What Is Modalism? The Most Common Mistake About the Trinity

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Have you ever tried to explain the Trinity and accidentally committed a heresy? You are not alone. The usual suspect, perhaps, is Modalism.

Modalism may sound right to many believers. However, it critically misunderstands the nature of God as presented in Scripture.

Let us explore what this heresy is, why it matters, and how we can avoid it.

What is Modalism?

Modalism (also called Sabellianism or Modalistic Monarchianism) teaches that God is one Person who reveals himself in different modes or roles. It strictly affirms one God but completely denies three distinct Persons. A Modalist believes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the exact same Person, only wearing different masks. According to this ancient heresy, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not three co-existing divine Persons, but a single God with no threeness, only oneness.

In contrast, Trinitarianism says God eternally co-exists as three Persons of one nature. Modalism holds that God is a single being who sometimes appears as the Father, the Son, or the Spirit. The big distinction here is that Modalism rejects three Persons. In Modalism, there’s one God, one essence, one Person. These three manifestations of God are not co-eternal or co-existing.

According to Modalism, God reveals himself in the Old Testament as the Father. God in the Old Testament is not revealing himself as the Son or Spirit. It’s not that the Son does not exist at this point, because, according to Modalism, the Son is simply one way God shows up. He is not a distinct Person or entity. But then, when the incarnation occurs, God reveals himself as the Son, not as the Father (or the Spirit).

When did Modalism begin, and who was Sabellius?

Modalism emerged in the late second and early third centuries.

Sabellius was a teacher active in Rome in the early third century. He taught that God was a single monad expanding into three manifestations for salvation. He famously compared God to the sun, a single essence projecting shape, light, and warmth (though orthodox theologians would also use this metaphor).

Arianism, in contrast, presents an opposite extreme. Arianism radically divides the Father and the Son, declaring the Son a lesser created being. Modalism, on the other hand, radically conflates Father and Son (and Spirit), declaring them the exact same being.

It’s often said that the Western Church begins with God’s oneness and tries to explain his threeness, whereas the Eastern Church begins with his threeness and tries to explain his oneness. This is an oversimplification, but it’s not without some merit. (The Western Church largely followed Augustine’s lead on the Trinity, compared to the East.) Consequently, Western Christians tend toward Modalism because they emphasize God’s oneness, whereas Eastern Christians have sometimes struggled with Arianism because of their emphasis on God’s threeness.

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How is the Bible used to support Modalism?

While Modalism is heretical, it is not without support from Scripture.

Perhaps the most important verse in all the Old Testament, the Shema, declares unequivocally that God is one (Deut 6:4). So any doctrine of God based on the Bible has to safeguard this oneness. Modalists lean heavily on such passages that emphasize absolute monotheism, citing verses like Isaiah 44:6 (“besides me there is no God”) and Jesus’s own words in John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one”) and John 14:9 (“He who has seen me has seen the Father”).

This emphasis on God’s oneness runs throughout Scripture, allowing us to understand why some would teach Modalism.

Does Modalism align with the Bible?

The fatal flaw in Modalism is its inability to account for intra-Trinitarian interactions in Scripture. In other words, what do we do when the Father and Son and Spirit interact with each other as distinct, co-existing Persons? Modalism doesn’t have a sufficient answer.

The fatal flaw in Modalism is its inability to account for intra-Trinitarian interactions in Scripture.

Perhaps the greatest example is Jesus’s baptism (Matt 3:16–17; Mark 1:9–11), where the Father speaks, the Son is baptized, and the Spirit descends. In Modalism, only the Father, Son, or Spirit exists at any given moment—so when the Son is baptized, there is no Father to speak and no Spirit to descend. A Modalist account reduces this scene to God playacting or talking to himself, since only the Father, Son, or Spirit exists at any given moment. For the Modalist, the voice of the Father and the descending Spirit are “manifestations” of God, not distinct Persons. Since God is omnipresent, even during Jesus’s incarnation, he can speak from heaven and descend as a dove.

Besides Jesus’s baptism, other verses display distinct divine actors. For example:

Genesis 1:1–2 shows the Spirit present at creation, contradicting the idea that God only operated as the Father in the Old Testament.
In John 17, Christ prays to the Father. Modalists tend to interpret Jesus’s prayers as an internal struggle within Jesus rather than a genuine interaction with a distinct Person.
Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit in John 16, clearly distinguishing himself from the Spirit. Of Modalism, we may ask: Who is sending the Spirit? Does he send himself?

More broadly, any divine action attributed to a specific Person of God creates problems for Modalism. If the Spirit raises Jesus from the dead, then God must at that moment become the Spirit, meaning he is no longer Jesus. So is the risen Christ merely human, then? Has divinity departed from him? Modalism offers no coherent answer to these types of questions.

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Why is Modalism considered heresy?

One way to view heresy is that it’s a belief where, if it were true, salvation would be made impossible.

In this view, Modalism is indeed a heresy because it unravels the sacrificial nature of Jesus’s death. Scripture indicates that his sacrifice is offered to the Father and that the Spirit raises him from the dead. But in Modalism, to whom is his sacrifice offered, and who resurrects him? There is no one. This destroys the very mechanism of salvation, the Bible’s core teaching that Christ is our distinct representative with the Father.

Additionally, by abandoning the diversity of Persons in the Godhead, Modalism logically leads to Patripassianism, the teaching that God the Father suffered and died on the cross.

That said, salvation isn’t a function of having perfectly correct theology. That would amount to an intellectually oriented works righteousness, which is contrary to the gospel. Rather, salvation is based on union with the risen Christ.

How did the early church respond to Modalism?

The early Church Fathers responded aggressively to defend the truth. Hippolytus attacked the Modalists Noetus and Callistus. Most notably, Tertullian wrote Against Praxeas to refute Praxeas, a Modalist teacher. Tertullian famously declared that Praxeas had “put the Paraclete to flight and crucified the Father.”¹

Later, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, the issue was officially taken up. On one side, there were those who would come to be known as the Nicenes, who rejected Arianism. On the other side were the Arians, though they didn’t necessarily accept that name, as their position was far more diverse than “followers of Arius.” While the council was convened to respond to Arianism, many Arians accused their opponents of Modalism, making it a central issue, as well. The opponents of Arianism emphasized God’s oneness strongly, using terms such as homoousios (“same essence” or “same nature”). According to the Arians, this left the Trinitarian Persons not sufficiently distinguished. This charge did not hold, however, and the council refuted and condemned Modalism.

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Does Modalism still exist today?

Yes and no. Modalism survives today, but typically not in the form that was seen in the early church.

What is Oneness Pentecostalism?

Versions of Modalism can be found in Oneness Pentecostalism and groups like the United Pentecostal Church. But contemporary Oneness theology tweaks ancient Modalism, often in very significant ways.

For instance, we should not describe Oneness Pentecostalism using the traditional “three masks” analogy, in which God is first the Father, then the Son, then the Spirit. Oneness Pentecostals explicitly reject this and affirm that God can manifest as Father, Son, and Spirit simultaneously because God is omnipresent.

In ancient Modalism, there’s no Father for the Son to speak to during his baptism or any of his prayers. Oneness believers argue that because God is not spatially limited to the incarnation, the Father can easily speak from heaven while God is incarnate in Jesus.

Likewise, they would reject any charges of Patripassianism. For them, God suffered in the flesh in Christ, rather than the Father suffering as the Father. This point actually helps us reach one of the central points of Oneness Pentecostalism: the incarnation. For them, the distinction between Father and Son is not a distinction between two divine Persons. Instead, it is a distinction between deity (the transcendent Father) and humanity (the man Christ Jesus). They do not view the Logos in John 1 as an eternally distinct divine Person. Rather, they see the Logos as the one God’s own self-expression, mind, or plan becoming flesh.

Oneness theologians have highly sophisticated biblicist arguments for their views. Instead of simply dismissing them with isolated proof texts, we ought to look at how Oneness writers interpret those specific verses.²

Oneness Pentecostals sincerely worship Jesus as God and trust in his saving work, yet hold to heterodox theology of God.

Why is Modalism appealing to some?

Modalism remains appealing because it is the consummate “logical” heresy. It offers a simple way to protect God’s oneness without wrestling with complex metaphysical mysteries.

In fact, well-meaning Christians often accidentally teach Modalism through popular analogies. Have you ever heard that God is like water (ice, liquid, steam)? Have you heard God is like an actor wearing three different masks? Or like a man who is simultaneously a father, son, and brother? These analogies are Modalist. They describe one substance changing form or role, thereby depersonalizing the distinct, eternal identities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

^{This famous video does a great job humorously explaining bad theology analogies and why they fail theologically.}

Conclusion

The heart of the gospel is that Jesus offers us his relationship to his Father. When we experience the love of God, we are experiencing Trinitarian love that has always existed. We’re being invited into a relationship that has never been broken and never will be.

Modalism cannot offer this, though. With no co-existing Persons in the Trinity, there is no Father–Son relationship in the Godhead. In fact, there is no relationship of any kind within God. This makes for a lonely God with no relational stability to offer us.

As believers, we must protect the beautiful mystery of the Trinity.