The term “Sabellian” has two distinct but related uses in the early church. Its earliest use refers to the form of modalism of the early 3rd-century CE teacher Sabellius and his immediate followers. Later, the term was used virtually synonymously for modalism in general. Due to the paucity of reliable sources for Sabellius, Sabellianism is usually discussed in broader treatments of modalistic monarchianism of the patristic period (see Bienert, 1993).