This thesis was written in partial fulfillment of the ecclesiastical degree of Licentiate in

Sacred Theology (STL) at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1991.

A Low and Mean Christ:

A Social Reading of the Controversy Surrounding Paul of Samosata

–Tim Clancy S.J.

History has not been kind to Paul of Samosata. A powerful preacher, he enjoyed a

meteoric rise to prominence in the Christian community of third century Antioch, becoming

its bishop in 260. Yet his popularity in Antioch and its rural hinterland was matched by

vehement and determined opposition from his brother bishops of the surrounding cities of

Syria, Palestine and Eastern Asia Minor. These bishops tried without success to discipline

Paul through correspondence and meetings. Finally, in 268 they convened at Antioch a1

synod of unprecedented size and scope to definitively resolve the conflict. This council

deposed Paul and condemned his teachings, although at the cost of precipitating a schism in

the Antiochene church which persisted for decades. In subsequent centuries Paul of Samosata

has been remembered only through the eyes of his enemies as ambitious and pompous, venal

and licentious. His teachings have been recalled only to smear one's opponents as latter-day

"followers of the Samosatene." What had Paul done to generate such strong polar reactions?

What had he preached for the assembled bishops to expel one of their own so popular with

the masses and to throw one of the most important churches in Christianity into such

dissension and chaos?

To this day, interpretations of the controversy surrounding Paul have mirrored larger,

contemporary disputes concerning dogma and its development. In the centuries immediately

following Paul's condemnation, the controversy was understood to concern the metaphysical

relationship between the divine and human in Christ which then divided the church. Paul was

accused of teaching that Jesus was not himself the divine Logos but rather that he was an

ordinary man in whom the Logos dwelled "as in a temple". In modern times the controversy2

came to be seen as part of a perennial theological conflict, then particularly acute, between

rationalism and the sensus fidelium. Paul's problematic christology was taken to be derivative

of a more basic metaphysical insistence upon the transcendence and unity of the divine. Paul

The history of this controversy is found in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History VII, xxvii-xxx.1

See p.28-9 below.2

2

could not accept, any more than could contemporary modernists, the "scandal" to reason of

an incarnate God.3

In recent years, as metaphysics has been displaced in favor of a more experientially

centered, existential approach to the interpretation of dogma, the conflict surrounding Paul

has been similarly re-interpreted as a conflict between competing soteriologies. In this re-4

interpretation the focus of attention over Paul has once again returned from his views

concerning God to those regarding Christ. Paul is seen as opposing the Logos Christology

of divine descent with a prophetic Christology of spiritual ascent. To the soteriological rule

of Irenaeus and Origen that what God has not become, God has not saved, Paul is interpreted

as opposing what will later become the Arian principle that by following Jesus, what has

happened to Christ can happen to us.5

In the first part of this thesis I will study this history of how the controversy over Paul

has been interpreted over the last century and present arguments for favoring the recent shift

from metaphysical to soteriological concerns. In the second half, however I shall argue that

Paul's soteriology must itself be situated in a social perspective if it is to be properly

understood, and the significance of his condemnation correctly appreciated. The

soteriological question may describe the conflict but it does little to explain it. To understand

This interpretation is developed in the first part of the thesis below. However a brief selection3

from the literature here can substantiate that this is how the controversy was understood at this time.See, among others, Adolph Harnack in History of Dogma vol. III, (New York: Dover, 1961,republishing the English translation of the third German edition c. 1900). Harnack linked Paul to theRoman adoptionists, thereby depicting him as attempting to give traditional Jewish Christiantraditions "a philosophical, Aristotelian basis" (p.43). For Harnack this meant that ultimately Paul"had betrayed the mystery of the Christian faith, i.e. the mystic conception of God and Christ, dueto natural philosophy" (p.44). Gustave Bardy in his book, Paul de Samosate (Louvain, 1929) givesan even stronger portrayal of Paul's "intransigent rationalism".

Other dogmatic historians agreed with their assesments, for example, Jules Lebreton in TheHistory of the Primitive Church (New York: Macmillan, 1947) p.1056; and Karl Baus, Handbookof Church History, vol I (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965) p.255, 256.

See principally Robert Sample's dissertation, The Messiah as Prophet: The Christology of Paul4

of Samosata (Northwestern, 1977). While still unpublished, this work has recieved unusuallywidespread circulation among early historians of dogma. In it Sample explicitly affirms hisdependence upon the new soteriological interpretation of Arius reconstructed in part by hisdissertation director, Dennis Groh. Groh's work has since been published as Early Arianism: A Viewof Salvation by Robert Gregg and Dennis Groh (Philadeplphia: Fortress Press, 1981).

Cf the saying of Ibas of Edessa, "I am not jealous of Christ having become God, because that5

which he has become, I will also become". Simon of Beit-Aramsur Barsauma attributes a similarsaying to Paul: "I myself also, if I will it, could be Christ, since Christ and I are of one and the samenature." See Sample, The Messiah as Prophet, Frag. 35; p. 242.

3

the intense yet radically divergent receptions of Paul's preaching and conduct we need to

reconstruct the social conditions and cultural ethos within which Paul was heard by his two

audiences, that of his admirers and of his opponents.

As with past interpretations, so too this study of Paul reflects new developments in

the study of early church history. There has been a growing recognition in the last few years

in theology that the now common soteriological question "What does salvation in Christ

Jesus mean existentially?" must be addressed, at least at first, to the particular historical

audience to which the teaching in question was originally addressed. That is, one must ask

"To whom did salvation mean this?" and, in the case of doctrinal conflict such as with Paul

we must also ask "To whom was this manner of preaching the Gospel too dangerous to

tolerate--and why?" 6

Now the point of reconstructing the social location and cultural ethos of rival

soteriologies' contending carrier groups is not to explain in a reductionistic fashion how

socio-cultural context determines theological dogma, as some might fear, but rather to

discover the contingent yet real interdependence of a group's concrete everyday experience

with their more abstract beliefs concerning who they are and how they fit into the world

around them. If the proclamation of the Gospel is indeed liberating as Christianity claims,

then one should expect that a past conflict over how the Gospel ought to be understood

would be illumined by discovering how each audience understood themselves and how each

interpretation of the Gospel did indeed function in the original historical context to socially,

politically and psychologically liberate its adherents while at the same time mortally threaten

its opponents. As Schillebeeckx has recently argued in his typically forceful way,

A theological analysis of authentic belief in God is certainly possible,but soon threatens to become ideological without an analysis of thesociety in which these conceptions of God function. You cannotisolate the social function of belief in God from its theologicalsignificance. It is never just a matter of religious good intentions, butof the visible consequences of belief in God at the level of ourhistory. Even very abstract confessions of faith can have very specific

While this social hermeneutics can trace its theological roots historically back to the work of6

Ernst Troeltsch, (see for example his classic work, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches),it appears to have entered into the mainstream of theological thought only within the last twentyyears or so. Most work done on these lines is still in Scripture studies--see among others, WayneMeeks, Gerd Thiessen, Abraham Malherbe and Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza--but it is beginning toinfiltrate systematic theology--see for example, George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine, FrancisSchussler Fiorenza's Foundational Theology and the later work of Edward Schillebeeckx (inparticular, his latest book, Church, which contains a systematic defense of this "hermeneuticalmethod" as it was referred to in the interrogations he underwent with the Congregation for theDefense of the Faith).

4

social significance and political function. And here the question isalways Cui bono? Who profits from these particular concepts of God?And who are their victims?7

This approach to the study of dogma has its own particular limitations. Foremost is

its need to rely on the work of others. The question of social conditions and cultural ethos

can only be addressed in an inter-disciplinary setting, requiring appeals, among others, to

social history, sociology, anthropology, and literary criticism, in addition to the more

traditional fields of philosophy and church history. The unfortunate result is that the

plausibility of the argument depends on secondary as well as on primary sources and thus an

evaluation of its cogency will require more than the ability to follow an argument; it will also

demand some prior familiarity with the field. It is my hope that the argument presented here

can indeed be followed by anyone, irrespective of prior background, but whether the

secondary sources I appeal to are themselves reliable lies largely beyond the resources of this

paper to demonstrate.

Another novel and, to some, unsettling, feature of this approach is the attention given

to rhetorical language. Emotionally charged polemical rhetoric offers little promise for an

objective exposition of the cognitive content of the view being opposed. Nor does it

contribute directly to an empathetic understanding of its target. However rhetorical language

does illumine the values of the audience it hopes to persuade and it indicates the threats to

those values feared from its rival. Thus rhetorical documents, while of little use to traditional

cognitive or empathetic, existential readings of dogmatic controversies, can be invaluable in

reconstructions of the social location and cultural ethos of a document's author and audience,

and, indirectly, of that of their opponents as well.

Such a hermeneutics which focuses upon the reception of a figure or text by various

audiences differs from more familiar historical-critical methodology in one other important

Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York:Crossroad, 1990) p.58.7

5

respect as well. Whereas in historical criticism a document is more useful the more it

deviates from stereotypes of the period, in reception hermeneutics stereotypical charges are

prized for one is trying to reconstruct precisely the common values, beliefs and expectations

of the text's author and of its various audiences.

I believe Paul of Samosata is a particularly apt subject for this kind of a study. For as

the historical-critical method has gradually become adopted by dogmatic historians, the

traditional sources for reconstructing Paul's teachings have come to be regarded as

contaminated by later redactors with their own diverse agendas. On the other hand, our most

certainly authentic source on Paul, consisting of excerpts from the synodal letter proclaiming

his excommunication preserved in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History , has traditionally been8

considered virtually useless precisely because, characteristically, Eusebius mentions the

doctrinal conflict only in passing, choosing instead to quote extensively from that part of the

letter where the bishops deliver a highly rhetorical, vituperative attack on Paul's character and

conduct as bishop.

In the second half of this thesis, relying upon a prophetic interpretation of Paul's

Christology established in the first part, I turn to these quotations in Eusebius from the

bishops' synodal letter and use their charges against Paul to reconstruct the social dynamics

of the controversy at Antioch. I study their accusations under three headings: first, that Paul9

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (H.E.) VII. xxx 2-17. Throughout this thesis quotations from8

Eusebius will be from the Loeb edition, translated by G.E.L. Oulten (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1973). I have reproduced Eusebius' selections from the synodal letter in the second appendixbelow.

Some recent articles have stressed the need for such a study and offer some help in setting out.9

John Burke in "Eusebius on Paul of Samosata: A New Image" (Kleronomia 7 (1975) 8-20) drawsa portrait of Paul consistent with my reconstruction below, but without a great deal of argumentationto support it. Frederick Norris in "Paul of Samosata: Procurator Ducenarius" (Journal of TheologicalStudies (new series) 35 (1984) 50-70) agrees on the importance of the Eusebian material and theneed to reconstruct the social context at Antioch (see p.58) but unfortunately, he restricts his concernto whether or not Paul was a ducenarius, a very high political official, as the synodal letter can beread to affirm. On this latter question Fergus Millar's article, "Paul of Samosata, Zenobia andAurelian: The Church, Local Culture and Political Allegiance in Third Century Syria" (Journal ofRoman Studies 61 (1971) 1-17) has won the concensus, against Norris, that Paul was not a

6

is a vulgar, social-climbing sophist; secondly, that he enjoys scandalous relationships with

some of his women supporters and thirdly, that through liturgical innovations Paul has

"burlesqued the mystery".

From these charges I argue that the doctrinal conflict at Antioch between "high" and

"low" christologies mirrors a conflict of ethos between high and low status Christians. Many

of the bishops instrumental in the excommunication of Paul we know from elsewhere in

Eusebius to have enjoyed the cultivated, classical education that was a mark of high social

standing. On the other hand the bishops' themselves claim that Paul was originally "poor and

beggarly", and that he drew his support from the "more naive souls" easily taken in by what

the bishops perceived to be vulgar sophistry and cheap theatrics. I shall argue that Eusebius'

brief summary of Paul's "low and mean views", that "Jesus was by nature an ordinary man"

should be read not only metaphysically, but also socially. That is, I shall contend that Paul

proclaimed a Jesus who was a socially ordinary man, one of the multitudes, who was raised

to the divine by God's prophetic Spirit in accordance with the Father's will and plan. It was

this charismatic gospel of social empowerment which Paul lived out in his own life and

which so galvanized his supporters. And it was the rising hegemony of the opposing kenotic

ethos of orderly reciprocity, with the great called upon to exercise paternal concern over the

lowly and the lowly to have a childlike reverence for and obedience to the great, championed

by a new influx from the high status elite in Christianity, which doomed Paul's "low and

mean" gospel.

The Modern Interpretation of the Conflict at Antioch

ducenarius, but rather that the bishops complained he acted so pompously one would have thoughthe was one.

Finally, Virgina Burrus in "Rhetorical Stereotypes in the Portrait of Paul of Samosata" (VigiliaeChristianae 43 (1989) 215-225) has argued that a number of the descriptions of Paul in the letter areattempts to depict him as a sophist. I use Burrus' work in the section of the thesis dealing with thecharge of sophistry below.

7

As I mentioned above, in the modern period, interpretations of Paul of Samosata have

generally portrayed him as a rationalist whose philosophical convictions concerning the

transcendent unity of God led him to teach a "divisive" Christology in which he sharply

distinguished Jesus, a "mere" man from the impersonal divine Logos which dwelt within

him. This view was reiterated, by Adolf Harnack in his massive and widely influential

History of Dogma and some decades later, in a different way, by Gustave Bardy in his10

exhaustive study Paul de Samosate. Writing independently, but at nearly the same time as11

Bardy, Friedrich Loofs also wrote a book on Paul, Paulus von Samosata . Loofs agreed that12

Paul had a philosophical background, but he argued for a more orthodox interpretation of

Paul as an economic trinitarian, similar to Tertullian. Few have found Loofs' interpretation

persuasive, however, and through the sixties most dogmatic historians have followed either

Harnack or Bardy.13

(i) Harnack: Aristotelian rationalism vs Platonic mysticism

Harnack understood the theological conflicts of the third, fourth and fifth centuries to

be principally a philosophical struggle over how the new faith was to be rationally

systematized. Stoic Platonism championed by the emergent Logos theologians was opposed

by an Epicurean Aristotelianism which emphasized the absolute transcendence and unity of

the Divine Monarchy. 14

See Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma III, 37-48.10

Gustave Bardy, Paul de Samosate: Etude Historique (Louvain, 1929). Bardy revised an earlier11

edition published in 1917 in light of Friedrich Loofs' book.

Friedrich Loofs, Paulus von Samosata TU 44 (Leipzig, 1924).12

See, for example, those cited at the bottom of n.313

Harnack, History of Dogma II, 9-10.14

8

Harnack classified Paul as a "monarchian;" He argued that central to Paul's teaching

was the conviction that God must be one person, in opposition to the threat of "ditheism" or

even "tritheism" among his Alexandrian opponents. For Paul, the Word and the Spirit could

not be separate hypostases but must be understood as merely impersonal qualities of the

Father. It was for this reason that Eusebius could later accuse Marcellus of following Paul--

Marcellus, for whom the Word was the "breath" of the Father, no more subsistent than our

own speech. It was for this reason as well that Paul reportedly called the Word homoousios

with the Father, which the assembled bishops apparently also condemned to the great

discomfort of Athanasius and the supporters of Nicea in the next century.

Paul's philosophical convictions were inferred by Harnack through his linkage of Paul

to the Roman Adoptionist, Artemas, and through Artemas, to Theodotus. Harnack

understood the Synodal letter to imply that Paul was both in correspondence with Artemas,

and in communion with him. Eusebius claims elsewhere in his Ecclesiastical History that15

this Artemas was attempting to revive the adoptionist Christology of Theodotus of a couple

generations earlier. Theodotus and his immediate followers, we know in turn principally16

from Eusebius and Hippolytus. They studied the works of Aristotle, Galen, Euclid and17

Epicurus. Harnack portrayed them as creating an Aristotelian-Epicurean theology for

Christianity to rival the Middle Platonic and Stoic reflections of the Logos theologians,

Justin, Irenaeus and Hippolytus. They rejected the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures

relying instead upon an analytical (or "grammatical") reading of the plain sense of the text.

See Eusebius, H.E. VII xxx 16, 17.15

Eusebius H.E. V xxviii. Harnack makes the qualification that "the evident anxiety of the writer16

(quoted by Eusebius) to impose Theodotus upon them as their spiritual father" leads him to concludethat "the party did not identify themselves with the Theodotians." Nevertheless, "what they regardedas the point of difference we do not know," and Harnack remains content to include Artemas in theRoman Adoptionist tradition (History of Dogma III p.32).

Ibid and Hippolytus, Ref. Her. 7.35, as well as the Syntagma of Hippolytus preserved by17

Epiphanius. In what follows I naturally present Harnack's interpretation of the Roman Adoptionists.See History of Dogma III, 20-32.

9

Theodotus was ultimately expelled from the apostolic Church, principally on the

grounds that he held Jesus Christ to have been a "mere man" (psilos anthropos) rather than

the incarnate Logos. While believing that Jesus was born of the Virgin by special decree, still

it was only after his piety had been tested that the Father annointed him with his Holy Spirit.

Only then, at his baptism, did Jesus become "the Christ". Thus Jesus' sonship was not by

nature, but by "adoption", that is by the Father's own choice. By nature, Jesus was no

different than any other human being. Whether Jesus could ever properly be called "God"

appeared to be a matter of dispute within the Theodotian camp. Some were said to have

argued that after his resurrection, Jesus could indeed be called "God", but Theodotus himself

apprarently resisted even this.

Harnack pointed out that the Theodotian Christology was not without its own

antecendents in the Christian tradition. Just as the Logos Christology of Justin and

Hippolytus was a Middle Platonic extrapolation of the mysticism of John, so Adoptionism

was a more empiricist extrapolation of the Synoptics and Hebrews, as well as of Hermas in

the second century. Nevertheless, Harnack concluded, their close, analytical readings of the

Scriptures could not hope to win out against the rich mystical allegorizing of their Platonic

opponents. As opposed as Harnack was to the Platonizing of the Gospel, he admitted that

"the triumph of Neo-Platonic philosophy and of the Logos Christology in Christian theology

is, in this sense, to be considered an advance."

In the condition of the theology of the Church at that time, it couldnot be supposed that religious conviction was especially strong orardent in men who depreciated the religious philosophy of the Greeks(as did both Aristotle and Epicurus in the eyes of contemporaries--mynote). For whence, if not from this source, or from Apocalyptics, didmen then derive a distinctively pious enthusiasm?18

Harnack, History of Dogma III, 25 and n.2.18

10

Harnack portrayed Paul as continuing this psilanthropic, adoptionist tradition and its

philosophical struggle against the platonic Logos theology: "The teaching of Paul was

certainly a development of the old doctrine of Hermas and Theodotus." Harnack19

nevertheless did insist that Paul was closer to orthodoxy than his predecessors. Though Paul

also tried to give the more Jewish Christian traditions "a philosophical, Aristotleian basis"20

he endeavored to remain within accepted terminology, much to the exasperation of his

opponents.

Indeed Paul's skill as an "experienced theologian" seemed clear from the account that

Eusebius had given of the strenuous efforts needed to expose his heresy. Paul managed to

hold his own against a group of hostile bishops, some deeply steeped in philosophy, and

several of whom had studied at the feet of the great Origen himself. Try as they might the

bishops could not themselves trap Paul in his heresy. They succeeded only in a second (or

possibly even third) synod, after having recruited a ringer, Malchion, himself a presbyter, but

also

a learned man, the head of a Greek school of rhetoric in Antioch. Thisman had stenographers to take notes as he held a disputation withPaul, which we know to be extant even to this day, and he, alone ofthem all, was able to unmask that crafty and deceitful person.21

The transcripts of this final disputation between Paul and Malchion were thought to

survive in alleged quotations by later theologians. These fragments (referred to as the Acta,

the acts of the council) revealed a very nuanced and complicated metaphysical debate

between the two men on the nature of the union of the logos with the human in Christ:

Ibid p.4319

Ibid.20

Eusebius, History of the Church VII, xix21

11

Malchion: This Word having thus an independent existence, himselfwas born in that body...I inquire therefore if, even as we men, that is,as composite beings, possess a coming together of flesh andsomething dwelling in the flesh, even so the Word Himself, WisdomHerself was in that body as the life principle is in us in this life? Evenas in our case we are complete from the conjunction (that is, of bodyand the principle of life) so too it is in His case from the concurrencein the same person of the Word of God and the element that camefrom the Virgin.

Paul: You answered for me too from your way of speaking.

Malchion: I asked you a question. You speak of Word and Wisdom.But in the case of human beings one is said to participate in Word andWisdom, while another lacks them. Do you mean that (in the case ofChrist) it is by participation or by the Word itself and Wisdomcoming down upon Him? Substance (ousia) and participation are notalike. For the substantial is a part of the total person who became ourLord by the intermingling of God and man, but participation does notmean being a part of the person in whom it is.

Paul: All those here agree with what I say. Now you tell me--I amasking first (this time). Your argument has tried to put forward as anillustration something in no way analogous. The constitution ofhumanity is different. We were talking about Word and Wisdom.22

In the Acta, Malchion appeals to the philosophical understanding of the relationship

of the soul to the body in middle Platonism to explain the relationship of the divine Logos

to Jesus' humanity. The Word is to Jesus what the soul is to us--our true substance. In doing

so Malchion anticipates the logos-sarx Christology taught by Apollinarus a century later.

Paul on the other hand, is portrayed in the Acta as opposing Malchion's logos-sarx

Christology with a logos-anthropos Christology which in turn anticipates the later

Antiochene theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries, particularly Nestorius. According

to the Paul of the Acta the Logos dwells in Jesus "as in a temple" , and thereby Jesus23

participates in the Logos. But as Malchion insists above, "substance and participation are not

alike". While the power of the divine indwelling and the depth of Jesus' participation in the

J. Stevenson, ed. and trans., A New Eusebius (London: 1957) pp. 277-8. It is taken from the22

Codex Januensis 27, thought to be from Leontius of Byzantium.

Harnack op. cit., p.41 n1; from Severus of Antioch, Contra Grammaticum iii, 25.23

12

Logos far surpasses any who came before him, Jesus and the Logos remain two distinct

substances: "The Logos is one, Jesus is another;" insists Paul. Or again,24

A human being is anointed, the Logos is not annointed. The Nazareneour Lord is anointed. For the Logos is greater than the anointed one,that is, Christ, since the anointed one became great through Wisdom.For the Logos is from above, Jesus is from hence. Mary is not olderthan the Logos, but she gave birth to a man like us though better inevery way, since he was from the Holy Spirit [and from the promisesand the Scriptures].25

Metaphysically, then Jesus remains a "mere man" as Eusebius had complained. This

psilanthropic Christology and the very analytical mode of argumentation such as is evident

in this last passage confirmed for Harnack that Paul was indeed taking up the Aristotelian

rationalism of the Roman Adoptionists.

Harnack was able to draw a further similarity between Paul and Theodotus by

appealing to another collection of alleged quotations from Paul, The Discourse to Sabinus,

which, like Theodotus, offers a moral interpretation of Jesus' participation in the divine

Word:

Our savior has become holy and righteous, having conquered the sinsof our forefather by suffering and trial, by means of which heachieved virtue and was joined to God having held one and the samewill and energy with God by means of his progress in good works;having kept to this indivisibly he was assigned the name, the namewhich is above all, the name which was given freely to him as a prizeof love. 26

Ibid p.41 n.4; from the Contestio publice proposita a clericis Constantinopolitanis, author24

uncertain (possibly Eusebius of Doryllaeum) See Sample, Messiah as Prophet p.244-5.

Stevenson, op. cit., from Leontius of Byzantium, Adversus Nestorianos et Eutychianos iii.25

(Sample, p.246).

Discourse to Sabinus, Sample frag 80; Harnack p. 41-2, n.10.26

13

Filled with God's Spirit, Jesus committed his life in perfect obedience to the Father's

will. Through such steadfast perseverence he "grew in grace" and conquered sin. "So,"27

notes Harnack, "he became the Redeemer and Savior of the human race, and at the same time

entered into an eternally indissoluble union with God." And so too did he fulfill the Father's28

plan of salvation for his people, being the one foretold by all the prophets, the Messiah whom

God had promised to send. Though not "from above" but rather a man "from below," Jesus

was the Anointed One, raised up from amongst God's people, ultimately himself becoming

"God" by divine grace and his own steadfast obedience. Thus did Paul oppose the mystical29

Platonic allegorizing of the Scriptures with a more naturalistic, ethical reading as the

Epicureans were known to do with religion generally.

Harnack noted the popularity Paul's teachings appeared to have enjoyed in Antioch.

He attributed this to the Adoptionist school's favoring of Jewish Christian traditions which

were likely to still be strong and deeply cherished in a city with as large a Jewish population

as Antioch, and in a see whose bishops past and future devoted so much attention to the

relationship of Christianity to its Jewish roots. Indeed a century later, Chrysostom

complained that some of his flock still saw nothing inconsistent in participating in both

Christian and Jewish religious rituals. The political situation in Antioch at the time of Paul

was also thought to have played a role in his attaining such prominence. Harnack understood

the synodal letter to have complained that while bishop, Paul was also a ducenarius, a very

high civic official in Antioch at a time when the city was under the control of Palmyra30

whose powerful Queen Zenobia was thought to have strong Jewish sympathies. Had the

church at Antioch elected Paul in light of this political situation?

Cf Lk 2:5227

Harnack, p.42.28

see p.43 n.129

As noted in n.8 above, this reading of Eusebius has since been discredited. 30

14

Harnack concluded his treatment of Paul by judging that while the orthodox bishops

were correct in attacking Paul's divisive Christology which made too clear a distinction

between God and man in Jesus, in the end he was hardly less orthodox than Hermas whose

writings have managed to remain within the Church. Paul's principal sin was the

philosophical error of opposing Aristotle to Plato:

As he kept his dogmatic theology free from Platonism, his differencewith his opponents began in his conception of God. The latterdescribed the controversy very correctly when they said that Paul "hadbetrayed the mystery of the faith" i.e. the mystic conception of Godand Christ, due to natural philosophy.31

(ii) Bardy: Paul the intransigent rationalist

Bardy disagreed with the some of the details of Harnack's interpretation of Paul, but

essentially supported his principal conclusions. Like Harnack, Bardy argued that Paul's

motivation was principally to safeguard the transcendence of the divine monas:

It well appears that this down-to-earth Christology has its origin in amonarchian theology and if Paul refused to attribute a divine natureto Christ it was because he was determined to protect the unity ofGod, a unity compromised in his view by the traditional doctrinewhich did give to our Savior the name of "God".32

Bardy also agreed with Harnack that Paul's monarchianism had its roots in his

philosophical convictions. However Bardy rejected Harnack's linkage of Paul to Artemas and

the Roman adoptionists. He argued that by 260 the "Artemites" had long been suppressed,

and so would hardly have been of any help to Paul. The point of the bishops associating Paul

with Artemas was merely to demonstrate that "for them, the heresiarch was also a

philosopher, too concerned for the exigencies of human wisdom." Paul then was not so33

Ibid p.4431

Bardy, Paul de Samosate p.429. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.32

Ibid. p.501.33

15

much a continuation of an Adoptionist "tradition" as he was an independent, parallel

development. So too, reacting to Loofs interpretation of Paul to be given below, Bardy

discounted the influence of Judaism on Paul's thought. While he may indeed have pandered

to Queen Zenobia's Jewish sympathies, Bardy suggests that Paul's monarchianism is better

explained by a rationalistic attraction to religious syncretism.34

Bardy's interpretation of Paul's Christology was a similar mixture of agreement and

disagreement with Harnack. He joined Harnack and most every historian of the day in taking

Paul to be a psilanthropist. Yet while he agreed that Paul understood the union of the divine

Logos and Jesus' humanity to be moral rather than substantial, he rejected Harnack's attempt

to attribute to Paul a Christology of moral ascent. The Acta portrays Paul very clearly

affirming that the Divine Logos dwells in Christ from his conception, and Pseudo-Athanasius

reports that Paul held Christ to be God from birth. For Paul, Mary had borne a son not by35

man, but through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, Paul's Christ was never "like us" in this

respect. He did not "grow in wisdom" but from the beginning of his life Wisdom had dwelt

in him as in no other. Thus although the Father had indeed "adopted" Jesus, the "mere man",

Jesus was one with God from his conception; he himself had done nothing to warrant such

a grace. Thus Bardy rejected the authenticity of the Discourse to Sabinus on which Harnack

had relied for his moral interpretation of Paul's Christology. Indeed, far from having a moral

salience, Bardy professed to find no soteriological concerns whatsoever in Paul's teaching:

What we certainly know the least in Paul's Christology is what hethought about the Redemption. None of the authentic fragments giveJesus the title of Savior, which is, on the contrary, common in thefragments to Sabinus.36

Ibid. p.505.34

Psuedo-Athanasius, Contra Apollinarem ii. 3.35

Ibid. p.471.36

16

While this does not in itself mean that Paul simply ignored "the mystery of salvation",

on the other hand it is understandable that the Redemption would findlittle place in a system in which Christ was merely an ordinary man.A God can save sinners; but a man, even one without sin, is incapableof accomplishing such a task.37

Thus Bardy's interpretation of Paul is even more diametrically opposed to the recent

soteriological interpretation of Robert Sample than is Harnack's. So too, having stripped Paul

of both ethical and traditional motivations, Bardy ends up placing even greater emphasis on

Paul's rationalism. Using the bishops' accusation of Paul as a "sophist" in the synodal letter

as his point of departure, Bardy summarizes the picture of Paul which emerges from the

Acta:

The title of sophist which is given to the Samosatene allows us todivine his intransigent rationalism, his attachment to the method ofdiscussion employed in the schools, his predilection for syllogisticargumentation...What we know of his intellectual temperment allowsus to recognize him as a sort of rationalist, able at handlingdiscussions; a man for whom the sacred scriptures were the pretextfor argumentation at times tortuous, at which he embarassed the goodfaith of his adversaries.38

(iii) Friedrich Loofs: A Stoic economic trinitarianism

Friedrich Loofs, on the other hand, argued that Paul was no more of a rationalist than

his Origenist opponents. He saw both parties as intent upon giving metaphysical39

interpretations and defenses of cherished ancient Christian traditions. The value of Paul for

us, claimed Loofs, lies in the evidence he provides of the more Jewish Christian traditions

which were being overwhelmed in his day by the rising hegemony of the Logos theologians:

Ibid, p.472.37

Ibid. pp.269, 270.38

For a lengthy review of Loofs' work in English, see W. Telfer, Jounal of Theological Studies39

26 (1925) pp.187-99. Telfer also treats Bardy's book, though in less detail.

17

Paul opposed himself to the Neo-Platonic current which since Origeninvaded the Church and devoured its ancient traditions....This is hismark of honor; this is why he appears as one of the most interestingtheologians of the ante-nicene period: he belonged to a traditionwhich had its roots in a time prior to the flood of Hellenization.40

In this respect, Loofs is at one with Harnack. However, the two disagreed concerning

which traditions Paul promoted. Loofs argued that Paul had more in common with Tertullian

than with the Roman Adoptionists. While certainly concerned to defend the divine monas,

and sensitive to the dangers of tritheism among the Origenists, Paul is better seen not as

continuing the rationalistic Aristotelian monarchianism of Theodotus, but as a traditionalist

opposing the Platonic Logos theologians with a Stoically influenced economic trinitarianism.

Paul's discussion of the divine monas refers to God before the ages. At creation however,

God "begets" his Word, and that Word acquires a personal existence when it comes to dwell

within the man Jesus. Thus Paul does not reject the trinity, but only denies its originary

status. Likewise Paul does not deny the incarnation, it is only that, concerned with the

monophysite tendencies so apparent in Malchion, he stresses the dual nature of Christ. To

associate Paul with the adoptionists and accuse him of psilanthropism as Eusebius does is

a gross distortion. Paul's heresy, in Loofs mind, stems not from his rationalism but from his

backing a Christian tradition that was rapidly losing ground.41

In support of this far more orthodox re-interpretation of Paul, Loofs points to passages

in the patristic writings where Paul is listed along with other ecomomic trinitarians. He also

appeals to the alleged profession of faith of Gregory Thaumaturgos, whose assertion, "the

monad did not develop into a dyad, nor the dyad into a triad" is claimed by Loofs to be

"certainly" directed against Paul.

Loofs, Paulus von Samosata p. 322; quoted by Bardy, p.496.40

Ibid. p.188.41

18

However, Loofs interpretation of Paul as an economic trinitarian did not sway many

scholars. Most followed Harnack and Bardy, understanding Paul to be a monarchian, driven

by his philosophical principles to espouse a "divisive" Christology of a "mere man"

"adopted" by God. His analytical rationalism was seen to be no match for the sacramental

mysticism appealed to and encouraged by his Platonist opponents. While he could dazzle the

crowds with his rhetorical theatrics for a time, without a soteriology he had nothing lasting

to offer the ordinary faithful who were concerned not with philosophical niceties but with

finding solace in a harsh world. Thus most dogmatic theologians thought the haughtiness42

portrayed in the Synodal letter, betrayed itself in Paul's teaching as well as in the conduct of

his life. His hubris proved to be his undoing in more ways than one.

Sample's Soteriological Interpretation

Recently however the teaching of Paul of Samosata has been re-interpreted precisely

as fundamentally a soteriological reading of the Gospel rather than a metaphysical theology.

Following the new soteriological re-interpretation of Arianism by Gregg and Groh, one of

Groh's students, Robert Sample, has written a dissertation arguing that Paul should be

similarly understood to be concerned principally about how we find our salvation in Jesus

Christ, rather than with philosophical conundrums concerning either a triune God or a God-

man. In contrast to the contemporary scholarly consensus on Paul shaped by the works of43

Harnack, Bardy, and Loofs, Sample claims that Paul's teaching was not motivated primarily

Cf Tefler, who while more impressed with Loofs' work than with Bardy's, nevertheless ends his42

review with the remark:

"What Dr. Loofs seems to lack, on the other hand, is an appreciation of theweakness of the type of Christology which he represents as Paul's from thepoint of view of religious sentiment...The Christology of Paul afforded a poorfoundation for an objective soteriology."

Robert Sample, The Messiah as Prophet; see n.4 above.43

19

by a desire to protect the transcendence and unity of God. The controversy surrounding Paul44

was not a contest between Platonic mysticism and Aristotelian empiricism, or between

economic and immanent Trinitarianism. Indeed it was not directly a metaphysical fight at all,

but rather an argument between two different understandings of how, in Christ Jesus, God

saves a sinful humanity.

Sample's re-interpretation of Paul begins with a re-assessment of the historical

sources. Despite their differences, Harnack, Bardy and Loofs had all relied principally upon

the Acta for their understanding of Paul. But as dogmatic historians have become more45

critical in their use of the early Fathers, the neat foreshadowing of Nestorius by Paul and of

Apollinaris and the Monophysites by Malchion has come under increasing suspicion. Did

later polemicists distort, even at times create the record of the Council? The first document

extant which quotes the Acta only dates from 429, one hundred and fifty years after the

original controversy, and it is precisely an attempt to establish that Nestorius's Christological

teaching repeats that of Paul virtually word for word. Later in the sixth century, alleged46

quotations of the Acta appear again in polemical writings by Leontius of Byzantium and

Justinian to the same purpose. The Acta were also appealed to in the fifth and sixth century

by monophysites against the followers of Chalcedon. In light of this history of their

provenance, a new consensus has grown that the Acta are indeed an unreliable source which

has been subjected to later Apollinarian and monophysite redaction and so should be treated

with great caution in reconstructing Paul's teaching.47

For Sample's documentation of this consensus, see p.24 n.2.44

Harnack, p.39, n.2; Bardy, p. 79; Loofs, pp.110-133; 202-264.45

See the Contestio probably by Eusebius of Doryleum. For the history of the provenance of the46

fragments I am relying on Sample, pp.47-51.

Henri de Riedmatten defended the authenticity on the Acta in his study, Les Actes du Proces47

de Paul de Samosate (Fribourg: 1952). However his emphasis on how closely Malchion anticipatedApollinaris seems only to have fueled doubts. Even Bardy, in his review of De Riedmatten's workclaimed that he could no longer support their authenticity. See Revue de Sciences Religieuses 26

20

Sample not only agrees that such neat anticipations in the Acta just too neat to be

credible, but that another document, almost certainly authentic, casts the historical48

controversy in a very different light from that provided by the Acta. He refers to a letter

allegedly written by six bishops from the region of Palestine in which Paul is asked to sign

a profession of faith. This letter allegedly antedates the final council which expelled Paul.49

It represents an earlier attempt by neighboring bishops to satisfy themselves of Paul's

orthodoxy. The authenticity of the letter is defended by Sample chiefly on the grounds that

its own theology is so strongly Origenist, affirming a subordinationist Christology which

would itself be anathematized fifty years later at Nicea. He also notes that where the50

bishops define the Word's eternal subsistence "not as ...a tool, nor as ....an anhypostatic

knowledge, but begotten of the Father as a Son, as a living agent and hypostasis" they51

prescind from the key Johanine texts which will be at the heart of the dispute with Marcellus

over this very point in the next century. Even the letter's tone has an authentic ring to it.

Towards Paul the bishops are dignified and polite, as one would expect bishops to address

one of their own, and in stark contrast to how he will later be treated in the Synodal letter

announcing his excommunication.

(1952) pp.294-6.

See Sample, pp.47-55; also his article, "the Christology of the Council of Antioch (268 C.E.)48

Reconsidered" Church History (1979) pp.18-21. As he summarizes on p. 21 of the latter:

However, it is inconcievable that the language of a third century presbyter, asrecorded in the Acta could be identical at points with the language ofApollinaris nearly a century later--language that is inexplicable apart from thedecisions and controversies following Nicea.

This letter is referred to as "The Letter of the Six Bishops" or the Epistula. (I shall refer to it by49

the latter title.) For the text see Appendix 1, below.

Cf Epistula para. 2: "Also the Beloved recieved a limited (metrion) knowledge concerning him50

(the Father)."

Ibid. para.4.51

21

Indeed the Epistula was accepted as authentic by Harnack, Bardy and Loofs.52

However in the past it had been little used in interpreting Paul, since it directly expresses

only the theology of the bishops who opposed him. With Paul's own words thought to be

recorded in the Acta, the indirect testimony of the Epistula could hardly be considered "best

evidence" for reconstructing Paul's teaching. But with the suspicion now cast on the Acta,

Sample reverses the relative weight given the two documents. For him, it is the Acta which

can only provide indirect support for a reconstruction of Paul's teaching based principally

upon the Bishops' letter. Sample also relies more on other fourth century church fathers'

reports of Paul. These latter must also be treated with care, as their primary intent is to try

to discredit Arius or alternatively, Marcellus, by showing either one to be "reviving the

heresy of the Samosatene". Yet being closer to the historical controversy, Sample accords

them greater credibility than much of the Acta, particularly where they still acknowledge

some difference between Paul and Arius or Paul and Marcellus.

Finally, Sample also wants to restore credibility to the Discourse to Sabinus, originally

accepted by Harnack but rejected by Bardy, Loofs and most others. These had dismissed its

authenticity mostly on the grounds that it expressed a Christology incompatible with the

Acta, (cf. Bardy's argument above) and that it was alien to what was understood to be the

theological concerns of the late third and early fourth centuries. However the Acta has now

been discredited, and the Discourse's emphasis on grace and moral ascent, far from being

alien to the period, is quite consonant with the new soteriological re-interpretation of early

Arianism. While acknowledging that its principal intent is to identify monothelites as

reviving the heresy of Paul, Sample argues that his exegesis of the Epistula and other early

Harnack, pp.47-8; Bardy, pp.9-34 (see especially p.32), and his earlier study, "La Lettre des six52

Eveques a Paul de Samosate" Revue de Sciences Religieuses 6 (1916) pp.17-33; Loofs pp.265-283.De Reidmatten had also devoted a final chapter in his book to the letter, also arguing for itsauthenticity.

22

reactions to Paul corroborate at least the general motif of moral and spiritual advance

attributed to Paul's Christology in this document.53

Sample's reconstruction of Paul's teaching starts then from what he argues to be our

"best evidence" on Paul--the Epistula and other early reactions to Paul. In light of these54

materials he proceeds to evaluate the reliability of later alleged quotations from Paul, paying

particular attention to the Discourse to Sabinus.

What first strikes Sample about the Epistula is precisely what it does not address,

namely, the terminological controversy at the heart of the dispute as recorded in the Acta.

Not only does the letter not define how the human and divine natures relate to one another

in the person of Christ, but the one sentence in the entire letter which at least affirms the

incarnation states in all historical innocence, "having become flesh, he became man"

(sarkothenta enenthropekenai) without any hint of a need to differentiate between the two55

terms, sarx and anthropos over which the Christological controversy rages in the Acta.

On the other hand, what the letter does stress and at considerable length with

numerous proof texts, is the divine pre-existence of the Son. The bishops insist that the Son

was "always with the Father to fulfill the Father's will," that he is the divine mediator of the56

Father both at creation itself and in God's dealings with humanity ever since, the Son57

himself being the one who appeared to Abraham, Moses and the prophets. Sample argues58

For a fuller treatment of the Discourse's reliability see Sample, pp.57-63.53

Sample, "Christology of the Council" p.22; Messiah as Prophet, p.78.54

Epistula, para. 8.55

Ibid. para. 4.56

Ibid.57

Ibid. para. 5-7.58

23

that this focus on the Son's pre-existence strongly indicates that Paul was denying it.59

Indeed, the only direct condemnation in the letter is addressed specifically to whoever would

deny the Son's pre-existent divinity:

Whoever refuses to believe and confess that the Son of God is Godbefore the foundation of the world, (my emphasis), pretending thatone proclaims two gods if one proclaims that the Son of God is God,this one we believe to be outside the rule of the church and all thecatholic churches agree with us.60

In their anathema, the bishops allude to one reason Paul may have given for his

rejection of the bishop's belief in the Son's pre-existence--the charge, familiar to Origenists,

that their view on the divinity of Christ leads to ditheism. Sample argues that this may be61

more their concern than Paul's. While Paul almost certainly would have availed himself of

such a common counter-argument to Logos theology, Sample doubts that it was a principal

motivation for Paul's own teaching. Rather he looks to another emphatic line in the letter for

a clue to what Paul was up to. In their initial description of the Son, the bishops conclude a

list of his attributes by calling Christ:

the Wisdom and Word and Power of God before the ages, being Godnot by foreknowedge but in being and substance (ou prognosei all'ousia kai hupostasei) the Son of God in both the old and newcovenants.62

Sample argues that rather than a pre-existent Christ, Paul likely taught a pre-existent

divine plan, the Father's plan of salvation for humanity, in which Jesus had a fore-ordained

According to Eusebius, this was also the doctrinal dispute with Beryllus of Bostra a generation59

before, in which Origen himself had led the interrogation. See H.E. VI. xxxiii.

Epistula para. 3.60

Cf Origen's Dialogue with Heraclides, Dionysius of Rome's warning to Dionysius of Alexandria,61

and Hippolytus' report of his nemesis, Callistus' charge against himself in The Refutation of AllHeresies IX. 6,7.

Epistula para. 2.62

24

role as the Christ. It was this plan of salvation and the role of the Christ within it which was

revealed to Moses and the prophets. The bishops' insistence that it was Jesus Christ himself

who appeared to the prophets of old would thus be a criticism that Paul's proclaiming Jesus

to be God before the ages "by foreknowedge" did not go far enough. In support of his

reconstruction, Sample points to a quote from Epiphanius in the fourth century:

This one maintains strongly that Christ...was from Mary and up tothat time existed prophetically (proaggeltikos; literally, "as havingbeen foretold"), since he possessed, on the one hand, the things beingwritten about him in the Holy Scriptures, but, on the other hand, hewas not existing but was from Mary and through the incarnatecoming.63

Sample argues that Christ's "prophetic" pre-existence in the Father's promised plan of

salvation is part of a larger prophetic Christology. The bishops insist that Christ is God "in

being and substance". Sample agrees with Harnack and Bardy that for Paul, Jesus is divine

not by nature, but by the will of the Father. Christ is literally "the anointed one," the Messiah

foretold by all the prophets, the one raised up by God's prophetic spirit to bring salvation to

God's people. God's Logos which "dwelled in Jesus as in a temple" is not a metaphysical

principle, personal or otherwise; it is God's prophetic Word which Jesus is inspired to fulfill.

It is this prophetic Christ which Sample reconstructs as the historical kernel in the Acta's

portrayal of Paul:

She bore a man like us. But mightier with respect to all things, sincegrace was upon him by the Holy Spirit and from the promises and theScriptures.64

So too in the Discourse to Sabinus:

Sample, 82-3; Frag. 25. From the Anacephalaeosis.63

Sample, p.246, Frag. 45: from Adversus Nestorianos et Eutychianos iii. App. by Leontius of64

Byzantium. See p. above.

25

Having been anointed by the Holy Spirit, he was named Christ,suffering according to nature (kata phusin), working wondersaccording to grace.65

Sample takes Paul to be basing his Christology primarily upon an exegesis of

Luke/Acts--a gospel associated with Antioch from very early times and a gospel that portrays

Jesus as God's ultimate prophet, the "anointed one" foretold by all his predecessors. As Luke

has Jesus proclaim in his home synagogue in Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry, he

fulfills what was written by the prophet Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me topreach good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering ofsight to the blind,to set at liberty those who are oppressed,to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

(Lk 4:18-19)66

Sample points out that Paul's characteristic, prophetic understanding of several key

Christian terms can be traced to similar usages in Luke-Acts. For example, Luke alone67

refers not only to o Christos, but to Jesus literally being "anointed" in the Spirit (Lk 4:18

above, cf also Acts 4:27; 10:38) as Paul insists upon understanding the title in many of the

alleged excerpts from the Acta and which the Epistula appears to resist when it affirms that

"the Christ, before his incarnation was named as Christ." So too, Paul's use of logos to68

mean the spoken, prophetic word of God, is common in Luke. Again, God's charis, another69

term central to Paul's Christology, appears twenty-four times in Luke-Acts while only four

Doctrina Patrum de Incarnatione Verbi, Paul of Samosata, Discourse to Sabinus; Sample, p.65

262, Frag. 78.

Cf also Lk 1:76; 13:33, 24:19, Acts 2:33.66

See Sample, pp. 148-159.67

This is the thesis for all of para. 9 in the Epistula.68

69Cf Lk 5.1; 8.11; 10.39; 11.28; Acts 10.36; 11.1. (Sample, p.153, n.1)

26

times in John, and not at all in Matthew and Mark. Finally, associations of the Spirit with

sophia and dunamis, frequently attributed to Paul, are also Lucan favorites.70

Sample finds further precedence for a prophetic Christology in other ancient Syrian

Christian texts, particularly the second-century Kerygmata Petrou, the early fourth-century

Acta Archelaii and, more problematically, Theophilus of Antioch's Ad Autolycum.71

Together with Luke, it is these native Syrian Christian traditions, Sample argues, rather than

the Aristotelianism of the Roman Adoptionists, or a Stoic economic trinitarianism which

should be taken as the principal sources for Paul's own teaching.72

For Sample, these Syrian sources also strengthen the credibility of the portrayal of

Paul in the Discourse to Sabinus as teaching a Christology of moral and spiritual ascent. In

the Acta Archelaii, Mani summarizes the teaching of his opponent Archelaus, bishop of

Carrhae in such terms:

For if you say that he is just a man from Mary, and that he receivedthe Spirit in the baptism, therefore he will be seen as Son throughprogress and not through nature.73

If Jesus is God's anointed prophet, he cannot indeed himself be God "in being and

substance." However, Jesus could "participate" in the divine Logos, in the prophetic sense

of being divinely inspired, and could ultimately himself become divine by virtue of the

indissoluble union of his will to his Father's. Now Bardy had argued that the Discourse's

Christology of moral ascent was incompatible with Paul's teaching that from birth the Spirit

Sample, p.154, 156.70

On his reading of Theophilus, see pp.159-160.71

Sample will not categoricaly rule out that Paul may have been influenced by one or other72

philosophical school; his point is that "it is unnecessary to look to Greek philosophy as the key toPaul's particular brand of thinking...there is nothing in Samosatene thought that is inexplicable savewith reference to Aristotelianism or Stoicism" (pp.162-3, n.5).

Sample, p.165. The text is quoted in Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. vi and Epiphanius, Haereses73

lxvi.

27

dwelt in Jesus as in no other. But any such "incompatibility" drops out if one gives this claim

a Lucan reading. Luke relates the Virgin Birth in prophetic categories, modelling his infancy

narrative on the story of Hannah and Samuel. This account does not prevent Luke from

closing the narrative with the report, "Jesus advanced in wisdom (sophia) and in stature and

in grace (chariti) with God and man (2:52)." Even the Acta has Paul quoting this verse in his

support. So too, when Athanasius complains about how the Arians were using this same74

verse to support their own Christology of ethical advance, he specifically tags them with

being latter-day followers of Paul:

If he is an ordinary man, as the rest, then let him, as a man advance.This indeed is the sentiment of the Samosatene which you virtuallyentertain also, though in name you deny it because of men.75

Sample acknowledges that Athanasius himself may be suspected of putting Arian

words into Paul's mouth, as Sample has accused later polemicists to have done with

Nestorius. But he argues that Athanasius' predecessor, Alexander of Alexandria, made the

same charge as also does the Macrostic Confession, itself composed at Antioch only seventy

years after Paul's expulsion, and which, Sample alleges, "at this point is not explicitly

comparing this belief to any current doctrine" when it reports,76

the disciples of Paul of Samosata...say that after the incarnation, hewas by advance made God, from being made by nature a mere man.77

Thus Sample reconstructs Paul to have taught an "ascent" Christology. Herein lies, for

him, the heart of the controversy at Antioch: is salvation in Christ a comforting story of

See above p.18.74

Sample, p.173. From Athanasius, Orationes iii. 51.75

Sample, p. 92, n.2.76

Sample, Frag. 9, p.231; from Athanasius, De Synodis 26.77

28

divine descent or a heroic saga of prophetic ascent? How best to proclaim the absolute

fidelity of God to the Word he has spoken through the prophets? How best to announce the

efficacy of God's grace to raise us to new life? For Paul, the gospel that saves is a gospel

rooted in the power of the Spirit which inspires us all to ever more closely conform our own

will to the will of our heavenly Father. It is a gospel which proclaims the good news of God's

mighty prophet, foretold by all who came before him, who heroically suffered and died on

our behalf, in unswerving dedication to the Father's eternal plan of salvation. And it is a

gospel which announces how God did not abandon his anointed one to death but raised him

up to new divine life in union with him, a life in which we too can hope to have some share,

if we too share his life of obedience to God's Word. As in a quote that Sample (and Harnack

before him) attributes to Paul:

According to the promise, he is a great and elect prophet, becomingequally both mediator and lawgiver of the better covenant, who,having offered himself as a sacrifice on behalf of all men, wasrevealing that he held one will and one energy with God, willing justas God that all men be saved and that they come into full knowledgeof truth, the truth which has been manifested through him to theworld through his deeds.78

According to Sample, Paul's opponents' affirmation of a Christ who is divine "by

nature" undermined for Paul the centrality of ethical progress and heroic commitment in the

Christian life. As Paul notes in the Discourse,

The things which are strong by reason of nature do not produce awe,but the things which are strong by the condition of love are praisedexceedingly, the things ruled by one and the same sentiment, being

Sample, Frag. 83, p.266 from the pseudo-Ebion fragments in the Doctrina Patrum de78

Incarnatione Verbi. This is the same anthology which contains the excepts from the Discourse toSabinus. Sample follows both Harnack and Bardy in arguing that these fragments all are so similarin thought (e.g.see the quote from the Discourse on p.15 above) that they probably arise from acommon source (though Bardy argues that this source is not traceable to Paul). See Sample, p.56.

29

secured by one and the same impulse, toward further increase, neverceases.79

On the other hand, for Paul's opponents, a descent Christology was essential to the

gospel. As Origen had taught, and Ireneaus before him, what God has not assumed, God has

not saved. Christ must be God "in being and substance". Thus, Sample argues, it is Paul's

opponents, rather than Paul who are ultimately driven by metaphysical principles. For them

a sound soteriology must be grounded in nature not will. A union of will "by advance" is not

metaphysically substantial enough. For Christ to save he must be divine from before the ages;

he must be divine by nature. Jesus may have been raised up by the Father after his death, but

such an ascension is based on a prior, original descent by Christ from the divine to the

human. Thus the six bishops affirm in their letter to Paul not only that it was the divine pre-

existent Son who appeared to the prophets, but precisely that he "descended and appeared".80

So too the same bishops quote John 6:46 and 1:18 to establish that only one "from the

Father," one "from the bosom of the Father" could have revealed the Father to us. And later81

again they repeat that Jesus, "having been sent by the Father from heaven," "emptied himself

from his equality with God" to "participate" in our humanity. Similarly the only doctrinal82

complaint in what Eusebius quotes of the Synodal letter is that Paul "would not acknowledge

that the Son of God came down from heaven" but rather was "from below". And so too did83

Athanasius later relate that the bishops at Antioch,

directed all their thoughts to destroy the device of the Samosatene andto show that, instead of becoming God from man, He (Jesus Christ),

Sample, Frag. 82, p.265; from the Discourse to Sabinus.79

Epistula, para.5.80

Ibid. para.781

Ibid. para. 8.82

Eusebius, H.E. VII, xxx, 11.83

30

being God, had put on a servant's form and, being the Word, hadbecome flesh...84

For his brother bishops, it was non-negotiable that God had descended to become a

man, a man had not ascended to become God. Sample concludes, "Antioch affirmed that no

Christology could be valid without recognizing Christ's pre-existence and his descent to

become a man." 85

For Sample, the dynamics of the Arian controversy fifty years later confirms this

reading of the conflict between Paul and his episcopal opponents at Antioch. As Gregg and

Groh have recently argued, Arius shares with Paul a Christology of moral and spiritual

progress. Where they differ, according to Sample, is precisely in Arius' acceptance of both

Jesus' pre-existence, as "the first born of all creation" and of his descent "from above" at the

incarnation. For Arius, Jesus enjoys such pre-eminence not of course by nature, but by virtue

of the life of perfect obedience to the Father's will which he was to lead here below. The

Father, knowing all things, rewards Jesus in advance for his total and complete oblation of

himself to God.

Thus despite Arius' Christology of spiritual ascent, it remains formally an

incarnational descent Christology. Sample points out that the metaphysical limbo in which

the orthodox accused Arius to have placed Christ--being different from all the rest of

creation, yet also being different from God--may not have been a principal component

intrinsic to the Arian logic of salvation itself but rather may have been a concession to the

emergent orthodox consensus in the aftermath of the conflict with Paul. However Arius'86

nod to descent Christology was insufficent. The orthodox saw, correctly in Sample's view,

Sample, Frag.7, p. 231; from Athanasius, De Synodis 45.84

Sample, "The Christology of the Coucil" p.24.85

See Ibid. p.25-6.86

31

that ultimately Arius was indeed reviving the soteriological logic of ascent condemned at

Antioch, and so in the end he too shared Paul's fate.

A Social Reading of the Controversy at Antioch

But did Arius and Paul essentially share a common soteriology as Sample has

claimed? In this second half of my thesis I shall argue that a study of the social dynamics

operative in the conflict at Antioch reveals a greater difference between the soteriological

logic of Paul and Arius than merely a concessionary nod to Christ's pre-existence by the

latter. Peter Brown has argued that Arianism appealed to the ethos of the high status elite of

the late Roman Empire. Gregg and Groh's recent work on Arius can be seen to confirm this87

reading. In contrast I shall try to demonstrate that Paul's Christology resonated with the low

status ethos of the multitudes. In giving only cursory attention to the social context of the

controversy at Antioch, Sample has overlooked this crucial difference between the teachings

of Paul and Arius. As a consequence, notwithstanding his important contribution in

reconstructing the prophetic character of Paul's Christology, I ultimately find Sample to have

subtlely but significantly misconstrued Paul's soteriological logic and to have largely missed

the doctrinal import of his condemnation.

(i) Arius' heroic ethos and the high status elite

Peter Brown has argued that, not only did Arius enjoy "the tacit support of cultivated

bishops, such as the elder statesman, Eusebius of Caesarea" but also that in many respects

Arianism represented "the religion of the cultivated Christian Apologists of a previous

The remaims no general consensus in the field however, regarding the social location of87

Arianism.

32

generation" with their insistence on a single, transcendent high God against "the suspect new

piety of Athanasius." He adds,88

For the cultivated Christian of the fourth century, a high God couldonly manifest himself to the physical universe through anintermediary. Christ had to be in some way a reflection of God; hecould not possibly be God: for the lonely essence of the One Godmust stand concentrated and transcendent. The God of the Arians wasthe jealous God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob: but their Christwas the godlike intermediary of the high-pitched universe of theNeoplatonic philosophers.89

Brown argues that this strictly subordinationist Christology was more plausible to the

educated elite not merely by virtue of their philosophical convictions, but also because it

expressed the manner in which legitimate authority was exercised at the highest levels of late

Roman society.

Arianism also appealed to the imagination of a new court society. ForChrist was thought of as "representing" God in this world, much asa governor, sitting beneath an icon of the emperor, "represented"Constantius II in a distant court-house.90

Gregg and Groh's interpretation of Arianism, while shifting the emphasis away from

Arius' monarchianism to his Christological soteriology, nevertheless can be seen to confirm

Brown's claim that Arius' teaching appealed to the ethos of the educated elite. Gregg and

Groh argue that Arian soteriology ought to be understood in the ethical categories of

Stoicism. Such an ethos, I shall argue, relies on a sense of power and agency characteristic

of those of high status.

Gregg and Groh are emphatic about the importance of Stoicism in understanding

Arian Christology:

Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (New York: Harcourt, 1971) p.90.88

Ibid.89

Ibid.90

33

It is in terms of Stoic ethical theory of the Roman period and itscritics, modified somewhat in Christian circles, that the Arianstatements about the Christ become intelligible.91

However, because of the mental anguish experienced by Jesus in the Garden of

Gethsemane, the earthly Jesus could not be considered perfect, nor even wise in the Stoic

sense. Thus, as noted above, Arius' Jesus grows in wisdom (cf Lk 2:52). While throughout

his life, Jesus remains in steadfast obedience to the Father's will, this perfect fidelity is not

due to his nature but achieved by dint of "diligence of conduct and discipline. " Jesus always92

retains a free will; he could have sinned, but persevered in withstanding every temptation,

to become perfect in virtue. It was "in consequence of this life of obedience and love of

righteousness" that the Father bestowed such pre-eminent favor on Jesus, adopting him as

his own beloved Son. It is as the Risen Lord that Jesus exemplifies the Stoic sage, now93

perfect in wisdom, unchangeable in will.

Jesus saves by showing us how we too might become children of God. If we choose

to imitate his perfection in virtue we will also share his divine reward:

As Christ was chosen and named "Son" because of the works heperformed (works foreknown by God), so believers are adopted andperfected by following in the way of his obedience and moralexcellence, his works done as a creature. The exemplar is notcategorically other, "unlike us and like the Father"; hence theimitation envisioned is straightforward and strictly possible. Thereason Arian Christians can assert, "we too are able to become sonsof God, just as (hosper) [Christ]," is unambiguous: Christ's electionas a reward for his discipline, for his perseverence in the good bychoice, is within the reach of fellow creatures.94

Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism p.15.91

Ibid. p.57.92

Ibid. p.59.93

Ibid. p.144.94

34

In sum, Arian soteriology offers not so much supernatural aid as supernatural rewards.

Grace in Arian thought is principally "reward for performance" , "the bestowal of divine95

favor and approval upon obedient (that is, virtuous) creatures." Indeed, I want to argue that96

Arian soteriology, as reconstructed by Gregg and Groh, most directly addresses concerns not

about spiritual liberation, that is, about acquiring power in one's life, but about divine justice,

that is, whether God shall reward those who exercise the power they already have virtuously.

As such, Arianism speaks most directly to those who ordinarily see themselves as exercising

free choice, those accustomed to asserting control over their daily affairs, and thereby, over

themselves as well. Arius' Christ gives such individuals "a champion and exemplar" of

Christian perfection, as well as an assurance of the divine favor consequent upon

participating in such holy virtue.

In reconstructing this Arian view of grace, Gregg and Groh themselves are tentative

about attributing any empowering aspect to it:

Was grace also an empowering force in the servant's life? Perhaps, forthe Arians allude to a participation in the Spirit and the anonymousArian homilist points believers to the continuing work of Jesus,understood rather as an "influence for good."97

But Gregg and Groh later argue that Arian references to "participation" ought to be

given an ethical, Stoic interpretation, as in a hero whose courageous deeds allows one to say

that he "partakes" or "participates" in courage. Such an ethical "participation in the Spirit"98

leaves the principal agency, and power, with the person, not with a Spirit who "inspires" or

Ibid. p.57.95

Ibid. p.28.96

Ibid. p.28-9.97

See p.111.98

35

"possesses." So too, Jesus' continuing "influence for good" sounds more like the exemplary

role of the religious hero than a divine power which floods one's soul with new life.

Indeed Gregg and Groh and Sample all argue that it was in large measure precisely the

heroic cast of the soteriology of moral ascent, which they believed Arius and Paul shared,

that ultimately led to its rejection by the wider Church in favor of the essentialist descent

Christology of the Logos theologians. As Sample puts it,

If there is any justice in the condemnations of Paul, Arius and theirsuccessors, it lies in the fact that they could not read their owntimes.... They offered heroes and martyrs to a people who could nolonger pull themselves up and who had come to forget the fires ofpersecution.99

The late third and fourth centuries were times of great economic uncertainty and

change. To this age, Greg and Groh argue that the Logos theologians could bring "the Christ

who cannot change, who by nature has stabilized an unstable cosmos" and who "has brought

to his saints the unchanging virtue, the secure and stable grace." Or as Sample concludes100

his dissertation,

Despite all the talk about the grace of God, the Church wanted apermanence and assurance in their Christ, and in their own lives,which somehow transcended the good will of the loving, butadmittedly arbitrary, God of Paul and Arius. "Heterodoxy" can, anddoes, bear many meanings. But it suggests above all the crisis oftheological anachronism, the failure to mature or die gracefully.101

In the remainder of this thesis I want to argue against Sample, that however accurate

a reading of Arius, the stoic Christology reconstructed by Gregg and Groh is fundamentally

foreign to the soteriological logic of Paul. While indeed prophetic, Paul's Jesus is not well

Sample, The Messiah as Prophet p.200.99

Op. cit. p.183.100

Op. cit. p.201.101

36

described as "heroic." Paul's opponents complain not that he has portrayed the spiritual life

as too difficult, but as too easy. For Paul, I shall argue, grace was not a "reward for

performance," but rather an infusion of divine power which raised one to a level of spiritual

perfection far above one's ability, even above one's nature, enabling one to live no longer as

do "the sons and daughters of this generation" but rather "as angels". I shall argue that this

gospel of charismatic empowerment disturbed, even threatened, the ethos of the high status

elite who were only now beginning to enter in significant numbers into the leadership

positions of the Christian churches. I shall argue that opposition to Paul was led by this new

cultured elite and that the suppression of his teaching was part of a larger fight for a gospel

that could unite, rather than divide the Christian assembly of both great and small. Thus I

believe Paul's condemnation complemented rather than anticipated that of Arius fifty years

later. If Arian Christology appealed to the powerful, Paul appealed to the powerless.

Whatever the failings of the orthodox consensus which gradually emerged from these

conflicts it can at least be said that its "love patriarchalism" addressed both groups.102

An apt term coined by Troeltsch in his Social Teachings to describe the Christian ethos which102

gradually took shape at this time.

37

(ii) A Social exegesis of the Synodal Letter

My reconstruction of Paul's brand of Christianity will be based on the extracts of the

Synodal letter that condemned Paul which has been preserved in Eusebius. In terms of

authenticity, which as we have seen has become a vexing problem for reconstructing Paul's

teaching, this is our least controversial source. However it has been rarely used, for regarding

the doctrinal dispute directly, Eusebius himself mentions only that Paul "taught low and

mean views as to Christ, contrary to the Church's teaching, namely that he was in his nature

an ordinary man". Eusebius' excerpts from the Synodal letter add only the allusion that "he103

is not willing to acknowledge with us that the Son of God has come down from heaven" but

rather that Jesus Christ is "from below". While these passages have framed the parameters104

for all subsequent interpretations concerning Paul, (they are consistent, for example, with the

readings we have seen by Harnack, Bardy, Loofs and Sample) dogmatic hstorians have

generally despaired of learning much else about Paul's teaching from the synodal letter, for

what we have of it from Eusebius consists in a highly charged polemical attack on Paul's

character and conduct as bishop. These charges have either been accepted at face value or

dismissed out of hand, but they have not been much studied with a view to learning more

fully what the controversy over Paul was about.

Sample's attitude toward the bishops' accusations is typical:

For the most part, the charges of moral impropriety leveled againstPaul in the synodal epistle are not relevant to my purposes (ofreconstructing his Christology) and should, in all events, be takenwith a grain of salt. Only a few of these remarks are trulysignificant.105

Ibid, xxvii 2.103

Ibid. xxx 11.104

Sample, The Messiah as Prophet p.5.105

38

What remarks Sample does find "truly significant" are the bishops' complaint about

Paul's forbidding "modern" hymns addressed to Christ "which sought to accord Jesus the

same rights and perogatives of worship as God the Father" and the bishops' accusations of

"unrestrained liturgical acts" which suggest that "Paul's brand of Christianity had an ecstatic

or spontaneous character with a stress on spiritual power and possession."106

For Sample, the first complaint confirms that Paul too could appeal to Christian

traditions in support of his views. The second comment he returns to only once more a

hundred pages later in a footnote:

One must assume that "spirit-possession" played a large role in theliturgical life of Paul's church. The "impropriety" reported by thesynodal letter in Eusebius (i.e. clapping, singing, shouting etc.)suggests a charismatic, ecstatic brand of Christianity, stressing,certainly, the action of the Holy Spirit in the life of the worshipper.107

Yet while Sample acknowledges that the Synodal letter suggests that Paul is

promoting a charismatic Christianity, he never indicates any awareness of a tension between

this and his attributing to Paul a heroic soteriology of ethical self-improvement such as Gregg

and Groh have reconstructed for Arius. I shall argue, on the other hand, that a study of all

the Synodal letter's moral and liturgical charges against Paul and his supporters which

situates these accusations in their original social and historical context suggests a soteriology

which appeals not to the stoical heroic ethos of the high status elites, with its emphasis on

order, discipline and self-control, but rather to the experience of disorder and vulnerability

common among a society's powerless. In effect I shall be arguing for a social reading of

Eusebius' albeit brief report of Paul's teaching. A Jesus who is "hos koinou ten phusin

anthropou" in a metaphysical sense, also becomes koinos in the socially derogatory sense of

being "ordinary," "common," one of "the many." If Jesus is not the Word come down "from

Ibid.106

Ibid p. 121, n.2.107

39

above" he is psilos anthropos not only in the metaphysical sense of being simply human, but

also in the social sense of being a "simple man" , the lowly son of a woodworker, one "from108

below." I shall argue that to "the more naive souls" who so admired him, Paul proclaimed109

the good news that God's Spirit had raised up, empowered, one like them. I believe this is110

why Eusebius describes Paul's teachings as "tapeina"--"low," "base," or "humble"-- and

"chamaipete"--"mean," literally, "grovelling."

Rhetorically, that portion of the synodal letter in Eusebius which attacks Paul's

character and conduct as bishop is organized around repeated disclaimers that, to one who

"has departed from the canon and has turned aside to spurious and bastard doctrines, we are

under no obligation to judge his actions". This refrain both opens and closes their111

indictment of Paul's behavior and internally organizes their charges into four groups: (i) that

while originally "poor and beggarly", without patrimony or occupation, Paul has exploited

his episcopal position to amass "abundant wealth;" (ii) that Paul's pride and shameless

ostentation has brought ridicule to the faith; (iii) that he has "burlesqued the mystery,"

behaving in the assembly "as though he were not a bishop but a sophist and a charlatan;" and

finally (iv) that the practice of Paul and many of his subordinates of living with beautiful

young women has brought scandal to the faithful, and justifiably so as many have already

fallen into sin, if not Paul himself.

Cf Origen's use of "the simple" to refer to the ordinary uneducated Christian multitudes and108

their "simple" faith, eg. in On First Principles IV, ii, 4.

Compare Eusebius' description of the Ebionites earlier in his Ecclesiastical History: "they had109

poor and mean (tapeinos) opinions concerning Christ. They held him to be a plain and ordinary man(liton men gar auton kai koinon hegounto)..."(III. xxvii. 1-2).

Cf Athanasius De Decretis 10 (PG 25, 433); Fragment 13.110

Eusebius, H.E. VII, xxx, 6. The text of the Synodal letter preserved in Eusebius can be found111

in Appendix 2 below.

40

I shall argue that each of these charges, if situated in their proper social and historical

context, can shed light on Paul and his two opposed audiences. The first two portray Paul as

a shameless social climber whose crass vulgarity continually betrays his social pretensions.

This portrayal is further reinforced in the third set of charges by the bishops' use of the

stereotype of the crowd-pandering, unscrupulous sophist in describing Paul's manner of

preaching. In the next section I shall study what the use of this rhetorical strategy by the

bishops can tell us about Paul and his supporters as well as what it can tell us about the

bishops themselves and their motives for opposing him. I then turn to the sexual charges and

innuendos directed against Paul and his party. Here I shall argue that we are dealing with an

important dispute over Christian spirituality which sheds much light on the kind of

Christianity Paul championed, and how he could have suffered from such a polarized

reception from the Christian community at Antioch. Finally in a third section I return to the

third set of charges concerning liturgical abuses. In light of the two previous sections I shall

offer a charismatic interpretation of these accusations which helps to give us a richer, more

concrete appreciation for Paul's prophetic Christology of spiritual empowerment.

1. Paul the vulgar, social climbing sophist:

The bishops begin their moral indictment of Paul by noting that while Paul began his

life "poor and beggarly, neither having received a livelihood from his fathers nor having

gotten it from a trade or any occupation," he now enjoys "abundant wealth", by virtue of his

position as bishop of Antioch. This wealth, they charge, Paul has accumulated through the

crass exploitation of his judicial authority,

...for he deprives the injured of their rights and promises to help themfor money, yet breaks his word with these also and with a light heartmakes his harvest out of the readiness of persons engaged in lawsuits

41

to make an offer, for the sake of being rid of those that trouble them;seeing that he considers godliness is a way of gain.112

What are we to make of these charges? As bishop, Paul would have arbitrated disputes

among Christians in Antioch. From the time of St. Paul, Christians were not supposed to sue

one another in pagan courts but were to bring the matter before the ekklesia in the person of

the bishop and his council of elders. According to the bishops, Paul acquired much of his113

wealth by seeking payments both from plaintiffs seeking redress and from those being sued

who wished to be rid of what they may have considered petty harassment.

Now Paul is not the first bishop to have been accused of such venality by his

opponents. It was a charge easy to make and hard for a bishop to defend himself against.114

After all Christians did contribute to their church, and church expenditures were ultimately

under the bishop's discretion. It would be easy for a bishop's enemies to insinuate that he115

profitted from the existence of some secret quid pro quo in a particular case. A bishop's only

real defense would be his own reputation, something the bishops are intent upon destroying

in Paul's case. In addition Paul may have been particularly vulnerable to charges of legal

irregularities since he appears to have been the first bishop to have introduced a sekreton, a

judge's chamber, as was common in civil courts, which enabled him to consult with parties

discretely away from public view.

What is almost certainly true in the bishops' depiction is that Paul's elevation to the

episcopacy in Antioch did benifit him both financially and socially. Saying that Paul

originally was "poor," "penes," would not in itself say much about Paul's background, as even

H.E. VII. xxx. 7.112

Cf 1Cor 6:1-6. A good part of the Didascalia Apostolorun is also devoted to how bishops113

should conduct legal arbitrations.

Fox points out that Cyprian, for example, faced similar charges from his enemies (Pagans and114

Christians, p.513.)

See Didascalia Apostolorum IX.115

42

wealthy families, owning multiple estates and many slaves could be referred to by those of

even greater wealth as "poor." "Beggarly," "ptochos" on the other hand, did have more base116

connotations, meaning literally "one who crouches or cringes." It has been argued that117

given Paul's rhetorical eloquence, Paul's family could not have been literally destitute, but

at most, he may have come from a great family of the provinces which was financially ruined

in the economic and political upheavals of the third century. While this may indeed have

been the case, it is dangerous to infer much about Paul's own education from the bishops'

complaints. Paul may have been difficult to "unmask" not because of rhetorical eloquence,

but because of his facility with the Scriptures. Although the letter's charge of sophistry has

been taken literally by many in the past as we have seen, I shall argue below that this charge

is part of a larger rhetorical strategy on the bishops' part that need have no bearing on

whether Paul was actually a sophist or simply an effective preacher.

In any case, Paul must have been known to have come most immediately from at least

relatively humble origins, for it is Paul's own original lack of resources that gives force to

their charge that his current lifestyle must be being financed at the church's expense. His past

history is also what enables the bishops to mock Paul's current social pretensions. They begin

by noting that "he sets his mind on high things and is lifted up". In light of the prophetic

interpretation of Paul's teaching given above, such a description could be given a sympathetic

reading. Just as Paul preached Jesus to have been lifted up by the power of the Spirit so Paul

may have proclaimed that he too had been "lifted up" by this same Spirit. But the bishops go

on to charge that the "high things" Paul has set his mind on are "worldy honors," giving

huperertai, literally, "he is lifted up," the figurative sense of "he gives himself airs," "he is

immoderate, excessive". They then ridicule how he "struts" around in the agora with a train

See G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Ithica: Cornell,116

1989) p.143-4; or Paul Veyne, "The Roman Empire" in A History of Private Life I, ed Paul Veyne(Cambridge, Belknap Press, 1987) p. 140-1.

Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979).117

43

of attendants as if he were a ducenarius, a very high civic official. In the Christian118

assembly he is forever "bragging" about himself, while he behaves in "an insolent and vulgar

fashion" towards the venerable interpreters of God's Word who have gone before him.

In the bishops' eyes, Paul is not God's prophet but the quintessential social parvenu.

Rising from humble origins, he has become consumed by his newly attained power and

prestige. However the bishops' depiction of Paul as a vulgar social climber says as much119

about them as it does about Paul himself. Such an accusation betrays the disdain and moral

revulsion felt by the well-born in classical society to those ambitious souls among the

undifferentiated multitudes who would aspire to break into their ranks. As Brown observes,

In every city a crushing sense of social distance between the notables,the "wellborn" and their inferiors was the basic fact of RomanImperial society. The most marked evolution of the Roman periodwas the discreet mobilization of culture and of moral grooming toassert such distance. The upper classes sought to distinguishthemselves from their inferiors by a style of culture and moral lifewhose most resonant message was that it could not be shared.120

This "basic fact of Roman Imperial society" can also help account for the bishops'

vehement resistance to Paul's Christology. If Jesus is not the Father's son by nature, then121

in terms of the Christian vision of the world, he is by nature a slave, a slave to sin and to the

evil powers and principalities who rule this world below. But as one born a slave, how could

Jesus ever liberate us from servitude? Even freed and adopted by the Father, Jesus would not

As noted in n.8 above, the earlier belief that Paul actually was a ducenarius has been118

discredited.

The bishops also return to this theme at the close of their moral charges (14-15).119

Peter Brown, "Late Antiquity" in A history of Private Life I, p. 240.120

In what follows concerning the status of slaves adopted by their masters to inherit their121

patrimony, I rely principally upon the work of Annales historian, Paul Veyne both in his extendedessay on the social history of the Roman Empire in A History of Private Life I (pp.5-233) and in anearlier article which focuses upon Petronius' satirical depiction of just such a freedman, Trimalchio,in his Satyricon (75f), "Vie de Trimalcion" Annales. Economies, Societes, Civilizations 16 (1961)pp.213-247. See also G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient World, pp.174-9.

44

have the requisite standing to be an advocate for our freedom for only one born free could

himself solicit freedom for another. Acts of clemency could only be requested between

peers. 122

Nor could the Father's adoption of Jesus ever make him fully divine. In Roman society

it was not unheard of for a wealthy master to adopt a trusted slave, who upon the master's

death would be manumitted and inherit his master's estate. But while the adopted freedman

might inherit his master's wealth, he could not inherit his master's noble standing, his social

ousia. Having once suffered a servile condition, he could never appear noble to other nobles.

As Paul Veyne remarks, such freedmen were not really even parvenus, but were more like

refugees, for "they bore an indelible stain that kept them out of good society." Reminiscent

of the bishops' treatment of Paul, Veyne adds, "The barriers between status groups were

unbreachable. People of good society found the freedmen's imitation of good manners

absurd; they saw only pretentiousness and vulgarity." At best, the freedman's own son,123

himself free by birth, and having had the financial resources to have obtained a good

education and to have avoided demeaning "servile labor" might be able to see himself one

day counted among his society's "best", though even he would still be dogged by his

patrimony, being "the son of a nobody".124

Thus were Jesus not originally God "in being," that is, by birth, he could he never

become God "in substance." A God "by adoption," Jesus would always remain

metaphysically analogous to a freedman, never enjoying the honor of one divine from the

Veyne, History of Private Life I p.65.122

Ibid. p.85.123

Lucian, in his autobiographical treatise, The Dream, has Education so refer to him as he was124

born into a family of stone masons.

45

beginning. Such a Jesus could never inherit the true "substance" of his Father's patrimony.

As Eusebius complains, such a teaching was a "blasphemy against Christ." . 125

Now just as Paul preached a Christ whose rise in divine favor was imitated in Paul's

own rising status at Antioch, so too the descent Christology of his episcopal opponents

resonated with their own understanding of how God had dealt with them. As Origen insists,

those chosen as bishops should not be men who desire it for the status it confers, as the

bishops accuse Paul, but rather they are fit for office, who are reluctant to take on such a

burden but do so out of a sense of responsibility to God's people. As Origen explains to

Celsus,

We do not accept those who love power. But we put pressure onthose who on account of their great humility are reluctant hastily totake upon themselves the common responsibility of the church ofGod. And those who rule us well are those who have had to be forcedto take office, being constrained by the great King who, we areconvinced, is the Son of God, the divine Logos.126

H.E. VII, xxviii, 2. Note that Arian Christology will also avoid this particular "blasphemy."125

While not God by nature, Jesus is with the Father from the creation of the world. He is thus not borna slave to sin. Rather in the Arian account Jesus appears more like a divinized hero, the Stoic sagewhose strenuous pursuit of wisdom and virtue has earned him apotheosis. Perhaps surprising tomodern sensibilities, the perceived distance between society's great and the gods of Hellenism wasprobably less than that between the aristocracy and the multitudes. As Veyne points out, "Greek andRoman notables did not consider themselves to be superior to the average run of humanity. Theybelieved purely and simply that they were humanity, hence that the poor were morally inferior. Thepoor did not live as men ought to live" (History of Private Life, p.119-120). On the other hand, "tobecome a god, one did not need to rise very far. The gods stood just above humans, so that it oftenmakes sense to translate the Latin and Greek words for "divine" as "superhuman" (p.209)."

Despite the frequent use of euhemerism by Christian apologists to refute contemporarypolytheism, the Arian differentiation between the kind of divinity attributable to Jesus (andachievable by us) and the kind of divinity attributable to the Father may also have arisen from thisHellenistic tradition of attributing divinity to the great men of the past. Thus, Arius' Christ may nothave inhabited quite the ontological limbo that his opponents, and Sample (see p.45 above), havecomplained of.

Paul's psilanthropic Christ, on the other hand, does not fit this model of apotheosis, for he doesnot begin life as one of the megaloi, but on the far side of the social chasm, as koinos anthropos.

Origen, Contra Celsum VIII, 75.126

46

Indeed, while this selfless image of the episcopacy might sound strained to modern

ears, it is comparable to a growing attitude toward civic offices in later antiquity by those of

high status. In fact Origen's explanation above to Celsus is precisely to defend the127

reluctance of high status Christians to take on civic liturgies by comparing them to the offices

they were assuming in the Christian community. Nor was it unheard of from the third century

on for well educated, high status Christians to have the episcopacy virtually forced on them

by a city's Christian church and for them to subsequently suffer a significant loss of social

prestige from their non-Christian peers.128

That many of those prominent in the opposition to Paul did indeed come from the

aristocratic elite can be confidently established. Firmillian who appears to have presided over

the first council convened against Paul and who died en route to the last, was "an aristocratic

Cappadocian" as Gregory of Nyssa reports. The two brothers, Gregory Thaumaturgos and129

Athenodore, also present at the first council, we know, again from Gregory of Nyssa, came

from a family of great wealth and prestige. More importantly, these three together with130

Theotecnus and the prolific Dionysius of Alexandria, (who was entreated to attend the final

council, but sent a letter instead, being himself too ill to travel and indeed dying before the

synod closed) all studied under Origen who, according to Gregory Thaumaturgos, believed131

See Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity p.66-7.127

Cyprian and later Augustine are the classic examples, but their fate was also shared by many128

other high status Christans from the late third century on. Indeed, it occurred to Anatolius, founderof the Aristotelian school in Alexandria, as he passed through Laodicea on his way back from thesynod at Antioch! See Eusebius, H.E. VII, xxxii 5-6.

See Thomas Kopecek, "The Social Class of the Cappadocian Fathers," Church History (42)129

1973, p.460.

Ibid. On their presence at the first council, see Eusebius, H.E. VII, xxviii, 1.130

Firmillian: VI. xxvii; Gregory and Athenodore: VI. xxx; Theotecnus: VII. xiv; Dionysius: VI.131

xxix.

47

"it was not possible for any one to be truly pious who did not philosophize." As Gregory132

continues,

And thus he continued to do with us, until, by pouring in upon usmany such argumentations, one after another, he carried us fairly offsomehow or other by a kind of divine power and established us (inthe practice of philosophy) and set us down without the power ofmovement, as it were, beside himself by his arts.133

In this way, Origen explains to Celsus, he prepared his students for the study of the

Christian mysteries:

(I) try to raise them (his students), as those who have been previouslyexercised in the whole circle of learning and in philosophicalsubjects, to the venerable and lofty height of eloquence that lies hidfrom the multitude of Christians, where are discussed topics of thegreatest importance, and where it is demonstrated and shown that theyhave been treated philosophically both by the prophets of God and theapostles of Jesus. 134

Also attending the synod, though not yet a bishop, was Anatolius, founder of the

Aristotelian school in Alexandria, and the "learned" presbyter, Malchion, the man "foremost

in calling him (Paul) to account and in utterly refuting his attempts at concealment." As

already noted, Malchion was himself, "head of a school of rhetoric, one of the Greek

educational establishments at Antioch."135

Paul thus faced an imposing body of learned opponents. They were even more

imposing than we moderns might imagine, for classical education, paideia, was at the heart

Gregory Thaumaturgos, Oration to Origen vi. This translation is taken from The Ante-Nicene132

Fathers, vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1978) p.28.

Ibid.133

Contra Celsus, 3.58. The translation is again to be found in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4. On134

the extensive philosophical training to which Origen exposed his students see Gregory's Oration toOrigen cited above.

H.E. VII. xxix. 2.135

48

of the ruling aristocratic ethos. As H. I. Marrou, in his study of education in classical

antiquity, notes about the philosophical training in which these men were steeped,

"Philosophy was a minority culture for an educated elite prepared to make the necessary

effort." It was the inner sanctum of an already very exclusive set.136

Classical paideia played such a defining role for the ruling elite in part because "it

helped the wide and disperate upper class to communicate on common ground and to

maintain a sense of personal contact--a common culture." It thus "gave cohesion to the137

governing class." As Brown argues,138

Yet the Roman Empire, that had sprawled so dangerously far from theMediterranean by 200, was held together by the illusion that it wasstill a very small world....By 200 the empire was ruled by anaristorcacy of amazingly uniform culture, taste andlanguage...Throughout the Greek world no difference in vocabularyor pronunciation would betray the birthplace of any well-educatedspeaker.139

However, the cohesion it afforded the elites was only as effective as its ability to

exclude those outside, the vast multitudes that populated the Empire. In this respect, as we

have already noted in the travails of freedmen and others who aspired to break into the

aristocracy, paideia was a also an effective tool of exclusion:

Men of the same class and culture, in any part of the Roman world,found themselves far closer to each other than to the vast majority oftheir neighbors, the "underdeveloped" peasantry on their doorstep.140

H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956) p.206.136

Fox, Pagans and Christians p.305.137

Ibid.138

Brown, The World of Late Antiquity p.14.139

Ibid.140

49

Thus the very cohesive character of classical paideia contributed to the "moral

hypochondria," with which the great kept haughtily aloof from the multitudes. Indeed one141

of the principal reasons why those high status Christians who became bishops suffered a loss

of social status was because their office would require them to associate with the uneducated,

simple common people who made up the vast majority of their flock. As Celsus ridicules:

Let us hear what kind of persons these Christians invite. Everyone,they say, who is a sinner, who is devoid of understanding, who is achild and, to speak generally, whoever is unfortunate, him will thekingdom of God receive.142

Origen replies that the Christian teacher is like "a benvolent physician who should

seek after the sick in order to help and cure them." Rather than remaining aloof, in the143

realm of the perfect, Christian notables are called upon to descend from their high position

and lend what aid and counsel they can to the mikroi, the "little ones" in their midst. In such

selfless acts of love, the megaloi would both imitate Christ themselves and teach the

unlettered to imitate Christ according to their own condition, that is, by imitating his humble

obedience. In this way all might be saved.

And so the only-begotten Son of God, who was the Word andwisdom of the Father, when he lived with the Father in that glorywhich he had before the world was, emptied himself, and taking theform of a servant became obedient even unto death in order to teachthem obedience who could in no other way obtain salvation exceptthrough obedience; and also restored the corrupted laws of ruling andof reigning in that he "subdues all enemies under his feet"(1Cor

Brown's apt phrase. See History of Private Life p.241.141

Origen, Contra Celsus III, lix. For another example, see an educated Roman's attack on142

Christianity (probably that of M. Cornelius Fronto, a senator and consul in 143) preserved in theOcatavius of Minucius Felix, 5.4, 8.4, 12.

Ibid, III, lxxiv.143

50

15.27); and by the fact that he must reign till he puts his enemiesunder his feet, he teaches the rulers themselves the arts of control.144

Thus, whereas Paul's gospel proclaims a God who pours forth his Spirit on the the

lowly, Origen's God came "to renew the capacity not only for ruling and reigning but also for

obeying." The governing aristocracy and the humble multitudes both are called to imitate145

Christ, but each according to their respective condition in life. As the contemporary

Didascalia Apostolorum spells out this ethos of Christian agape:

Hear then, O bishops, and hear, you laymen, how the Lord says: I willjudge between ram and ram, and between ewe and ewe" (Ez. 34.17)that is, between bishop and bishop, and between layman and layman;whether layman loves layman and whether again the layman loves thebishop and honors him and fears him as father and lord and god afterGod Almighty. For to the bishop it was said through the apostles:"Everyone who hears you, hears me; and everyone who denies you,denies me and him that sent me" (Lk 10.6). And again whether thebishop loves the layman as children, and breeds and keeps them warmthrough zest of love as eggs from which young birds are to come orbroods over them and breeds them as young birds, for their rearing upas winged fowl.146

The layman is to obey the bishop as "father, lord and god:" the bishop is to love the

layman "as children." The humble masses, particularly women and slaves were not

infreqently compared to children, especially when speaking of training and governing. For

the simple common multitude was by nature more fit for physical discipline than intellectual

deliberation, and thus, like children, they were thought by the cultured elite to be more

Origen, De Principiis, III, 5, 6. The translation is by G.W. Butterworth (Gloucester, Peter144

Smith, 1973.)

Ibid.145

Didascalia Apostolorum VII. 146

51

susceptible to the passions, especially the pain and fear of punishment than to the power of

reason.147

While not the "moral hypochondria" of classical paideia, this new concern for the

unlettered multitudes involves then little change in the low estimation of the many, forced

to base, manual labor, for whom the leisure, let alone the education, necessary for a "free,"

truly human life was forever out of reach. Thus while a physician to the multitudes, Origen

explains to Celsus that Jesus' pronouncements about the blessedness of the poor refers to the

spiritual poverty of this self-emptying love he exemplified; Jesus is not here referring to the

materially poor, "for even a common individual would not thus indiscriminately have praised

the poor, many of whom lead most wicked lives."148

This aristocratic ethos betrays itself in all the Synodal letter's complaints about Paul's

conduct at Antioch. The bishops mock Paul for adopting aristocratic airs, while he is really

"the son of a nobody." They are mortified at the disrepute into which their church has fallen

through his vulgar, ostentatious displays. Yet who does Paul so offend but the socially more

prominent? The "more naive souls" he amazes and astounds by his words and his manner.

The very use of the term "layman," "laikos" in the Didascalia is itself siginificant. Alexandre147

Faivre in The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church (New York, Paulist, 1990) notes that theterm does not appear either in the Septuagint or in the New Testament (p. 15). It is found in profaneliterature from the third century onwards where it appears to refer to "the local population as opposedto the administration" (Ibid). Its first instance in Christian literature is in Clement's letter to theCorinthians, where citing the levitical heirarchy he insists "The layman is bound by lay precepts"(1Clem 40:5). Faivre argues we learn more about the term's connotations when we see how thissentence was translated into Latin in the second half of the second century: "Plebeius homo laicuspraeceptis datus est." As Faivre notes:

In Clement's first use of the Greek word laikos, then, the "layman" becomes intranslation "the plebeian man"--in other words, the man who forms part of theplebs, the vulgar or popular section of the people and was not of the patricii orprivileged class (p. 21).

The next appearance of the term in a Christian text is in the Didascalia. Faivre argues that thecommon use of laikos only from the third century on indicates that a sharply defined clergy-laydistinction only begins to emerge at this time.

Origen, Contra Celsum, VI, 16.148

52

To the bishops complain Paul behaves more like "a sophist and a charlatan" than like a true

Christian bishop.

Virginia Burrus has recently argued that the portrayal of Paul as a sophist lies behind

many of the bishop's complaints concerning his conduct. Such a portrayal reinforces their149

depiction of him as an ambitious, shameless social climber. A sophist was considered to be

a pseudo-rhetorician who used his eloquence not in the service of truth and for the good of

the community, as would "natural" leaders of "good breeding," but to advance his own

popularity among the multitudes who were too "simple" to distinguish clever oratory from

sound argument. Such sophistry itself betrayed a vulgar lack of good breeding. Eloquence

was indeed a mark of high culture and of noble character; but unscrupulous social climbers

could learn a false eloquence to steal for themselves the "wealth, fame, power and acclaim"

that accompanied "Lady Rhetoric".150

Burrus compares the bishops' charges against Paul's conduct with a satirical treatise

by Lucian, Rhetoron Didascalos. In this satire a corrupt elderly orator explains to an aspiring

young man the two breeds of rhetorician and the paths which lead to each. The first is

represented by "a vigorous man with hard muscles and a manly stride, who shows heavy tan

on his body and is bold-eyed and alert." He is the guide for the "old" path, a rough and

difficult road, requiring a long journey, measured "not in months but in whole Olympian

cycles". In addition he demands "no small fee for all these hardships; in fact he would not

guide you unless he should get a huge sum in advance." 151

Virginia Burrus, "Rhetorical Sterotypes in the Portrait of Paul of Samosata" Vigiliae149

Christianae 43 (1989) pp. 215-225.

On the attributes of rhetoric see Lucian's treatise Rhetoron Didascalos, 6.150

Rhetoron Didascalos 9.151

53

The other breed by contrast is represented by "an all-wise and all-beautiful man with

a mincing gait, a thin neck, a languishing eye and a honeyed voice." He offers another path,152

easy, short and cheap. To journey upon it,

Bring with you, as the principal thing, ignorance, secondlyrecklessness and thereunto effrontery and shamelessness. Modesty,respectability, self-restraint and blushes may be left at home.153

Along this latter path one does not acquire education but technique,

First of all you must pay special attention to outward appearance, andto the graceful set of your cloak...(when addressing the multitude)slap your thigh, bawl, clear your throat while you are speaking andstride about swaying your hips. If they do not cry "Hear!" beindignant and upbraid them... in short, carry the thing with a highhand.154

If one should but follow these rules faithfully,

nothing can hinder you...from holding the mastery in the courts,enjoying high favor with the public, being attractive andmarrying...Rhetoric, fairest of brides.155

As students of Origen and heads of schools of philosophy and rhetoric, the principal

bishops opposing Paul were of the first, noble breed and had journeyed along its long,

difficult and expensive path. Burrus argues that these bishops were intent upon portraying

Paul as of the second ambitious and "shameless" variety. They complain that in the

Ibid. 11. I have changed the translation for kai pansophon tina kai pagkalon andra from "a152

wholly clever and wholly handsome gentleman".

Ibid. 15.153

Ibid. 15,16,19.154

Ibid. 26.155

54

ecclesiastical assemblies Paul "courts popularity and poses for appearances sake and thus156

astonishes the more naive souls" who do not know any better. Just as a faithful disciple of

Lucian's sophist, Paul too,

smites his hand on his thigh and stamps the tribunal with his feet; andthose who do not applaud or wave their handkerchiefs as in a theateror shout out and jump up in the same way as do the men andwretched women who are his partisans and harken in this disorderlyfashion, but who listen as in God's house with orderly and becomingreverence, these he rebukes and insults. 157

The bishops' charge that Paul made "godliness a way of gain" also fits into the

stereotype of the sophist. One of an orator's principal sources of income was to represent

plaintiffs and defendants before magistrates and juries in legal disputes. It was common for

them to be accused by their enemies (not infrequently rival orators themselves!) of both

defrauding their clients when they would lose and of rhetorical grandstanding when they

would win. So too the bishops accuse Paul of breaking his word to the injured he had158

promised to help, presumably when he would decide against a plaintiff's suit, and of

extorting those being sued, presumably when he would judge in a plaintiff's favor. The

picture of Paul as a shameless and unscrupulous social climber is now virtually complete.

All that remains is to accuse Paul of sexual licence.

What the bishops are referring to here is not clear. It could refer to the church councils156

convened to investigate and discipline Paul. (The early councils were often attended by both clergyand ordinary Christians of the locality.) Eusebius mentions that several councils were held beforePaul was finally excommunicated. Or they could be referring more generally to Paul's preachingbefore his congregation. It most likely refers to both. If Paul were indeed highly rhetorical in his owndefense, it would seem probable that he would also use such techniques on other occasions in whichhe would address "the more naive souls" such as in preaching.

H.E. VII. xxx. 9.157

Lucian's corrupt elderly orator admits to "generally playing false to my clients, (i.e. selling out158

to the other side) although I promise the poor fools to deliver their juries to them". RhetoronDidaskalos, 25.

55

Paul and the suneisaktai gunaikes

Lucian's corrupt elderly rhetorician tells his young pupil that the easy path to wealth,

fame, power and acclaim as an orator includes rules not only for one's public conduct in the

agora and the law courts but also some for one's private life as well.

In your private life be resolved to do anything and everything--to dice,to drink deep, to live high and to keep mistresses....You must aim tobe elegant, you know, and take pains to create the impression thatwomen are devoted to you....This helps your rhetoric in many ways;it increases your shamelessness and effrontery. You observe thatwomen are more talkative, and that in calling names they areextravagant and outstrip men. Well, if you imitate them, you willexcel your rivals even there.159

So too, the bishops try to associate Paul with licentious sexual conduct. In particular

they denounce him for living with "call-in girls, as the Antiochenes call them" both he and160

many of his presbyters and deacons. Now to understand what the bishops are referring to here

and also to see more fully why they are so opposed to Paul in general, it is necessary to

situate his relationship with these "call-in girls" in its cultural and historical context.

"Call-in girls," "suneisaktai," was a pejorative term for a radical ascetic practice

remarkably common in very early Syrian Christianity. Men and women, desiring to161

become filled with the Spirit, would dedicate their entire lives to sexual abstinence in the

belief common among both Christians and pagans that sexual pleasure was incompatible

with divine communion. Yet these Christian prophets would still live together "as brother

Ibid. 23.159

This is Peter Brown's translation for suneisaktous gunaikas. (Body and Society, (New York:160

Columbia, 1988) p.267). In a seminar on his book in January 1991 at Northwestern, Brown said thathe does believe the double entendre to be intentional. All uses of the term known to him arepejorative, employed by opponents criticizing the practice.

Arthur Voobus in Celibacy, A requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syrian161

Church (Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1951) argues "This spiritual marriagemust have been a characteristic feature of Christian life in wide circles of those primitive Syriancommunities. This is a necessary inference from all that we know of efforts made during latercenturies to get rid of this archaic habit." (p.25)

56

and sister" enjoying a purely spiritual intimacy with one another. From the point of view of

their adversaries such behavior was at the very least brash and imprudent, deliberately

placing themselves in continuous sexual temptation. However they themselves claimed162

that through the power of God's Spirit which they enjoyed, they had not only renounced the

spirit of the flesh, they had been completely liberated from their bondage to its desires. They

boasted that they no longer even experienced sexual feelings, but now lived as angels the

resurrected life proclaimed by Christ.163

They appealed to Luke 20:34-36. In this passage some Saduccees in an attempt to164

refute Jesus' teaching about the afterlife present him with a riddle about a woman who

marries seven brothers. If there is an afterlife, to whom shall she be married in heaven, they

ask. In Mark, Jesus responds that "when they rise from the dead" people will no longer be

married, but will live like angels. However Luke's version of the passage reads differently,

The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those whoare accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrectionfrom the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannotdie any more, because they are equal to angels (my emphasis).

Marcion had interpreted this passage to refer to living Christians, who by virtue of

their baptism no longer are "sons (and daughters) of this world" but are now "accounted

worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection of the dead." Thus he taught that no

Christian should marry, calling marriage a form of "porneia". Christian men and women can

and should still live together, but "as angels" not as man and wife.

See for example, John Chrysostom, Adversus eos qui se habent subintroductas virgines (PG162

47. 514) (referred to below as Adv. eos).

For the above characterization and what follows concerning the understanding of spiritual163

marriages among gnostic Christians I rely heavily upon Peter Brown's The Body and Society pp. 83-121.

For the following Marcionite interpretation see David Aune, The Cultic Setting of Realized164

Eschatology in Early Christianity (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972) 202-211.

57

Marcion was very popular in Syria. In some places he seems to have been more

popular than "orthodox" Christianity itself. Tatian, who also enjoyed a strong following

among Syrian Christians agreed with Marcion that marriage was porneia. So too did the

author of the Gospel of Thomas who referred to marriage as "this dirty communion".165

Valentinus was more moderate. While spiritual marriages were the ideal for the spiritually

perfect, he allowed that ordinary "psychic" Christians, who were still ensnared in this world,

were not able to lead the full spiritual life. To most Christian leaders in the Great Church,

many of whom were still married, all of this sounded very arrogant and was accurately

perceived by them as a challenge to their own spiritual authority.

The practice of purely spiritual marriages had strong apocalyptic overtones as well.

Not only did these inspired prophets consider themselves to already be living the

eschatological life of the age to come, but they also believed that through their refusal to bear

and raise children, they were literally helping to bring the present world of sin and death to

an end. Clement quotes from their writings,

When Salome asked the Lord: "How long shall death hold sway? Heanswered "As long as you women bear children166

And again,

they say that the Savior himself said "I came to undo female works."meaning by this "female" sexual desire, and by "work" birth and thecorruption of death.167

That life-long virginity could be construed as helpting to bring the world to an end is

yet another instance where we need to suspend our modern sensibilites, shaped as they are

Voobus, Celibacy, p.26.165

Clement, Stromata 3.6.45; quoted in Brown, The Body and Society p.85.166

Ibid. 3.6.63 also quoted in Brown, p.85.167

58

by a different world. As Brown points out, the Roman Empire "was more helplessly exposed

to death than is even the most afflicted underdeveloped country in the modern world." He

continues,

Citizens of the Roman Empire at its height, in the second century,were born into the world with an average life expectancy of less thantwenty-five years....It was a population "grazed thin by death". In sucha situation, only the privileged or the eccentric could enjoy thefreedom to do what they pleased with their sexual drives. Unexactingin so many ways in sexual matters, the ancient city expected itscitizens to expend a requisite proportion of their energy begetting andrearing children to replace the dead.168

Of course, the number of new births possible was absolutely limited by the number

of women of childbearing age. Consequently,

The pressure on the young women was inexorable. For the populationof the Roman Empire to remain even stationary, it appears that eachwoman would have had to have produced an average of five children.Young girls were recruited early for their task. The median age ofRoman girls at marriage may have been as low as fourteen.169

Brown argues that the tradition of virgin prietesses and prophetesses in Greco-Roman

cults does not count against this interpretation. For unlike Christian virgins, their continence

was temporary, not life-long; they were dedicated to this service of the gods by others, not

by their own voluntary choice; and while "eminent and admired, they were not thought to

stand for human nature at its peak. Their virginity did not speak to the community as a whole

of a long-lost perfection." On the contrary,

they were the exceptions that reinforced the rule. The presence insome cities of a handful of young girls, chosen by others to forgo

Peter Brown, Body and Society, p.6. The quote is from Chrysostom's essay on virginity, De168

Virginitate, 14.1.

Ibid.169

59

marriage, heightened the awareness of contemporaries that marriageand childbirth were the unquestioned destiny of all other women.170

In their voluntary apocalyptic renunciation of marriage, on the other hand, these

Christian virgin prophets were at the same time attacking the social mores modeled on the

patriarchal household, particularly those concerning the proper role of women. Unlike171

wives bound to submission to their husbands, women vowed to virginity could remain

relatively independent from male control. As Valentinus expressed it, the female would172

no longer be disciplined by the male, she would herself become male. So too, in the Gospel

of Thomas we read,

Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary (Magdalene) leave us, forwomen are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her andmake her male."173

Such women hardly saw themselves engaged in licentious behavior. But, not fitting

into any of the familial roles according to which their society was structured, they did share

with courtesans and prostitutes a certain permenant liminality. For those who resisted their

claims to spiritual authority it was only too easy to associate them with the sexual immorality

of the latter.

Now Paul's opponents do not and would not argue against virginity per se. The New

Testament privelieges those "who become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom" and Origen

Ibid. p.9.170

Young women's choice of virginity in early Chrisitanity was at least perceived to be voluntary.171

Brown acknowledges however that some may have been making the best of an undesired plight,there likely having been many women and few eligible Christian men, especially given the Church'snegative attitude towards remarriage (Body and Society p. 147).

On the subordination of wives to their husbands, see Didascalia Apostolorum III. Both wives172

and widows (XV) are instructed to live private domestic lives, not "wandering or running aboutamong the houses," being "talkative and chatterers and murmerers."

Gospel of Thomas, 114; again, quoted in Brown, p.113.173

60

himself had been a strong advocate of perpetual virginity, agreeing with the contemporary

association of this state with the attainment of the most intimate levels of divine communion.

However, from the time of the pastoral epistles there is a concern among the leadership of

the church to restrict spiritual virginity among women to those who are past childbearing

age. Also following these later epistles, even Origen had forbade a public role for women174

in the church, claiming that they lacked the "image of God" enjoyed by males. Also by the175

beginning of the third century, we begin to find resistance by Church officials to the literal

interpretations of Christian apocalypticism such as we have found associated with the

practice of spiritual marriages.176

John Chrysostom's criticism of the suneisaktai gunaikes among his own flock at

Antioch a hundred years after Paul, both confirms Brown's interpretation of how spiritual

marriages were understood by their practitioners and sheds further light on the bishops'

opposition to this practice. In a treatise condemning spiritual marriages he complains that

those who engage in them "take pride in their state saying they are exempt from

concupiscence." "The women are proud as if they have a higher status than the crowds."177 178

They boast, "I have not become a mother; I have not known the sorrows of giving birth."179

The men on the other hand demean themselves by conversing with women and treating them

See, for example, Dennis MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle (Philadelphia: Westminster,174

1983), p.73-77. MacDonald argues that the order of widows should be understood to includeunmarried women vowed to virginity (p.76).

Cf Frend, The Rise of Christianity, p.411.175

Contrast, for example, Irenaeus and Hippolytus with Origen or with his student Dionysius of176

Alexandria, who while visiting an Egyptian village "corrects" their local bishop's literalunderstanding of John's book of Revelation (H.E. VII, xxiv-xxv.)

John Chrysostom, Adv. eos. Saint Jean Chrysostom: Oeuvres Completes translated by De M.177

Jeannin (Bar-le-Duc: L. Guerin, 1864) vol. 2, p.99.

Ibid. p.103.178

Ibid. p.114.179

61

as peers. "Stop being slaves of women!" demands Chrysostom, "Be your own master!" 180

Chrysostom suspects that men only engage in this practice because they wish to be

admired by women. However, "it is totally unworthy of a spiritual man to seek this honor,"

and in any event,

women admire those who resist them, those who are not pliant totheir every whim. Ask them for whom they hold the greatestadmiration; to those who are their slaves or their master?--you do noteven need to ask them, the facts speak for themselves."181

And yet despite his professed cynicism about spiritual marriages, Chrysostom also

acknowledged the eschatological idealism professed by their participants. At the end of one

of his treatises against the practice, he too portrays as the ideal human relationship men and

women living together "as angels." But he warns that this ideal is only realizable in the life

to come, after the death of our fallen, mortal bodies. In this present age such a way of life is

unnatural. Frail and sinful as we all are, we are too "tyrannized" by our desires to safely

attempt to live the life of angels in this world. Thus, while an eschatological ideal, men who

are engaged in these intimate spiritual friendships with women here below should sever them

now so that,

after the pilgrimage of this life you might see your friend once moreto enjoy in all security her conversation and her presence."182

With this background, we are now in a position to consider more fully what the bishops' have to say about Paul in this regard:

As to the "call-in girls", as the Antiochenes call them, his own andthose of the elders and deacons in his company, with whom he joinsin concealing both this and the other incurable sins, though he knows

Ibid. p.103.180

Ibid. p.104-5.181

Ibid. p.107.182

62

of and has convicted them, that he may have them under obligationto him, and that they may not dare, through fear for themselves, toaccuse him of his misdemeanors in word and deed; yea, he has evenmade them rich, for which cause he is the beloved and admired ofthose who affect such conduct, why should we write of thesethings?183

Thus, Paul both lives this realized eschatology himself and actively promotes it at

Antioch, including some of these Christian prophets among his council of elders and also

among his administrative assistants, the deacons. The bishops go on to complain that such

Christians should not hold any church office at all because of the scandal they cause both

inside and outside the community. Those who have not actually fallen into "licentiousness"

still bring the church into disrepute through the rumors their lifestyle provokes, rumors that

their angelic conduct in public does indeed mask "incurable sins" (i.e. fornication) in private.

Even Paul himself is not above suspicion. After all "he has sent one (woman) away already

and has two in his company in the flower of youth and beauty." Thus, "even if it be granted

that he does nothing licentious" the example he sets does not become a bishop of the church,

who "should be a model to the people of all good works" not a cause for others' stumbling.184

Thus, the bishops anticipate many of Chrysostom's later condemnations. For them, Paul's

spiritual marriages is but another instance of his shameless effrontery.

Paul, on the other hand, presumably shared the view of many Syrian Christians, both

within the Great Church and without, that this spiritual intimacy embraced the angelic way

of life of the world to come. Indeed, the bishops complain the Paul's partisans hail him as "an

angel, down from heaven." But would not such a reading of Paul conflict with his185

preaching a psilanthropic Christ? Proponents of the angelic way of life, such as Marcion and

H.E. VII. xxx. 12.183

Ibid. 13-14.184

H.E. xxx 11.185

63

Valentinus, taught an unacceptably high Christology. How then could their understanding

of spiritual marriage be shared by Paul whose Christology was unacceptably low?

I believe an answer to this question lies in construing Paul's Christology of ascent as

a spirituality of empowerment for the "more naive souls" he "astonished". Paul did not teach

that we are angels or divine "by nature" as did many gnostic Christians, but he may well have

taught that the Spirit having come down from heaven raises us up to live as angels, just as

Jesus, though a simple man, was raised up by the same Spirit to become God.

Such a reading of Paul would help account for the "disorderly" behavior of his

partisans, who, the bishops complain, conduct themselves in ecclesiastical assemblies more

as though they were in a theater, at that time, a raucous, bawdy form of low-class

entertainment, than in the house of God. The multitudes under his sway applaud him; they186

"wave their hankerchiefs;" they "shout out and jump up in the same way as do the men and

wretched women who are his partisans." From her studies in comparative religion,187

anthropologist Mary Douglas has argued, following Durkheim, that such exuberant,

charismatic religious behavior tends to be found among relatively undifferentiated groups

who feel their lives to be in important respects at the mercy of forces beyond their own

conscious control. In the religious setting participants can experience this lack of control188

as safe by feeling themselves to be taken up in this larger divine power. Thus, "in the

disorder of the mind . . . ritual expects to find powers and truths which cannot be reached by

conscious effort."189

Theaters were a raucous, bawdy form of low-class entertainment. (see Ramsey Macmullen,186

Enemies of the Roman Order pp. 170-172.) Christians were strictly forbidden to go to the theater,see for example, Didascalia Apostolorum XIII.

H.E. VII, xxx, 187

See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (New York: Routledge, 1966) and Natural Symbols188

(New York, Pantheon, 1970).

Douglas, Purity and Danger, p.94.189

64

Now there is no evidence that the behavior of Paul and his adherents was charismatic

in the narrow sense of speaking in tongues or entering trance states such as one finds in the

early church at Corinth, in Acts, or in contemporary Pentacostal groups. By the middle of the

third century, the church's liturgy had probably become too firmly settled to allow for such

radically ecstatic behavior. However the bishops' charges do depict an enthusiastic, exuberant

reception to Paul by his congregation, and, as we shall later see, the bishops charge Paul with

making innovations in the liturgy that contribute to this charismatic atmosphere in the

broader sense of the term. Thus I believe that studies of charismatic religiousity can shed

light on the kind of Christianity Paul promoted at Antioch even if they themselves focus on

more extreme manifestations of ritual effervescence.190

As mentioned above, Douglas takes an expressivist approach to the study of religious

behavior. Ritual represents the social reality its adherents experience. Thus "disorderly"191

religious behavior expresses perceptions of a disorderly society and a vulnerability to forces

beyond the individual's control. Now the latter half of the third century was a period of great

economic and political disintegration. Every major frontier in the Empire was breached by

marauding invaders. Antioch itself fell to Shapur I of Persia in 256 and again in 260.192

Virutally everywhere trade diminished, inflation soared, great families were ruined and the

multitudes of humble day-laborers and small scale shopkeepers and artisans who always

An analogous situation might be the study of Catholic liturgies in predominantly African-190

American congregations. Here too one finds what in the Catholic tradition is an unusuallycharismatic liturgy which nevertheless in following offical rubrics lacks the more classic expressionsof charismatic behavior such as speaking in tongues or enduced trances. Despite this less extremecharismatic behavior, much light can be shed on understanding such congregations by treating themas analogous to more typical Pentacostal groups.

Douglas, Natural Symbols p.80.191

See Bardy, Paul de Samosate, pp.239-249. In 256 Sapur I installed Cyriades, who had betrayed192

his city to the Persians, on the throne at Antioch. After Shapur withdrew from Syria, his puppet wasburned alive and the Persian garrison massacred in an uprising. After the disastrous defeat andcapture of the Emperor Valarian at the hands of Shapur in 260, Antioch was again siezed by thePersians, to be liberated this time by Palmyra, a sometime Roman client. Palmyra becameincreasingly independent of Rome in the late 260's and the Emperor Aurelian retook Antioch in 272.

65

lived on or near the brink of subsistence fell into that beggarly destitution, ptocheia, from

which Paul was accused to have arisen. At the same time, local notables began withdrawing

their sponsorship from religious festivals in the cities, whose feasts had traditionally

functioned in part as a primitive "safety net" for the very poor. As a consequence Fox193

observes,

The social effects of the difficult years from c. 250 to c. 280 and thesubseqent era of reform were generally to exacerbate the gap betweenthe very rich and the men of modest property, the propertied class andthe rest.194

In these troubled times, the Christian community provided its members some measure

of security. From its origins, Christian morality had always been "a morality of the socially

vulnerable:"

It had long been obvious also to Jewish communities, as it would beto the Christians, that among small men the maintenance of a marginof financial independence in a hostile world was possible through asmall measure of mutual support. By offering alms and the chance ofemployment to the poorer members of their community, Jews andChristians could protect correligionists from impoverishment, andhence from outright vulnerability to pagan creditors or paganemployers....The eventual replacing of a model of urban society thathad stressed the duty of the well-born to nourish their city by onebased on the notion of the implicit solidarity of the rich in theaffliction of the poor remains one of the most clear examples of theshift from a classical to a postclassical Christianized world. This shiftwas under way by the second century A.D. among the Christiancommunities.195

Thus at this time of political disintegration and with the well-born withdrawing from

their traditional civic responsibilites upon which the general populace in part depended for

Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, p.66-7.193

Fox, Pagans and Christians, pp.590-1.194

Brown, History of Private Life, I, p.262.195

66

their livelihood, living within the Christian ekklesia gave those from the vulnerable

multitudes more control over their destinies.

The Christian community suddenly came to appeal to men who feltdeserted. At a time of inflation, the Christians invested large sums ofliquid capital in people; at time of increased brutality, the courage ofChristian martyrs was impressive; during public emergencies, such asplague or rioting, (or seige, as we know from the case of Alexandriain the 260's--me) the Christian clergy were shown to be the onlyunited group in the town able to look after the burial of the dead andto organize food supplies....The churches of Rome and Carthage wereable to send large sums of money to Africa and Cappadocia to ransomChristian captives after barbarian raids in 254 and 256....Plainly, tobe a Christian in 250 brought more protection from one's fellows thanto be a civis romanus.196

This power which the humble enjoyed, they knew did not come from their own effort,

but from their participation in the life of the Spirit which annimated the Church and in which

they had been annointed at baptism. Thus, unlike the Arian grace that is a "reward for

performance," these multitudes experienced the presence of the Spirit in their lives as an

empowering force from without that raised them up and protected them to some extent from

the political and economic disintegration around them. In this light, a sociological study of

contemporary Pentacostalism is suggestive . It claims that those attracted to Pentacostalism197

tend to also be from the economically vulnerable working and lower middle classes, anxious

about their ability to stay out of poverty and the social humiliation and powerlessness it

entails. Pentacostals emphasize the importance of discipline and self-control, but believe

such can be realized only through possession by the Spirit:

The believer has to lay himself open to a stronger power in order tohave power over himself. Conversely, the believer proves to himselfhis "infilling" by the Spirit by the success he has with self-discipline.

Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, p.67.196

See John Wilson and Harvey Clow, "Themes of Power and Control in a Pentacostal Assembly"197

in Religion: North American Style, Patrick McNamara ed, (Belmont Ca: Wadsworth, 1984) pp. 132-140; reprinted from Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 20 (1981) 241-250.

67

Thus the Christian church in the third century could be said to be an empowering force

in the lives of simple, common believers and the charismatic character of their reception of

Paul at Antioch could well be an expression of this empowerment. Paul's gospel of a simple

common man raised up by the Spirit could well have resonated with the experience of the

"naive multitudes" who so admired him. It would also have resonated with Paul's own rise

from beggarly ptocheia to pre-eminence in the Antiochene church. Douglas argues that

successful individuals can acquire a charismatic appeal in a society particularly at times when

the ordinary structures of authority are weakened, or otherwise perceived to be unreliable and

untrustworthy. Furthermore such charismatic figures will tend to arise from those "living198

in the interstices of the power-structure; those who hold "dangerously ambiguous roles,"199 200

whose liminal existence has exposed them to the powerful forces lying beyond human

control.201

It appears that Paul rose to the episcopacy at Antioch after the seizure and deportation

of his predecessor, Demetrius, and at least some of his priests. Demetrius apparantly died202

in exile in 260. Thus Paul attained the bishop's seat at Antioch at a time when some number

of the church's heirarchy were in exile and the Church had been without its official leader for

some time. Furthermore, in the Synodal letter, the bishops refer to Paul's "partisans", by

which they mean not the multitudes he sways but those who, with Paul, were engaged in

spiritual marriages, some of whom he had appointed priests and deacons, others of whom,

Douglas, Purity and Danger, p.98-100, 112.198

Ibid. p.104.199

Ibid. p.99.200

Ibid. p.95.201

Bardy quotes from the Nestorian Chronicle of Seert, redacted in the eleventh century, whose202

information about Demetrius is confimed in the partly legendary accounts of another twelfth centuryNestorian, Mari ibn Soleiman (Paul de Samosate p.241.)

68

I shall argue below, make up the virgin woman's choir the bishops also find offensive. Did

Paul himself come from this group that rode to power on his coattails? Their rejection of

sexual differentiation, one of the pillars of the Hellenistic Roman order, would have placed

them precisely in the kind of liminal social ambiguity from which Douglas claims

charismatic leaders tend to arise when formal authority structures are weak.

Thus Paul may have acquired his charismatic appeal not only from the power of his

own preaching and the economic and political disintegration of the times, but also from the

weakened state of the Antiochene hierarchy due to deportations and from the liminal,

prophetic group with which he was at least intimately associated, and from which he may

even have come. Once in power, his successful rise to prominence would have further

enhanced his charismatic appeal, for as Douglas also notes, such acclaim feeds off success.203

Paul's gospel of a common man raised up by the Spirit to divinity would also have kept his

similar success story before the mind of his congregation. Finally, Paul's popularity among

the "more naive souls" would also have benefitted from his being in charge of the

distributions of alms among those threatened by destitution. To these Paul would be the

vehicle of the Spirit's empowering grace materially as well as rhetorically.204

Now just as the charismatic character of Paul and his supporters among the multitudes

can be seen to be expressive of their experience of society, so too his enemies' revulsion at

this religious enthusiasm can also be seen as expressive of the experience of the high status

elite. Whereas disorderly religious behavior expresses perceptions of a disorderly society,

Douglas also claims that a religiosity which values the "orderly and becoming reverence"

Douglas, Purity and Danger, p.111.203

In the next century, this distribution of alms to "a new category: the faceless, profoundly204

anticivic rootless and abandoned poor," would give the bishops considerable status and power (SeeBrown, History of Private Life, pp. 279-80.

69

esteemed by the bishops in their letter expresses perceptions of a well articulated, orderly

society. 205

The legitimacy of the social order in classical antiquity depended upon the belief that

its steep hierarchical structure was the product of reason itself . What physical coercion was206

necessary to enforce this social order needed to be seen as sober deliberate punishments of

irrationality. Thus those with the authority to exercise such power were obliged to exhibit

prudence, measured temperence and sober gravitas. Self-restraint was the mark of the well-

bred "virile" male, those born to rule. Loss of self-control, more than anything else,

threatened to degrade the best to the common run of humanity. "Any disruption of the even

tenor of their style of command over others caused acute anxiety," notes Brown. Thus for207

example,

To beat a slave in a fit of rage was condemned. This was not becauseof any very acute sense that an act of inhumanity against a fellowbeing had been committed, but because the outburst represented acollapse of the harmonious image of the self of the wellborn man, andhad caused him to behave in a manner as uncontrolled as a slave.208

The turbulence of the latter third century only heightened the high status concern for

discipline and order. "At no time did this urban crust feel its hold over a wide world to be

more precarious than at the end of the third century." And yet Brown notes,209

Douglas, Purity and Danger, p.99.205

One of Origen's principal tasks in the De Principiis is to explain how the current social order206

is a manifestation of God's justice and providence: "Each contains within himself the reasons whyhe has been placed in this or that rank of life" (III, v, 4; see also II, ix, 5-7.) It may also have partlymotivated Origen's insistence on allegorizing traditional Christian eschatology. For an example ofhow literal apocalypticism offended cultivated sensibilities concerning the order of the cosmos, seeMinucius Felix, Octavius, 10.

Brown, Body and Society, p.12.207

History of Private Life, I, p. 243.208Brown,

Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, p.84.209

70

The governing classes had no intention of loosening their grip on aworld they viewed with such inflexible certainty. The instability ofthe third century changed little in this respect. It merely hardenedtheir resolve to hold on to the self-discipline and to maintain thesymbols of public order that had come to the fore in more peacefuldays.210

Thus the exuberance Paul generated at Antioch may not only have offended the

educated bishops who opposed him; it may have alarmed them as well. Disorder was not

only self-indulgent and irrational, typical of the common mob of humanity, it was also

dangerous, threatening the social order, here, the mutual reciprocity of love and obedience

between the great and the small that in the bishops' view characterized the providential order

of the Christian ekklesia.

Paul had polarized these two groups. He was a harbinger not of God's grace but of dissension

and division. He did not build up, he rent asunder the body of Christ.

Paul the goes

The liturgical charges the bishops raise against Paul confirm and further embellish the

"vulgar" and "disorderly" character of his teaching and conduct. Not only is Paul a sophist;

he is a goes as well. Oulton translates goes as "charlatan," but as Ramsey MacMullen notes,

"the word has no English equivalent and perhaps "fakir" is closest, meaning "juggler with

magic" both as fraud and as black magician." The goes purported to be a prophet and a211

seer, who could amaze the uneducated multitudes with fake displays of divine power. He

could also shake the social order by arousing the gullible masses with visions of salvation

from their suffering. To call Paul a goes is to accuse him of similar "quackery" towards the

Brown, Body and Society, p.22.210

Ramsey MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order p.322 n.20. For the following description211

of the goes see also pp. 146-147, and Origen's Contra Celsum VI.41.

71

multitudes and to blame him for disturbing the harmonious order of the Christian212

community.

Furthering their mockery of Paul's vulgar social pretensions, the bishops also accuse

him of building for himself "a lofty throne" on a raised dias "not befitting a disciple of

Christ." Interestingly, on this matter history was ultimately to be on Paul's side. Whether213

befitting or not, what little archeological evidence we have concerning ante-Nicene Christian

architecture suggests, that even in Paul's own day, this renovation may not have been

unusual. However certainly after Nicea it became customary for the bishop's chair to be214

prominently situated on a raised dias facing the congregation, together with seats for his

council of presbyters. As the bishop would teach the people in his homilies seated (ex

cathedra), this arrangement allowed the growing Christian congregation to better see, and so

attend, to their bishop. Given Paul's evident skills as a preacher, he may well have renovated

the Antiochene church for just such a reason.

The judicial sekreton Paul had built is likewise "in imitation of the rulers of this

world." In the Synoptics, when his disciples had gotten into an argument concerning "who

was to be regarded as the greatest" Jesus had expressly forbidden his disciples from imitating

"the rulers of the Gentiles," who lord their power and authority over their subjects. The215

bishops portray Paul's church renovations as yet another example of his un-Christian desire

to be "raised up" rather than to "humble" himself and be a servant for God's people.

The bishops' most puzzling, but potentially the most illuminating, liturgical accusation

against Paul concerns what he has done with music in the Christian assembly:

terateian--"dealings in the marvelous, imposture, quackery"--as the bishops'refer to it (9).212

H.E. VII. xxx. 9.213

See for example Richard Krautheimer's reconstruction of the house church discovered at Dura214

Europus in the first chapter of his book, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (Penguin, 1965).

Lk 22:24-27; Mt 20:20-28; Mk 10:35-45.215

72

As to the psalms, he put a stop to those addressed to our Lord JesusChrist, on the ground that they are modern and the compositions ofmodern men, but he trains women to sing hymns to himself in themiddle of the church on the great day of the Pascha, which wouldmake one shudder to hear.216

The bishops here juxtapose two accusations against Paul. On the one hand, Paul

forbids the singing of hymns to Christ; on the other he arranges for women to sing hymns to

himself. The first appears consistent with Paul's teaching "low and mean views" about Jesus

Christ; the second fits the bishops' portrayal of Paul as vain and shameless. Their

juxtaposition creates a telling contrast. However if, again, these two charges are situated in

their contemporary cultural context, it is possible to reconstruct a surprisingly sympathetic

picture of what Paul and his supporters probably understood themselves to be doing.

As to the charge that Paul had forbidden the singing of psalms addressed to Christ in

the liturgy, as the bishops themselves acknowledge, Paul here claims to be not an innovator

but calling for a return to traditional practice. And so indeed he was. The first psalm217

composed to Christ which has come down to us outside of some disputed instances within

the Pauline corpus was written by Clement of Alexandria in the late second century. In

addition prayers were not generally addressed to Christ at all in the eucharistic liturgy at this

time. Hippolytus, hardly a low Christologist himself, instructs that prayers are to be218

addressed to the Father, through the Son in the Spirit. So too, Origen, the bishops' own219

mentor, with a similarly high Christology, imagines Christ reprimanding those who would

pray to him:

H.E. VII. xxx. 10.216

Cf Massey Shepherd, "The Formation and Influence of the Antiochene Liturgy" Dunbarton217

Oaks Papers 15 (1961) pp.25-44. See pp. 36-7 for his remarks on Paul.

See Joseph Jungmann, The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer, Geoffry Chapman Ltd. trans.218

(Staten Island: Alba House, 1965) p.164.

Ibid. pp.5-9.219

73

Why do you pray to me? You should pray only to the Father, to whomI pray myself....For you must not pray to the High Priest appointed onyour behalf by the Father or to the Advocate who is charged by theFather with praying for you. Rather you must pray through the HighPriest and Advocate...It is not reasonable for those who are deemedworthy of one and the same Father to pray to a brother. You mustpray only to the Father with me and through me.220

Thus, while the bishops clearly want to portray Paul's position in this matter as another

instance of his demeaning Christ, their case here, as with his "throne" seems strained at best.

Part of their motivation may have been to point out to Dionysius of Rome, to whom their

letter is in part addressed, another similarity Paul bore to Artemas, the Roman heretic the

bishops are intent on identifying Paul with. Another reason is surely rhetorical, to221

juxtapose it to the following charge that Paul had arranged other hymns to be addressed to

himself. And yet, here too, this latter accusation takes some surprising twists when properly

situated in its historical and cultural context.

Firstly, this accusation is the first extant report of a choir ever used in a Christian

liturgy. Traditionally, where music was used in Christian liturgy, it always consisted in222

hymns sung by all the assembly. It was thought that by singing to God "with one voice" the

Christian liturgy expressed that unity and mutual solidarity which should characterize the

assembly in all its life. As Basil was to explain a century later,

Origen, On Prayer, XV.4. Rowan Greer trans. (New York: Paulist Press, 1979) p.114.220

Artemas may also have criticized hymns addressed to Christ, see H.E. V xxviii. 6. The bishops221

desire to identify Paul as a follower of Artemas, may well have arisen from a concern that Paulhimself might appeal to Dionysius for support against them. After all, this same Dionysius hadearlier warned Dionysius of Alexandria about teaching "two gods" after Lybian Sabellians hadcomplained to him of what the Alexandrian Origenist had written in his attempt to refute theirteachings. Thus Paul was probably himself a victim of the same polemical labelling for which hisown name would later be used.

On what follows concerning choirs and liturgical hymns I am relying on Johannes Quasten's222

book, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity Boniface Ramsey, trans. (WashingtonD.C.: National Association of Pastoral Musicians, 1983) pp.66-94.

74

Who can consider as an enemy one with whom he has sung God'shighest praises with one voice? Hence singing the psalms imparts thehighest good, love, for it uses communal singing, so to speak, as abond of unity and it harmoniously draws people to the symphony ofone choir.223

Even instrumental accompaniment and polyphony were forbidden because they were

thought to soil the purity of this unity.

Within such a tradition, creating a separate choir would be a significant innovation

which could well be seen to be dividing the community. Having that choir consist of women

would add to this tension. It was thought that St. Paul himself had instructed women to keep

silent in the assembly. The Didascalia of the Three Hundred Eighteen Fathers is also quite224

explicit:

women are ordered not to speak in church, not even softly, nor maythey sing along or take part in the responses, but they should only besilent and pray to God.225

Now the women in Paul's choir were almost certainly not ordinary women but the

virgin prophets involved in the spiritual marriages which had already outraged Paul's

opponents. As the bishops note, it is those "who sing psalms to him and utter his praises in

the congregation" who call Paul "an angel." The bishops then follow this complaint with226

their discussion of the scandal of Paul's "call-in girls".

Thus it appears that Paul was giving these spiritual prophets a public liturgical role

to highlight the status to which they had been raised by the Spirit. The bishops, for their part,

Basil, Homilia in Ps.1,2 (PG 29, 212) in Quasten, p.70.223

1Cor 14: 33b-35; 1Tim 2:11-12. Neither of these passages are commonly thought to be224

authentically Pauline today.

Didascalia CCCXVIII Patrum 8 (18 Batiffol) in Quasten p.81.225

H.E. VII. xxx. 11.226

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are careful never to acknowledge that these women enjoy any special status in the Christian

community. Indeed they refer to them at one point as gunaioi, a term of contempt for women.

Never are they referred to as parthenai, virgins, even when discussing their participation in

spiritual marriages. To do so would be precisely to acknowledge their enjoying some

measure of spiritual authority in the community, and render Paul's innovation less startling.

Indeed, other bishops would also experiment with virgin women choirs in the next century.227

While these ultimately proved too offensive to the hierarchy, the bishops attacking Paul have

deliberately heightened Paul's "offense" by never acknowledging that the women involved

were charismatic virgins.

It is likely that the bishops have also rhetorically heightened the shock value of their

accusation against Paul by saying without further ado that he arranges for this choir to sing

hymns "to himself", while forbidding psalms "to Christ". Is the reader to understand that Paul

is the subject of these hymns? Or are they praising the power of God's Spirit in which Paul

has been "raised up"? Or, are they responding in song to some prayer or reading proclaimed

by Paul? Or, again, are they singing a celebratory hymn to Paul's entrance procession as was

a common function for virgin choirs in other cults at this time?

It is important not to overlook that the bishops only accuse Paul of arranging for a

virgin choir to sing "to him" "on the great day of Pascha". Thus Paul may have done this only

a few times; he had only been bishop for eight years when the synod convened. That he chose

to do so specifically at Easter is also suggestive. The Easter ritual would normally include

baptisms and in the Syrian tradition the baptismal rite emphasized both rebirth in the Spirit

E.g. Ephrem of Edessa, see Quasten, p.78-9. 227

76

and the role of the bishop as the Spirit's channel. Thus in the Didascalia Apostolorum the228

people are exhorted to always honor their bishop,

through whom the Lord gave you the Holy Spirit...and through whomthe Lord in baptism, by the laying on of the hand of the bishop, borewitness to each one of you and caused his holy voice to be heard thatsaid: "Thou art my son: this day have I begotten thee."229

This ritual is thought to have immediately preceded the private annointing and immersion

of the baptizands. The virgin choir, themselves thought to also be possessed by the Spirit in

a special way, might well have sung a hymn of celebration to the Spirit resident in Paul.

Another reconstruction is also possible. It was Mary Magdalene and the other women

at the tomb who first announced the resurrection to the assembled apostles on that first

Easter. We also know from many gnostic writings that the prophetic virgins involved in

spiritual marriages identified themselves in particular with these very women. Perhaps230

these virgins were reenacting in song the announcement of the resurrection to Paul, the

successor to the apostles.

The above suggestions are speculative, to be sure, but they show that there are indeed

ways in which to reconstruct in a sympathetic manner, what the bishops attempt to cast as

See Gabriele Winkler, "The Original meaning of the Prebaptismal Anointing and its228

Implications" Worship 52 (1978) 24-45; and E.C. Ratcliff, "The Old Syrian Baptismal Tradition andits Resettlement Under the Influence of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century" Studies in Church HistoryII (1965) 19-37 reprinted inStudies on Syrian Baptismal Rites, Jacob Vellian ed; (Kottayam, India: CMS Press, 1973). I amindebted to Lizette Larson-Miller for alerting me to this question and steering me to the literature.

Didascalia Apostolorum ix. The quote in this passage is a variant reading of the words spoken229

from the heavens at Jesus' baptism in Lk 3:22, which can be found in the Codex Bezae, as well asin Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 88 103. Given the adoptionist use Paul would have givento such an invocation, and noting that "there is no evidence to show that the formula continued inuse in the Antiochene area beyond the Didascaliast's time" Ratcliff (op. cit.) even suggests "we maysuppose that the affair of Paul of Samosata led to the relinquishment of a form of words which waspatient of unorthodox construction" (p.89). Winkler (op. cit.) also gives Ratcliff's suggestionqualified support: "It is possible that this reading was the original one, which was eventually droppedbecause of its possible adoptionistic connotation" (p.35).

Cf Clement's quotations cited above p.82 and that from the Gospel of Thomas cited on p.84.230

77

shameless self-aggrandizement. To the bishops, who looked down on the gunaikes

suneisaktai as no more than courtesans for Paul and his partisans, such behavior would

indeed be a sacrilege, truly a "burlesquing" of the liturgy, whose flouting of church customs

would well epitomize both the disorder (by having women sing aloud) and the dissension (by

separating them from the rest of the congregation) that his episcopacy had generated in the

Christian ekklesia at Antioch. But for Paul and his followers, whatever the particular details

of his Easter liturgy, it was undoubtedly a powerful celebration of the Spirit who had raised

Christ up from this world of sin and death to divine sonship by those who had themselves

been raised up by the same Spirit from their bondage to this world into the new

eschatological freedom of the angelic life in filial communion with God.

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the beginning of this latter half of the thesis, the claim that Paul

championed a charismatic realized eschatology is not in itself new. Recently, it has been re-

iterated by Sample, Burrus and John Burke. Burrus and Burke also suggest further that231

Paul may have used his own social ascent at Antioch as a demonstration of the continued

activity of the Spirit in his own day. What I have tried to do is to argue that these

observations, and others, suggest a social reading of the dogmatic and soteriological

controversy over Paul. Paul's Jesus was not only metaphysically an ordinary man, but232

socially an ordinary man, one of the multitudes, as well. His prophetic ascent Christology

provided a sense of spiritual empowerment for these multitudes that can account for the

boisterous enthusiasm with which they received his preaching. Its clash with a kenotic ethos

of patriarchal condescension by the great and reverent deference by the small can also

Sample, p.5, 121 n.2; Burrus, p.221-2; Burke p.19-20. 231

On the basis of her study of Paul's depiction as a sophist by the bishops, Burrus makes the232

related suggestion that "class prejudice may also have played an important role in the conflict.." (p.221-2).

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account for the contempt Paul encountered from the educated, high status Christian leaders

who eventually succeeded in deposing and excommunicating him.

To both his supporters and his opponents, Paul's own life and conduct was likely seen

to have embodied the gospel he preached. Where his enemies saw the vulgar ostentation of

the social parvenu, his supporters likely saw the exuberance and generosity of one raised up

by God's own Spirit. Where the bishops heard the shameless rhetoric of an ambitious sophist,

Paul's supporters heard the impassioned eloquence of an inspired prophet. Where the bishops

observed with dismay the arrogant pride which accompanies social hubris, his supporters

honored a prophetic authority conferred not by human wisdom but by divine power. Where

the bishops saw the sexual licence of the vulgar, his supporters saw a charismatic spiritual

intimacy among God's prophets. And finally where the bishops saw self-promotion and

anarchy, his supporters saw a celebration of the Spirit's power to raise up those like

themselves.

Thus, whereas traditionally Paul's demise has been attributed to his philosophical

scrupples concerning the unity and transcendence of the divine, which put him out of step

with the sensus fidelium of the simple, common Christian, I have argued that Paul was

in tune with the common Christian; who he was out of tune with was the high status educated

elite who were only now beginning to enter the Church and to assume their "natural"

positions as leaders and teachers in the Christian community.

Sample had also argued that Paul was out of tune with the "majority of Christians,"

though not because of his philosophical preoccupations but precisely because his Christology

lacked sufficient metaphysical assurances:

"There is something about the utter dependence on a charismatic andimpermenant charis that terrifies the Christian world from the latethird century onward"233

Sample, The Messiah as Prophet, p.201.233

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Again, however, I have argued that it was not "the Christian world" generally, but

specifically high status Christians who were "terrified" by such a charismatic religiosity. To

the "majority of Christians" Paul's charismatic brand of Christianity spoke to their own

experience of disorder and vulnerability in the world,

and their sense of spiritual and even material empowerment in the church.

Thus I believe that Paul's demise ought not to be seen in terms of a conflict with the

sensus fidelium in general, but with the sensus magnorum fidelium, the ethos of the Christian

great. From this perspective the controversy at Antioch becomes one scene in a larger

cultural drama being played out in the Christian church of the third century, a drama which

Peter Brown has called "probably the most important aggiornamento in the history of the

Church:"

It was certainly the most decisive single event in the culture of thethird century. For the conversion of Constantine in 312 might nothave happened--or if it had, it would have taken on a totally differentmeaning--if it had not been preceded for two generations by theconversion of Christianity to the culture and ideals of the Romanworld.234

Christianity in the third century had changed from "a sect ranged against or to one side

of Roman civilization" to "a church prepared to absorb a whole society". Such a235

momentous change could not occur without loss or victims. I believe Paul and the

charismatic Christianity of prophetic empowerment which he proclaimed was one such

victim and one such loss. Nor was the bishops' victory an easy one. Their expulsion of Paul

did precipitate a schism at Antioch, the very kind of disorder in the ekklesia for which, in

part, they had opposed Paul's teaching in the first place. It was only upon the direct

intervention of the Roman Emperor four years later that control of the episcopal house

Brown, The World of Late Antiquity p.82.234

Ibid.235

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church was wrested from Paul and his supporters and assumed by the bishops' appointed

sucessor, Domnus, the son of Paul's predecessor, who they commend in their letter as

"adorned with all the noble qualities suitable for a bishop."236

Ought we to continue to judge the loss of a psilanthropic Christology a gain in our

own modern context? Such a question lies well beyond the scope of this study. However, as

"low" Christologies reappear in contemporary theology, it is critical that we know as fully

as possible the factors that led to the condemnation of earlier formulations, that we might

discern which of those factors still deserve our respect and which no longer make a

legitimate claim upon us. In such a socially informed, critical discernment lies our best hope

for appropriating the richness of our tradition while addressing it to the changed social ethos

of our own contemporary audience.

Eusebius, H.E., VII, xxx, 17; my emphasis.236