4
Godhead to be one and inseparable.
8
Because Jesus Christ was able to grow, learn, and suffer, and
also had the full power of the Logos, Justin concluded that he was equally human and divine.
9
The founder of Dynamic Monarchianism, Theodotus, is the third person in we find in
Rome. Despite his label as heretic, Theodotus held strongly to many of the orthodox beliefs being
established, however, when he claimed that Jesus was merely a very good man who, at his baptism,
was adopted by the Holy Spirit and was then able to perform many miraculous works of God, he
veered from the orthodox path that was being established.
10
Millard Erickson explains Theodotus`s
Christology: Jesus was an ordinary man, inspired but not indwelt by the Spirit.
11
This non-
orthodox position caused a stir within the burgeoning orthodoxy.
The last important Roman we meet is the presbyter Hippolytus, who became presbyter
around 200. His over-emphasis on the distinction between the Logos and the Father in The Refutation
of All Heresies rightly drew a charge of ditheism from the Roman Bishop Callistus. The passage in
question included, Therefore this solitary and supreme Deity, by an exercise of reflection, brought
forth the Logos first; not the word in the sense of being articulated by voice, but as a ratiocination of
the universe, conceived and residing in the divine mind.
12
But Hyppolytus also claimed that the
8
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books a division of
Baker Book House Company, 2003), 358; Karen O`Dell Bullock, Shepherd's Notes: The Writings of
Justin Martyr, (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1998), 18-19; Erwin Ramsdell
Goodenough, The Theology of Justin Martyr, (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1968), 140-141.
9
Leslie William Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1967), 105, 120
10
Erickson, 358-59; J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, an
imprint of Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), 116-17.
11
Erickson, 359.
12
Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, X.29, as quoted in ANF, vol. 5 (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2004), 150 (italics author`s).