St. Felix I

Felix · 269 – 274

Affirmed the doctrine of Christ's two natures and the inseparability of his divinity and humanity.

Felix became pope in 269 after the death of Dionysius. His pontificate fell during a brief period of imperial tolerance that allowed the Church to consolidate after decades of persecution. He is credited with affirming the unity of Christ's divine and human natures, a teaching directed against Paul of Samosata, the bishop of Antioch who had been condemned for teaching that Christ was merely a man adopted by God. Felix also reportedly decreed that Mass should be celebrated over the tombs of martyrs, linking liturgy to the honored dead. He died in 274.

Anchoring Christology

Paul of Samosata had been teaching that Jesus was just a man who was specially chosen by God, not God himself. Felix upheld the condemnation of this view. The insistence that Christ is truly divine, not just divinely approved, would be formally defined at Nicaea decades later, but Felix was already on the right side of the question.