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| Introduction.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTERS TO THEODORE.
These two letters, which are the earliest of
Chrysostom’s extant works, are addressed to a friend who had been
a member of the little ascetic brotherhood which Chrysostom and
Basil formed, soon after they had abandoned secular life, as
described in the first book of the Treatise on the Priesthood.
Theodore, like Maximus, afterwards Bishop of Isaurian Seleucia, who
was another member of the same fraternity, had been a fellow
student with Chrysostom and Basil in the school of Libanius,220
but was a
few years younger than either of them. The strain upon his powers
of religious devotion had proved too much for him; he had withdrawn
from the ascetic brotherhood, and relapsed for a season into
worldly habits, being fascinated by the beauty of a young lady
named Hermione, whom he was anxious to marry. His fall was regarded
with almost as much sorrow and dismay by his austere friends as if
he had plunged into deadly vice. Prayers were continually offered,
and great efforts made for his restoration, amongst which must be
reckoned the two letters which are here translated. They are the
productions of a youthful enthusiast, and as such allowances must
be made for them; but they abound in passages of great beauty and
power, especially upon the infinite love and forbearance of God, as
encouraging to repentance and withholding from despair and
recklessness into which Theodore seems to have been inclined to
sink. The appeal of Chrysostom, combined with the efforts of his
other friends, was not in vain. Theodore once more renounced the
world and his matrimonial intentions, and retired into the
seclusion of the fraternity. In A.D. 383, when he was about
thirty-three years of age, he was ordained priest, and in 392 he
became Bishop of Mopsuestia, where he died in A.D. 428 at the age
of seventy-eight. Chrysostom seems to have retained his affection
to him to the last, and during his own exile at Cucusus, A.D.
404–7, wrote a letter to him which is full of expressions of
fervent admiration and regard. He was a most voluminous writer, and
may be regarded as the ablest representative of the school of
Biblical interpretation founded by Diodorus of Tarsus, under whom
he had studied, together with Chrysostom and Basil. A fierce
controversy raged during the fifth and sixth centuries respecting
the orthodoxy of some of his writings which some accused of
preparing the way for Nestorianism. When this had died down his
name was comparatively forgotten, and it is only in modern times
that his great merits as a commentator, who boldly applied the
historical and grammatical methods of examination to the books of
Holy Scripture, have been fully recognized.
Tillemont was of opinion that of the two letters of
Chrysostom the second only was addressed to Theodore, who was
afterwards Bishop of Mopsuestia. Montfaucon, however, Dupin, and
Savile, maintain that both were addressed to him, and their view is
confirmed by the fact that Leontius of Byzantium (in Nest. et.
Eutych. lib. iii. c. 7) and Isidore of Seville (de Script. Eccl. c.
6.) mention two letters of Chrysostom to Theodore of
Mopsuestia. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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