A. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND UNITARIANISM

Unitarianism — known also as Monarchianism and Anti-Trinitarianism — has appeared in various forms. For practical purposes the Monarchians have been divided into two classes, modal and dynamic. The Modalists of the third century held that God is a Unity () and therefore unipersonal. This unipersonal God has revealed Himself successively in three different modes, or forms: In the Father as Creator, in the Son as Redeemer, and in the Holy Ghost as Sanctifier. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not three distinct Persons, or hypostases, but merely three roles, or parts (), played by the one divine. Person. Modal Monarchianism as advocated by Noetus of Smyrna, the Patripassian Praxeas, and especially Sabellius (excommunicated 260), at first appealed to many because it not only upheld monotheism over against pagan polytheism, but also taught a certain trinity in God’s mode of revelation and apparently also emphasized the deity of Christ. Dynamic Monarchianism, on the other hand, teaches that Jesus was a mere man, who was pre-eminently endowed by the indwelling of the Logos, a power [dynamis] emanating from the unipersonal God. Likewise the Holy Spirit is only a divine power operative in Moses, the Prophets, and particularly in Jesus. The three divine names are therefore actually no more than the personification of such divine attributes as omnipotence, love, grace. Jesus may be called the Son of God because, under the Logos influence, He was able to establish a moral union with God, i. e., His will was in perfect agreement with God’s will. As a result of the indwelling of the Logos and the Holy Spirit, Jesus was “adopted” as God’s Son (Adoptionism), received the power to perform miracles, and ultimately attained a permanent oneness with God. Dynamic Monarchianism was repudiated by the Church when its chief representative, Paul of Samosata, was excommunicated in 272. While Modalism and Dynamism differ in many important points, they are agreed in their categorical denial of the three distinct Persons in God. The Photinians, adherents of Photinus (bishop of Sirmium, d. 366 A.D.) were anti-Trinitarians; their teaching was revived by the Socinians of the 16th century. In our day all those Protestant theologians who reject the doctrine of “the two natures” in Christ, or the “enhypostasia” of the human nature of Christ, holding that the human nature of Christ is a person by itself, distinct from the Person of the Son of God, are to be classed with the Unitarians. When Seeberg, e.g., says (in Grundwahrheiten, p. 115): “This eternal energy of love [God’s] so filled the human soul of Jesus that it became its content. This is the deity of Christ,” he might be classed as a Dynamic Monarchian.12 Most of the English, American, and German Unitarians are Dynamic Monarchians.

The Christian Church has always successfully met and overcome Unitarianism by the following three Scripture proofs:

a. The names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost can denote only three self-subsisting persons, drei Ich. No one who hears these names of God will think of three modes of appearance or three activities of the same person.

b. Personal actions, such as knowing, willing, teaching, reproving, speaking, are ascribed to each of the three, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Scripture says that the Father and the Son “know” (, Matt. 11:27); that the Son “declares” (, John 1:18), and “wills” (, John 17:24; Luke 22:42); that the Holy Ghost “teaches” (, John 14:26); “reproves” (, John 16:8); “speaks” (, Acts 28:25). All these predicates denote personal acts. Here the axioms apply: Actiones semper sunt personarum sive suppositorum intelligentium. Opera sunt personis propria.

c. Scripture expressly describes the relation between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as . In His relation to the Son, the Father is expressly called ;13 and again, in His relation to the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost is expressly called (John 14:16). The Athanasian Creed therefore says correctly: Alia est persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti. The Augustana reproduces the ecclesiastical usus loquendi of “person” fully when it states: “And the term ‘person’ they use as the Fathers have used it, to signify not a part or quality in another, but that which subsists of itself” (Art. I).14