In Rome Modalism was the doctrine which prevailed from Victor to Calixtus (c. 190-220). The bishops just named protected within the city the schools of Epigonus and Cleomenes, where it was tau g ht that the Son is identical with the Father. But the presbyter Hippolytus was successful in convincing the leaders of that church that the Modalistic doctrine taken in its strictness was contrary to Scripture. Bishop Calixtus saw himself under the necessity of abandoning his friends and setting up a m ediatin g formula designed to harmonize the Trinitarian and the Modalistic positions. But, while excommunicating the strict Unitarians (Monarchians), he also too k the same course with Hippolytus and his followers, declarin g their teachin g to be ditheism. The m ediation formula, however, proposed by Calixtus became the bridge by which, in the course of the decades immediately followin g , the doctrine of the Trinity made its way into the Roman Church. In the year 250, when the Roman presbyter Novatian wrote his book De Trinitate, the doctrine of Hippolytus, once discredited as ditheism, had already become official there. At the same time Rome and m ost of the other churches of the West still retained a certain leaning towards Modalistic monarchianism . This appears, on the one hand, in the use of expressions having a Modalistic ring about them—see especially the poe m s of Commodian, written about the time of Valerian—and, on the other hand, in the rejection of the doctrine that the Son is subordinate to the Father and is a creature (witness the controversy between Dionysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Ro m e), as well as in the readiness of the West to accept the for m ula of Athanasius, that the Father and the Son are one and the same in substance (ὁμοούσιοιo ).

The strict Modalists, whom Calixtus had excommunicated alon g with their most zealous opponent Hippolytus, were led by Sabellius, who was perhaps a Libyan by birth. His party continued to subsist in Rome for a considerable time afterwards, and withstood Calixtus as an unscrupulous apostate. In the West, however, the influence of Sabellius seems never to have been important; in the East, on the other hand, after the middle of the 3d century his doctrine found m uch acceptance, first in the Pentapolis and afterwards in other provinces. It was violently controverted by the bishops, notably by Dionysius of Alexandria, and the development in the East of the philosophical doctrine of the Trinity after Origen (from 260 to 320) was very powerfully influenced by the opposition to Sabellianism. Thus, for example, at the g reat synod held in Antioch in 268 the "word ὁμοούσιος was rejected, as seemin g to favour Unitarianism. The Sabellian doctrine itself, however, durin g the decades above mentioned underwent many chan g es in the East and received a philosophical dress. In the 4th century this and the allied doctrine of Marcellus of Ancyra were frequently confounded, so that it is exceedin g ly difficult to arrive at a clear account of it in its g enuine form . Sabellianism, in fact, became a collective name for all those Unitarian doctrines in which the divine nature of Christ was acknowledged. The teachin g of Sabellius himself was indubitably very closely allied to the older Modalis m (“Patripassianism”) of Noetus and Praxeas, but was distinguished from it by its more careful theological elaboration and by the account it took of the Holy Spirit. His central proposition was to the effect that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same person, three names thus bein g attached to one and the same bein g. What weighed most with Sabellius was the monotheistic interest. The One Bein g was also named by him υἱoπάτωρ ,—an expression purposely chosen to obviate ambiguity. To explain how one and the same being could have various forms of manifestation, he pointed to the tripartite nature of man (body, soul, spirit), and to the sun, which manifests itself as a heavenly body, as a source of li g ht, and also as a source of warmth. He further maintained that God is not at one and the same time Father, Son, and Spirit, but, on the contrary, has been active in three consecutive energies,—first in the prosopon of the Father as Creator, then in the prosopon of the Son as Redeemer, and lastly in the prosopon of the Spirit as the Giver of Life. It is by this doctrine of the succession of the prosopa that Sabellius is essentially distinguished from the older Modalists. In particular it is si g nificant, in conjunction with the reference to the Holy Spirit, that Sabellius re g ards the Father also as merely a form of manifestation of the one God,—in other words, has formally put Him in a position of complete equality with the other Persons. This view prepares the way for Au g ustine’s doctrine of the Trinity. Sabellius himself appears to have made use of Stoical formulas (πλατύvεσθαι, σvστέλλεσθaι ), but he chiefly relied upon Scripture, especially such passages as Deut. vi. 4, Exod. xx. 3, Isa. xliv. 6, John x. 38. Of his later history nothin g is known; his followers died out in the course of the 4th century.

The sources of our knowledge of Sabellianism are Hippolytus (Philos., bk. ix.), Epiphanius (Haer., lxii.), and Dionys. Alex. (Epp.) ; also various passages in Athanasius and the other fathers of the 4th century. For modern discussions of the subject see Schleiermacher (Theol. Ztschr., 1822, hft. 3), Lange (Ztschr. f. hist. Theol., 1832, ii. 2), Döllinger (Hippolyt u. Kallist, 1853), Zahn (Marcell v. Ancyra, 1867), and Harnack (s.v. “Monarchianismus, in Herzog-Plitt, Encykl. f. Prot. Theol,., x. 199 sq.).