Scripture and God in Christianity

submitted to birth from a virgin, and conversed as man among men. On account of his birth that
has taken place he confessed himself to be the Son to those who saw him, while to those who
could receive it he did not hid the fact that he was the Father." 524 Epiphanius quotes Sabellians as
saying, "Do we have one God or three?" If one, then words of Isaiah 44:6 applied also to Christ:
"Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I
am the last; beside me there is no God." 525
Kelly observes that we cannot be sure of all the details of the position ascribed to Sabellius as
"Most of the surviving evidence dates from a century or more after his lifetime, when his theology
and that of the much more familiar Marcellus of Ancyra were hopelessly confused. One
point which seems to be established is that the traditional belief that he spoke of Father, Son and
Spirit as three prosopa, in the sense of masks or outward appearances, is erroneous. The term...
was used by Hippolytus to signify the otherness, or separate subsistence, of the Son, as revealed
in the economy, from the father, and it is most unlikely that Sabellius used it with a diametrically
opposite meaning. Indeed, Hippolytus clearly implies that for Callistus, whom he regarded as a
Sabellian, the Godhead was but a single prosopon, i.e. individual or Person." 526 It seems that Sabellians,
as they were called, were interested in monotheism. "It was his interest in monotheism"
observes Harnack, "that influenced Sabellius." 527 They accused orthodox Christians, as Tertullian
reports, of polytheism, "they accuse us of preaching two and three Gods while they claim that
they are worshippers of one God." 528 As a result, Tertullian gave them the name "Monarchians"
which has clung to them to this day. Historically they are called the 'Modalist Monarchians'.
This extreme position and preciseness in regards to Jesus' relationship with God may have been
an off-shoot of orthodox teachings and underlying ambiguity, as Harnack observes: "many facts
observed in reference to the earliest bodies of Monarchians that come clearly before us, seem to
prove that they bore features which must be characterized as pre-Catholic, but not un-Catholic."
529 Worshipping Jesus with absolute titles like the Lord and explicitly calling him God could
have led anybody to eradicate the distinction between Jesus and God. We are told that phrases
such as "God is born," "the suffering God," or "the dead God" were so widespread among Christians
that even Tertullian, for all his hostility to the Modolist Monarchians, could not escape using
them. Therefore, "taken as it stands, that is, as Hippolytus and Tertullian have reported it,
this doctrine of the relation between Christ and God turns out to have been a systematization of
popular Christian belief." 530 It was a bold step towards giving a precise theological color to the
rather ambiguous Christian devotional language but the Church could not accept it because of its'
implications. It was nothing but naive anthropomorphism and patripassianism. Though it safeguarded
Jesus' deity as well as monotheism, the objective for which the Church had been aspiring,
the Church could not approve of it in such bold terms because of its' subtle implications.
Linwood Urban observes that "If the whole of God is present in the historic Jesus, the transcendence
of God is nullified. The Pre-Nicene solution asserts that there is part of God which is not
incarnate, and so allows for God to transcend his presence in Jesus." 531
In his work Against Praxeas Tertullian explains the reason arguing, "How is it that the omnipotent,
invisible God, whom no man hath seen or can see, who inhabiteth light inaccessible...how is
it, I say, that the Most High should have walked at evening in paradise seeking Adam,...unless
these things were an image and a type and an allegory? These things indeed could not have been
65