But whatever its origin in its development, Monarch- ianism must be carefully distinguished among two oj)- posite classes claiming to be Monarchians : the rational- istic or dynamic Monarchians, who denied the divinity of Christ, or explained it as a mere power (^Avvafiic) ; and the patripassiau Monarchians, who identified the Son with the Father, and admitted at most only a modal trinity, a threefold mode of revelation. "The first form of this heresy," says Schaff, " involved in the ab- stract Jewish monotheism, deistically sundered the di- vine and the human, and rose little above Ebionism. The second proceeded, at least in part, from pantheistic preconceptions, and approached the ground of Gnostic docetism. The one prejudiced the dignity of the Son, the other the dignity of the Father ; yet the latter was by far the more profound and Christian, and according- ly mei with the greater acceptance."
1. The Monarchians of the first class saw in Christ a
mere man, filled with divine power; but conceived this
divine power as operative in him, not from the baptism
only, according to the Ebionitish view, but from the
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beginning; and admitted his supernatural generation by the Holy Ghost. To this class belong :
(1) The A logians, a heretical sect in Asia Minor about A.D. 170, of which very little is known. See Alogians.
(2) The Theodotians, so called from their founder, Theodotus, who flourished near the close of the 2d century. He denied Christ in a persecution, with the apology that he only denied a man ; but still held him to be the supernaturally begotten Messiah, He taught that Jesus was born of the Virgin according to the will of the Father, and that at his baptism the higher Christ descended upon him. But this higher Christ Theodo- tus conceived as the Son of him who was at once the Supreme God and the Creator of the world, and not (with Cerinthus and other Gnostics) as the son of a deity superior to the God of the Jews. See Theodo- tians.
(3) The A rtemonites, or adherents of Artemon, who came out somewhat later at Rome with a similar opin- ion, declaring the doctrine of the divinity of Christ an innovation, and a relapse to heathen polytiieism. They asserted that until the time of Victor, bishop of Rome, their doctrine was the reigning one in the Roman Church, and that it was first proscribed by Victor's suc- cessor, Zephyrinus (after A.D. 200). This was an un- reasonable charge, but may have been made jjossible by the indefiniteness of the earliest formulas of the Christian Church. The Artemonites were charged with placing EucUd and Aristotle above Christ, and esteem- ing mathematics and dialectics above the Gospel. See Artemonites.
(4) Paid of Samosafa, bishop of Antioch in the sec- ond half of the 3d century, who denied the personality of the Logos and of the Holy Ghost, and considered them merely powers of God, like reason and mind in man ; but granted that the Logos dwelt in Christ in larger measure than in any former messenger of God ; anil taught, like the Socinians in later times, a gradual elevation of Christ, determined by his own moral devel- opment, to divine dignity (a ^toTroit]aie t/c irpoKonriQ). His overthrow by the emperor Aurelius in 272 decided the fall of the Monarchians, though they still appear at the end of the 4th century as condemned heretics, under the name of Samosatenians (q. v.), Paulianists (q. v.), and Sahellians (q. v.).
2. The second class of ISIonarchians, called by Ter- tullian Patripassians (as afterwards a branch ^ the Monophysites was called Theopaschites), together with their unitarian zeal, felt the deaper Christian impulse to hold fast the divinity of Christ; but they sacrificed to it his independent personality, which they merged in the essence of the Father.
(1) The first prominent advocate of this class of Mo- narchians, rather than the founder of Monarchianism, was Praxeas, of whom we have already spoken above. No'etiis of Smyrna, who differed but little from Praxeas, is frequently recognised as the leader of a branch of this class; and Callistus (pope Calixtns I), who adopted and advocated the doctrines of Noetus, as the leader of a third branch. Those who strictly followed him were called Callistians, in distinction from the direct follow- ers of Noetus, who were called NoUiam (q. v.). Noetus taught (according to Hippolytus, Philos. ix, 7 sq.) that the one God who created the world, though in himself invisible, had yet from most ancient times appeared from time to time, according to his good pleasure, to righteous men ; and that this same God had himself be- come also the Son, when it pleased him to submit to being born ; he was consequently his own son, and iu this ^identity of the Father and the Son consisted the " monarchia" of God. An associate and disciple of No- etus was Epigonus, who brought the doctrine he pro- fessed to Rome ; and his pupil, again, was Cleomenes, who defended the doctrine of Noetus m the time of bish- op Zephyrinus, the successor of Victor. With this Cle- omenes, according to Hyppolytus, Callistus, the successor of Zephyrinus, was on" terms of friendship, and was of
MONARCHIAXS
450
MONARCHIANS
like opinions. Callistus decbred the Son to be merely the manifestation of the Father in human form ; the Father animating the Son, as the spirit animates the body (John xiv, 11), and suffering with him on the cross. "The Father," says he, " wlio was in the Son, took fiesh and made it God, uniting it with himself, and made it one. Father and Son were therefore the name of the one God, and this one person {npoaojTzop) cannot be two ; thus the Father suffered with the Son." After tlie death of this pope, Patripassianism virtually disappear- ed from the Koman Church.