Copyright © By Dr. Adel Elsaie, Book Title: "Please Revise the Bible, Again"

3.4 Montanism

 

In the second century Montanus the Phrygian claimed to be the incarnate Trinity, uniting in his single person God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. This was not an isolated case of a single ill-balanced mind. From the earliest times down to the present day many sects have believed that Christ, not God himself, is incarnate in every fully initiated Christian, and they have carried this belief to its logical conclusion by adoring each other. Tertullian records that this was done by his fellow-Christians at Carthage in the second century; the disciples of St. Columba worshipped him as an embodiment of Christ; and in the eighth century Elipandus of Toledo spoke of Christ as “a god among gods,” meaning that all believers were gods just as truly as Jesus himself. The adoration of each other was customary among the Albigenses, and is noticed hundreds of times in the records of the Inquisition at Toulouse in the early part of the fourteenth century. These cases of Incarnation are encouraged by the following verse in the Gospel according to John 17:22,

"And the glory which Thou hast given me, I have given to them (disciples); that they may be one, just as we are one."

where every “true” Christian can be like the disciples receiving glory from Jesus and God, hence a part of the godhead.

Montanus was a convert to Christianity who lived in Phrygia in Asia Minor during the seventies of the second century. He and two followers, Priscilla and Maximilla, began prophesying as though the Holy Spirit were speaking directly through them. They claimed that Jesus was going to return and establish the New Jerusalem. Montanism spread through Asia Minor and as far as Africa but did not receive recognition from the established church.

 

Eusebius presented the following testimony concerning this group,

 

 “In a certain village in that part of Mysia over against Phrygia, Montanus, they say, first exposed himself to the assaults of the adversary through his unbounded lust for leadership. He was one of the recent converts, and he became possessed of a spirit, and suddenly began to rave in a kind of ecstatic trance, and to babble in a jargon, prophesying in a manner contrary to the custom of the Church which had been handed down by tradition from the earliest times”

 

Over time the expectation of Christ's return diminished, the prophetic element withered, and the movement's internal energies dissipated. From the 4th century all that was left was of Montanism was a small sect increasingly subjected to ecclesiastical and civil oppression, There is no evidence that Montanism survived in the west beyond the 5th century. However, the movement continued in Asia Minor up until the early Middle Ages.

 

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