Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T01:47:31.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Anthropomorphic Controversy in the Time of Theophilus of Alexandria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Massey Hamilton Shepherd Jr
Massey Hamilton Shepherd Jr
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It was the long-established custom of the Alexandrian patriarch to write each year a paschal letter to the faithful of his province. In the letter of the year 399 the Patriarch Theophilus, an ecclesiastic of great ability but few scruples, inveighed rather severely against those who taught that God was corporeal, or in other words that God had bodily form. This opinion was by no means extraordinary. For over two centuries Alexandria had been the leading center of Christian theology, and for a much longer period a pre-eminent seat of philosophic learning as well. The repudiation of anthropomorphic conceptions of God had long been a matter of common acceptance by pagan and Christian theologians alike who laid any claim to a liberal education.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 1938 , pp. 263 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1938

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Collationes x. 2Google Scholar. Other principal sources for the controversy are Socrates, Eistoria ecclesiastica, vi, 7, 9Google Scholar; Sozomen, , Historia ecclesiastica, viii, 11–13Google Scholar

2 Dialogue, i, 6–7Google Scholar; cf. Jerome, , Epistolae, 92.Google Scholar

3 First published by Francesco Rossi with Italian translation in “Trascrizione di tre Manoseriti copti del Museo egizio di Torino con Traduzione italiana,” (Memorie della reale Accademia delle Science di Torino, scienze, morale, storiche e fililogiche), Serie II, Tom, XXXVII (1886), 67–84, 145–150Google Scholar. I have used the edition with French translation by Drioton, Étienne, “La Discussion d'un Moine anthropomorphite audien avec le Patriarche Théophile d'Alexandrie en l'Année 399,” Revue de l'Orient chrétien, XX (1915–1917), 92–100, 113–128Google Scholar. Drioton, (p. 93)Google Scholar considers the work to be genuine.

4 Vita altera graeca Sancti Pachomii, 27Google Scholar (ed. Halkin, , 195Google Scholar); Paralipomena, 7Google Scholar (ed. Halkin, , 131–2Google Scholar). See also the discussion of White, H. G. Evelyn, The Monasteries of the Wâdi'n Natrûn. Part II: The History of the Monasteries of Nitria and of Scetis (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932), 125–32.Google Scholar

5 Contra Celsum, vii, 44.Google Scholar

6 De oratione, 9Google Scholar (trans. Pope).

7 Ibid., 13.

8 Hist, eccl., vi, 9.Google Scholar

9 Coll., iii, 7Google Scholar (trans. Gibson).

10 Ibid., x, 11.

11 Ibid., iii, 6.

12 (P. L., XXI, 397).Google Scholar

13 96, edited by Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Book of Paradise (London, 1904), II, 985–6.Google Scholar

14 See the exposition of his theology by Bousset, W., Apophthegmata. Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums (Tübingen, 1923)Google Scholar, Part III; on his relation to Origen, see especially 292 ff. Also cf. Reitzenstein, R., Historia Monachorum und Historia Lausiaca. Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Mönchtums und der frühchristliche Begriffe Gnostiker und Pneumatiker (Göttingen, 1916), 124 ffGoogle Scholar. Jerome, , Epistolae, 133Google Scholar, classed him as a heretic for his Origenism. A critical edition of the works of Evagrius is a desideratum.

15 Practicus, ii, 70–71Google Scholar (P. G., XL, 1244).Google Scholar

16 Centuries, v, 52Google Scholar (edited by Frankenberg, W. in Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttigen, phil.-hist. Kl., N. F., XIII, 2 ], 341).Google Scholar

17 Ibid., iii, 6, (p. 193).

18 Coll., x, 3.Google Scholar

19 The Sarapeum at Alexandria is described in Rufinus, , Historia ecclesiastica, ii, 23Google Scholar; for the Iseum uncovered at Pompeii, see Moret, A., Kings and Gods of Egypt (New York, 1912), 156Google Scholar, and Plate XIII.

20 For the rite. Apuleius, , Metamorphoses, ix, 9, 20, 22Google Scholar; Porphyry, , Be abstinentia, iv. 9Google Scholar; Arnobius, , Adversus nationes, vii, 32Google Scholar; Servius, , In Aeneidem, iv, 512Google Scholar; Moret, , op. ctt., 158ff.Google Scholar; Cumont, F., Les Religions orientales dans le Paganisme romain (4th ed.; Paris, 1929), 88ff.Google Scholar

21 Apuleius, , Metam., ix, 23ff.Google Scholar

22 Text in Catalogus cadicum astrologorum Graecorum (Bruxelles, 1898–), VIII, 3, 136, 16ffGoogle Scholar.; VIII, 4, 256, 20ff.

23 Cumont, F., “Le Culte égytien et la Mysticisme de Plotin,” Monuments et Mémoires publiés par l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Foundation Eugène Plot, XXV (1921), 77–92.Google Scholar

24 Peterson, E., “Herkunft und Bedeutung der MON ΠΡΟΣ MONON — Formel bei Plotin,” Philologus. Zeitschrift für das klassische Altertum, LXXXVIII (1933), 30–41.Google Scholar

25 vi, 9, 11 (trans. McKenna); cf. i, 6, 7. On the whole question of Plotinus relation to the Egyptian mysteries, see the articles of Cumont and Peterson already cited, and also Cochez, J., “Plotin et les Mystères d'Isis,” Revue néo-scholastique de Philosophie, XVIII (1911), 328–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 C. Cels., vii, 66.Google Scholar

27 Adversus Anthropomorphitas, 1 (P. G., LXXVI, 1077).Google Scholar