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Did William Branham Teach Oneness?: Difference between revisions
→Concerns with the Oneness doctrine
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:''Sabellius says that Father, Son, and Spirit signify no distinctions in God. Say they are three, and he will scream that you are naming three Gods. Say that in the one essence of God there is a trinity of persons; you will say in one word what Scripture states, and cut short empty talkativeness.<ref> John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volumes 1 & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics, 125 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).</ref> | :''Sabellius says that Father, Son, and Spirit signify no distinctions in God. Say they are three, and he will scream that you are naming three Gods. Say that in the one essence of God there is a trinity of persons; you will say in one word what Scripture states, and cut short empty talkativeness.<ref> John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volumes 1 & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics, 125 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).</ref> | ||
SABELLIANISM. A name given to two very different forms of doctrine, which, however, agreed in this that they denied any real distinction of Persons in God. The Catholic Church teaches that there are three divine Persons really distinct from each other, and yet one God. The Sabellians confessed with Catholics the numerical unity of God, but denied the mystery of the Trinity by explaining away the real distinction of the Persons. | |||
(1) The earliest form of the heresy was Patripassianism. Praxeas, who came from Asia Minor to Rome under Pope Eleutherus (175–189), Noetus of Smyrna, who was excommunicated in his own province about 230, Epigonus and Cleomenes, who transplanted the doctrine of Noetus to Rome, all held that God the Father of all is the only God and that this one God became man, suffered and died. Thus Praxeas held “that the Father came down into a virgin, that He himself was born of her, that He himself suffered: finally, that he himself is Jesus Christ” (Tertull. “Adv. Prax.” 1, and so 28, 29, 30). Pressed to explain how it was that Father and Son could be said on this theory to exist at all after the Incarnation, Praxeas replied that Christ so far as He was flesh was Son, and so far as He was spirit or God was the Father (ib. 27). The tenets of Noetus were precisely the same (Hippolytus, “C. Noet.” ed. Lagarde, “Philosoph.” ix. 7–10). And such also was the original doctrine of Sabellius,a Libyan, who came to Rome under Zephyrinus, was banished from the Roman Church by Callistus, and took refuge in the Libyan Pentapolis. The testimonies as to the original teaching of Sabellins are too early and express to be set aside. “He” (Sabellius) “blasphemes,” says Dionysius, bishop of Rome, in the middle of the third century, “saying that the Son himself is the Father, and vice versâ.” (The Epistle of Dionysius is contained in Athanas. “De Decret. Nicen. Syn.” and edited by Routh, “Rell. Sacr.” vol. iii. p. 373 seq.) Novatian, another author, nearly contemporaneous, speaks of Sabellius as one “who calls Christ the Father” (Novat. “De Trin.” c. 12). The Macrostich, a Semiarian creed of the Eusebians (apud Athanas. “De Synod.” 26), refers to those whom the Latins call the Patripassians and we the Sabellians. So also Athanasius, iii. 36; and Cardinal Newman (“Oxford Translation of St. Athanas.” p. 529) quotes on the same side Euseb. “Eccl. Theol.” i. p. 91; Basil. Ep. 210, 5; Rufin, “In Symb.” 5; August. “Hær.” 41; Theodor. “Hær. Fab.” ii. 9.) | |||
(2) The doctrine of the Sabellians, and perhaps of Sabellius himself, underwent a complete transformation, and resolved the mystery of the Trinity into three manifestations of God to man. It was difficult for Sabellianism, in its original form, to assume even the appearance of conformity to the traditional teaching, embodied in the form of baptism, on the Holy Ghost. A very early author, Dionysius of Alexandria (apud Euseb. “H. E.” vii. 6) reproaches the Sabellians with this very thing, “that they had no idea of the Holy Ghost” (ἀναισθησίαν τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος.) It was conceivable that the Father should have been incarnate in Christ, but there was no room for such an incarnation, and therefore on Sabellian principles for a real existence of the third Person in the Trinity. Hence Sabellius, or at least the Sabellians, came to hold that the same Person is the Holy Ghost so far as He manifests Himself in the Christian Church, and by parity of reasoning Son so far as He appeared in Christ. The same Person or Hypostasis (so Theodor. “Hær. Fab.” ii. 9, reports the doctrine of Sabellius) was Father when He gave the law, Son when He became flesh in Christ, Holy Ghost when He descended on the Apostles, being “one person with three names” (ἓν τριώνυμον πρόσωπον.) He compared the three πρόσωπα or characters of God (Epiphan. “Hær.” 62, 1) to the spherical form, light and heat of the one sun. Such late authorites are not decisive for the supposition that Sabellius himself held this view, but undoubtedly the Sabellians did. Patripassianism was thus avoided altogether; but on the other hand the Incarnation, no less than the Trinity, was in effect deuied, for the manifestation of God in Christ could differ in degree only, and not in kind, from his union with other holy men. This Sabellian doctrine, which takes πρόσωπον or persona in its original meaning of mask, character, &c., has been maintained by many Protestant divines—e.g. by Archbishop Whately in his “Logic.” It is of course completely incompatible with Catholic belief, and is contrary, e.g., to the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel | |||
(3) Closely akin to the later Sabellianism is the doctrine of Marcellus of Ancyra. He was a strenuous defender of the Nicene definition against the Arians, and this and the obscurity of his doctrine account for the fact that he was defended by Pope Julius, the Synod of Sardica, and Athanasius himself (Athanas. “Apol. c. Arian.” 23, 32; “Ep. ad Monach. et Hist. Arian.” 6.) He made the Λόγος a mere attribute of God like the reason of man, manifesting itself in the creation, in the incarnation, and in the sanctification of Christians. (Theodor. “Hær. Fab.” ii. 10). In Christ the Word dwelt with extraordinary power, to retire from him at the consummation of all things, when the manhood of Christ would no longer reign. (Euseb. “Adv. Marcell.” ii. 2–4; “Eccl. Theol.” iii. 8–17.) | |||
William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, Sixth Edition, With Additions, 730-31 (New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co., 1887). | |||
=William Branham and Modalism= | =William Branham and Modalism= | ||