Theophilus the Bishop

Theophilus, bishop of the church of Alexandria, wrote one great volume Against Origen. In it he condemns nearly everything Origen said, and Origen himself as well. At the same time he says that Origen was not original in his views but took them from the ancient fathers, especially from Heraclas, and that he was deposed from the office of presbyter, driven from the church, and forced to flee from the city. He also wrote Against the Anthropomorphites, heretics who say that God has a human form and limbs. He refutes them in a long discussion, arguing from the testimony of Divine Scripture and convincing them. He shows that, according to the belief of the fathers, God is to be thought of as without a body, not formed with any hint of limbs at all. Therefore nothing among created things is like him in substance, and the incorruptibility, the unchangeableness and the bodilessness of his nature have been given to no one. Rather, all intellectual natures are bodily, all corruptible, all changeable, so that he alone should not be subject to corruption or change, who alone has immortality and life. He also set out for the emperor Theodosius the cycle of the Paschal feast, which the great council at Nicaea had found would come round again at the same time, in the same month and on the same day, after ninety years; and he added some observations and explanations about the festival. I have also read three books On Faith that bear his name, but since their language is not like his, I hardly think they are by him. [a]