Patripassianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Patripassianism is a label to describe an unorthodox teaching about the Christian God in which the Father suffers on the cross rather than the Son, i.e. Jesus.

This would happen in a form of modalism, the teaching that there is only one God, who appears in three different modes (as opposed to the orthodox teaching that there is one God, who exists in three persons). In antiquity divinity was generally assumed to be above human passions or weaknesses, so this attribution of human experience to the creator deity was considered to be wrong, when instead this should be attributed to the human nature of the incarnate Son.

Patripassianism comes from the Latin, and means "the father suffers." The name refers to the teaching that God the Father suffers on the cross as Son — since the two are different modes of the same person. Patripassianism is closely related to Sabellianism.

[edit] Oneness Pentecostalism

Modern theologians have asserted that Oneness Pentecostalism is similar to patripassianism. According to Dr. Gary Reckart, Sr. an Apostolic Messianic : "If as Oneness believe, that God the Father was incarnate in Christ, which Jesus confessed ("it is the Father in me that doeth the work"), the Father was in Christ during all of the sufferings and being nailed to the cross. Thus the Father did suffer or experience the sufferings of the Son up to the time the Father departed from the body".

[edit] See also

• Heresy
• Nontrinitarianism
• Trinitarianism
• Trinity