true, original God. He starts from the essentia Dei, which dwells equally in all three.
Although he still uses the expression fons or principium deitatis for the Father, trin. IV 20, it has a different meaning for him. It does not indicate that the Godhead logically existed first in the Father and was communicated to the Son and the Spirit by Him, but the Father can only be called so because He is not God but as Person, Father of the Son. And in this sense, the formula of Nicea Deus de Deo is also explained by him, trin. VII 2.3. Therefore, Augustine also came to a different understanding of the theophanies in the Old Testament.
Previously, they had always and exclusively been seen as revelations
of the Logos because the Father was hidden, but Augustine also ascribes them to the Father and the Spirit, who can manifest themselves just as well as the Son and indeed cannot be separated from His, trin. II and III. Finally, Augustine, more than any church father before him, sought images, similitudes of the Trinity, vestiges of the Trinity, and elucidated the connection between the doctrine of God and that of the entire cosmos, trin. IX-XV2.
Augustine completed what Tertullian had begun. In the West, despite agreement, there is a different understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity than in the East. While here it was confessed that the Son and the Spirit both proceed from the Father but otherwise exist separately, in the West it was felt that the essential equality and the mutual relation of the three Persons came to their full expression only in the filioque. The West aligned itself with Augustine and, while elaborating his doctrine of the Trinity more closely in some points, did not alter it or add anything new to it. The Athanasian
Creed, wrongly attributed to Athanasius and certainly originating after 400, is entirely in the spirit of Augustine and therefore found acceptance in the West but not in the East. The Reformers also expressed their agreement with it. The Lutheran and Reformed confessions align with the three ecumenical symbols; in the Belgic
Confession Article 9, the faith summary of Athanasius is also mentioned, and in the Anglican Church, it even found a place in liturgical use. However, in recent times, there has been a strong opposition against it. And generally, there is a not insignificant difference in the attitude that Roman Catholics and Protestants adopt towards the Athanasian Creed. The Reformation highlighted that historical belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, no matter how pure, does not save, but only sincere belief of the heart in God
Himself, who has revealed Himself as triune God in Christ.
This dogma, however, has always encountered serious opposition.
Not only from outside, from the side of the Jews and the Muslims, against whom Christians then defensively acted. But also within the bounds of Christianity, this dogma was resisted by many both before and after its establishment. In the confession of the Trinity beats the heart of the Christian religion; every error stems from, or can be traced back to, a deviation in the doctrine of the Trinity upon deeper reflection. It is such an essential component of the Christian faith that it continues to echo in the confession of the Unitarians. All who are attached to the name of Christians continue to speak of the Father, Son, and Spirit. However, the doctrine of the Trinity, in its ecclesiastical form, has been contested and presented differently over time. But the history of this dogma clearly shows that the ecclesiastical form in which this truth is contained alone is capable of preserving the matter for which it exists, unadulterated. The great problem with this dogma is that the Unity of Essence does not annul the Trinity of Persons, nor conversely does the Trinity of Persons abolish the Unity of Essence. And therefore, there is always the danger of deviating and falling into Sabellianism or Arianism, either to the right or to the left.
Arianism was prepared in the 2nd and 3rd centuries by the Ebionites, the Alogi, Theodotus, Artemon, Paul of Samosata, who saw in Christ a man, born supernaturally and anointed with the Holy
Spirit at baptism, empowered for His work and exalted as Lord, but who decisively denied His pre-existence and deity. They were adherents of an adoptionist christology. In the fourth century, it was advocated by Lucian and his disciple Arius, and then further by Aetius and Eunomius. Arius taught, according to a work called
Thalia, of which Athanasius, in Against the Arians, has preserved fragments, that God, being without generation and without beginning, is absolutely unique. He is ineffable, incomprehensible,
unable to have direct communion with the finite, unable to communicate His Essence, which consists precisely in being without generation. Therefore, everything outside of Him is created, brought into being by His will. He is not eternally Father but becomes Father through and by means of creatures. But before God proceeded to the creation of the world, He brought forth, as a means of mediation, as a kind of intermediary, an independent hypostasis or essence, which in Scripture bears the Name of Wisdom, Son, Logos, Image of God, etc., and through whom God created all things, and also a third, lower hypostasis, namely the Holy Spirit. This Logos is not generated from the Essence of God and does not share the Essence with the Father, for then there would be two Gods, but is created or born from non-existence, is a creature or product of God, brought forth by will and counsel. There was, therefore, a time when He was not, although
He was created before the ages and before the world. This Logos was therefore not consubstantial with the Father but completely separate from Him, changeable, able to choose both good and evil. But He became immutable by choosing the good, and, as it were, became a god. This Logos also became human, proclaimed the truth, effected our salvation, and is now our honor but not worthy of our worship.
Arianism was strong and found many adherents, not least among those who, for various reasons, had converted to Christianity after the conversion of Emperor Constantine. Moreover, the writings of Athanasius show us what formidable weapons they brought to the battle. Firstly, they appealed to a series of scriptural passages that emphasize the Unity of God, such as Deuteronomy 6:4, 32:39, John
17:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, the birth or generation of the Son, Proverbs 8:22, Colossians 1:15, His subordination to the Father, John 14:28, 1
Corinthians 15:28, Hebrews 3:2, His ignorance, Mark 13:32, John 11:34, His limited power, Matthew 28:18, and goodness, Luke 18:19,
His increase in wisdom, Luke 2:52, His suffering, John 12:27, 13:21,
Matthew 26:39, 27:46, His exaltation to Lord and Christ, Acts 2:36, Philippians 2:9, Hebrews 1:4, etc. Furthermore, they argued with numerous quotations that they had many early church fathers on their side. Then they derived various arguments from Aristotelian, nominalistically interpreted, philosophy, thereby arguing for the unity and agennesis of God. Finally, they pointed out the weaknesses and contradictions inherent in the Christology of Nicaea, with this argument in particular occupying a significant place: that if the Son was generated, He thereby differed essentially from God as the unborn, agennetos, and therefore came into existence in time.
Sabellianism was prepared in the second and third centuries by Noetus, Praxeas, Epigonus, Cleomenes, who taught that in Christ the Father Himself was born, suffered, and died, that Father and Son were thus names for the same person in different relationships, before and in the incarnation, in itself and in His historical appearance, or also that the Divine nature in Christ was the Father, and the human nature, the flesh, was the Son. This monarchianism, patripassianism, or modalism was advocated and further developed in the third century by Sabellius. Father, Son, and Spirit are the same
God; they are three names for one and the same Essence, which he called the hypostasis, but which was not simultaneously, but successively, called by three energies or stages. God first existed in the prosopon, the appearance, the mode of the Father, namely as Creator and Lawgiver; then in the prosopon of the Son as Redeemer from incarnation to ascension; and finally in the prosopon of the Holy Spirit as Life-Giver. Sabellius relied especially on Deuteronomy
6:4, Exodus 20:3, Isaiah 44:6, John 10:38. Sabellius thus included the Holy Spirit in the Essence of God, placed Son and Spirit on an equal footing with the Father, and further taught a historical succession in the revelations of God, a becoming in God Himself.