Savelianism

The ideas of Savelianism are ascribed to the preacher Savelliy from Ptolemaida of the Pentapolis . The main sources for the emergence and content of heresy are the anti-Savelian texts of the church fathers - Tertullian , Hippolytus of Rome and Epiphanius of Cyprus , partly contradicting each other in the description of the essence of the Savelian heresy. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 concludes that “ Savelli’s philosophical views are impossible to establish” ( English It is impossible to arrive at the philosophical views of Sabellius ). ^[one]

The essence of the heresy of Savely was the idea that the Persons of the Holy Trinity are not eternal Persons, but only manifestations, faces, “modes” (hence the other name for the heresy - modalism ) of the One God. In His depth, the “abyss of the Divine” (the expression of St. Ignatius of Loyola , Meister Eckhart , N. Berdyaev and others) God is absolutely one, and manifests Himself in the World in Three Persons according to only one arbitrariness known to Him. At another time, in another historical era, aeon, etc. God can reveal Himself differently - as the Double, the Four, etc.

Adjacent to modalism are the medieval triadological heresies of the Cathars , Albigensians, and other heretical movements, claiming that the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity manifest themselves in human history not simultaneously and jointly, but in turn. The era of the Old Testament was the era of the harsh God the Father, the era of the New Testament is the era of the Second Person of the Trinity - God the Son, or Jesus Christ, and the “life of the next century” coming after the Apocalypse will be the era of the Holy Spirit.

Savelianism as an independent movement within monarchianism arose in Rome at the beginning of the 3rd century, probably under the influence of the sermon Noetius from Smyrna , no later than 217 (during the life of Pope Zefirin ) but not earlier than 200–205, when the lost Syntagma of St. . Hippolyta . St. Epiphanius , who died in 403, claimed that with him heresy remained strong in the East, that is, it existed for at least one and a half centuries. ^[one]

The origin of Savellius is unknown; from the texts of St. Basil , written a century and a half after the sermons of Savely, we can conclude that he came from Persepolis . According to St. Epiphanius, the heresy of Savely was based on the apocryphal "Gospel of the Egyptians"; surviving fragments of this apocrypha do not contradict the opinion of the church fathers about the anti-trinitarian essence of Savelianism. St. Hippolytus, becoming a pope, tried to personally reason with Savellius, but in the end excommunicated him. While Hippolytus was writing The Philosophers (230th), Savelli still continued his sermon in Rome. ^[one]