modalistn.adj.

c1705 Consid. Damnatory Clauses Athanasian Creed 10/2 By the Modalists every one knows those are many..who take the Doctrine of the Trinity to imply three Modes of Existence, according to which God may be consider'd, with respect to his Divine Understanding, his Divine Wisdom, and his Divine Will.

1832 I. Taylor Sat. Evening xxviii. 469 The error of the Modalists and Sabellians.

1933 A. C. McGiffert Hist. Christian Thought I. ii. xii. 237 Hippolytus..wrote a brief work..which..is our principal source for a knowledge of the teachings of these Monarchians..or Modalistic Monarchians (or Modalists) as they are commonly called by modern historians.

1891 E. J. Hamilton (title) The modalist; or, the laws of rational conviction.

1965 Jrnl. Philos. 62 473 The modalist escapes by insisting that there be no nonnecessary premises to an argument whose conclusion is necessary.

1985 Jrnl. Philos. 82 42 The moderate modalist takes the modal operators as primitive, but countenances, for special purposes, constructed possible worlds built up by principles stated using the primitive operators from actual objects and properties.

1994 Philos. Perspectives 8 442 Fine is therefore a modalist, for he thinks there is nothing more basic than primitive modal notions.

1897 Expositor Dec. 408 Passages..could be understood in a distinctly modalist sense.

1957 F. L. Cross Oxf. Dict. Christian Church 914/1 The ‘Modalist’ Monarchians or Sabellians, of whom the most notable were Noetus, Praxeas, and Sabellius.

1979 Renaissance Q. 32 599 This leads to..Servetus' emanationist, modalist views of the Godhead.

1992 Mind 101 115 Even the modalist assumptions are too strong to be explained as linguistic conventions.