Theodore of Mopsuestia

• Like his teacher Diodore, Theodore of Mopsuestia was born at Antioch.
• He studied rhetoric and literature under the famous rhetorician and philosopher Libanius, in whose school he began a lifelong friendship with St. John Chrysostom.
• According to St. John Chrysostom, he was a man of noble birth and an heir to large estates. Probably his parents were Christians.
• Theodore left the Museum and the Forum, and following the example and advice of his former fellow student, St. John Chrysostom, retired with Maximus to the monastic school of Diodore and Carterius in the vicinity of Antioch.
• Afterwards, he left the monastic school and life, and returned to the Forum, and assumed his juristic studies. Theodore was seduced by a beautiful woman, called Hermione. St. Chrysostom dealt with this problem as an excellent physician of souls. He did not rebuke him on his fall, but through love and kindness he helped him in his weakness and revealed the divine love to him. He sent to him two eloquent epistles “Paraereses ad Theodorum lapsum,” asking him to repent and return to the monastic life.
• In 383 Flavian of Antioch ordained Theodore presbyter while he was about 33 years old. He fervently opposed the errors of the Arians, Eunomians, Apollinarians, Origenists, and Persian magic.
• In 392 he was promoted, after the death of Bishop Olympios, to the see of Mopsuestia, “the heart of Mopsuestia,” in Cilicia

Secunda.

• He alone among early exegetes does not accept the traditional interpretation of the couple in the Song of Songs as Christ and the Church and reads the work as a simple love song, for which reason he rejects its full canonicity.
• He died in 428 after gaining a wide reputation. Highly esteemed by his contemporaries but condemned as a heretic 125 years after his death, he shared the fate of his master Diodore of Tarsus. His Christology
• Bardenhewer drew the following conclusion: We possess at present only isolated fragments of these works but enough, however, to make certain that Theodore was a Nestorian before Nestorius. Like Diodorus he taught that in Christ there were two persons. The divine nature is a person, and the human nature is a person. The unity of the two natures consists in the community of thought and will. The Christian adores one sole Lord because the man who was joined to the Logos in a moral union was raised, in reward of his perseverance, to a divine dignity.
• For all his insistence on the unity of the nature, his conception of it as a “junction” (suna,feia) rather than a “union” (e[nwsij) was ultimately unsatisfactory.
• He was condemned and ever since the Fifth General Council (Constantinople) in 553 he has been branded as “a Nestorian before Nestorius.”
• Theodore is the most typical representative of the Antiochian School of exegesis and is by far its most famous author.
• The Nestorian Church venerated him as “the great exponent of the Scriptures” second to none.

1. Biblical Commentaries on the Old Testament

• On Genesis.
• On Exodus.
• On the Psalms.
• On the Twelve Prophets.
• On 1 and 2 Samuel.
• On the Book of Job.
• On the Book of Ecclesiastes.
• On the Song of Songs.
• On the Major Prophets. 2. Biblical Commentaries on the New Testament
• The Gospels.
• The Pauline Epistles. 3. Works on Liturgy, Discipline, and Theology
• Catechetical Homilies: There are catecheses; the first ten deal with articles of faith as contained in the Nicene Creed, while the other six explain the Lord’s Prayer, the liturgy of Baptism, and the Eucharist.
• In his Catechetical Homilies Theodore declares that it was not merely a human

body that was assumed, but a complete man of body and soul. [Catech. 5. 19] 26 The fifth catechetical homily is very valuable to explain his Christology: “Because of all this our blessed Fathers warned and said: ‘He was incarnate and became man', so that we should believe that the one who was assumed and in whom God the Word dwelt was a complete man, perfect in everything that belongs to human nature, and composed of a mortal body and a rational soul, because it is for man and for his salvation that He came down from heaven. (Cat. Hom. 5 ed. Mingana 55-59).” Here we notice the progress made in realizing the two natures in Christ; He is no longer said to consist of Logos and sarx but of Logos and man.

• De Incarnatione(On the Incarnation). 2. Other Works
• The Sacrament; On Faith; Priesthood; The Holy Spirit; Against Eunomius; Against those who affirm that sin is innate in the human nature; Against Magic; On Monasticism;Against Allegorists.
• A book defending Basil, and another on the Assemente and Assumpts.
• A sermon on Legislatio.