Oneness Pentecostals see themselves as restoring the faith of the apostles. Some argue that the first Christians held a Oneness view of God before the Trinity took over. What does the record show?
Short answer: When modalism appeared around AD 200, the Church rejected it as a novelty. Presbyters expelled Noetus; St. Hippolytus and Tertullian answered Noetus and Praxeas from Scripture; Sabellius was excommunicated in Rome; and the Council of Constantinople (381) anathematized the Sabellians. Their measuring stick was Scripture and the faith handed down in baptism: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Before modalism, the earliest writers (St. Clement, St. Ignatius, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, St. Justin) already distinguish the Son from the Father.
Key verses in the early debate
- "I am the first, I am the last; there is no God but me." (Isaiah 44:6)
- "The Father and I are one." (John 10:30)
- "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9)
- "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God" (John 1:1)
- "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19)
Scripture quotations are from the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
What Catholics Actually Teach
First, the Oneness view. The United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI) "traces its organizational roots to 1916, when a large group of Pentecostal ministers began to unite around the teaching of the oneness of God and water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ" (About the UPCI). It sees this as a recovery: "By recognizing the almighty God in Jesus Christ, we restore correct biblical belief and experience apostolic power" (Oneness Pentecostalism). So the history matters.
The Catholic Church teaches: "From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church's living faith, principally by means of Baptism" (CCC 249). Councils and Fathers later clarified that faith "to defend it against the errors that were deforming it" (CCC 250). Modalism was one of the first of those errors.
What Catholics do not claim:
- That Nicaea invented the Trinity. Everything below comes before or apart from Nicaea (325).
- That early writers already had the later vocabulary. Terms like "person" and "substance" were refined over time (CCC 251).
- That Oneness believers repeat every ancient claim. Noetus said the Father "suffered, and died." The UPCI teaches instead that Christ's death "refers to the death of the human manifestation, for deity cannot die" (The True Humanity of Jesus Christ).
The Biblical Case, as the Early Church Argued It
1. One God: common ground
Noetus' followers cited Isaiah's "I am the first... and the last" to prove "that God is one" (St. Hippolytus, Against Noetus 2; see Isaiah 44:6). The Church never disputed that. When the presbyters examined Noetus, they began, "We too know in truth one God" (Against Noetus 1). The question was never monotheism. It was whether the Son is distinct from the Father.
2. "Are one," not "am one"
Noetians quoted "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30). St. Hippolytus answered: "He did not say, 'I and the Father am one, but are one.' For the word are is not said of one person, but it refers to two persons, and one power" (Against Noetus 7). The Greek verb in John 10:30 is plural (esmen, "we are"). Tertullian made the same point: "These Three are one essence, not one Person, as it is said, 'I and my Father are One,' in respect of unity of substance not singularity of number" (Against Praxeas 25).
3. "With God" before creation
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). St. Hippolytus built his case on this verse (Against Noetus 14), reading "with" as two persons, not two gods. The Son speaks of "the glory that I had with you before the world began" (John 17:5).
4. Is "the Son" only the flesh?
Some of Praxeas' followers argued from Luke 1:35 ("the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God") that "as it was the flesh that was born, it must be the flesh that is the Son of God." Tertullian reports that they "distinguish two, Father and Son, understanding the Son to be flesh, that is man, that is Jesus; and the Father to be spirit, that is God, that is Christ" (Against Praxeas 27). He replied: "the flesh is not God, so that it could not have been said concerning it, 'That Holy Thing shall be called the Son of God,' but only that Divine Being who was born in the flesh."
The UPCI is more careful than that group: in Christ, it says, "Humanity and deity were inseparably joined in His one Spirit." But its claim that the distinction between deity and humanity "explains the biblical difference in the use of the titles 'Father' and 'Son'" is close to the view Tertullian answered. And Scripture settles it: the Son existed "in the form of God" before He "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave" (Philippians 2:6–7), and through the Son God "created the universe" (Hebrews 1:2). A humanity born in Bethlehem did not create the universe.
5. Baptism into three
Jesus commanded baptism "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). Tertullian: "He commands them to baptize into the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, not into a unipersonal God. And indeed it is not once only, but three times, that we are immersed into the Three Persons, at each several mention of Their names" (Against Praxeas 26). See Must You Be Baptized "in Jesus' Name Only"?
Objections Answered
(a) "Tertullian admits most believers were on the other side."
At its strongest: Tertullian writes, "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)." They accused him of preaching "two gods and three gods" (Against Praxeas 3). So the ordinary faithful were Oneness, and the Trinity was a scholars' theory.
Answer: Read the whole sentence. They were startled "on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world's plurality of gods to the one only true God." They feared the "Three in One" meant many gods. Being startled by an explanation is not holding a rival creed. And that rule of faith, which Tertullian had just quoted, confesses one God who "has also a Son, His Word," and the Holy Spirit. He insists it "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" (Against Praxeas 2). Tertullian wrote as a Montanist, as he says himself (ch. 1), but the rule he cites matches St. Irenaeus below.
(b) "Even bishops of Rome sided with the modalists."
At its strongest: St. Hippolytus reports that Pope St. Zephyrinus said, "I know that there is one God, Jesus Christ; nor except Him do I know any other that is begotten and amenable to suffering." He accuses Pope St. Callistus I of calling his opponents "Ditheists" (Refutation of All Heresies IX.6–7).
Answer: St. Hippolytus was St. Callistus' bitter opponent; he calls him an "impostor and knave," and he set himself up as a rival bishop of Rome before being reconciled to the Church and dying a martyr (about AD 236). The Catholic Encyclopedia judges his charges against St. Callistus "altogether unjustified" ("St. Hippolytus of Rome"). Even so, his own account says St. Zephyrinus also said, "The Father did not die, but the Son," and that St. Callistus "excommunicated Sabellius, as not entertaining orthodox opinions." A hostile report of a remark is not a papal definition; infallibility concerns a doctrine proclaimed "by a definitive act" (CCC 891). Rome's teaching appears clearly in Pope St. Dionysius, who around AD 260 rejected Sabellius' claim "that the Son is the Father, and the Father the Son" (St. Athanasius, De Decretis 26). So even the hostile witness shows Rome removing the modalist, not following him.
(c) "St. Ignatius used Oneness language."
At its strongest: Around AD 110, St. Ignatius of Antioch called Jesus "God existing in flesh" (Ephesians 7). That is the Oneness message.
Answer: Catholics affirm the same truth: Jesus is God in the flesh (John 1:14). But St. Ignatius also urges his readers to prosper "in the Son, and in the Father, and in the Spirit," and to be subject to the bishop "as Jesus Christ to the Father, according to the flesh" (Magnesians 13). He speaks of "one Jesus Christ, who came forth from one Father, and is with and has gone to one" (Magnesians 7), and of "Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed" (Magnesians 6). That is St. John's "the Word was with God" (John 1:1) in St. Ignatius' words: the Son was with the Father before the Incarnation.
The Early Church Agrees
The earliest witnesses, before any modalist controversy, already speak of Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct.
- Pope St. Clement I (St. Clement of Rome) (1 Clement 46, about AD 96): "Have we not [all] one God and one Christ? Is there not one Spirit of grace poured out upon us?" (newadvent.org).
- The Martyrdom of Polycarp (14, mid-second century) records St. Polycarp's last prayer to the Father: "I glorify You, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, Your beloved Son, with whom, to You, and the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and to all coming ages" (newadvent.org). He prays to the Father through the Son, and gives glory to all three.
- St. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 128, mid-second century) rejected the idea that the Son is a power "indivisible and inseparable from the Father," like sunlight from the sun; He "is indeed something numerically distinct" (newadvent.org).
- St. Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus II.15, about AD 180), in the earliest surviving Christian use of the word, calls the first three days of creation "types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom" (newadvent.org).
- St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies I.10.1, about AD 180): the Church "has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty... and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit" (newadvent.org).
- The presbyters who examined Noetus, a native of Smyrna, answered: "We too know in truth one God; we know Christ; we know that the Son suffered even as He suffered, and died even as He died." Then "they expelled him from the Church" (Against Noetus 1).
- The First Council of Constantinople (381), Canon 1: "every heresy shall be anathematized, particularly... that of the Sabellians" (newadvent.org).
Conclusion
The record is consistent. From St. Clement, St. Ignatius, St. Justin, and St. Irenaeus through St. Hippolytus, Tertullian, and the councils, the Church confessed one God and a Son truly distinct from the Father, and answered modalism from Scripture and the baptismal faith.
If you are a Oneness Pentecostal, we share your zeal for one God and for Jesus as God in the flesh. Read St. Hippolytus' short Against Noetus yourself and ask which side sounds like the apostles. For the scriptural argument, see Is the Trinity Three Gods? Answering Modalism.
Come home. The faith St. Hippolytus defended, one God confessed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in every baptism, is the same faith the Catholic Church confesses today. Christ promised, "upon this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18), and His Church never fell away or disappeared. It is the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of St. Peter and the bishops in communion with him. "It is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained" (CCC 816). We invite you to come and see the Church Christ founded, and to enter her.
Your next step: Come to Mass this Sunday at your local Catholic church. You can find one near you at MassTimes.org. Everyone is welcome; if you're not yet Catholic, pray with us but don't receive Communion yet. When you're ready to become Catholic, call the parish office and ask about OCIA, the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. They will walk you through every step. Read our guide: How Do I Become Catholic? Not ready yet? Get our free pocket guide below and keep learning.
FAQ
Who was Sabellius? An early third-century teacher in Rome whose name became a byword for modalism (Refutation IX.7).
Did Nicaea condemn modalism? Nicaea (325) focused on Arianism. The First Council of Constantinople (381) named the Sabellians in its first canon.
Is Oneness Pentecostalism the same as Sabellianism? Not in every detail. It began in the twentieth century, but it shares the core claim that Father, Son, and Spirit are not distinct persons.
Sources
Scripture (NABRE, bible.usccb.org): Isaiah 44:6; Matthew 16:18; Matthew 28:19; Luke 1:35; John 1:1, 14; John 10:30; John 14:9; John 17:5; Philippians 2:6–7; Hebrews 1:2.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (vatican.va): 249, 250, 251; 816; 891.
Church Fathers and councils (newadvent.org; ccel.org): Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 46 (ANF vol. 9); Martyrdom of Polycarp 14 (ANF vol. 1); Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus II.15 (ANF vol. 2); Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 128 (ANF vol. 1); Ignatius of Antioch, Ephesians 7 and Magnesians 6, 7, 13 (ANF vol. 1); Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.10.1 (ANF vol. 1); Hippolytus, Against Noetus 1, 2, 7, 14 (ANF vol. 5); Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies IX.6–7 (ANF vol. 5); Tertullian, Against Praxeas 1, 2, 3, 26, 25 and 27 (ANF vol. 3); Athanasius, De Decretis 26, quoting Dionysius of Rome (NPNF2 vol. 4); First Council of Constantinople (381), Canon 1 (NPNF2 vol. 14); Catholic Encyclopedia, "St. Hippolytus of Rome".
United Pentecostal Church International (upci.org): "About the UPCI"; "Oneness Pentecostalism"; The True Humanity of Jesus Christ, position paper adopted by the General Board in 2004 (PDF).