Arianism and Sabellianism
Arianism and Sabellianism Both directions have continued to exist in the Christian church, to the right and left of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the Trinity, throughout all ages. The essence of Arianism lies in the denial of the homoousion of Father and Son, in the assertion that the Father alone and in an absolute sense is the only true God. Naturally, then, the Son is a lesser and lower Being, standing outside the nature of God; but there can be differences over the place that the Son occupies between God and the world of creatures; Arianism allows for all sorts of latitude. The distance between God and the world is endless, and at every point along that distance, a place can be assigned to the Son, from the place next to God on His throne down to that next to the creatures, angels, or humans. Thus, Arianism has appeared in various forms. First, in the form of subordinationism: the Son is indeed eternal, generated from the Essence of the Father, not a creature and not brought forth from nothing, but He is nevertheless inferior to the Father and subordinate to Him. The Father alone is o theos, the source of divinity; the Son is theos, having received His nature by communication from the Father. This was taught by Justin
Martyr, Tertullian, Clement, Origen, and others, also by the Semiarians, Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia, who placed the Son outside the Father and called Him homoiousios to the Father, later by the Remonstrants, by the supranaturalists, and by many theologians in modern times. Furthermore, in its old form, which it had with Arius, it reappeared among many theologians after the Reformation, especially in England. For example, Milton taught
that the Son and Spirit were created by the free will of the Father before creation, and bore only the Name of God for Their office, just as the judges and rulers in the Old Testament did, and likewise with minor modifications W. Whiston, whose Arianism sparked many rebuttals, S. Clarke, P. Maty, Dan. Whitby, Harwood, many
Remonstrants here in the Netherlands, and in later times, the Groningen theologians. A third form of Arianism emerged in Socinianism. The Father is the only true God. The Son is a holy Man created immediately by God, through supernatural conception, who did not exist before His conception and was brought forth by God for this purpose, to preach a new law to humanity. After fulfilling this mission, He was exalted in heaven and became partaker of divine grace. The Spirit is nothing but a power of God. This Socinianism spread from Poland to Germany, the Netherlands, England, and America, finding interpreters in these latter two countries in John
Biddle, Nathanael Lardner, Theophilus Lindsey, Joseph Priestley, founder of the Unitarian Society, etc., and evolved into unitarianism.
Socinianism could not maintain supernaturalism, which it initially adopted; Jesus became an ordinary Man, albeit an example of piety and morality, and Christianity became entirely detached from His
Person. The same thing happened in rationalism and in modern theology. There is no place here for the Trinity, for the Triad, Father,
Son, and Spirit. God is one, and Jesus is an ordinary yet great human being; even Ritschl has essentially done nothing different from renewing Socinianism. Jesus was a human being, enabled by God to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth and was then elevated to the rank of God and Lord of the church. In this entire rationalistic view of the doctrine of the Trinity, there is of course even less need for divine grace, and therefore the Holy Spirit is hardly mentioned;
His divinity and usually His personality are denied.
Sabellianism can also appear in various forms. It shares with Arianism the denial of the Trinity in the Divine Being but seeks to achieve the unity of God not by placing the Son and Spirit outside the Divine Essence, but by incorporating both in such a way that all distinction between the three Persons disappears. According to the church's doctrine of the Trinity, the distinction between the persons lies in personal properties, particularly in eternal generation and spiration. If these are denied, the Persons become detached from each other, and tritheism emerges. In ancient times, the Monophysites, Johannes Askusnages, Johannes Philoponus, and in the Middle Ages, Roscellinus were accused of this. Later, similar charges were brought against Th. Sherlock for positing three infinite spirits in the Divine Being; against Roëll for disputing generation; and against Lampe and Sibelius for objecting to the formula per communicationem essentiae. Furthermore, if the Divine Essence is conceived in a Platonic-realistic sense, tritheism transitions into tetratheism, which was attributed to Damianus of Alexandria.
However, since such a trinity of individual, separate beings, merikai ousiai, idikai fuseiv, cannot be reconciled with the unity of God, it can also be maintained that Father, Son, and Spirit are the same
Person and the Same Essence; this was taught by Praxeas in the second century. Alternatively, one can view Son and Spirit as attributes in God, which went forth from God only for the purpose of creation and recreation and became independent and personal. The Logos was indeed eternal as logos endiathetos; the Father was never without the Logos; He was always Father; but this Logos became
Son, proforikos, in time; God extends Himself in time to become Son and Spirit and then returns to Himself. From this naturally arises modalistic monarchianism, which sees in the Three Persons only three modes of revelation of the one Divine Being.
This was the actual doctrine of Sabellius, and later this conception of the doctrine of the Trinity repeatedly reemerged. Speculation on the Trinity by Erigena and Abelard is not free from modalism either. But this becomes clearer in the pantheistic sects of the Middle Ages, in Joachim of Floris, Amalrik of Bena, David of Dinant, who distinguished between periods of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit and considered the last one near. During the Reformation century,
Anabaptism opposed the church's doctrine of the Trinity. The true God is the God within us; this is the Essential Christ, and the Word, the Spirit within us, is the true God. David Joris taught that God was one and revealed Himself successively as Father, Son, and Spirit in three eras of faith, hope, and love, which began with Moses, Christ, and himself. But above all, Servetus devoted all the power of his thinking to this dogma; in three writings, he subjected it in its ecclesiastical form to sharp criticism and also tried to rebuild it positively. Servetus has no words sharp enough to condemn the church's doctrine of the Trinity. In his eyes, it is tritheistic, atheistic, a three-headed monster, a triple Cerberus, a tripartite God. In opposition, he starts from the proposition that the Divine Essence cannot be divided, and therefore, to maintain the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, only dispositions, apparitions, modes of God may be assumed, not persons. The Father is the entire Divine
Essence, the only God. But He makes use of the Logos, which existed before Christ, however, not as a Person but as Word, reason, thought, to reveal Himself in creation and under the Old Testament and to become human in Christ. The Logos did not assume human nature in Christ but became flesh in Him. Therefore, the human
Christ is the true Son of God; God dwells fully in Him. Similarly, the Holy Spirit, who is not really distinct from the Logos but included in Him, is the mode of God's self-communication. Through Him, God dwells in all creatures and shares His life with all. At the end of the process, the Trinity ceases again.
The Gnostic and theosophical elements that reappeared in the doctrine of the Trinity were further developed later by Boehme,
Zinzendorf, and Swedenborg. In Boehme's thought, the Trinity is the result of a process in which the dark nature, the light of idea, and the will in the Godhead are the foundations and factors. Zinzendorf, while calling himself "most trinitarian," actually operated from a gnostic conception of God. God in Himself was unreachable, hidden, unfathomable, but He reveals Himself in Christ. Christ is the true
Creator of all things, the Jehovah of the Old Testament who became flesh and is the object of our worship. In Him, the Trinity is also revealed, but not with immanent relations of generation, spiration, etc., but as a holy family. The first Person is the Father, the Holy
Spirit is the mother, Christ is the Son, and in that family, the individual believer and the church are included as the bride of the Son, who, like Eve from Adam's side, is created in a wholly realistic manner from the side and blood of Christ.
Swedenborg, even more strongly than Servetus, opposed the doctrine of the Trinity, seeing nothing but tritheism in it. God is one, but He has been revealed in Christ as Father, Son, and Spirit, which are related as soul, body, and the activity emanating from both. This theosophy prepared the doctrine of the Trinity for the new philosophy. In Spinoza's system with its one unchangeable substance, there was still no place for it. In Kant, the three persons are replaced by three qualities; true religion consists in believing in God as holy Lawgiver, good ruler, and just judge. Schleiermacher subjected the dogma of the Trinity to strict criticism and only recognized in it the truth that God is united with humanity, both in the person of Christ and in the communal spirit of the church.
According to Schelling and Hegel, the dogma contained a profound philosophical thought, which they interpreted thus: God is Spirit, thought, idea, and it is therefore part of His nature to represent