Scripture and God in Christianity

element of the non-Christian Logos doctrine which leads to the total obscuring of the distinction
between Logos and soul in his christology." 520
We can conclude this part of the discussion by the observation that untill the second century
A.D., the Christian God Paradigm in general and the doctrine of Christ's Person were not fixed. It
was flexible, fluid and confusing. The ideas of subordination, derivative and secondary rank of
the Christ were common among thoughtful Christians like Justin and Origin. The traditionalists
as well as the orthodox Church, if we can possibly use the term for convenience purposes, inclined
more towards Unity, Equality and Eternity of the Christ, and that on par with God the Father,
but not without confusions and problems. It seems like Docetism. They were accused of
corporealism, anthropomorphism, and irrationalism by their opponents, as we have already seen
in the case of Celsus.
THE MONARCHIANS:
From the start, the belief that Christ was a god was common among many Christians, especially
the Gentiles. There were many who felt it degrading to assign Jesus a secondary or subordinated
position. To "associate another God with him and particularly to put another God above him offended
them deeply. If it were necessary to recognize a creating as well as saving God, then the
Lord Jesus Christ whom they worshipped, and faith in whom had brought them into the Christian
church, was himself creator as well as saviour; they neither knew nor cared to know any other
God apart from him." 521 There are traces of such tendencies among Christians during Justin's
times who in his Apology makes explicit references to groups such as these. Writing in the early
third century Hippolytus of Rome observed, "Cleomenes and his followers declare that he
(Christ) is the God and Father of the universe." 522 They were later called "Modalist Monarchians".
J.N.D. Kelly well summarizes 'Modalistic Monarchianism' as follows: "This was a fairly widespread,
popular trend of thought which could reckon on, at any rate, a measure of sympathy in official
circles; and the driving-force behind it was the twofold conviction, passionately held, of the
oneness of God and the full deity of Christ. What forced it into the open was the mounting suspicion
that the former of these truths was being endangered by the new Logos doctrine and by the
efforts of theologians to represent the Godhead as having revealed Itself in the economy as tripersonal.
Any suggestion that the Word or Son was other than, or a distinct Person from, the Father
seemed to the modalists (we recall that the ancient view that 'Father' signified the Godhead
Itself was still prevalent) to lead inescapably to blasphemy of two Gods." 523 It was Praxeas (c.
210 C.E.) and then Noetus, both of Asia Minor, who gave this belief a regular theological touch
around 200 A.D. They argued that the whole of God was present in Jesus. It was Sabellius (c.
215 C.E.) who became the most vocal and important theologian of the movement. Their position
was quite simple. There is no God but the one creator and sustainer of the world as stated in the
Scriptures. Christ was God. Then he is that creator whom people call as Father. They made use of
passages of Identity like "I and the Father are one" and stressed absolute likeness and identity of
Jesus with God. Hippolytus quotes them saying," there exists one and same Being, called Father
and Son, not one derived from the other, but himself from himself, nominally called Father and
Son according to changing of times; and that this One is that appeared [ to the patriarchs ], and
64