1. Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia, was the son of respectable parents in Antioch, the friend and fellow-student of Chrysostom, first under Libanius, then under Diodorus. He died in A.D. 429. It was he who gave full development and consistent expression to the essential dogmatic and hermeneutical principles of the Antiochean theology. For this reason he was far more suspected of heresy by his Alexandrian opponents than even his teacher Diodorus, and they finally obtained their desire by the formal condemnation of his person and writings at the fifth œcumenical Synod in A.D. 553 (§ [52, 6]). Leontius Byzantinus formulated his exegetical offence by saying that in his exposition he treated the Holy Scriptures precisely as ordinary human writings, especially that he interpreted the Song of Songs as a love poem, libidinose pro sua et mente et lingua meretricia, explained the Psalms after the manner of the Jews till he emptied them dry of all Messianic contents, Judaice ad Zorobabelem et Ezechiam retulit, denied the genuineness of the titles of the Psalms, rejected the canonical authority of Job, the Chronicles and Ezra as well as James and other Catholic Epistles, etc. In every respect Theodore was one of the ablest exegetes of the ancient church and the Syrian church has rightly celebrated him as the “Interpres” par excellence. He set forth his hermeneutical principles in the treatise: De Allegoria et Historia. Of his exegetical writings we have still his Comm. on the Minor Prophets, on Romans, fragments of those on other parts of the New Testament. Latin translations of his Comm. on the Minor Epp. of Paul, with the corresponding Greek fragments, are edited by Swete, 2 vols., Cambr., 1880, 1882. An introduction to Biblical Theology collected from Theodore’s writings and reproduced in a Latin form by Junilius Africanus (§ [48, 1]) is still extant. His dogmatic, polemical and apologetical works on the Incarnation and Original Sin (§ [53, 4]), against Eunomius (§ [50, 3]), Apollinaris (§ [52, 1]) and the Emperor Julian (§ [42, 5]), are now known only from a few fragmentary quotations.
  2. Polychronius, bishop of Apamea, was Theodore’s brother and quite his equal in exegetical acuteness and productivity, while he excelled him in his knowledge of the Hebrew and Syriac. Tolerably complete scholia by him on Ezekiel, Daniel and Job have been preserved in the Greek Catenæ (§ [48, 1]). In regard to Daniel he maintains firmly its historical character and understands chap. vii. of Antiochus Epiphanes.
  3. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus in Syria, was Theodore’s ablest disciple, the most versatile scholar and most productive writer of his age, an original investigator and a diligent pastor, an upright and noble character and a man who kept the just mean amid the extreme tendencies of his times,—yet even he could not escape the suspicion of heresy (§ [52, 3], [4], [6]). He died in A.D. 457. As an exegete he followed the course of grammatico-historical exposition marked out by his Antiochean predecessors, but avoided the rationalistic tendencies of his teacher. He commented on most of the historical books of the Old Testament, on the Prophets, the Song, which he understood allegorically of the church as the bride of Christ, and on the Pauline Epistles. Among his historical works the first place belongs to his continuation of the history of Eusebius (§ [5, 1]). His Φιλόθεος ἱστορία, Hist. religiosa, gives a glowing description of the lives of 33 celebrated ascetics of both sexes. Of higher value is the Αἱρετικῆς κακομυθίας ἐπιτομή, Hæreticarum fabularum compendium. His Ἑλληνικῶν θεραπευτικὴ παθημάτων, De Curandis Græcorum Affectionibus, is an apologetical treatise. His seven Dialogues De s. Trinitate are polemics against the Macedonians and Apollinarians. The Reprehensio xii. Anathematismorum is directed against Cyril of Alexandria; and the Ἐρανιστὴς ἤτοι Πολύμορφος against monophysitism as a heresy compounded of many heresies (§ [52, 4]).[ ]Besides these we have from him 179 Epistles.[141]

§ 47.10. Other Teachers of the Greek Church during the 4th and 5th Centuries.

  1. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, from A.D. 351 to A.D. 386, in the Arian controversy took the side of the conciliatory semi-Arians and thus came into collision with his imperious and decidedly Arian metropolitan Acacius of Cæsarea. During a famine he sold the church furniture for distribution among the needy, and was for this deposed by Acacius. Under Julian he ventured to return, but under Valens he was again driven out and found himself exposed to the persecution of the Arians, which was all the more violent because in the meantime he had assumed a more decided attitude toward Nicene orthodoxy. At the death of Valens in A.D. 378 he returned and became reconciled to the victorious maintainers of the Homoousion by fully accepting the doctrine at the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 (§ [50, 4]). We still have his 23 Catechetical Lectures delivered in A.D. 348 by him as presbyter to the baptized at Jerusalem. The first 18 are entitled: Πρὸς τοὺς φωτιζομένους, Ad Competentes (§ [35, 1]); the last five: Πρὸς τοὺς νεοφωτίστους, Catecheses Mystagogicæ, on Baptism, Anointing and the Lord’s Supper.In their present form they afford but faint evidence of their author having surmounted the semi-Arian standpoint.[142]
  2. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis or Constantia in Cyprus, was born of Jewish parents in the Palestinian village Besanduce and was baptized in his sixteenth year. His pious and noble, but narrow and one-sided character was formed by his education under the monks. He completed his ascetic training by several years residence among the monks of the Scetic desert, then founded a monastery in his native place over which he presided for thirty years until in A.D. 367 he was raised to the metropolitan’s chair at Salamis, where he died in A.D. 403. In the discharge of his episcopal duties he was a miracle of faithfulness and zeal, specially active and self-denying in his care of the poor. But in the forefront of all his thinking and acting there ever stood his glowing zeal for ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The very soul of honour, truth-loving and courageous, but credulous, positive, with little knowledge of the world and human nature, and hence not capable of penetrating to the bottom of complicated affairs, he was all his days misused as a tool of the intriguing Alexandrian Theophilus in the Origenistic controversies (§ [51, 3]). He was all the more easily won to this from the fact that he had brought with him from the Scetic desert the conviction that Origen was the prime mover in the Arian and all other heresies. In spite of all defects in form and contents his writings have proved most serviceable for the history of the churches and heresies of the first four centuries. The diligence and honourable intention of his research in some measure compensate for the bad taste and illogical character of his exposition and for his narrow, one-sided and uncritical views. His Πανάριον ἤτοι κιβώτιον κατὰ αἱρέσεων lxxx. is a full and learned though confused and uncritical work, in which the idea of heresy is so loosely defined that even the Samaritans, Pharisees, Essenes, etc., find a place in it. He himself composed an abridgment of it under the title: Ἀνακεφαλαίωσις. His Ἀγκυρωτός is an exposition of the Catholic faith, which during the tumults of the Arian controversy should serve as an anchor of salvation to the Christians. The book Περὶ μέτρων καὶ στάθμων, De mensuris et ponderibus, answers to this title only in the last chapter, the 24th; the preceding chapters treat of the Canon and translations of the Old Testament. There are two old codices in the British Museum which have in addition, in a Syriac translation, 37 chapters on biblical weights and measures and 19 on the biblical science of the heaven and the earth. The tract Περὶ τῶν δώδεκα λίθων (on the high-priest’s breastplate) is of little consequence.
  3. Palladius, born in Galatia, retired at an early age into the Nitrian desert, but lived afterwards in Palestine, where he was accused of favouring the heresy of Origen (§ [51, 2]). Chrysostom consecrated him bishop of Hellenopolis in Bithynia. Latterly he administered a small bishopric in Galatia, where he died before A.D. 431. His chief writing is the Πρὸς Λαῦσον ἱστορία, Hist. Lausiaca, a historical romance on the hermit and monkish life of his times which is dedicated to an eminent statesman called Lausus.
  4. Nilus, sprung from a prominent family in Constantinople, retired with his son Theodulus to the recluses of Mount Sinai. By a murderous onslaught of the Saracens his beloved son was snatched away from him, but an Arabian bishop bought him and ordained both father and son as priests. He died about A.D. 450. In his ascetical writings and specially in the 4 books of his Epistles, about 1,000 in number, he shows himself to be of like mind and character to his companion Isidore, but with a deeper knowledge and more sober conception of Holy Scripture. He himself describes the capture of his son in Narrationes de cæde monachorum et captivitate Theoduli.

§ 47.11. Greek Church Fathers of the 6th and 7th Centuries.

  1. Johannes Philoponus was in the first half of the 6th century teacher of grammar at Alexandria, and belonged to the sect of tritheistic monophysites in that place (§ [52, 7]). Although trained in the Neo-Platonic school, he subsequently applied himself enthusiastically to the Aristotelian philosophy, composed many commentaries on Aristotle’s writings, and was the first to apply the Aristotelian categories to Christian theology. Notwithstanding many heretical tendencies in his theology, among which is his statement in a lost work, Περὶ ἀναστάσεως, that for the saved at the last day entirely new bodies and an entirely new world will be created, his philosophical writings powerfully impelled the mediæval Greek Church to the study of philosophy. His chief doctrinal treatise Διαιτητὴς ἢ περὶ ἑνώσεως is known only from quotations in Leontius Byzantinus and Johannes Damascenus. Of his other writings the most important was the controversial treatise Contra Procli pro æternitate mundi argumenta in 18 bks. The 7 bks. Περὶ κοσμοποίας treat of the six days’ work of creation with great display of philosophical acuteness and acquaintance with natural history.
  2. Dionysius the Areopagite. Under this name (Acts xvii. 34) an unknown writer, only a little earlier than the previously named, published writings of a decidedly mystico-theosophical kind. The first mention of them is at a conference of the monophysite Severians (§ [52, 7]) with the Catholics at Constantinople in A.D. 533, where the former referred to them, while the other side denied their authenticity. Subsequently, however, they were universally received as genuine, not only in the East but also in the West. They comprise four tracts: 1. Περὶ τῆς ἱεραρχίας οὐρανίου; 2. Περὶ τῆς ἱεραρχίας ἐκκλησιαστικῆς; 3. Περὶ τῶν θείων ὀνομάτων; 4. Περὶ τῆς μυστικῆς θεολογίας; and also 12 Epp. to Apostolic men. Their author was a Monophysite-Christian Neo-Platonist, who transferred the secret arts of the Dionysian mysteries to Christian worship, monasticism, hierarchy and church doctrines. He distinguished a θεολογία καταφατική, which consisted in symbolic representations, from a θεολογία ἀποφατική, which surmounted the symbolical shell and rose to the perception of the pure idea by means of ecstasy. Side by side with the revealed doctrine of Holy Scripture he sets a secret doctrine, the knowledge of which is reached only by initiation. The primal mystagogue, who like the sun enlightens all spirits, is the divine hierarch Christ, and the primitive type of all earthly order in the heavenly hierarchy as represented in the courses of angels and glorified spirits. There is constant intercourse between the earthly and heavenly hierarchies by means of Christ the highest hierarch incarnate. The purpose of this intercourse is the drawing out of the θείωσις of man by means of priestly consecration and the mysteries (i.e. the Sacraments of which he reckons six, § [58]). The θείωσις has its foundation in baptism as consecration to the divine birth, τελετὴ θεογενεσίας, and its completion in consecration of the dead, the anointing of the body. The historical Christ with His redeeming life, sufferings and death is at no time the subject of the Areopagite mysticism. It is always concerned with the heavenly Christ, not about the reconciliation but only about the mystical living fellowship of God and man, about the immediate vision and enjoyment of God’s glory. The monophysite standpoint of the author betrays itself in his tendency to think of the human nature of Christ as absorbed by the divine. His Christian Neo-Platonism appears in his fantastic speculations about the nature of God, the orders of angels and spirits, etc.; while his antagonism to the pagan Neo-Platonism is seen in his regarding the θείωσις not as a natural power proper to and dwelling in man, but as a supernatural power made possible by the ἐνσάρκωσις of Christ, but still more expressly by his emphatic assertion over against the Neo-Platonic depreciation of the body, of the resurrection of the flesh as the completion of the θείωσις.Hence also the importance which he attaches to the sacrament of the consecration of the dead.[143]

§ 47.12.

  1. Leontius Byzantinus, at first an advocate at Constantinople, subsequently a monk at Jerusalem, wrote about the end of the 6th century controversial tracts against Nestorians, Monophysites and Apollinarians, and in his Scholia s. Liber de sectis presented a historico-polemical summary of all heresies up to that time.
  2. Maximus Confessor, the scion of a well-known family of Constantinople, was for a long time private secretary to the Emperor Heraclius, but retired about A.D. 630 from love of a contemplative life into a monastery at Chrysopolis near Constantinople, where he was soon raised to the rank of abbot. The further details of his story are given in § [52, 8]. He died in A.D. 662. In decision of character, fidelity to his convictions and courage as a confessor during the Monothelete controversy, he stands out among his characterless countrymen and contemporaries as a rock in the ocean. In scientific endowments and comprehensive learning, in depth and wealth of thought there is none like him, although even in him the weakness of the age, especially slavish submission to authority, is quite apparent. His scientific theology is built up mainly upon the three great Cappadocians, among whom the speculative Nyssa has most influence over him. His dialectic acuteness and subtlety he derived from the study of Aristotle, while his imaginative nature and the intensity of his emotional life which predestined him to be a mystic, found abundant nourishment and satisfaction in the writings of Dionysius. He was saved, however, by the manysidedness of his mind and the soundness of his whole life’s tendencies, from many eccentricities of the Areopagite mysticism, so that in his humility he thought that his soul was not pure enough to be able fully to penetrate and comprehend these mysteries. His numerous writings, of which more than fifty are extant, were in great part occasioned by the struggle against Monophysitism and Monotheletism. His mystico-ascetic writings are also important, such as his Μυσταγωγία, treatises on the symbolico-mystic meaning of the acts of church worship, his epistles and several beautiful hymns. He also wrote scholia and commentaries on the works of the Areopagite. He is weakest in exegesis, where the most wilful allegorizing prevails.
  3. Johannes Climacus, abbot of the monastery at Sinai, died at an extremely old age in A.D. 606. Under the title Κλίμαξ τοῦ παραδείσου, Heavenly Guide, he composed a directory toward perfection in the Christian life in thirty steps, which became a favourite reading book of pious monks.
  4. Johannes Moschus was a monk in a cloister at Jerusalem. Accompanying his friend Sophronius, afterwards patriarch of Jerusalem (§ [52, 8]), he travelled through Egypt and the East, visiting all the pious monks and clerics. At last he reached Rome, where he wrote an account in his Λειμονάριον ἤτοι νέος παραδείσος, Pratum Spirituale, of the edifying discourses which he had had with famous monks during his travels, and soon thereafter, in A.D. 619, he died.
  5. Anastasius Sinaita, called the new Moses, because like Moses he is said to have seen God, was priest and dweller on Mount Sinai at the end of the 7th century. His chief work Ὁδηγός, Viæ duæ, is directed against the Acephalians (§ [52, 5]) and his Contemplationes preserved only in a Latin translation give an allegorico-mystical exposition of the Hexæmeron.

§ 47.13. Syrian Church Fathers.[144]

  1. Jacob of Nisibis, as bishop of his native city and founder of the theological school there, performed most important services to the national Syrian Church. At the Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325 he distinguished himself by vindicating the homoüsion and also subsequently we find him sometimes in the front rank of the champions of Nicene orthodoxy. Of his writings none are known to us. He died in A.D. 338.
  2. Aphraates was celebrated in his time as a Persian sage. As bishop of St. Matthew near Mosul he adopted the Christian name of Mar Jacob, and dedicated his 23 Homilies, which are rather instructions or treatises, to a certain Gregory. He wrote them between A.D. 336 and A.D. 345. The Sermones ascribed even by Gennadius at the end of the 5th century to Nisibis were composed by Aphraates. Although he lived when the Arian controversy was at its height, there is no reference to it in his treatises, which may be explained by his geographical isolation. The polemic against the Jews to which seven tracts are devoted ex professo, was one which specially interested him.
  3. Ephraim the Syrian,[145] called, on account of his importance in the Syrian Church, Propheta Syrorum, was born at Nisibis and was called by the bishop Jacob to be teacher of the school founded there by him. When the Persians under Sapor in A.D. 350 plundered the city and destroyed the school, Ephraim retired to Edessa, founded a school there, administered the office of deacon, and died at a great age in A.D. 378. As an exegete he indulged to his heart’s content in typology, but in other respects mostly followed the grammatico-historical method with a constant endeavour after what was edifying. Many of his writings have been lost. Those remaining partly in the Syriac original, partly in Greek and Latin translations, have been collected by the brothers Assemani. They comprise Commentaries on almost the whole Bible, Homilies and Discourses in metrical form on a variety of themes, of these 56 are against heretics (Gnostics, Manichæans, Eunomians, Audians, etc.), and Hymns properly so called, especially funeral Odes.
  4. Ibas, bishop of Edessa, at first teacher in the high school there, translated the writings of Diodorus and Theodore into Syriac, and thus brought down upon himself the charge of being a Nestorian. Having been repeatedly drawn into discussion, and being naturally outspoken, he was excommunicated and deposed at the Robber Synod of Ephesus in A.D. 449, but his orthodoxy was acknowledged by the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, after he had pronounced anathema upon Nestorius. He died in A.D. 457. An epistle, in which he gives an account of these proceedings to Bishop Meris of Hardashir in Persia, led to a renewal of his condemnation before the fifth œcumenical Council at Constantinople in A.D. 553 (§ [52, 4], [6]).
  5. Jacob, bishop of Edessa, a monophysite, is the most important and manysided among the later Syrians, distinguished as theologian, historian, grammarian and translator of the Greek fathers. He died in A.D. 708. Of his works still extant in MS.—scholia on the Bible, liturgical works and treatises on church law, revision of the Syrian Old Testament according to the LXX., continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, etc.—only a few have been printed.