The rest is silence

Anatolios summarizes the soteriological consequences of the modalist-leaning theology of Marcellus of Ancyra this way: “Marcellus’s doctrine of God depicts divine being as a monologue – God is singular, monas ; in his own being, he is silent; in relation to creation, he utters his Word . . . . Jesus Christ, as the human incarnation of the Word, encompasses that dialogue in his own being. But since, for Marcellus, dialogue is not internal to God, neither can Jesus Christ, as a dialogical being in his divine-humanity, be wholly reintegrated into divine life. Rather, in the end as in the beginning, God’s life will again be simply a monologue. The dialogue of the union of humanity and divinity in Jesus Christ must once again be resolved into the monologue of divine life.”

Anatolios is right to emphasize that this shows that “the deep structure of trinitarian faith involves grounding the God-world difference in an intra-divine difference – not merely as a postulate of abstract metaphysical calculations but as the indispensable basis of the christological narrative and its soteriological import.”

And there are other, fairly massive implications:

On Marcellus’s account, there can be no deification, no human incorporation into Triune life, no human involvement in the perichoresis of the Persons. Flip-side, if the Trinity is affirmed, then deification follows necessarily, since the Father’s dialogue partner has taken flesh and therefore taken us up into the dialogue. Denying theopoesis is anti-Trinitarian.

Put somewhat differently, Marcellus’s theology polarizes the exaltation of God and the exaltation of man. God is all in all only because humanity isn’t united to Him. There is no place for man to be exalted with or in God. Is there a hint of this in some Reformed versions of “God does all things for His own glory”? And, if so, does that mean there is a hint of modalism in some versions of Reformed theology?

And there are implications for theology proper too. On Marcellus’s theory, God ultimately carries out a lonely monologue, or falls silent in the void. What is this but the death of God?