So called because of his home-town, Samosata on the Euphrates, Paul was a governor of taxes in the Syrian empire centered at Palmyra which had, for a time gained its independence from Rome in the early 3rd Cent. He was elected bishop of Antioch in 260, but his teachings of dynamic monarchianism and his lavish lifestyle— inherited naturally from his earlier political office—did not go well with the church, and an attempt was made to depost him in 265. The attempt failed until 268, when another bishop was elected. Paul, with the favour of Queen Zenobia behind him, however, refused to vacate his see and, for a time, Antioch had two bishops. The difficulty was not resolved until Emperor Aurelian (r.270-275) retook Palmyra for Rome. Aurelian's reign "is noteworthy for the first known Christian appeal for the intervention of the secular arm in an ecclesiatical dispute," when both parties in the Antioch church sought the help of the emperor in their cause. Aurelian ruled in favour of the party recognized by the church in Rome, and Paul was hence removed from office.
It is interesting that Paul's use of a particular word (homoousios 'of the same essence') in his expression of his heretical view of the relationship between the Father and Christ would cause a great deal of heart-searching for the church nearly a century later. As the church continued its search for a more precise way of expressing what Scriptures teach about Jesus, they found, during the Arian controversy, that homoousios was precisely what most clearly express that relationship. It was the term that would be included in the formulation of the Nicene Creed (Open text of the Creed).
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