RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Theophany
Theophilus of Alexandria
maun, Der Ursprung der israelitisch-judischen Eschatologie, pp. 8 sqq., Gottingen, 1905; P. Volz, Der Geist Gottes und der verwandten Erscheinungen im A. T. und im anschliessenden Judentum, Tubingen, 1910; EB, iv. 5033-36; JE, xii. 137-138; also the works on the Biblical theology of the O. T.
THEOPHILANTHROPISTS: A French religious organization of the Revolutionary period. In Sept., 1796, during the reign of the Directory, a small pamphlet appeared in Paris, under the title Manuel des Theophilanthropes, by Chemin. The divine worship described in that book had originated as a kind of family worship. During the period when all religious service was positively prohibited, five house fathers used to gather together their families for common prayer, singing of hymns in honor of God, and listening to moral and patriotic speeches. The basis of the whole organization was pure deism, the last trace left of true religion among the aberrations of atheism. The first public meeting took place on Jan. 5, 1797, in a house in Rue St. Denis. God, virtue, and the immortality of the soul formed the three articles of the Theophilanthropist creed; and any one who agreed on those three points could become a member of the association, even though he belonged to some special sect with respect to the further details of his creed.
The movement met at first with great success; Thomas Paine was a member, while Reveillere Lepeaux of the Directory was its leader; and the Directory granted it the use of ten churches in Paris. The service it instituted was very simple; the walls of the churches were ornamented with some few moral maxims; the altar was a plain table covered with flowers or fruit; the ministering officer was any one who felt disposed; and the ceremonies were reduced to a minimum of forms. The Christian baptism became a mere presentation and naming of the child; Christian wedding, a mere announcement of the civil marriage contracted, accompanied with congratulations and admonitions. New members were admitted after a short catechization upon the three articles above mentioned. As the Theophilanthropists considered their religion the only true universal religion, because the only true natural religion, they were averse to all kinds of propaganda, but they took much care of the education of their children, and their instruction in good morals.
During the first and second years of their existence the Theophilanthropists formed associations also in the provinces. But by degrees, as the Christian feeling became reawakened in the French people, the Theophilanthropist movement died away, and in 1802 the First Consul Bonaparte deprived them of their churches, which he restored to the Roman Catholics.
Bibliography: H. Gregoire, Hist, des sects religieuses, 2 vols., Paris, 1810; N. M. D., La Mort des Theophilantropes, ib. 1799; Recueil de cantiques, odes, et hymnes . des
Theophilantropes, ib. 1797; Hymns on Natural Moral, and Theological Subjects, for . the Theophilanthropist Society, Glasgow, 1816; R. Carlile, The Deist; or, Moral Philosopher, vol. i., London, 1819.
THEOPHILUS OF ALEXANDRIA : Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 to 412; d. at Alexandria Oct. 15, 412. Of the events of his life before his elevation to the archiepiscopate nothing certain is known, but soon after this event he was consulted
by the Emperor Theodosius with regard to the adjustment of the differences between the Alexandrine and Roman reckonings of Easter, 387, a matter which Theophilus was able to arrange to the emperor's satisfaction, especially as he prepared a paschal cycle for 418 years, besides reckoning the days on which Easter would fall for the century 380-^80. About 389 Theophilus either obtained permission from Theodosius to destroy the pagan temples at Alexandria, or, according to other accounts, was granted the privilege of building a church on the site of a temple of Dionysus. At all events the patriarch incurred the bitter hostility of the pagans by public insults to their sacred emblems, and, after working vengeance on the Christians, they made a stand in the famous Serapeum of the city. When the pagans surrendered in terror at the shouts acclaiming the receipt of an imperial edict for the destruction of all pagan shrines, Theophilus and his followers were enabled to enter the Serapeum, where he caused the image of Serapis to be cut down, this being followed by wide-spread demolition of temples of the ancient faith, only one image (that of an ape, preserved for obvious uncomplimentary reasons) being spared.
In 391 or 392 Theophilus was appointed by the Council of Capua to arbitrate in the controversy between Flavian of Antioch (q.v.) and Evagrius, which he ultimately decided, following the lead of Chrysostom and some time after the death of Evagrius, in Flavian's favor in 398 (see Meletius of Antioch). In 394 he was at Constantinople, attending a council in which he urged that depositions from the episcopate should be pronounced not merely by three bishops (the number required by the canons of the Council of Nicsea for a consecration), but, if possible, by all bishops of a province.
With the year 395 the character of Theophilus, under the sinister influence of the Origenistic Controversies (q.v.), underwent a lamentable change. He had himself been in sympathy with Origen's revolt against anthropomorphism, and in his paschal letter of 399 had insisted sharply that the divine nature must not be construed in anthropomorphic fashion. This aroused the violent antagonism of the Scetic monks, and before their open threats the patriarch descended to ambiguous phrases more politic than honorable. With this change of attitude there would even seem to be connected personal antipathy for certain of his old friends, notably Isidore, whom he had proposed for the see of Constantinople in 398, and some of the " Long Brothers " — all these being in sympathy with Origenism. Late in 399 or early in 400 he convened a synod at Alexandria at which Origenism was condemned, following up his attack in his paschal letter of 401. In this same year, fortified by an imperial edict forbidding any monk to read Origen, Theophilus proceeded to Nitria and secured the expulsion of all those monks who would not subscribe to entire anthropomorphism. The accounts of this procedure are, unfortunately, so at variance that it is difficult to say whether it was carried out with violence, as Theophilus' bitter enemy, Palladius (q.v.), asserts, or, as Theophilus himself declared in a synodical letter (transl. by Je-
Theophilus of Alexandria Theosophy