Davide's Notes

Brief notes on Paul of Samosata, specifically with an eye to some comparisons with Origen's thought.

In HE V.XXVII, Eusebius says that Paul "attempted to revive" the heresy of Artemon. This heresy teaches "that the Saviour was a mere man". It is important to observe that this is on the one hand an ancient belief. For example, Hermas' Christology is certainly adoptionist, as noted already, and of course the same can be said of the Ebionites, cf. the notes on ante-nicene Christology. Therefore, the anonymous writer Eusebius refers to in V.XXVII.I was wrong in maintaining that Artemon's heresy was an innovation. On the other hand, the methods used by Artemon and by the Theodotians were new, for example in the field of biblical exegesis, where they are said to have

treated the Divine Scriptures recklessly and without fear [...] They do not endeavor to learn what the Divine Scriptures declare, but strive laboriously after any form of syllogism which may be devised to sustain their impiety. And if any one brings before them a passage of Divine Scripture, they see whether a conjunctive or disjunctive form of syllogism can be made from it.
[...]
[They] forsake the holy writings of God to devote themselves to geometry. Euclid is laboriously measured by some of them; and Aristotle and Theophrastus are admired; and Galen, perhaps, by some is even worshiped.

Some sort of critical method, perhaps, and not a lot of attention to allegorical interpretation. If as it seems this method was taken up by Paul of Samosata as well, who "attempted to revive this heresy", then we have a marked contrast to Origen already.

Jerome, in De Viribus Illustris 71, confirms that Paul "had introduced the doctrine of Artemon".

In HE VII.XXX, Eusebius reports part of the letter of the bishop Malchion against Paul. Unfortunately there are not very many details about Paul's teachings. We learn that, while born poor and "having received no wealth from his fathers", he was now rich, and that his richness he obtained

through his iniquities and sacrilegious acts, and through those things which he extorts from the brethren, depriving the injured of their rights and promising to assist them for reward, yet deceiving them.

He also

is puffed up, and assumes worldly dignities [...], struts in the market-places, reading letters and reciting them as he walks in public, attended by a body-guard, with a multitude preceding and following him, [...] practices chicanery in ecclesiastical assemblies, contrives to glorify himself, and deceive with appearances, and astonish the minds of the simple, [... and he stamps] on the tribunal with his feet, [...] he rebukes and insults those who do not applaud, and shake their handkerchiefs as in the theaters, and shout and leap about like the men and women that are stationed around him, and hear him in this unbecoming manner, but who listen reverently and orderly as in the house of God. [And he] stops the psalms to our Lord Jesus Christ, as being the modern productions of modern men, and trains women to sing psalms to himself in the midst of the church on the great day of the passover. [...]

And

Those singing to him and extolling him among the people say that their impious teacher has come down an angel from heaven [...] There are the women, the `subintroductae,' as the people of Antioch call them, belonging to him and to the presbyters and deacons that are with him. Although he knows and has convicted these men, yet he connives at this and their other incurable sins, in order that they may be bound to him, and through fear for themselves may not dare to accuse him for his wicked words and deeds. But he has also made them rich; on which account he is loved and admired by those who covet such things. [additional sexually related allegations follow later on]

In summary, not a very positive portrait of a man, who must have definitely been quite popular, though. As for his theology, we are simply told that

he is unwilling to acknowledge that the Son of God has come down from heaven.

Chadwick says that

For Paul, God and his Word or Wisdom are one (homoousios) without differentiation, and to affirm the pre-existence of the Son is to profess two Sons, two Christs; Jesus is a uniquely inspired man.

The NPNF notes report that he thought that

Christ was a mere man, though he was filled with divine power, and that from his birth, not merely from his baptism, as the Ebionites had held.

Finally, according to Schaff,

He denied the personality of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit, and considered them merely powers of God, like reason and mind in man; but granted that the Logos dwelt in Christ in a larger measure than in any former messenger of God, and taught, like the Socinians in later times, a gradual elevation of Christ, determined by his own moral development, to divine dignity. He admitted that Christ remained free from sin, conquered the sin of our forefathers, and then became the Saviour of the race.

So we have a Christ who's "filled with divine power", but is not pre-existent (cf. instead Origen). If the Logos, or Wisdom, is not an essential part of Christ (i.e. Wisdom according to participation), then a fundamental part of Origen's system, namely soteriology, falls down, as I noted when dealing with Origen's thought.

Incarnation was also a very problematic part of Paul's teachings: in some fragments of the letter of Malchion, not reported by Eusebius, it is said that

[The Church hold that] other men indeed received of Wisdom as an inspiration from without, which, though with them, is distinct from them; but that Wisdom in verity [i.e. Christ] came of itself substantially into His body by Mary.

Malchion, in the disputation with Paul, is also reported to have said:

Did I not say before that you do not admit that the only-begotten Son, who is from all eternity before every creature, was made substantially existent in the whole person of the Saviour; that is to say, was united with Him according to substance?

So, according to Paul, the man and the divine are united, but not "according to substance". The key difference with Origen here is the missing concept of eternal participation; in other words, it seems to me, problems of composition are inevitably brought in once one conceives of an in-time generation of the divinity of Christ. It is interesting to note that it seems (cf. especially the fuller account in de Riedmatten, S36) that Malchion was not proposing so much an Origen-centered theology himself, since he never refers to the human (created) soul of Christ: rather, it looks like Malchion likes to say that the Logos took the place of the human soul in Christ: a view that will be exploited by Apollinaris of Laodicea (Jesus has a human body but a divine mind, the tertium quid between being fully human or fully divine). Cf. instead on the other hand how with Origen the soul of Christ is the nous that does not replace the psychic (bodily) part. And again this is only possible is one admits the theoretical possibility of a nous that can be independent from the body, from history, in other words from time, that is, eternal.

As a final note, consider how easily Paul's teachings can be stretched, and how they will soon be stretched (by Arius): if the Logos is added to Christ, Christ is not God.

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Categories: Church_History