Modalism

One God in three masks?

Around the turn of the third century teachers such as Noetus of Smyrna, Praxeas in Rome and Sabellius set out to guard the confession that God is one. Israel confessed, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4), and Jesus said, "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). From such words they taught that the one God shows himself in turn as Father in creation and law, as Son in the incarnation, and as Spirit in the church: one actor wearing three masks, three ‘modes’ of one person, hence the name modalism.

They also wanted to hold fast to Christ's full deity. But on their account the one who suffered on the cross was the Father himself, and so their opponents also called the view patripassianism, ‘the Father suffered’. Tertullian complained of Praxeas that "he put to flight the Paraclete, and he crucified the Father", and around 213, in Against Praxeas, he answered that God is one substance in three persons, becoming one of the first Latin writers to call God a Trinity Tertullian, Against Praxeas.

The answer of Scripture and the church

The church replied that Scripture shows the Father, the Son and the Spirit as distinct:

As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!”

Matthew 3:16-17

The Son prays to the Father and asks him to send "another Advocate" (John 14:16). He speaks of the glory the Father gave him "because You loved Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). This is not one person speaking to and loving himself; from all eternity the Father and the Son share their love in the Spirit. Augustine, commenting on John 8:16, gives the rule: "Make a distinction then of persons, and distinction of intelligences: acknowledge that the Father is the Father, the Son the Son: but beware of saying, that the Father is greater, the Son less" Augustine. The first half guards against modalism, the second against Arianism. The church's creed walks between the two:

And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence.

Athanasian Creed

Modalism today

Illustrations of the Trinity in which one substance changes form, like water, ice and steam, come close to modalism (see The Trinity). In the early twentieth century a group within the Pentecostal movement began teaching what it calls the oneness of God and baptizing in the name of Jesus only; its account is close to the old modalism. Most Pentecostal churches confess the Trinity, and the Assemblies of God set it out plainly in its 1916 Statement of Fundamental Truths Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths.

Modalism set out to guard God's oneness, but by erasing the distinction of Father, Son and Spirit it lost the eternal fellowship of love that Scripture reveals within God. The church confesses one God in essence and three in person: the Trinity. See also What is the Trinity?