Abstract
Abstract The term represents a modern classification (by Adolf von Harnack) for several similar theological movements that stressed the indivisible unity of God as the primary way of understanding the mystery of the Trinity. The concept of God as monarchia (sole sovereignty), over against pagan polytheism and forms of Christian gnosticism, was a well‐established descriptor of the Divine Being among Pre‐Nicene writers. To think of God in monarchian terms was not regarded negatively, since it was necessary for Christians to emphasize God's unitary source and power — one divine spirit — as the basis for rendering the threefold operation of the divine economy in the world. No matter how the Trinity manifested itself in history, the full divinity of each in its earthly appearance is always asserted because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one substance. Reference to God in terms of a single substance will have different connotations in the 4th century when the Council of Nicaea professed the Father and the Son as the “same substance.”
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