Praxeas

FL. c.200. Modalist Monarchian. He is little known apart from Tertullian's treatise Adversus Praxeam (c.217) and has indeed been identified with Noetus and Epigonus, and even with Pope Callistus. He was said to have arrived in Rome toward the end of the second century from Asia where he had suffered imprisonment for his faith, and he may have gone later to Carthage. He was strongly anti-Montanist. He became leader of the so-called Patripassian* Monarchians—i.e., those concerned to maintain the unity of the Godhead even to the point of declaring that God the Father suffered. As Tertullian put it, “He drove out prophecy and introduced heresy: he put to flight the Paraclete and crucified the Father.” Praxeas conceived of Father and Son as one identical Person, the Word's having no independent existence. Consequently it was the Father who entered the Virgin's womb, thus becoming, so to speak, His own Son who suffered, died, and rose again.