METHODIUS
Works.
Greek Church Father and bishop
of Olympus, in Lycia; probably martyred by
Maximinus, 311. The only one of his works preserved
entire in Greek is the
"Symposium," which, as its
name implies, forms a counterpart to Plato's
"Symposium." Ten maidens, invited to the "garden of
virtue," are the speakers, their themes being the
following:
(1) the praise of virginity as the essence
of the likeness to God brought by
Christ;
(2) the divine ordinance of marriage;
(3) virginity preferable to the married state;
(4) virginity the best medicament to immortality;
(5) virginity the great vow;
(6) virgins keep themselves undefiled for the
marriage with the Logos;
(7) they are equal to the
martyrs and are meant by
Cant. ii. 2,
Cant. iv. 9.">iv.
9 sqq.,
Cant. vi. 7.">vi.
7 sqq.;
(8) the woman of
Rev. xii. 1
sqq. is the
Church, and the human will is free;
(9) with her
we must adorn ourselves for the Feast of
Tabernacles, which is the Resurrection;
(10) perfect
righteousness (cf.
Judges ix. 8
sqq.) first came into
the world through Christ.
The maidens close with
a hymn to the heavenly bridegroom. The
De Autexusio is preserved independently in Greek only
in the portion i.-vii. 5,
but considerable fragments
are given by Eusebius, but under the name of
Maximus (Præparatio evangelica, vii. 22; Eng. transl.,
ii. 366 sqq., 2 vols., Oxford, 1903), Photius
(Bibliotheca, 236), the Sacra Parallela; while it is fully
reproduced in an Old Church Slavic translation of the
eleventh century. Its theme is the origin of evil,
which arose from Satan's disobedience to God. In
his Peri geneton, of which only a few fragments
have been preserved by Photius (Bibliotheca, 235),
Methodius assails Origen's doctrine of an eternal creation
ation of the world. The same opposition is
maintained in his most important work next to the
"Symposium," the
De resurrectione, in which, at
Patara, with one Theophilus presiding, the physician
Aglaophon and Proclus plead for Origen against
Eubulius (Methodius) and Memian. As the
angels
prove, things created are not necessarily mortal;
and since the soul is immortal, while only the dead
can rise, the body becomes mortal that the sin which
dwells in it may be removed by death, the
resurrection of the body being everywhere taught by the
Scriptures. The work is extant only in an Old
Church Slavic translation, though the Greek text
of i. 20-ii. 8 is given by Epiphanius (
Hær., Ixiv. 12
sqq.), and fragments are found in Photius
(
Bibliotheca, 234), the
Sacra Parallela, the Syriac florilegia,
the
Catena of Procopius, Justinian (
Ad Menam),
OEcumenius, Eustratius, and others. The three
fragments of his polemic against Porphyry are valuable
for a knowledge of Methodius' theory of salvation;
while those of his exegesis of Job ix., xxv.,
xxvii.-xxix., xxxviii:, xl., are important for his doctrine of
grace. Of his
De martyribus scant fragments have
been preserved by Theodoret and the
Sacra
Parallela. His other works are preserved almost
exclusively in abbreviated Old Church Slavic translations,
such as that "On Life and Reason" and "On Foods
and the Red Heifer," the latter treating also of the
blessings of suffering, true purity, and the spiritual
understanding of the Scriptures. In the "To
Sistelius, On Leprosy" (a few fragments also in
manuscript in Greek), he connects the legal rules for
leprosy with Christian penance; and in his "On
the Horseleach of Proverbs, and 'The Heavens
Declare the Glory of God' " he interprets the
horse-leach as the serpent of lust. His treatises "On the
Body," and
De Pythonyssa, as well as his exegeses
of Genesis and Canticles, and, possibly, a dialogue
Xenon, are lost; while the orations
De Symeone et
Anna and
In ramos palmarum, like the Armenian
fragments in the
In ascensionem Domini nostri Jesu
Christi, are spurious. Nor were the
Revelationes,
ascribed to him under various names and forming
in various languages one of the favorite books of
the Middle Ages, written by him. Their origin
doubtless dates from the seventh century, although
they appeared in Latin translation as early as the
century following.
Doctrine.
Deeply influenced by Platonism and Stoicism,
and strongly allegorical in interpretation,
Methodius is at once an advocate of early Christian realism
and of the ascetic and contemplative
life. The main
points of his constant
opposition to Origen have already been
noted. His concept of God was characterized by
the attributes of non-becoming, power, and
exemption from all need. If the Father is the essential
principle of all being, the Son is the external
effective force; yet Methodius stresses the divine nature
of the Son, who was the means of all revelation of
salvation, even in the Old Testament. The world
was created for the microcosm man, whose will is
absolutely free, and who is progressively taught by
God to conquer the devil. The Logos necessarily
became incarnate to bring man into harmony with
the Divine, and, bringing "knowledge of the Father
of all," he stripped off the old man, which he
replaced "with his own flesh." This is done through
the Church, for whom the Logos left the Father in
heaven; and the souls betrothed to him are "helps
meet for him," thus realizing the "deep sleep" of
Adam
(Gen. ii. 21).
Nevertheless, outward
membership is no guaranty of salvation, which is the
work of grace that rewards longing with fulfilment.
Yet even the Christian does not entirely extirpate
sin in this life, and the forgiveness of sins and deeper
recognition of the divine will only strengthen the
natural good in him; while the birth of Christ in
the faithful, transforming them into Christs, is
essentially a spiritual growth, though coming to
pass on principle in baptism. The cure for all evils
and the root of true morality is the spiritual
understanding of the Scriptures, wisdom blooming in
the desert, where dwells the bride of the Logos.
The progress in the Christian life here outlined,
however, finds its culmination, as implied above,
in perfect virginity of both body and soul. The
ideal of Methodius is that of the ascetic sage. In
accordance with the tradition of the Church, more
over, Methodius was inclined toward a moderate
chiliasm, holding that in the seventh millennium
the faithful would celebrate the true Sabbaths and
the real Feast of Tabernacles with Christ, this
millennium being the rest preliminary to endless eternity.
(N. Bonwetsch.)
For Methodius the apostle to the Slavs
see
Cyril and Methodius.
Bibliography:
The first complete ed. of the "Banquet"
was by Allatius, Rome, 1656. An incomplete collection
of the works was made by F. Combefs, Paris, 1644, enlarged, 1672. The works are also in A. Gallandi, Bibliotheca roeterum patrum, iii. 670
sqq.,
Venice, 1767; in MPG,
xviii. 27-408; and an edition is by A. Jahn, Halle, 1865.
There is an Eng. transl. with introduction in
ANF, vi.
307-402. The earlier literature on the subject is given
very completely in
ANF, Bibliography, pp. 75-76. Consult: Jerome, De vir. ill., Ixxxiii.; Socrates, Hist. eccl.,
vi. 13; A.
Pankau,
Methodius, BischofwonOlymput, Mainz,
1888; N. Bonwetsch,
Methodiue won Olympus,
Leipsic,
1891; idem, Die Theologis des Methodius
won
Olympus,
Berlin, 1903; O. Bardenhewer, Patrologie, pp. 154 sqq.,
Freiburg, 1894; Ehrhard, Die altchristliche Litteratur
und ihre
Erforschung, 1884
-1900, pp. 363 sqq., ib. 1900;
Harnack, Litteratur, i. 468-478, 786, 929-930, ii. 2, pp.
147 sqq., 150-151; idem, Dogma, vols. i.-v. passim;
Krüger, History, pp. 235-242; Schaff,
Christian
Church,
ii. 309-312; Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, iii. 62-73;
DCB, iii:
909-911.
