+ One of the Catenw in Karo and Lietzmann’s list, Vat. gr. 1270, sec. xii., Romans and 1 Corinthians (p. 489, above, /), appears to be related to Oecumenius but to name its authorities more frequently ; and may possibly prove useful for identifying further quotations from Severian for these two epistles.
t As the contributions of both Chrysostom and Theodore for these four epistles can be identified,—in the case of Chrysostom from his Homilies, in the case of Theodore from the Latin version (see below, p. 510),—it ought to prove possible, by a process of exclusion, to put together the residue that belongs to Severian ; but the attempt has not yet been made.
$ Venables, in Dict. Christ. Biogr. iv. 6260, speaks of the possibility that quotations given as from Severian may really belong to Severus, the great Monophysite patriarch of Antioch in the early 6th century. But he was not apparently acquainted with the decisive testimony of Cramer’s Catena ; nor is Severus, active writer as he was, known to have commented formally on any of the Pauline epistles. See further below, p. 5224.
508 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
of the literalist or historical type. An interesting testimony to his reputation as a preacher outside the limits of the influences of either Constantinople or Antioch, is the fact that in the Coptie Church his Homilies are prescribed as lessons in Holy Week, together with those of Athanasius, Chryso- stom, Shenoute the Copt, and Severus of Antioch the Monophysite.
15. Theodore of Mopsuestia (commentaries on all the Epistles).—
1. THE POSITION OF THEODORE IN HISTORY AMONG SYRIANS, GREEKS, LATINS.—Theodore— called sometimes of Antioch, where he was born about 350, but more often of Mopsuestia, of which he became bishop in 392—was pupil of Diodore, friend of Chrysostom, and after the latter’s death the most influential teacher, whether as theologian or as exegete, within the Eastern Church. Intel- lectually the greatest of the Antiochene writers, Theodore’s greatness was seriously qualified by the defect of one-sidedness: in exegesis he repre- sented the extreme of the reaction against the allegorizers, minimizing or explaining away the Messianic element in the Old Testament; in Christology he dwelt on the ethical value of the human example of Christ so exclusively as almost to make ‘the Master’ (6 decrérns Xpiords) a different Person from the indwelling Word. In both aspects Theodore’s thought may not unfairly be called rationalizing ; and yet there is both in his theolo and in his exegesis an important element of truth, such as specially needed emphasis in his day and perhaps also in ours. He died at the end of 428, ‘taken away from the evil to come,’ just as the theological tendency which he represented and fostered was coming to a head in the Nestorian controversy.
Naturally, Theodore became one of the great saints and doctors of the Nestorian communion. Throughout the long centuries of its prosperity he was to it, par excellence, ‘the Interpreter’ : most, if not all, of his commentaries on Holy Scripture were translated into Syriac, and were read in that language for at least 1000 years. Yet, so far, only the commentary on St. John has been in this way recovered: we owe the greater part of our extant Syriac literature to the Monophysite monastery of Nitria in Egypt, and consequently writers of the school of Theodore are but scantily represented in it.
Naturally, again, in proportion as Theodore became an authority among the Nestorians, he became an object of suspicion within the Church. In the first generation, indeed, after the Council of Ephesus in 431, the ‘Churches of Syria and Cilicia’ remained faithful to the memory of their great teacher : ‘we believe as Theodore believed, long live the faith of Theodore.’ The Council itself, though in one of its later sessions it had condemned the use of a creed which appears in fact to have been Theodore’s, neither on that occasion mentioned his name nor took any other opportunity of aspersing his memory. Cyril of Alexandria did not conceal his own conviction that Theodore and Diodore ‘had borne down full sail upon the glory of Christ,’ and were the true parents of Nestorianism; he collected and answered a series of propositions taken from their writings ; but happily for the peace of the re-united Churches, and in spite of pressure from his more extreme adherents, he declined to commit himself to the fatal policy of post mortem anathemas. For a century, therefore, after Theodore’s death it re- mained possible for orthodox Christians of the ‘East’ to study the Biblical writings of ‘the Inter- preter’ without being calumniated as fautors of heresy: and it is at least not improbable that it was within this period that the Catenz in which
most use is made of him were originally compiled. But the stubborn and protracted resistance which the Chalcedonian definition encountered in so many quarters, caused the centre of gravity in matters theological to shift further and further from the standpoint of the older Antiochene school ; while the sensitive orthodoxy which was engendered by the struggle made it easier for each party to pro- cure the condemnation of the extreme wing on the opposite side than to protect the extreme wing on its own. When Justinian anathematized Theodore to please the Monophysites (as he had already anathematized Origen to please the Nestorians), he failed, indeed, to reconcile the separatists, but he might at least claim that his policy had in- curred no serious resentment among Greek church- men. The accusation of Nestorianizing tendencies, repeated under a series of Monophysite emperors, had already driven the orthodox section of the school of Antioch to sacrifice Theodore; and if we may believe the evidence produced in 550 at a council at Mopsuestia, —held, it is true, under