Diodore of Tarsus

• The real beginning of the school of Antioch was as such with Diodore of Tarsus.
• All the surviving texts present him as strongly literalist.
• His disciples were Meletius of Antioch, John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Nestorius and Theodoret of Cyrus also belong to this theological school.
• Circumstances made Diodore an apologetic and polemic in character. In Antioch the conflict between the Church and the Arians was very bitter, and especially under the Arian emperors Constantius (337-361), and Valens (364-378).
• Not without justice, Diodore has been deemed the virtual parent of Nestorianism and called “a Nestorian before Nestorius.” It was his repugnance to the errors of Apollinarianism which led him to the opposite errors of Nestorianism. His sense of the importance of the truth of Christ’s manhood caused him to insist on its distinctness from His Godhead in a manner which gradually led to its being represented as a separate personality.
• He drew a distinction between Him Who according to His essence was Son of God – the eternal Logos – and Him Who through divine decree and adoption became Son of God. The one was Son of God by nature, the other by grace. The son of man became Son of God because chosen to be the receptacle or temple of God the Word. It followed that Mary could not be properly termed the “Mother of God,” nor God the Word be strictly called the Son of David, that designation belonging, according to human descent, to the temple in which the Divine Son tabernacled.
• Diodore therefore distinguished two sons, the Son of God and the Son of Mary, combined in the person of Christ. St. Cyril clearly saw that, apart from the watch-wordQeoto,koj, which had not arisen in the days of Diodore, what men called Nestorianism was substantially the doctrine of Diodore as developed by Theodore of Mopsuestia, and that Nestorianism could only be fully crushed by a condemnation of the doctrines of Diodore as the fountainhead. This condemnation was most difficult to

obtain; no name was held in so much reverence throughout the East. St. Cyril however, was far too determined a spirit to hesitate. If Orthodox views of the Incarnation were to be established, the authority of Diodore must, at any cost of enmity and unpopularity, be destroyed.

• Every means was therefore taken to enforce, by the aid of the emperor and the patriarch Proclus, his condemnation, together with that of his still more heretical pupil Theodore. All attempts to depreciate the authority of Diodore, both by St. Cyril and Rabbula of Edessa, only exalted him in the estimation of the Nestorian party and the opposition contributed to the formation of the independent and still existing Nestorian Church, which looks upon Diodore and Theodore with the deepest veneration as its founders. Flavian III, bishop of Antioch (was compelled) to pass an anathema on the writings of Diodore and Theodore in 499.
• Photius asserts that Diodore was formally condemned by the fifth ecumenical council (so called by the Greek Orthodox) held at Constantinople 553.

• Diodore’s literary output was very large.
• His writings comprised a great number of works on exegesis, apologetics, polemics, dogma, cosmology, astronomy, and chronology.
• Only fragments of his works survive; the small quantity of these fragments is due to the thorough destruction of his works. Biblical Commentaries 20
• In his exegesis Diodore follows firmly the historical and grammatical method and strongly opposes the allegorical interpretation of the Alexandrian School.
• He does not look for a hidden meaning in the text, but for the meaning intended by the inspired writer.
• St. Jerome mentions (Ep. 48, 3) a commentary on 1 Corinthians and (Ep. 119,

4. on 1 Thessalonians. He also speaks (De vir. ill. 119) of Diodore’s “extant commentaries to the Apostle and many others.”

• He wrote comments on all the books of the Old and New Testaments, except the Epistle to the Hebrew, the Catholic Epistles (1 John however being commented on), and the Apocalypse.
• A treatise On the difference between Theory and Allegory. 1. Dogmatic, Polemic, and Apologetic Treatises
• Contra Manichaeos –25 books Against the Manichaeans. In the first seven, he refuted the work of Mani’s disciple Addas. In the remaining books he explained and cleared

up the meaning of certain passages in the Scriptures which the Manichaeans were in the habit of appropriating to support their own views.

• Concerning the Holy Spirit, in which he shows that the Nestorian heresy is already evident in his work.
• His other numerous apologetic and polemic works comprise tracts against pagans, Jews, and heretics. Nothing remains of such works. 3. Astronomical and Chronological Works
• Of these works the only one remaining is the Contra Astronomos astrologos, et Fatum (Against Astronomers, Astrologers and Fate).
• It consists of eight books and defends the faith in God and Divine Providence against fate and the unlimited power of the stars.