Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Why are Sabbelianism, Modalism, Monarchianism and Patripassianism all wrong?

  • One: Rahner's determined identification of the economic Trinity with the immanent Trinity.
    • If Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not characteristics of God in his eternal nature, God is not revealed in our salvation.
      • The Father is not really Abba.
      • The Son is not begotten eternally.
      • The Spirit does not eternally proceed from the Father.
    • In what sense then could Christ be the self-revelation of God? We might say he is God, and is loving and saves us but what more could we say?
    • It would almost seem deceitful, that what God has shown us of himself is not true of his essence.
    • I feel there is something missing here ... suggestions?
  • Two: Apollinarianism.
    • If Christ's person cannot be distinguished from the Father, we cannot define Jesus' divinity in terms of his personal relation with the Father. After all, in this scheme he is the Father.
      • We cannot say that Jesus is divine because he is the same person as the Logos, or pre-existent Son of God, and therefore in both his pre-existent and earthly life had the same relationship to the Father.
    • This would mean we would have to define Jesus divinity as consisting in an internal continuity with his pre-existent life - as the Father in this case.
    • Why is this a problem?
      • Because once you begin to posit something which Jesus carried over from his pre-existent life, you begin to say that Jesus had something which normal humans don't. In Apollinarianism the Divine Logos replaced Christ's mind. While we are not in danger of saying this, we risk making the same mistake - that something divine was carried over from the pre-existent life therefore making Christ superhuman and undermining the incarnation.