Theophilus of Antioch

Theophilus of Antioch was a Christian bishop and apologist of the later second century who occupied the see of Antioch, one of the principal churches of the early Christian world. Eusebius of Caesarea, in the Ecclesiastical History, identifies him as the sixth bishop of Antioch after the apostles; later succession lists of the patriarchate of Antioch likewise include him in that line. He succeeded Bishop Eros and was followed by Maximus. His episcopate fell in the reign of Marcus Aurelius and apparently continued into the early years of Commodus. No ancient source records a year of birth or a precise year of death; modern handbooks conventionally place his tenure in the late 160s through the early 180s, but those figures are inferences from the imperial chronology in Eusebius rather than independently attested dates.

Almost nothing is known of his origins. In the only work that survives under his name he states that he was born a pagan and became a Christian after studying the sacred writings, above all the prophets, which he judged more ancient and more trustworthy than pagan literature. He does not name his birthplace. The surviving apology displays a Greek education, familiarity with pagan poets, philosophers, and mythographers, and close knowledge of the Septuagint, all of which fit the cultured milieu of Roman Syria. Antioch itself was a major Hellenistic city and an early centre of Gentile Christianity, and Theophilus wrote in Greek for an audience that moved in that world.

His sole extant composition is the three-book Apology to Autolycus (Ad Autolycum), addressed to a pagan named Autolycus. In it he defends Christians against charges of atheism and novelty, argues for the existence of God from the order of creation, and offers a hexaemeral commentary on Genesis. He is the earliest Christian writer known to have applied the Greek word trias (Trinity) to God, His Word (Logos), and His Wisdom. He constructs a chronology from Adam intended to show that biblical history is older than Greek and Egyptian accounts. He quotes or alludes to the Gospels, including John, to Pauline letters, and to other New Testament writings, and thus supplies important second-century evidence for the reception of those texts. He also attacks pagan gods, poets, and philosophers at considerable length.

Eusebius and Jerome attribute to him other works that have not survived: treatises against Marcion and against Hermogenes, a catechetical or historical writing, and, according to Jerome, commentaries on the Gospel and on Proverbs. His theology in the extant apology is strongly theocentric and creation-centred; his Logos doctrine is less developed than that of Justin Martyr, and the surviving books do not discuss the incarnation or name Jesus, a silence that has been much discussed by modern scholars. He remains a primary witness to second-century apologetic method, biblical chronology, and the early use of Trinitarian language.

Theophilus is venerated as a saint in Eastern and Western Christianity. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 13 October as the sixth bishop of Antioch after the apostle Peter, and the same date is observed in the Eastern Orthodox calendar. No reliable ancient testimony records his burial place, any marriage or children, or a later formal process of canonization; for so early a figure, cult belongs to the period of popular episcopal commemoration rather than to medieval papal procedure.