In this article, we will spotlight the
early monotheistic Christian denominations. We do not mean by
“monotheistic” that all of those denominations believed in pure
monotheism just as Muslims do, but that they were generally closer to
monotheism and farther away from the Trinity.
The Early Monotheistic Christian Denominations
Ebionitism
There were monotheistic Christian denominations since of the dawn of Christianity
It is a Jewish Christian movement that
existed during the early centuries of the Christian era. They regarded
Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah while rejecting his divinity and
insisted on the necessity of following Jewish law and rites. The
Ebionites used only one of the Jewish Gospels, revered James the Just,
and rejected Paul the Apostle as an apostate from the Law.
There is possible reference to Ebionite
communities, existing some time around the 11th century, in northwestern
Arabia, in Sefer Ha’masaot, the “Book of the Travels” of Rabbi Benjamin
of Tudela, a rabbi from Spain. These communities were located in two
cities: Tayma and Tilmas, possibly Sa`dah in Yemen.
The majority of Church Fathers agree
that the Ebionites rejected many of the precepts central to Nicene
orthodoxy, such as Jesus’ pre-existence, divinity, and atoning death.
The Ebionites are described as
emphasizing the oneness of God and the humanity of Jesus, who by virtue
of his righteousness, was chosen by God to be the messianic “prophet
like Moses” (foretold in Deuteronomy 18:14–22) when he was anointed with
the Holy Spirit at his baptism.
Paulianism
It is a 3rd-century belief concerning
the nature of Christ, denying his divinity by asserting that he was
inspired by God and was not a person in the Trinity. It is ascribed to
Paul of Samosata who denied a distinction of persons in God and
maintained that Christ was a mere man raised above other men by the
indwelling Logos.
Monarchianism
Monarchianism is a set of beliefs that
emphasize God as being one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism
which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in
being.
Various models of resolving the
relationship between God the Father and the Son of God were proposed in
the 2nd century, but later rejected in favor of the doctrine of the
Trinity as expounded at the First Council of Constantinople, which
confirmed the concept of God as one being consisting of three persons:
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Two models of Monarchianism have been propounded:
• Modalism (or Modalistic Monarchianism)
considers God to be one person appearing and working in the different
“modes” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The chief proponent
of modalism was Sabellius, hence the view is commonly called
Sabellianism. It has also been rhetorically labeled Patripassianism by
its opponents, because according to them it purports that the Person of
God the Heavenly Father suffered on the cross.
• Dynamic Monarchianism holds that God
is one being, above all else, wholly indivisible, and of one nature. It
reconciles the “problem” of the Trinity (or at least Jesus) by holding
that the Son was not co-eternal with the Father.
Arianism
Arianism in Christianity is the
Christological (concerning the doctrine of Christ) position that Jesus,
as the Son of God, was created by God. It was proposed early in the 4th
century by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius and was popular throughout
much of the Eastern and Western Roman empires, even after it was
denounced as a heresy by the Council of Nicaea (325).
Arianism is often considered to be a
form of Unitarian theology in that it stresses God’s unity at the
expense of the notion of the Trinity, the doctrine that three distinct
persons are united in one Godhead. Arius’ basic premise was the
uniqueness of God, who is alone Self-existent (not dependent for its
existence on anything else) and immutable; the Son, who is not
self-existent, cannot therefore be the self-existent and immutable God.
Because the Godhead is unique, it cannot be shared or communicated.
Because the Godhead is immutable, the Son, who is mutable, must,
therefore, be deemed a creature who has been called into existence out
of nothing and has had a beginning. Moreover, the Son can have no direct
knowledge of the Father, since the Son is finite and of a different
order of existence.
The Council of Nicaea, which condemned
Arius as a heretic and issued a creed to safeguard “orthodox” Christian
belief, was convened to settle the controversy. The creed adopted at
Nicaea states that the Son is homoousion tō Patri (“of one substance
with the Father”), thus declaring him to be all that the Father is: he
is completely divine. In fact, however, this was only the beginning of a
long-protracted dispute.
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