5 - Marius Victorinus

Summary

While Marius Victorinus was not on the lists of physicalists given by the German liberal Protestants of the nineteenth century, his physicalism is the closest match to Harnack’s definition of physicalism: Victorinus provides a “textbook example” of physicalist soteriology. Victorinus is the only physicalist who teaches that Christ assumes and transforms a platonic-type form of humanity, which then, through its paradigmatic power, transforms all individuals patterned on that form. Victorinus’ physicalism is both a participation in and development of Neoplatonic chain of being logic. Scholarly emphasis on Victorinus’ famous insistence on salvation by faith has obscured the physicalist foundation of Victorinus’ soteriology.