+(1).jpg)
As I always remind my readers - we don't know everything about Christianity. The truth hasn't wholly been pieced together by those who came before us. It is not as if 'all we have to do is believe.' What has really happened is that a particular doctrine has effectively coerced all those who came before us to marshal evidence to fit into a very small box. All that which contradicts our inherited assumptions is effectively ignored or made to sound like what we think it SHOULD say.
As part of our ongoing effort to understand pre-existent traditions of Christianity from the first, second and third centuries let's see what Tertullian tells us about Praxeas' understanding of the enthronement of Jesus at the right hand. According to Praxeas:
In the course of time, then, the Father forsooth was born, and the Father suffered, God Himself, the Lord Almighty, whom in their preaching they declare to be Jesus Christ. We, however, as we indeed always have done (and more especially since we have been better instructed by the Paraclete, who leads men indeed into all truth), believe that there is one only God, but under the following dispensation, or οἰκονομία, as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her— being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. That this rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel, even before any of the older heretics, much more before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday, will be apparent both from the lateness of date which marks all heresies, and also from the absolutely novel character of our new-fangled Praxeas. [Tertullian Against Praxeas 2]
In the next chapter Tertullian indicates how widespread Praxeas' beliefs were:
The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned,) who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation (of the Three in One), on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world's plurality of gods to the one only true God; not understanding that, although He is the one only God, He must yet be believed in with His own οἰκονομία. [ibid 3]
I know scholars like to keep this discussions as mere 'theological abstractions.' But I think there is something far more tangible here.
Praxeas was an opponent of the New Prophesy movement of which Tertullian was a member. Tertullian certainly thought he preserved the true teachings of Irenaeus and Polycarp and ultimately the apostles (through Polycarp's alleged relationship with John). Yet I can just as easily see an argument that after Irenaeus succeeded at establishing his reforms of Christianity at Rome (against the original Alexandrian tradition) the later Roman bishops who followed him attempted to curb the very Holy Spirit by which Irenaeus managed to institute his reforms.
The New Prophesy movement (which I see rooted in or associated with Polycarp) eventually became heretical. It was thanks to Praxeas that the Roman bishop (either Victor or Zephyrinus) to withdraw support for the movement.
Yet what I am particularly interested in is the fact that the movement associated with Praxeas is called 'monarchical.' The argument that emerges from Praxeas is that the Paraclete - the beating heart of the New Prophesy movement - could not be separated from the Father and Son. It was an inseparable part of the 'unity' which sat on the throne of God. It was not wandering around the earth as a separate hypostasis 'communing' with individual 'spokespeople' in the movement.
So we hear Tertullian argue:
The numerical order and distribution of the Trinity they assume to be a division of the Unity; whereas the Unity which derives the Trinity out of its own self is so far from being destroyed, that it is actually supported by it. They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves pre-eminently the credit of being worshippers of the One God; just as if the Unity itself with irrational deductions did not produce heresy, and the Trinity rationally considered constitute the truth. We, say they, maintain the Monarchy (or, sole government of God). And so, as far as the sound goes, do even Latins (and ignorant ones too) pronounce the word in such a way that you would suppose their understanding of the μοναρχία ( or Monarchy) was as complete as their pronunciation of the term. Well, then Latins take pains to pronounce the μοναρχία (or Monarchy), while Greeks actually refuse to understand the οἰκονομία, or Dispensation (of the Three in One). As for myself, however, if I have gleaned any knowledge of either language, I am sure that μοναρχία (or Monarchy) has no other meaning than single and individual rule; but for all that, this monarchy does not, because it is the government of one, preclude him whose government it is, either from having a son, or from having made himself actually a son to himself, or from ministering his own monarchy by whatever agents he will [ibid]
A lot has been written about 'monarchism' by scholars of early Christianity but not one of them has connected the concept with the Papacy either in Alexandria or Rome. This is of course strange because this is the obvious implication of the term in Greek:
μοναρχία A. monarchy, government by a single ruler, Alc.Oxy. 1789 Fr.12, A.Th.883 (lyr., pl.), Hdt.3.82; labôn chôras pantelê m. S.Ant.1163 , etc.; kai gar katestês' auton (sc. ton dêmon)eis monarchian E.Supp.352 ; ô misodême kai monarchias erasta Ar.V.474 ; including basilikê and turannikê, Pl.Plt.291e: in pl., hoi en tais m. ontes Isoc.2.5 , cf. Arist.Pol.1311a24, 1279a33, Rh.1365b37; of the Roman Dictator, Plu.Caes.37; supreme command, of a general, X.An.6.1.31.
What the hell do these imbeciles think was at the heart of Tertullian's struggle against the 'Monarchians' if not the Papacy? My God, people what is the matter with you? The argument was that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were made one in the form of the authority who sat on the papal throne and this individual 'sat in the place of Christ.'
Do you want a surprise? 'Monarchianism' wasn't just at Rome it was also very prominent in the Alexandrian Church, and especially in churches of Libya. Severus al'Ashmunein makes clear that 'Sabellianism' was so powerful in Alexandria that it challenged the authority of Peter I (d. 311 CE). This is especially interesting as I have demonstrated in my paper in the Journal of Coptic Studies that Peter was essentially a turncoat who sold out the Alexandrian tradition.
Notice what is said of Sabellius in Severus:
And in those days there had appeared a blaspheming man, named Sabellius, who preached a doctrine divergent from the faith; and this was that he believed that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the holy Trinity, were one Person, and not three Persons, but merely three names. Sabellius disbelieved in the gospel, and would not listen to that which is written therein, that our Lord Jesus Christ, when he was baptized by John, saw the Holy Ghost descending upon him like a dove, and heard the voice of the Father from heaven, saying : 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' So many, who heard the teaching of Sabellius, followed him, and he led them astray by his impiety.
This rejection of the baptism of John is shared by the Marcionites and it is noteworthy that the Monarchians in Rome are also identified as connected with Marcionitism.
Can the Alexandrian Monarchians really be separated from the defenders of the native Papacy? I don't think so. Their original argument must have been that Father and Son became one on the Papal Throne with the Holy Spirit. This understanding has eluded all previous investigations into the tradition.
It is impossible not to see that Jesus must have been understood originally to be the Father. The Marcionites (Tertullian Against Marcion IV) are continually identified as rejecting the identification of Jesus with 'the Son.' Clearly 'the Son of Man' and various related 'Son' titles are always used in the third person by Jesus. As we have noted earlier - 'the Son' - better applies to Jesus' diminutive child disciple.
So we see in Athanasius the clear idea that Jesus was the Father:
Sabellius will be the more quickly confuted, it being proved that it was not the Father that was made flesh, but His Word, who also redeemed the flesh and offered it to the Father.
And it is certainly true in Tertullian's attack against Praxeas:
the Father did not forsake the Son, for it was into His Father's hands that the Son commended His spirit. [Luke 23:46] Indeed, after so commending it, He instantly died; and as the Spirit remained with the flesh, the flesh cannot undergo the full extent of death, i.e., in corruption and decay. For the Son, therefore, to die, amounted to His being forsaken by the Father. The Son, then, both dies and rises again, according to the Scriptures. [1 Corinthians 15:3-4] It is the Son, too, who ascends to the heights of heaven, [John 3:13] and also descends to the inner parts of the earth. [Ephesians 4:9] He sits at the Father's right hand — not the Father at His own.
Of course it is only the Gospel of John (undoubtedly developed by Polycarp) that confuses the original Markan understanding.
And oh yes, Sabellius can be connected to Secret Mark as he is identified as employing the Gospel according to the Egyptians, which Clement also cites interestingly enough ...
If you are interested in reading how this observation fits within my greater understanding of the workings of Secret Mark WITHIN the contemporary Alexandrian Church please go here
If you want to read more about how Alexandrian Christianity was rooted in the Jewish traditions of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria and more feel free to purchase my new book here
