by Giuseppe Monno
Adoptionism is a heretical Christological current that developed within dynamic (or dynamistic) monarchianism, a doctrine aimed at preserving the absolute unity of God. According to this view, Jesus is not divine by nature, but was “adopted” by God as His Son at the moment of His baptism.
One of the earliest proponents of Adoptionism was Theodotus of Byzantium, a learned and influential figure active at the end of the second century. He maintained that Jesus was a man born of the Virgin, without sin, and that He was filled with divine power at the time of His baptism in the Jordan. According to Theodotus, it was at that moment that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, making Him the “Christ” and “Son of God” not by nature, but by adoption. This doctrine openly denied the ontological divinity of Christ.
Theodotus arrived in Rome around the year 190, bringing his teaching with him. He was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated by Pope Victor (c. 189–198), who upheld the orthodox faith concerning the true divinity of Christ.
In the third century, Adoptionism found another significant advocate in Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch from 260 to 268. He taught that Jesus was a man born of the Virgin Mary in whom the “wisdom of God” dwelt, identified with the Logos, but understood in an impersonal sense—as a divine force or energy rather than as a distinct Person of the Trinity. Paul denied the hypostatic union between the human and divine natures in Christ (that is, the substantial union of the two natures in one Person), asserting instead a moral or volitional union, namely, the full cooperation of the man Jesus with God.
This doctrine was condemned as heretical by a synod held in Antioch in 268, which led to the deposition and excommunication of Paul of Samosata. Nevertheless, his followers continued to uphold these teachings.
The definitive condemnation of Adoptionism, along with other heretical Christologies, came with the Council of Nicaea in 325, which clearly affirmed the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father (homoousios), declaring that Jesus Christ is true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father. This Nicene formulation decisively excluded every form of Adoptionism and laid the foundations of Trinitarian doctrine.