Theodore of Mopsuestia
quotes from Theodore of Mopsuestia→
Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350 – 428) was a Christian theologian, and Bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428 AD. Theodore was an early companion and friend of John Chrysostom.
Extant Writings:
- Catechetical Homilies
- Commentary on the Lords Prayer, Baptism and the Eucharist
- The Incarnation
- Commentary on Matthew
- Commentary on the Nicene Creed
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Quotes & Excerpts:
“When Christ gave the bread, He did not say,
‘This is the symbol of my body,’ rather He said ‘This is my body,’ In the same way, when He gave the cup of His blood, He did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my blood,’ but ‘This is my blood.’ For he wanted us to look upon them, after their reception of grace and the Holy Spirit, not according to their nature, but as they are, the body and blood of our Lord.” -Catechetical Homilies, Chap. 5 (Written 405 A.D.)
“In our receiving of the
Eucharist, each of us takes a small portion, but we believe that in that small portion, we receive all of Him.” -Catechetical Homilies Chapter 6 (Written 405 A.D.)
“In the profession of faith which our blessed Fathers wrote at the Council of Nicaea . . . they followed the divine Scriptures, which speak of the natures as different, while they referred to them as one Person because of the close union that was effected between them, so that it might not be supposed that they were separating that perfect union between the one who was assumed and the one who was assuming. If this union were destroyed, the one who was assumed would not be seen as more than a mere man like ourselves.” -Catechetical Homilies Chapter 6 (Written 405 A.D.)
“If with diligence we do good works and turn from evil deeds and truly repent of the sins that befall us, undoubtedly we shall obtain the grace of the remission of our sins in our receiving of the holy Sacrament (of Confession).” -Catechetical Homilies 16 (Written 405 A.D.)
“This is the medicine for sins, established by God and delivered to the priests of the Church, who make diligent use of it in healing the afflictions of men. You are aware of these things and the fact that God, who loves us, gave us penitence and showed us the medicine of repentance; and He established priests as the physicians of sins.” -Catechetical Homilies 16 (Written 405 A.D.)
“At first the offering is laid upon the altar as mere bread, and wine mixed with water; but by the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into the Body and the Blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and immortal nourishment.” -Catechetical Homilies, Chapter 16 (Written 405 A.D.)
“If we receive in this world, through our priests, healing and forgiveness of sins, we shall be delivered from the judgment to come. It behooves us, therefore, to draw near to priests in confidence and reveal our sins to them. And those priests, with all diligence, solicitude, and love, will grant healing to sinners and will not disclose our sins, but rather remain silent, as befits true and loving fathers.” -Catechetical Homilies 16 (written 405 A.D.)
“When, therefore, they ask ‘Is Mary the Mother of Man or the Mother of God?’ We answer ‘Both!’ The one by the very nature of what was done and the other by relation. Mother of man because it was a man who was in the womb of Mary and who came forth from her; and Mother of God because God was the man who was born. . .” -The Incarnation, Chap. 15 (Written 405 A.D.)
“He who wishes to draw near to the gift of Holy Baptism comes to the Church of God, which Christ our Lord showed to be a symbol of the heavenly things when He said: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’” -Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism and the Eucharist, Chap.2 (Written 405 A.D.)
“In this world we exist by two acts: birth and food -in birth we receive our existence and in feeding ourselves we maintain our existence- so also is the case with the next world. . . As we received the second birth in water, which is useful and necessary to life in this world, so also we take our food in bread and in wine mixed with water, as they eminently fit this life and sustain us to live in it. . . it is from this food that we are expecting to become immortal and remain forever. These are the things in the hope of which we partake of this holy food of the Sacrament.” -Commentary on the Lords Prayer, Baptism and the Eucharist. Chap. 5:2.7 (Written 405 A.D.) Translated by Alphonse Mingana
“When our Lord said: ‘He that eats my body and drinks my blood has eternal life’ and saw that the Jews were murmuring and doubting, thinking it impossible to receive immortality from mortal flesh, He added immediately to remove doubt: ‘If you see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before.’ It is as if He were saying: the thing that is being said about my body does not appear now true to you, but when you see Me rising up from the dead and ascending into heaven, it will be made manifest to you that what was said was not harsh and unseemly, but that I have moved to an immortal nature. And He added: ‘It is the Spirit that lives, the flesh profits nothing,’ as if He were saying: these things will come from the nature of the vivifying Spirit, and it is through Him that it will be given to the flesh to become immortal and to confer also immortality on others. ” -Commentary on the Lords Prayer, Baptism and the Eucharist, Chap. 5:9 (Written 405 A.D.) Translated by Alphonse Mingana
“To this our blessed Fathers added that the Son was ‘consubstantial’ with His Father, a word that confirms the beliefs of children of the faith and rebukes the unbelievers.
Although this is not explicitly written in
Holy Writ yet its meaning is found therein. . .
The meaning of the sentence ‘consubstantial with His Father’ is clearly found in the Book. When it says: ‘In the beginning He was with God and He was God,’ it shows by means of these two phrases that He is God in nature and that He is consubstantial with God.” -Commentary on the Nicene Creed. Chap. 4
(Written 405 A.D.) trans. by Alphonse Mingana
“The Marcionites and the Manicheans together with the followers of Valentinus and the rest of the heretics who were affected with a like malady, say that our Lord did not assume any of our natures either of the body or the soul, but that He was a phantasm. . . The partisans of Arius and Eunomius, on the other hand, say that He assumed a body but not a soul, and that the nature of the Godhead took the place of the soul. They have thus lowered the Divine nature of the Only Begotten to the extent that from the greatness of its nature it moved and performed the acts of the soul and imprisoned itself in a body.” -Commentary on the Nicene Creed, Chap. 5
(Written 405 A.D.) trans. by Alphonse Mingana
“Eve also was made of Adam, and her birth is different from all others since she received her existence from a rib only, without marital intercourse. She had an identical nature with Adam because she received the beginning of her existence from him. . . In this way we should also think about Christ our Lord. It was a novel thing to have been fashioned from a woman without marital intercourse, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but He is associated with the human nature by the fact that He is from the nature of Mary.” -Commentary on the Nicene Creed, 6: 14-15 (Written 405 A.D.) trans. by Alphonse Mingana
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