School of Antioch

The Catechetical School of Antioch was one of the two major Christian 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]

^ Brown 2019, p. 35.
^ Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A., eds. (2005). "Antiochene theology". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.
^ Brown 2019, p. 36–41.
^ Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A., eds. (2005). "Nestorius". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. pp. 1145–1146. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.

[FOOTNOTEBrown201935-1] Brown 2019, p. 35.

[odcc-2] Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A., eds. (2005). "Antiochene theology". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.

[FOOTNOTEBrown201936–41-3] Brown 2019, p. 36–41.

[4] Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A., eds. (2005). "Nestorius". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. pp. 1145–1146. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.

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