1.1Six bishops write to Paul of Samosata setting out the apostolic faith that the Son of God is God, begotten before the ages.
1.2The bishops cite Psalms, Isaiah, Romans and Hosea to show the Son is God, and identify him as the one through whom the Father created all things.
1.3The bishops teach that the Son is the living, personal Word through whom the Father made all things, and that he appeared to Abraham and the patriarchs.
1.4The bishops identify the 'angel of the Lord' who spoke to Abraham and Jacob, and who mediated the law, with the Son of God.
1.5The bishops show from Exodus and Deuteronomy that the one who appeared to Moses in the bush and in glory was the Son of God.
1.6The bishops confess that the Son, God and Lord of all, became man from the virgin, his body united unchangeably with the Godhead, and that Scripture names Christ even before the incarnation.
1.7The bishops close by affirming that Christ is one and the same before the ages and ask Paul to sign whether he agrees.
2.1A fragment of the disputation distinguishes the Word, begotten by God alone, from Jesus Christ born of the virgin, with whom the Word came together.
2.2A saying of Paul of Samosata: the Word is greater than Christ, who became great through wisdom.
2.3Paul of Samosata teaches that wisdom dwelt in Christ as in a temple, more than in the prophets, but that Jesus Christ and the Word are two.
2.4Paul of Samosata says that the visible Jesus was not wisdom, since wisdom cannot take a visible shape.
2.5Malchion presses Paul that he denies that the only-begotten Son was present in essence in the whole Saviour.
About this work
Author
Anonymous
Attribution
disputed · Documents connected with the synod of Antioch that deposed Paul of Samosata (usually dated 268 or 269). The creed letter of six bishops to Paul and the fragments of the disputation with the presbyter Malchion survive outside Eusebius; the authenticity of both is debated. The synodal letter to Dionysius and Maximus, which Eusebius quotes (Hist. eccl. 7.30), is already on the site within Eusebius.
Standing
A local council, not counted here as received by the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant traditions as a whole. Anonymous or pseudonymous work read and used in the church of its time.
Date
ca. 264–269 (approximate) · Eusebius places the final synod about 268; some scholars date the council to 268 and the earlier meetings (with Malchion) to 264–265.
Written at
Antioch, Syria
Language
Greek
Genre
canon/council
Reference system
1.n = the letter of the six bishops to Paul, in sections of about 200 words (the site's own division; Routh gives no numbering); 2.n = fragments I–V of the acts of the disputation with Malchion, numbered as Routh numbers them. Fragment VI survives only in Latin and is not included.
SBL abbreviation
Syn. Ant.Not yet checked
Clavis
CPG number not yet checked
Text from
Martin Joseph Routh, ed., Reliquiae sacrae, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1846), pp. 289–303, from the Internet Archive scan with a Tesseract OCR of the Greek (Printed edition in the public domain)
Critical editions
Eduard Schwartz, ed., Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum (Berlin: de Gruyter), for the later citations of the fragments; Fridericus Loofs, Paulus von Samosata (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924); Henri de Riedmatten, Les Actes du procès de Paul de Samosate (Fribourg: Éditions St-Paul, 1952) (cited, not reproduced)