often used for “person.” Thus the modalists could say, when Christians confessed belief in “one God in three persons” (or similar language), they were not violating Jewish and Greek monotheism because the “three persons” are only masks the one God wears on the “stage” of history. Tertullian was the first Christian theologian to confront and reject with great intellectual vigor and clarity this seemingly simple vision of God’s triunity. If it is true, he declared, then the Father died on the cross,