THE NEW SCHAPF-HERZOG
nents — was the man Jesus, and then monotheism and the divine dignity of Christ. Hence gradually developed a controversy on the entire theological implication of the first two articles of the rule of faith, which were suspected of both ditheism and reminiscences of Gnosticism. The beginnings of the struggle, which lasted more than a century and a half, are wrapped in obscurity. It may be regarded as the history of the substitution of the preexistent for the historic Christ and as the replacement of the person of Christ by the mystery of the person, or as the victory of Platonism over Aristotelianism in Christian theology.
The term " Monarchians," coined by Tertullian,
denotes the representatives of strict monotheism
in the early Church. This definition,
3. Meaning however, is too narrow, for some, if of "Mon- not all, of the older dynamistic Monarchian." archians assumed two hypostases,
recognizing the Holy Ghost as the eternal Son of God. Since, on the other hand, these binitarians did not consider Jesus as the real incarnation of this Holy Ghost, they were, Christologically, neither trinitarian nor binitarian, but Monarchian. But the term was restricted in the early Church to those who recognized in Christ an incarnation of God the Father; and while the Arians and all who held the acknowledged independence of a divine element in Christ to be a product of the creative activity of the Father may be considered in a sense Monarchians, such an application of the term would lead too far from the ancient connotation and would fail to recognize the limitation of rigid monotheism among even the most radical Arians. It is best, therefore, to apply the term only to those who regarded Jesus either as the man filled with the Holy Ghost and called to be the Son of God (though some considered the Holy Ghost a second hypostasis), or as an incarnation of God the Father.
The Monarchians, arising, as implied above, after the establishment of the anti-Gnostic interpretation of the rule of faith in the Church,
4. Relations must be considered as Catholic. They to the accordingly were in harmony with their
Catholics, opponents except in the points in controversy; and even had traces of pre- Catholic (but not non-Catholic) characteristics, so that their deviations from the Catholic canon point to the period before the formation of this canon, while other " heresies " of the older group must be referred to the formative age of the Catholic Church. The history of the movement is as obscure as its origin. Even the current distinction between dynamistic (or rather adoptian) and modalistic Monarchianism — the former regarding the power or Spirit of God as indwelling in the man Jesus, and the latter considering Jesus as the incarnation of the Godhead — is not free from objections. Though the common bond between the Monarchian systems was their concept of God, and their differences concerned revelation, no strict classification is possible on the basis of the sources thus far known, which consist almost entirely of the accounts of opponents, who garbled, distorted, and misrepresented the doctrines of their antagonists. Both the history and the geography, moreover, of Monarchian-
ism are uncertain, nor are definite dates yet determined for the Alogi, Artemas, Praxeas, Sabellius, or the synods at Antioch against Paul of Samosata.
II. The Alogi (q.v.) of Asia Minor: Hippolytus (quoted by Epiphanius, Hist, eccl., li., and others) and Philastrius (Hcer., lx.) recognize the existence of a sect in Asia Minor to which the former applied the name Alogi (perhaps designedly ambiguous, meaning both " without the Logos " and " irrational ")• Hippolytus also says that they rejected the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse, ascribing them to Cerinthus; of their views on the Johannine Epistles nothing is certainly known, although they probably rejected them also. Besides his Syntagma, Hippolytus wrote a work in defense of the Johannine writings, and apparently a special polemic against the Monarchians, probably in 204- 205. It is clear, from the statements of Hippolytus and Irenaeus {Hist, eccl., III., xi. 9) that the sect existed in Asia Minor between 170 and 180. Belonging to the radical anti-Montanistic party, they sought to exclude all prophecy from the Church, thus proceeding to reject the Gospel of John (and consequently the Logos which it postulates — whence their name) as containing Christ's prophecy of the Paraclete, and the Apocalypse because of its prophetic revelations. They likewise alleged internal evidence, eiscrepancy with the other Gospels, absurdity, and untruthfulness against the two books; and they regarded the Gospel of John as tending to Docetism because of its abrupt transition from the Logos to the ministry of Jesus. They objected to the use of the term Logos, in which they saw Gnosticism, to denote Christ, and to the statement in John they opposed the natural origin given by Mark. Nevertheless, both Hippolytus and Irenaeus considered the Alogi schismatics rather than heretics, the former expressly emphasizing their orthodoxy, except on the points in controversy. Of their Christology nothing is known except that they rejected the concept of the Logos and the birth " from on high," and that, from their antipathy to Gnosticism, their chief interest lay in the human life of Christ. It is also probable that they laid special stress on the events at the baptism of Christ, though this can not be demonstrated. They seem to have been the first within the Church to apply historical criticism to Christian writings and tradition; but how long they existed, or when, how, or by whom they were excluded from the Church in Asia Minor, are all unknown.
III. Adoptionism in the West: Toward the end of the pontificate of Eleutherus or at the beginning of that of Victor (d. 190), Theodotus the tanner went from Byzantium to Rome, and became the founder of dynamistic Monarchianism. He had
probably come into contact with the 1. Theodo- Alogi of Asia Minor, and was a man tus and His of thorough education and highly es- Teachings. teemed. All that is certainly known of him, however, is that he was excommunicated by Victor between 189 and 199 because of the Christology which he taught at Rome. The Philosophumena explicitly affirms Theodotus' orthodoxy in theology and cosmology. In Christology he taught that Jesus was a man born of a