8
wrote that he held Christ to be an ingenerate, pre-existent being, whose Sonship began in the
incarnation. Sadly, his views were not passed down as part of the Antiochene tradition.
24
The second person we encounter in Antioch is the Apologist, Theophilus. He developed a
Logos doctrine equating the Word with the Son; however, he no longer held Christ as pre-existent,
but as prophorikos, an idea in the mind of God who was expressed` at the moment of creation. His
main contribution to the advancement of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the way he applied the
word triad in relation to the Father, Word, and Wisdom. He was the first to present God as a triune
being.
25
Our third Antiochene is Paul of Samosata, arguably the most colorful character along the
road. Drifting further from the divine Christology of his predecessors, Paul maintained the idea that
God was dynamically present in Jesus. However, his Origenist views provided the grist for his
opponents` mill; and in 268, Paul was excommunicated, being the first extant example of a council
imposing a test of orthodoxy.
26
For Paul, the Logos was stronger in Jesus than in anyone else, but
that did not make him divine or worthy of worship. God and the Son were homoousios, but not equal.
He also held that Christ`s humanity had no soul and that it had been replaced by the Spirit at His
birth, and to a Dynamic Monarchianist view.
27
The Antiochene tradition was turning from the
established norm.
24
Kelly, 92-3; William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of
Antioch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 20-21.
25
Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 252; Woolley, 72-3; Kelly, 109; Gonzalez, 52-3; Pelikan, 189.
26
Woolley, 72-3; Erickson, 359; Kelly, 117; New Advent, St. Ignatius of Antioch, on-line
encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11589a.htm; accessed on March 21, 2005.
27
Pelikan, 198; Frend, The Early Church, 113-14, Erickson, 359; Woolley, 72-3; Arland J.
Hultgren and Steven A. Haggmark, eds. The Earliest Christian Heretics: Readings from their Opponents
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1996), 136.