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Artemon, Artemonites

Wace's Dictionary of Early Christian Biography

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Artemon, Artemonites , belong to that class of ante-Nicene Monarchians, or Anti-trinitarians, who saw in Christ a mere man filled with divine power. Of Artemon, or Artemas, we know very little. He taught in Rome at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd cent., and was excommunicated by pope Zephyrinus (202–217), who, as we learn from the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, favoured the opposite error of Patripassianism. He declared the doctrine of the divinity of Christ to be an innovation dating from the time of Zephyrinus, the successor of Victor, and a relapse into heathen polytheism. He asserted that Christ was a mere man, but born of a virgin, and superior in virtue to the prophets. The Artemonites were charged with placing Euclid above Christ, and abandoning the Scriptures for dialectics and mathematics. This indicates a critical or sceptical turn of mind. The views of Artemon were afterwards more fully developed by Paul of Samosata, who is sometimes counted with the Artemonites. The sources of our fragmentary information are Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 28; Epiphanius, Haer. lxv. 1, 4; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. ii. 4; Photius, Biblioth. 48. Cf. Schleiermacher's essay on the Sabellian and Athanasian conceptions of the Trinity ( Works , vol. ii.), and Dorner's Entwicklungsgeschichte der L. v. d. Person Christi , 2nd ed. i. 508 ff.

[P.S.]