Two early errors: modalism and subordinationism

Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 3.4

What you will learn

• Define modalism and subordinationism and name the people most associated with each.
• Explain why the church judged each to be a failure to do justice to the biblical witness.
• See how the two errors are opposite mistakes made in trying to protect the unity of God and the distinctness of the persons.
• Use the two errors as a test of whether a modern statement about the Trinity falls into either one.

The big idea

Most attempts to explain the Trinity can fail in two directions. One error protects the unity of God by saying that Father, Son and Spirit are not really distinct, only three names or modes of one God. This is modalism. The other protects the distinction by making the Son and Spirit lesser beings than the Father, so that they are not fully God. This is subordinationism in its strong form. The church rejected both, and the doctrine of the Trinity can be read as the path between them.

Key terms

Modalism

The teaching that Father, Son and Spirit are three modes, roles or appearances of one God who is a single person.

Sabellianism

A name for modalism, from Sabellius, a teacher in Rome in the early third century.

Patripassianism

From Latin for the Father suffers. A charge against those who said the Father himself suffered on the cross.

Monarchianism

A name for views that stress the single rule (monarchy) of God. It took two forms: modalist and adoptionist.

Adoptionism

The teaching that Jesus was a man who was adopted as God’s Son at his baptism or later, rather than being the eternal Son.

Subordinationism

A name for views in which the Son or Spirit is placed below the Father. It can mean order or rank, or a difference of being.

Economic and ontological subordination

Subordination of role (the Son obeys the Father in the work of salvation) as against subordination of being (the Son is lesser in nature).

Origen

A third-century scholar of Alexandria and Caesarea, whose thought on the Son is sometimes called subordinationist.

Background

In the late second and the early third centuries many Christians were most anxious about preserving the unity of God. Pagan critics accused them of worshiping several gods. Some Christians, called monarchians because they stressed God’s single rule, tried to protect this unity by teaching that the Father, Son and Spirit are not three. Two types appeared. One said that Jesus was a man filled with divine power, and the other said that Father, Son and Spirit were modes of one person.

Modalism was taught by Noetus of Smyrna, and by Praxeas, whom Tertullian answered. In Rome, Sabellius taught a form of it in the early third century and was condemned by Pope Callistus, though Callistus was also criticized by Hippolytus for being too soft on him. The fullest early refutation is Tertullian’s Against Praxeas. The same issue returned in the fourth century in the dispute with Marcellus of Ancyra, who was accused of Sabellian leanings.

Subordinationism is harder to date and define, because it was not a single movement. It reflects the widespread early habit of speaking of the Father as the source and the Son as derived. In moderate forms it was common among the pre-Nicene writers. In strong forms it led to Arius, the subject of module 4. The church did not condemn all subordinating language, but it rejected the claim that the Son is less than the Father in his nature.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Modalism

Modalists argued from the unity of God and from texts such as Isaiah 44:6 and John 10:30, I and my Father are one. They taught that the one God appears in different modes: as Father in creation, as Son in redemption and as Spirit in sanctification. A man may be a father, a son and a husband without being three men. The comparison is often used by modern Christians, who may not know it is an old error.

Critics saw that the idea cannot do justice to the gospel scenes in which Jesus prays to the Father, is sent by him and speaks of the Spirit as another Comforter (John 14:16). At the baptism of Jesus three are present in the same moment. On the modalist view, the Father would be praying to himself. And on the cross the Father would be suffering and abandoning himself. Tertullian mocked this, saying the modalists had crucified the Father. Whether the charge was fair to them is debated, but it identifies the problem.

Step 2: Adoptionism

A second monarchian view said that Jesus was a mere man, perhaps born of a virgin, on whom the Spirit descended at the baptism. Theodotus of Byzantium taught this around 190, and Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, taught a version of it in the third century and was deposed around 268. Adoptionists protected the unity of God by denying the divinity of Christ.

The church rejected this because the New Testament speaks of the Son as pre-existent and as agent of creation (John 1:1 to 3, Colossians 1:16). It also affirmed that worship of Jesus would be idolatry if he were only a man. This error is the root of later Christologies that stressed his humanity at the expense of his deity.

Step 3: Subordinationism

Many pre-Nicene writers spoke of the Father as the source and of the Son as coming from him, and they sometimes used language that placed the Son in a second rank. Origen taught that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, which was an important protection against the idea that the Son began, but he also described the Son as a second God and as less than the Father in some respects. Scholars debate how to read him. Some think his thought was the beginning of the Nicene idea of the Son as eternally begotten, while others see it as seeds of Arianism.

The distinction between two kinds of subordination helps. If subordination means that in the work of salvation the Son obeys the Father and is sent by him, then it is taught in the New Testament (for example John 6:38). If it means that the Son is less than the Father in being, nature or divinity, then the church ruled it out. Modern debate continues about whether role subordination is eternal in God or belongs to the time of the Incarnation.

Step 4: Between two errors

The errors can be seen as mirror images. Modalism keeps the unity at the expense of the distinction. Subordinationism keeps the distinction at the expense of the full deity of the Son and Spirit. The later doctrine sets three claims side by side: there is one God; Father, Son and Spirit are really distinct; each is fully God. The words used to express this, such as person and substance, are in a sense tools to hold the three claims together.

Many popular illustrations of the Trinity fall into one error or the other. The picture of water as ice, liquid and steam is modalist, since the same water is only in one state at a time. The picture of an egg as shell, white and yolk makes the three persons parts, which is another problem. Teachers of the church often say that no illustration is adequate, and that the best use of an illustration is to reveal how it fails.

1. What picture of the Trinity do I naturally use, and does it lean toward one error?
2. Why do I think Christians feel the pull of both extremes?
3. How do the scenes of Jesus praying challenge the idea that the persons are only modes?
4. What does it mean that the Son obeys the Father if he is not lesser in nature?
5. How should I treat a modern writer who uses language the early church would worry about?
6. Where does my own prayer treat the Father, Son and Spirit as distinct?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic doctrine rejects modalism and subordination of being as errors against the Trinity. The Catechism affirms that the three persons are really distinct from one another and that each is fully God. Catholic theologians accept that the Son is from the Father, in the order of origin, but not lesser.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology speaks of the monarchy of the Father, meaning that the Father is the source of the Son and the Spirit, while rejecting any lesser divinity for them. Orthodox writers insist on the distinctness of the persons to guard against modalism, which they associate with certain Western ways of speaking.

Protestant

Protestants hold the Nicene faith and reject both errors, but some modern evangelical writers hold a view of eternal functional subordination of the Son. Others, among them many evangelical scholars, argue that this view goes too close to the old error. The debate flared in the early 2000s and remains active.

Oneness Pentecostal

Oneness Pentecostals hold that God is one person who has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that Jesus is the name of this God. They deny that this is the old error and appeal to Acts and the Gospels. The historic churches judge it to be a form of modalism.

Critical scholarship

Historians note that the early monarchians were often sincere defenders of the unity of God against what they saw as ditheism. Some scholars argue that the church’s condemnation made it difficult to see how reasonable the worry was at the time. The debate about whether pre-Nicene thought was subordinationist is also ongoing.

Why it matters

These two errors have not gone away. They return every time a teacher uses an illustration of the Trinity, every time someone says the Father, Son and Spirit are just different names for God, and every time someone says Jesus is a divine being but less than God. Knowing the pattern helps a student recognize it, and helps explain why the creeds are worded as they are.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Which error do you think is more tempting in your own church or family, and why?
2. Is there a use of any illustration of the Trinity you have heard that now seems problematic?
3. How does the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3 count against modalism?

Independent assignment

Testing illustrations

In your own notebook, write about 400 words. List four illustrations of the Trinity you have heard or can think of. For each, say whether it leans toward modalism, toward making the persons into parts or separate gods, or toward subordination, and explain why. End with a paragraph on what use, if any, an illustration can still have. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study

• Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics Read for Tertullian’s way of testing teachers against the rule of faith.
• Origen, On First Principles (De Principiis) Read Book I, chapters 2 and 3, on the Son and the Spirit.
• J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines Read the section on monarchianism.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Trinity See how modern philosophers describe the risk of the two errors.
• John 10:30 I and my Father are one.
• John 14:16 Another Comforter.
• Matthew 3:16 Son, Spirit and the voice of the Father at the baptism.
• John 6:38 I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will.