The Catechetical School of Antioch was one of the two major centers of the study of biblical
exegesis and
theology during
Late Antiquity; the other was the
School of Alexandria. This group was known by this name because the advocates of this tradition were based in the city of
Antioch in
Syria, one of the major cities of the ancient
Roman Empire. Although there were early interpreters from Antioch, like
Theophilus of Antioch, the proper school of exegesis at Antioch belongs to the period of the late fourth and the fifth centuries.[1]
While the Christian intellectuals of Alexandria emphasized the
allegorical interpretation of Scriptures and tended toward a
Christology that emphasized the union of the human and the divine, those in Antioch held to a more literal and occasionally
typological exegesis and a Christology that emphasized the distinction between the human and the divine in the person of
Jesus Christ.[2] They rejected notions of instantaneous creation held by other figures such as
Augustine, and instead literally held to the notion of the progressive creation of the
Genesis creation narrative: those things created on the sixth day did not exist in the fifth, that made on the fifth day did not exist in the fourth, and so on. Advocates included
Acacius of Caesarea,
Severian of Gabala,
Theodore of Mopsuestia,
Theodoret, and others.[3]
Nestorius, before becoming Patriarch of Constantinople, had also been a monk at Antioch and had there become imbued with the principles of the Antiochene theological school.[4]
Periods
The school of Antioch is best divided into three periods:
The early school (170–early fourth century)
The earliest author known of this period is
Theophilus of Antioch. Then there is a gap of a century and in the first half of the fourth century there are three known antiochene authors: the best known is
Eusebius of Emesa; other representatives are
Acacius of Caesarea and Theodore bishop of Heraklea.
The middle school (350–433)
This period includes at least three different generations:
Diodorus of Tarsus, who directed an ἀσκητήριον (school) he may have founded. Among his disciples, the best known are
John Chrysostom and
Theodore of Mopsuestia. The main figure of the third generation was
Nestorius.
^
abCross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A., eds. (2005).
"Antiochene theology". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 79.
ISBN978-0-19-280290-3.
^Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A., eds. (2005).
"Nestorius". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. pp. 1145–1146.
ISBN978-0-19-280290-3.