century. There was an irresistible tendency in that direction, so soon as Father was introduced into the first section of the Creed, and also because of the influence of the baptismal formula, for it was important to define the Son of God as the Son of the Father in the specifically Christian sense.

Implicitly this term contained the entire New Testament doctrine of the divine sonship of Jesus, as the term Christ the Old Testament doctrine of the Messiah. While the early Christians were gradually appropriating that teaching, especially before the New Testament writings were all gathered into a canon, interpretations of the phrase were quite possible which were not altogether in accord with New Testament teachings. Such interpretations were in fact made in the various heretical sects which Catholic Christianity threw off.

Harnack's interpretation of the Creed, and indeed of the entire ancient Christology, is based on his peculiar theory that primitive Christianity had two rival conceptions of Christ, the one pneumatic, the other adoptionistic. The pneumatic regarded Christ as a pre-existent Spirit, who became man. This, he thinks, was the view of the chief Apostolic Fathers, such as Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp. The Adoptionists explained that Jesus was a man chosen by God, in whom the divine Spirit dwelt, and who was adopted by God as His Son at the baptism. This conception appears, Harnack thinks, in Hermas, the Roman prophet, who conceived of the Spirit of Christ as the preexistent Son of God (Dogmengeschichte, I Theil, I, 3o).

Loofs (P.R.E.3, IV, Christologie, s. 23) rightly challenges this distinction of Harnack as impossible to carry out in primitive Christianity, and as not productive of good results. Indeed, the Adoptionists were also pneumatic, in that they emphasized the divine Spirit dwelling in Christ. And the term pneumatic does not distinguish between those who

made a real distinction between the pre-existent Son and God, and those who were simply Modalists. As usual, Harnack's distinctions are made for a purpose; and they are used to throw into the background the doctrine of the reality of the divine sonship of Christ, as taught by St. Paul and the Apostolic Fathers.

Kattenbusch (II, 577-8) thinks that there is some value in the distinction; but objects to the term pneumatic, and proposes the term nativistic, which brings the Biblical conception of the reality of the sonship of Christ again into prominence. He shows quite well how the Adoptionists would develop their ideas out of the purely Messianic conception of Jesus, thinking that at the baptism He was recognized by God and taken possession of by the Spirit; and that at the resurrection, in accordance with Rom. 14 seq., He was declared to be the Son of God by His endowment with divine power. It is quite true that the Adoptionists get little, if at all, beyond the Messianic conception of Jesus; whereas the Apostolic Fathers build in the main upon St. Paul or St. John, and think of the Son of God as truly divine, because begotten by God as a pre-existent Son, a real sonship and not merely one nominal, or ideal.

The Church at Rome was troubled in the second and third centuries by heretical teachers, coming chiefly from other parts, who in their doctrine of Christ were essentially unitarian. These were named Monarchians by Tertullian. He says: "They are constantly throwing out the accusation that we preach two gods, and three gods. .. 'We hold,' they say, 'the monarchy."" There were two antithetical kinds of these Monarchians, the dynamic and the modalistic. The dynamic seem to have originated in Asia Minor, in reaction against the Montanists.

As the latter built on the Gospel of John, these opposed it, as written not by the Apostle but by 1 Adv. Prax., 3.

Cerinthus, and were thus later called Alogi as opponents of the Logos. Theodotus, the currier, came to Rome from Byzantium, and taught his doctrines. He was excommunicated by Pope Victor (c. 195). His chief disciple was another Theodotus, the moneychanger, who taught that the divine Spirit was greater than Jesus, because he not only inhabited Jesus but also Melchizedek, and so his followers were called Melchizedekians.

Harnack claims that he was in fact only reasserting the views of Hermas (Similitudes, I and IX). He claims that Hermas held that the divine Spirit and not Christ was the pre-existent Son of God. This interpretation of Hermas is false. F. Bauer and others held that Hermas identified Christ with the divine Spirit. This seems likely, if we look only at Sim., 56 and 91; but, as Dorner clearly showed in his great work on The History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (I, s. 192 seq.), Jesus Christ is, in 912-17, the Son of God, and the Spirit identified with the Son in 5o, 91, is not the Third Person of the Trinity, but the Spirit of Christ, as in the II Epistle to the Corinthians; and that is clear from the fact that He is represented as having created the whole creation, and as having cleansed sins; which are attributes of the Second Person of the Trinity and not of the Third.

Another representative of this school, Artemon, appeared in Rome (c. 230-240), and came into conflict with Pope Zephyrinus.1 We shall meet a stronger representative of this school later on in Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch (c. 262).

The Modalists were much more powerful and influential, as they were not only concerned to maintain the unity of God, but also the divinity of Jesus Christ. According to Tertullian, Praxeas was the

1 Eusebius, H. E., V, 28.

different modes of man

And so it was the Father
Praxeas was at first re-

first to import this heresy into Rome: "He drove out the Paraclete and crucified the Father." They were called Patripassians, because they made Father, Son, and Spirit only ifestation of the one God. who suffered in the Son. ceived with favor at Rome by Victor, doubtless because of his conflict with Theodotus before the serious character of his views became apparent. Later Noetus was influential at Rome through his followers Epigonus and Cleomenes, and they were also favored by Popes Zephyrinus and Callistus for similar reasons. This brought about a schism in the Roman Church, in which Hippolytus contended for the Christology of the Gospel of John against the Modalists.2

The Modalists attained their height in Sabellius, who worked at Rome at the beginning of the third century, and whose name is attached to the heresy of Sabellianism. According to this theory, there is one God, who first manifests Himself as Father, then becomes incarnate in the Son, then lastly comes as the Holy Spirit to the Church.

The Roman Creed of the middle of the second century was made before these heresies appeared to trouble the Church. The term Son of God could be interpreted by them in accordance with these views, especially if they rejected the Gospel of John, and minimized the teaching of the Synoptic Gospels and the Pauline Epistles. But the Church of Rome 2 Ref. Omn. Hær., 10".

1 Adv. Prax., I.

and all Christian Churches interpreted the Creed as merely the summary of the Sacred Scriptures, to which they adhered as the Word of God and Christ. The change of Son of God to His Son, that is the Father's Son, in accordance with the usage of Tertullian, would not suit the Monarchians so well. For it might be said, that the One God appeared first as Father, then as Son, etc.; but it would not be easy to say that, when the Son was declared to be the Son of

the Father.

(c) In the Creed of the middle of the fourth century the term the only begotten, тòv μovoyevĥ, appears in Marcellus and Rufinus. But it is not found in Irenæus or Tertullian, when they refer to the Rule of Faith, though they use the term in conflict with heresies. It seems that they would have used it, therefore, in referring to the Rule of Faith, if it had been there in their time. So also it is absent from the Creeds of Novatian, Faustus, and even Niceta.

It is suggested by Swete that the Catholic writers did not use it, because it had been appropriated by the Valentinian Gnostics for their aon, vous. This seems to be unjustified, because Irenæus and Tertullian do use it in controversy, though not in citing the Creed. Burn and Kattenbusch think it was in the original text of the Creed. I agree with Zahn and McGiffert that it was not in the original Creed; but I think, with Zahn, that it was added about the same time that eva was omitted from the first article, in order to exclude and overcome the heresies of the Modalists.

The term povoyevns is a term derived from the Gospel of John (114): ὡς μονογενούς παρὰ πατρός; (and 118): μονογενής θεός (W. H., Hort, Harnack, Plummer), or & povoyevs utós (usual text, R. V.; cf. 316-18, I John 49).