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SABELLIUS (fl. 230)
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See also:SABELLIUS (fl. 230) , See also:early See also:Christian See also:presbyter and theologian, was of Libyan origin, and came from the Pentapolis to See also:Rome early in the 3rd See also:century. To understand his position a brief See also:review of the Christian thought of the See also:time is necessary. Even after the elimination of See also:Gnosticism the See also: The See also:mediation formula, however, proposed by Calixtus became the See also:bridge by which, in the course of the decades immediately following, the doctrine of the Trinity made its way into the See also:Roman Church. In the See also:year 250, when the Roman presbyter Novatian wrote his See also:book De Trinitate, the doctrine of Hippolytus, once discredited as ditheism, had already become See also:official there. At the same time Rome and most of the other churches of the See also:West still retained a certain leaning towards Modalistic See also:monarchianism. This appears, on the one hand, in the use of expressions having a Modalistic See also:ring about them—see especially the poems of Commodian, written about the time of See also:Valerian—and, on the other hand, in the rejection of the doctrine that the Son is subordinate to the Father and is a creature (See also:witness the controversy between See also:Dionysius of See also:Alexandria and Dionysius of Rome), as well as in the readiness of the West to accept the formula of See also:Athanasius, that the Father and the Son are one and the same in substance (dµoouoaot). The strict Modalists, whom Calixtus had excommunicated along with their most zealous opponent Hippolytus, were led by Sabellius. His party continued to subsist in Rome for a considerable time afterwards,' and withstood Calixtus as an unscrupulous apostate. In the West, however, the See also:influence of Sabellius seems never to have been important; in the. See also:East, on the other hand, after the See also:middle of the 3rd century his doctrine found much See also:acceptance, first in the Pentapolis and afterwards in other provinces? It was violently controverted by the bishops, notably by Dionysius of Alexandria, and the development in the East of the philosophical doctrine of the Trinity after Origen (from 26o to 320) was very powerfully influenced by the opposition to Sabellianism. Thus, for example, at the See also:great See also:synod held in See also:Antioch in 268 the word bpoof o tos was rejected, as seeming to favour See also:Unitarianism. The Sabellian doctrine itself, however, during the decades above mentioned underwent many changes in the East and received a philosophical See also:dress. In the 4th century this and the allied doctrine of See also:Marcellus of See also:Ancyra were frequently confounded, so that it is exceedingly difficult to arrive at a clear See also:account of it in its genuine See also:form. Sabellianism, in fact, became a collective name for all those Unitarian doctrines in which the divine nature of Christ was acknowledged. The teaching of Sabellius himself was very closely allied to the older Modalism (" Patripassianism ") of See also:Noetus and Praxeas, but was distinguished from it by its more careful theological elaboration and by the account it took of the Holy Spirit. His central proposition was to the effect that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same See also:person, three names thus being attached to one and the same being. What weighed most with Sabellius was the monotheistic See also:interest.. The One Being was also named by him vicnrlerwp—an expression purposely chosen to obviate See also:ambiguity. To explain how one and the same being could have various forms of manifestation, he pointed to the tripartite nature of man (See also:body, soul, spirit), and to the See also:sun, which manifests itself as a heavenly body, as a source of See also:light and also as a. source of warmth. He further maintained that God is not at one and the same time Father, Son and Spirit, but, on the contrary, has been active in three apparently consecutive manifestations or energies—first in the 7rpboo nrov of the Father as Creator and Lawgiver, then in the rpbrwsrry of the Son as Redeemer, and lastly in the srpbew7rov of the Spirit as the Giver of See also:Life. It is by this doctrine of the See also:succession of the rrpbewTra that Sabellius is distinguished from the older Modalists. In particular it is significant, in See also:conjunction with the reference to the Holy Spirit, that Sabellius regards the Father also as merely a form of manifestation of the one God—in other words, has formally put Him in a position of See also:complete equality with the other Persons. This view prepares the way for See also:Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity. Sabellius himself appears to have made use of Stoical formulas (7XarbvecOai,cucriXXeo-Oal), but he chiefly relied upon Scripture, especially such passages as Dent. vi. 4; Exod. xx. 3; Isa. xliv. 6; See also: Theol. 1832, ii. 2) ; See also:Dollinger (Hippolyt u. Kallist. 1853), Zahn (Marcell v. Ancyra, 1867) ; R. L. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation (1896) ; various histories of See also:Dogma, and See also:Harnack (s.v. " Monarchianismus," in See also:Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. See also:fur prot. Theol. and Kirche, xiii. 303). (A. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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