Sabellius

Sabellius (fl. ca. 215) was a third-century priest and theologian who most likely taught in Rome, but may have been a North African from Libya. Basil and others call him a Libyan from Pentapolis, but this seems to rest on the fact that Pentapolis was a place where the teachings of Sabellius thrived, according to Dionysius of Alexandria, c. 260. What is known of Sabellius is drawn mostly from the polemical writings of his opponents.

The Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

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' opposition to the emerging idea of the Trinity led to his excommunication as a heretic by Pope Callixtus I (Callistus) in AD 220. Wace and Bunsen have both suggested that Calixtus' action was motivated more by a desire for unity rather than by conviction.

Sabellius taught that God was single and indivisible, with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being three modes or manifestations of one divine Person. A Sabellian modalist would say that the One God successively revealed Himself to man throughout time as the Father in Creation; the Son in Redemption; and the Spirit in Sanctification and Regeneration. (Because of this focus on God's revelation of himself to man, Modalism is often confused with economic Trinitarianism). There is actually no proof that Sabellius taught a sequential modalism. This might have been an exaggeration by trinitarians to make him a heretic.

This understanding has been called Sabellianism and modalistic monarchianism. The suggestion of development and change within the Godhead was seen as contradicting the concept of impassibility. It also stood in contrast to the position of distinct persons existing within a single godhead by representing Father, Son and Spirit as different “modes” (hence the term "modalism"), “aspects” or “faces”, "masks" (persona in Latin) that God presented successively to the world. More importantly it stood against the Trinitarian teaching that "God was one God in Father" rather than One in the Father's essence only.

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