PAUL OF SAMOSATA. - Heretic of the 3rd century, bishop of Antioch from 260 to 268.
I. LIFE
P. appears in history only from his elevation to the see of Antioch in 260. Born in Samosata of poor parents, he acquired considerable wealth, which he increased as the financial receiver (ducenarius) of Odaenathus II, king of Palmyra, who had become lord of Antioch after the defeat of Valerian by the Persians (260) and was succeeded at his death in 267 by his widow Zenobia. The new prelate immediately assumed the demeanor of a grand seigneur. The letter of the Council of Antioch of 268, which condemned him, attributes to him the manners of a merchant, charges him with pride and arrogance, reproaches him with worldly pomp, the seeking of applause in church, and in particular the suppression of hymns in honor of Jesus Christ.Above all, this last point was serious. The rumor of this heretical preaching soon spread among the Christians of the provinces near Antioch. As early as 264, some bishops of these regions, including Helenus of Tarsus and Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, gathered in Antioch to investigate the conduct and doctrine of P. Dionysius of Alexandria, who had been invited, excused himself on account of his poor health and old age, but wrote to the Church of Antioch on the matter. What took place at this assembly is little known; it is known only that P., who appeared there as the accused, worked to avoid any condemnation. A subtle spirit and skilled dialectician, he managed to conceal his error and promised to amend both in his manner of speaking and in his conduct, but in reality he continued to act and teach as before. Therefore, six of the bishops who had taken part in the council drew up a formula of faith (whose authenticity is sufficiently established) and ordered P. to subscribe to it (cf. the formula, which is of the highest dogmatic interest, in G. Bardy [V. BIBLICA.], pp. 13-19). The bishop of Antioch was deaf to this warning and continued to scandalize the faithful both by his teaching and by his conduct. A new council was necessary, which met in Antioch in 268. The bishops, numbering 70 or 80, carefully examined the charges against the Samosatene. The main point was to clarify his doctrine and convince him of error; they succeeded in this thanks to the outstanding culture of the priest Malchion. A long theological discussion ensued between the two, which was stenographed. The text was preserved for a long time. The fragments that remain have been collected by Bardy (op. cit., pp. 34-79). P., condemned and deposed, was succeeded by Domnus, son of the previous bishop, Demetrian. The Council made its decision known by means of an encyclical letter addressed to Dionysius of Rome, Maximus of Alexandria, and all the bishops and clergy of Christendom.
P., relying on the protection of Zenobia, refused to leave the episcopal residence and was still able to pose as bishop for those, quite numerous, whom he had won over to his cause. Only in 272, at the time of the passage of the emperor Aurelian through Antioch, could the orthodox regain possession of the Church’s house, following a recourse to the Emperor. He “ordered that the house be given to those to whom the bishops of Italy and of the city of Rome would adjudicate it.” And so P. was ignominiously driven from the church by the secular arm (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VII, 30, 19). After this expulsion, P. survived for some time, defended by disciples faithful to his theology who organized themselves in Antioch into a separate community. In the 19th canon, the Council of Nicaea confirmed the practice of rebaptizing them when they returned to the Catholic Church. They were called Pauliani or Paulianists; toward the end of the 4th century, the sect disappeared.
II. DOCTRINE
If one adheres to the broad outlines, it is easy to give a clear idea of the heretical doctrine of P. He was at once a Monarchian and an Adoptionist; he denied the dogma of the Trinity and that of the Incarnation; for him there exists only one God, the Father, while the Word and the Holy Spirit are not co-eternal with Him. At most he granted the Word a transitory and ill-defined subsistence. “Regarding the Incarnation he said that Christ was a mere man” (Anon., De sectis, 3, 3: PG 86, 1213-16). He insisted on the superiority of Christ over Moses and the prophets; the divine wisdom dwelt in Him as in an exceptional temple, but He is not God.If one wishes to enter into the details of the system, one must resort to conjecture, since reliable sources are lacking. P. wrote nothing; his theology is known only through fragments that come from the stenographic reports of the discussion between him and the priest Malchion and from the synodal letter of 268. There is also, as direct testimony, the letter of the six bishops written after the Council of 264. Indirect testimonies abound from the 4th century onward, but they provide few precise indications and almost always dwell on the comparison between the doctrine of P. and that of other heretics, such as Artemon and especially Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius.