{"author":"Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)","date_end":1892,"date_label":"1892 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain)","date_start":1892,"edition_year":1892,"edition_year_basis":"Historical NPNF II IV copyright 1892; original printed default and per-work translation credits replayed; transcription printing date and individual note authors uncertain","id":"ws-library-full-note:c53982171e6b63a867e7:cite_note-10","is_genuine_commentary_verified":false,"license_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Reusing_Wikisource_content","public_import_allowed":true,"publication_location":"source-library","record_type":"editorial-footnote","references":[],"rights_approved":true,"section":"Chapter uncertain; original source section: Section 3a, editorial note cite_note-10","semantic_kind_reviewed":false,"source_context":["The Origenist bishops of Syria and Asia Minor had in the years 269–272, after several efforts, succeeded in deposing Paul of Samosata from the See of Antioch. This remarkable man was the ablest pre-Nicene representative of Adoptionist Monarchianism. The Man Jesus was inhabited by the ‘Word,’ i.e. by an impersonal power of God, distinct from the Λόγος or reason (wisdom) inherent in God as an attribute, which descended upon him at His Baptism. His union with God, a union of Will, was unswerving, and by virtue of it He overcame the sin of mankind, worked miracles, and entered on a condition of Deification. He is God ἐκ προκοπῆς (cf. Luke ii. 52) by virtue of progress in perfection. That is in brief the system of Paul, and we cannot wonder at his deposition. For the striking points of contact with Arianism (two ‘Wisdoms,’ two ‘Words,’ προκοπή: cf. Orat. c. Ar. i. 5, &c.) we have to account. The theology of Arius is a compromise between the Origenist doctrine of the Person of Christ and the pure Monarchian Adoptionism of Paul of Samosata; or rather it engrafts the former upon the latter as the foundation principle, seriously modifying each to suit the necessity of combining the two. This compromise was not due to Arius himself but to his teacher, Lucian the Martyr. A native himself of Samosata, he stood in some relation of attachment (not clearly defineable) to Paul. Under him, he was at the head of a critical, exegetical, and theological school at Antioch. Upon the deposition of Paul he appears not so much to have been formally excommunicated as to have refused to acquiesce in the new order of things. Under Domnus and his two successors, he was in a state of suspended communion; but eventually was reconciled with the bishop (Cyril?) and died as a martyr at Nicomedia, Jan. 7, 312. The latter fact, his ascetic life, and his learning secured him widespread honour in the Church; his pupils formed a compact and enthusiastic brotherhood, and filled many of the most influential Sees after the persecution. That such a man should be involved in the reproach of having given birth to Arianism is an unwelcome result of history, but one not to be evaded. The history of the Lucianic compromise and its result in the Lucianic type of theology, are both matters of inference rather than of direct knowledge. As to the first, whatever evidence there is connects Lucian’s original position with Paul. His reconciliation with Bishop Cyril must have involved a reapproachment to the formula of the bishops who deposed Paul,—a thoroughly Origenist document. We may therefore suppose that the identification of Christ with the Logos, or cosmic divine principle, was adopted by him from Origenist sources. But he could not bring himself to admit that He was thus essentially identified with God the eternal; he held fast to the idea of προκοπή as the path by which the Lord attained to Divinity; he distinguished the Word or Son who was Christ from the immanent impersonal Reason or Wisdom of God, as an offspring of the Father’s Will, an idea which he may have derived straight from Origen, with whom of course it had a different sense. For to Origen Will was the very essence of God; Lucian fell back upon an arid philosophical Monotheism, upon an abstract God fenced about with negations (Harnack 22, 195, note) and remote from the Universe. It was counted a departure from Lucian’s principles if a pupil held that the Son was the ‘perfect Image of the Father’s Essence’ (Philost. ii. 15); Origen’s formula, ‘distinct in hypostasis, but one in will,’ was apparently exploited in a Samosatene sense to express the relation of the Son to the Father. The only two points in fact in which Lucian appears to have modified the system of Paul were, firstly in hypostatising the Logos, which to Paul was an impersonal divine power, secondly in abandoning Paul’s purely human doctrine of the historical Christ. To Lucian, the Logos assumed a body (or rather ‘Deus sapientiam suam misit in hunc mundum carne vestitam, ubi infra, p. 6), but itself took the place of a soul; hence all the ταπειναὶ λέξεις of the Gospels applied to the Logos as such, and the inferiority and essential difference of the Son from the Father rigidly followed."],"source_library_url":"/library/c53982171e6b63a867e7/#ws-library-full-note:c53982171e6b63a867e7:cite_note-10","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers:_Series_II/Volume_IV/Prolegomena/Life/Section_3a#cite_note-10","translator":"Archibald Robertson (historical edition translation and editorial credit)","verification":{"proof_file":"raw/review/source-library-note-batch-0063/proof-records.jsonl","proof_file_sha256":"7ea58a3a636042cb9a479725b70a7c60b8b607c9d28864957d21ef1237735f5d","proof_record_id":"ws-library-full-note:c53982171e6b63a867e7:cite_note-10"},"verified":true,"work":"Prolegomena","work_id":"ws-athanasius-supported-1892-c53982171e6b63a867e7"}