Sabellianism

In Christianity, Sabellianism is the Eastern Church equivalent to Patripassianism in the Western Church, which are both forms of theological modalism. Condemned as heresy, Modalism is the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three different modes of God, as opposed to a Trinitarian view of three distinct persons within the Godhead. However, Von Mosheim, German Lutheran theologian who founded the pragmatic school of church historians, argues that Sabellius "believed the distinction of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, described in the Scriptures, to be a real distinction, and not a mere appellative or nominal one." The term Sabellianism comes from Sabellius, who was a theologian and priest from the 3rd century. None of his writings have survived, and all that is known about him comes from his opponents. The majority believe that Sabellius held Jesus to be deity while denying the plurality of persons in God and holding a belief similar to modalistic monarchianism. While Sabellius did maintain that only one divine Person existed, he used the word person as synonym for nature:"Sabellius held to the simple unity of the person and nature of God." Since the distinction between ousia (substance) and hypostasis (person) (both of which mean ‘something that subsists’) was worked out only in the late fourth century, Sabellius used the word person in a different sense. But Sabellius did describe God as three in one sense but one in another. Modalistic monarchianism has been generally understood to have arisen during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and to have been regarded as heresy after the 4th, although this is disputed by some. Sabellianism has been rejected by the majority of Christian churches in favour of Trinitarianism, which was eventually defined as three distinct, co-equal, co-eternal persons of one substance by the Athanasian Creed, probably dating from the late 5th or early 6th century. The Greek term homoousian or (ὁμοούσιος 'consubstantial') had been used before its adoption by the First Council of Nicaea.