Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
That which has thereby become manifest, the man Jesus, is the Son. It therefore cannot be said that the Father as such has suffered, but rather that the Father has suffered in and with the Son. Decidedly Monarchian as this formula of compromise undoubtedly is, it seems to have afforded the bridge upon which the official Roman theology crossed over to the homoousian Hypostasianism which forty years later won the day (§ 33, 7). Among the opposing parties it found no acceptance. Hippolytus denounced the bishop as a Noëtian, while the Noëtians nicknamed him a Dytheist. The result was that the two party leaders, Sabellius and Hippolytus, were excommunicated. The latter formed the company of his adherents in Rome into a schismatic sect.
§ 33.6. Beryllus and Origen.—Beryllus of Bostra93 in Arabia also belonged to the Patripassians; but he marks the transition to a nobler Modalism, for though he refuses to the deity of Christ the ἰδία θεότης, he designates it πατρικὴ θεότης, and sees in it a new form of the manifestation (πρόσωπον) of God. In regard to him an Arabian Synod was held in A.D. 244, to which Origen was invited. Convinced by him of his error, Beryll [Beryllus] retracted.—All previous representatives of the hypostasis of the Logos had understood his hypostatizing as happening in time for the purpose of the creation and the incarnation. Origen removed this restriction when he enunciated the proposition: The Son is from eternity begotten of the Father and so from eternity an hypostasis. The generation of the Son took not place simply as the condition of creation, but as of itself necessary, for where there is light there must be the shedding forth of rays. But because the life of God is bound to no time, the objectivizing of His life in the Son must also lie outside of all time. It is not therefore an act of God accomplished once and for ever, but an eternally continued exercise of living power (ἀεὶ γεννᾲ τὸν υἱόν). Origen did not indeed get beyond subordinationism, but he restricted it within the narrowest possible limits. He condemns the expression that the Son is ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός, but only in opposition to the Gnostic theories of emanation. He maintained a ἑτερότης τῆς οὐσίας, but only in opposition to the ὁμοούσιος in the Patripassian sense. He teaches a generation of the Son ἐκ τοῦ θελήματος θεοῦ, but only because he sees in Him the objectified divine will. He calls Him a κτίσμα, but only in so far as He is θεοποιούμενος, not αὐτόθεος, though indeed the Son is αὐτοσοφία, αὐτοαλήθεια, δεύτερος θεός. Thus what he teaches is not a subordination of essence or nature, but only of existence or origin.
§ 33.7. Sabellius and Dionysius of Alex. and Dionysius of Rome.—We have already seen that Sabellius had founded in Rome a speculative Manichæan system, which found much favour among the bishops of his native region. His assigning an essential and necessary place in his system to the Holy Spirit indicates an important advance. God is a unity (μονάς) admitting of no distinctions, resting in Himself as θεὸς σιωπών coming forth out of Himself (for the purpose of creation) as θεὸς λαλῶν. In the course of the world’s development the Monas for the sake of redemption assumes necessarily three different forms of being (ὀνόματα πρόσωπα), each of which embraces in it the complete fulness of the Monas. They are not ὑποστάσεις, but πρόσωπα, masks, we might say roles, which the God who manifests Himself in the world assumes in succession. After the prosopon of the Father accomplished its work in the giving of the law, it fell back into its original condition; advancing again through the incarnation as Son, it returns by the ascension into the absolute being of the Monas; it reveals itself finally as the Holy Spirit to return again, after securing the perfect sanctification of the church, into the Monas that knows no distinctions, there to abide through all eternity. This process is characterized by Sabellius as an expansion (ἔκτασις) and contraction (συστολή). By way of illustration he uses the figure of the sun ὄντος μὲν ἐν μίᾳ ὑποστάσει, τρεῖς δὲ ἔχοντος τὰς ἐνεργείας, namely τὸ τῆς περιφερείας σχῆμα, τὸ φωτιστικὸν καὶ τὸ θάλπον.—At a Synod of Alexandria in A.D. 261 Dionysius the Great (§ 31, 6) entered the lists against the Sabellianism of the Egyptian bishops, and with well-intentioned zeal employed subordinationist expressions in a highly offensive way (ξένον κατ’ οὐσίαν αὐτὸν εἶναι τοῦ Πατρὸς ὥσπερ ἐστὶν ὁ γεωργὸς πρὸς τὴν ἄμπελον καὶ ὁ ναυπηγὸς πρὸς τὸ σκάφος—ὡς ποίημα ὢν οὐκ ἦν πρὶν γέννηται). When bishop Dionysius of Rome (A.D. 259–268) was informed of these proceedings he condemned his Alexandrian colleague’s modes of expression at a Synod at Rome in A.D. 262, and issued a tract (Ἀνατροπή), in which against Sabellius he affirmed hypostasianism and against the Alexandrians, notwithstanding the suspicion of Manichæanism that hung about it, the doctrine of the ὁμοουσία and the eternal generation of the Son. With a beautiful modesty Dionysius of Alexandria retracted his unhappily chosen phrases and declared himself in thorough agreement with the Roman exposition of doctrine.
§ 33.8. Paul of Samosata.—In Rome and throughout the West general dynamical Monarchianism expired with Artemon and his party. In the East, however, it was revived by Paul of Samosata, in A.D. 260 bishop of the Græco-Syrian capital Antioch, which, however, was then under the rule of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. Attaching himself to the other dynamists, especially the Theodotians and Artemonites, he went in many respects beyond them. Maintaining as they did the unipersonality of God (ἓν πρόσωπον), he yet admitted a distinction of Father, Son (λόγος) and Spirit (σοφία) the two last, however, being essentially identical attributes of the first, and also the distinction of the λόγος προφορικός from the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the one being the ἐπιστήμη ἀνυπόστατος operative in the prophets, the other the ἐπ. ἀνυπ. latent in God. Further, while placing like the dynamists the personality of Christ in His humanity and acknowledging His supernatural birth from the Holy Spirit by the Virgin, he conceived of Him, like the modern Socinians, as working the way upward, ἐκ προκοπῆς τεθεοποιῆσθαι, i.e. by reason of His unique excellence to divine rank and the obtaining of the divine name.—Between A.D. 264–269 the Syrian bishops held three large Synods in regard to him at Antioch, to which also many other famous bishops of the East were invited. The first two were without result, for he knew how to conceal the heterodox character of his views. It was only at the third that the presbyter Malchion, a practised dialectician and formerly a rhetorician, succeeded in unmasking him at a public disputation. The Synod now declared him excommunicated and deprived him of his office, and also transmitted to all the catholic churches, first of all to Rome and Alexandria, the records of the disputation together with a complete report in which he was described as a proud, vain, pompous, covetous and even immoral man (§ 39, 3). Nevertheless by the favour of the Queen he kept possession of his bishopric, and holding a high office at the court he exercised not only spiritual functions but also great civil authority. But when Zenobia was overcome by Aurelian in A.D. 272, the rest of the bishops accused him before the pagan emperor, who decided that the ecclesiastical buildings should be made over to that one of the contending bishops whom the Christian bishops of Rome and Italy should recognise. In these conflicts undoubtedly a national and political antagonism lay behind the dogmatic and ecclesiastical dispute (§ 31, 9e).—At the Synod of A.D. 269 the expression ὁμοούσιος, which since it had been first used by Sabellius was always regarded with suspicion in church circles, was dragged into the debate and expressly condemned; and so it is doubtful whether Paul himself had employed it, or whether, on the contrary, he wished to charge his opponents with heresy as being wont to use this term.
§ 33.9. Chiliasm or the doctrine of an earthly reign of the Messiah in the last