Theophylact, "On Predestination": a First Translation Garton, Charles Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1973; 14, 1; ProQuest pg. 83

Theophylact, On Predestination: 
a First Translation 

Charles Garton 

Introduction 

~
ONG the several bearers of the name Theophylact, the best 
known, or at any rate second best known, is Theophylactus 
Simocates, who flourished in Constantinople in the late sixth 

and early seventh centuries of the Christian era. He was a writer of 
Greek descent, born in Egypt. He held certain public appointments 
under the emperor Heraclius (reigned 610-641), and wrote a history 
of the reign of Maurice (582-602) which is one of the chief sources of the 
forty-sixth chapter of Gibbon. Within the general tradition of Byzan­
tine sophistic and rhetoric he developed, or at any rate wrote in, a 
somewhat tiresome and self-conscious style which has been criticized 
since the time of Photius and of which the chief merit is that it is his 
own. 

Three works of Theophylact have long been current-the Problems 
of Natural History, the Letters, and the History. Twentieth-century re­
search has added a fourth-an energetic little treatise On Predestina­
tion. This was first published in St Petersburg in 1910, but the text 
used for the present translation is that of Leendert G. Westerink,* 
who has recently retranscribed and edited the work from the XIII­
century codex, Jerusalem MS Taphos 108, fr. 7T_lOv, which he abbre­
viates as H (Hierosolymitanus). The Greek title, which is lost, may have 
been n€p~ 8pwv ~w7JC, but was more probably in the form of the 
proposition that, or the question whether, our lives have a pre­
destined end. This is the aspect of predestination to which the treatise 
is devoted. The beginning is lost, but Westerink has shown good 
reason to think that the loss does not extend to more than one leaf, 
that is, a maximum of 66 lines in the manuscript or about 105 lines of 
print; and it may be much smaller. The length of the extant portion 

* In F. Cupaiolo et aI., edd., Studi in onore di Vittorio De Falco (Naples 1971) 535-51. The 

editio princeps was by A. Papadopoulos·Kerameus, Zurnal Millisterstva Narodnago Prosves­
cenija (St Petersburg, Nov. 1910) 509-22. 

83 



84 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

is about three-fifths that of Plato's Euthyphro or about three-quarters 
that of his Crito. 

As the extant captions indicate, the subject is handled by the 
method of prosopopoeia, that is, through personae or in dramatized 
form. The treatise consists of three set speeches by different speakers, 
putting respectively a thesis (that our lives have predestined ends), 
the antithesis (that they do not), and an apophasis or verdict (which 
attempts a via media). The thesis is presented by an elderly monk 
Theognostus, the antithesis by a young man called Theophrastus, 
who from the way he is addressed seems to be a layman, and the 
verdict by two adjudicators called Evangelus and Theopemptus. The 
lost beginning may have included a protheoria (Westerink p.538); at 
any rate Theognostus, the first speaker in what is extant, explicitly 
indicates that he has already heard the gist of his opponent's case. Each 
of the two disputants devotes considerable energy to denouncing the 
other within the generous limits of vilification allowed by theological 
controversy and Septuagint Greek. And the adjudicators, besides 
rejecting both thesis and antithesis, advise the disputants in closing to 
mend their character and rhetoric as well as their dogmas. 

The literary form has been described as "unparalleled both in 
Byzantine and in classical Greek literature" (Westerink p.535). Yet, if 
it is an experiment, it is one which has its roots in concepts which go 
back almost to the dawn of rhetoric. For, without going into a plethora 
of detail, it may be remarked that the history of speech and argument 
recognizes at least five foreshadowings or congeners of Theophylact's 
form of presentation. These are: (1) the two logoi of Aristophanes' 
Clouds and the antilogiai of the Frogs (see line 775), together with their 
seedbed, the whole first sophistic movement; (2) forensic oratory in 
general and especially the forms used in arbitration, including 
arbitration on the stage of New Comedy; (3) controversiae, especially 
exercises of the type preserved by the Elder Seneca; (4) the progymnas­
mata of Byzantine rhetoric, and especially (a) the ethopoeia or piece 
written in character, and (b) the psogos or speech of censure, which is 
the less popular inverse of the encomium; and (5) the formal mediae­
val disputatio. 

What Theophylact has done is to collect as many Biblical allusions 
as he could which appear to bear on the point at issue. Reserving for 
the adjudicants those which allow of a compromise view of the 
matter, he divided the rest between the two disputants, each of whom, 



CHARLES GARTON 85 

in the manner of the time, is a Biblical fundamentalist as perfervid as 
the most extreme of Protestant sectaries were later to become. 
Round these texts Theophylact weaves his argument, if such it is to be 
called. His real aims are not dialectical at all, and Westerink has fully 
recognized this, though one might dispute his severe judgement 
(p.537) that "the problem itself is not even touched upon." It is true 
that set speeches are a poor medium for dialectical exchange, and the 
speakers here do not get sufficiently into rational communication to 
clarify each other's thinking. It is also true that Theophylact borrows 
significantly from St Basil. Yet, in the 'antithesis', the valid and basic 
point is made that a predestined end to a life excludes virtually by 
definition any contingent lengthening or shortening of that life, for 
whatever reason, while it is being lived. Further, Theophylact himself 
sees, and shows the reader, a great deal more than either of his dis­
putants does; he highlights the difficulty of using the Bible for the 
purpose in view, and in particular he makes self-evident the futility of 
either brand of fundamentalism, both in its partial choice of texts and 
in its tendentious methods of interpretation. Finally, the conclusion 
of the adjudicants that our lifespan is provisionally fixed by, and 
definitely foreknown to, God, and that, during life, it may be lengthened 
or shortened by our own good or evil deeds, and by our wisdom or 
folly-or by different causes again, as with the Holy Innocents or the 
martyrs-this, if not very original, is surely as much in contact with 
the problem as the ordinary Christian can expect to be, in view of 
what Theophylact calls "the surpassing degree of [God's] incompre­
hensibility. " 

Advancement of the question at issue is, however, subordinated to 
what are, to the writer, more important aims. The first of these is 
that his ebullition shall give pleasure or amusement as a verbal and 
ethopoeic construct. His style achieves this in spite of itself. It is not the 
natural discourse of any actual age or society, not even that of Byzan­
tine sophistic. The sentences, which are often long and rambling, are 
an odd mixture of periodic and eiromene lexis, thickly studded with 
abstractions, with the vocabulary and mannerisms of the Septuagint, 
and to a lesser extent those of New Testament koine. It is marked also 
by long series of participial phrases and rhetorical questions, and by 
occasional complex vocative phrases very difficult to render into a 
modern uninflected language. 

One of the most striking affectations is Theophylact's cult of dis-



86 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

tinctive clausula.e which, when scanned by word-stress, form single or 
accumulated dactyls or dactyl-related sequences. Both choice and 
order of words are subordinated to this whim. On a rough count, 
some 86 out of 114 sentences have clausulae of this kind. The break­
down is: 

CLAUSVLA 

1. I-dactyl 
2. 2-dactyl 
3. 3-dactyl 
4. 4-dactyl 
5. -vv vv -vv 

6. -vv vv vv -vv 

Total dactyl and dactyl-related 
Other clausulae 

Grand total 

NUMBER OF OCCURRENCES 

26 
35 

10 

I 

13 

1 

86 
28 

114 

These figures are only an approximate indication of the real state of 
affairs. A more thorough analysis would require enlargement of the 
category of <dactyl-related' clausulae, when it would be found that 
many of those I have called <other' are really of this kind; and many 
of what I called the I-dactyl clausulae have a dactyl-related structure 
preceding them. Most important of all, analysis should be extended 
from sentence-endings to include colon-clausulae. The full scope of the 
craze would then become very striking. In the translation I have made 
no attempt to reproduce this feature of the author's style. 

HIf his dialogue has any purpose," Westerink remarks (p.537), "be­
yond that of a purely rhetorical performance, it is to censure the 
crude ruthlessness that was considered normal in theological argu­
ment. Still, in an author whose style comes so dangerously close to 
being a parody of itself, it is not easy to distinguish between irony and 
earnest." My own impression is that, within the total rhetorical am­
bience, irony is the dominant note and quite deliberately so. Whatever 
the author's actual age at the time of writing, the temper of the piece is 
that of a young man who has only recently gone through the schools 
and emerged into the world of Byzantine sacred oratory and theo­
logical controversy. He regards it, and especially its patristic form of 
Biblical fundamentalism, with mingled incredulity, awe, devotion, 
affection and amusement; and his first impulse, that for which his 



CHARLES GARTON 87 

training has qualified him above all else, is to prove himself as 'to the 
manner born'. Like many doctoral candidates of our own day, he has 
the manner long before he has much of an original thesis to maintain, 
and the result is an impressionistic echo of what he hears around him, 
but in this case strongly tinged with caricature. But I think that his 
indirect censure strikes also at something one step beyond "the crude 
ruthlessness that was considered normal in theological argument." If 
he himself has grown up with a style which is not the natural dis­
course of any actual age or society, this is pardy because he has had to 
spend long years of study on book after book, written in another style 
of which the same holds true, namely, that of the Greek of the 
Septuagint itself, Greek cast in a matrix of classical Hebrew-phrase­
ology, structure, idiom, rhetoric, denunciation and all: the style of 
Deuteronomy and the style of Isaiah. One of the primal axioms of his 
education has been that such discourse is what St Augustine two 
hundred years earlier had called the dominicum eloquium, 'our Lord's 
manner of speech' (Confessions 9.5). It is not too much to see in the 
present essay, at a level deeper than that of parody of current theo­
logical polemics, the tragicomic protest of Theophylact as a young 
graduate, or putting himself in the position of one, against the lexis of 
Authority itself, the lexis of the Bible as the undoubted oracle of truth. 

A word more needs to be said about his Biblical quotations and 
allusions. His prose abounds in these, not only in the form of texts 
relating to predestination and phrases and epithets of strong and 
picturesque denunciation but in many less tangible ways. The total 
number of certain, probable or possible allusions established by 
Westerink is about 177, and perhaps one or two more could be added. 
The breakdown is: 

Old Testament, including Apocrypha (2) 139 
New Testament 38 

Total 177 

The breakdown by individual books is: 

Psalms 
Deuteronomy 
Exodus 
Genesis 
I Kings (III Kings in LXX) 
Matthew 

49 
17 
14 
13 
8 
8 



88 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINA TION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

Romans 
I Corinthians 

II Kings (IV Kings in LXX) 
Certain other books, each 

7 

7 
6 

1-5 

This sheds some light on the suitability of different books for Theophy­
lact's purpose. But it doubtless also reflects to some extent the pattern 
of his studies, which appear to have concentrated on the Psalms and the 
Pentateuch. In the notes to my translation I have selected for mention 
only the most salient of the Biblical allusions, a little over seventy in 
total. Westerink's references are all to the Septuagint and the Greek 
New Testament: mine are to the Revised Standard Version of the 
Bible in English. I have throughout kept an eye on the wording of this 
version and used or adapted it where possible, though the amount of 
direct quotation from it is not large. In the XX century there is no very 
agreed way of citing the Bible in English; tradition has largely gone 
overboard, but the Revised Standard Version perhaps retains enough 
of it to suggest (dimly) what the Greek scriptures were to citizens of 
Constantinople. 

As for the rest of my rendering, it would no doubt be possible to do 
for Theophylact what J. B. Phillips has done for the New Testament 
and especially its Epistles, that is, to produce something homogeneous 
and semi-naturalized in the colloquial idiom of our day. But I thought 
this not fully appropriate to a first translation, and have been content 
rather to reflect something of the sentence structure, non-homogene­
ous phraseology and accumulated abstractions of the original. I have 
also been fairly faithful to Theophylact's somewhat cavalier tense 
usages. The inserted figures are line numberings taken from the 
edition used. I have throughout been indebted to the counsel and 
help of Professor Westerink, but am in all cases responsible myself for 
the final choice of wording. 

As a footnote to this introduction it may be added that Theophylact 
presents us with three addenda lexicis-words to be found neither in 
LSJ or its Supplement nor in Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon (line 
numbers are as in Westerink): 

(1) 8Lacp)..€yp.alvw (II line 4), <cause to swell up thoroughly', 'inflame 
thoroughly' . 

(2) CPt)..&KOP..pOC (II line 22), <loving refinement', <quibbling'. 
(3) Ig&p)(1}cLc (II line 126), 'a dancing forth, away, or along'. 



CHARLES GARTON 89 

Two adverbs not given in either dictionary are {Jpacf1-arwowc (I line 41), 

'in the manner of a liquid boiling up, seethingly, splutteringly'; and 
Mwcai'KWT€POV (II line 124), 'more Mosaically'. In both these cases, 
however, Lampe and the Sophocles Greek Lexicon have the correspond­
ing adjective. A new syntactical usage is lALYYUlW with the accusative 
(III line 125), 'turn giddy at'. xopocTacta (III line 101) in the sense 
'choir', 'holy band (of martyrs)" is a later development of a usage 
already recognized by LS]. 

Theophylact, On Predestination 

I 

[Essay of Theophylactus Simocates, graduate of the schools,l 
in dramatized form, putting case that there are 

predestined ends set for human lives J 2 

[THEOGNOSTUS AGAINST THEOPHRASTUS]2 

[ ... With regard to the present disputation between myself and my 
opponent, had it not been for the fact thatp [LINE 1] I undertook it 
with an eye to the boon it would confer, scurvy to satisfy as is the 
summons which occasions it, I should not have entered this contest or 
got myself involved in the dust of the ring. The cause for appre­
hension was in fact no ordinary one. It was the possibility that theo­
logical propriety might somehow, if I may put it so, be obelized as 
false, and phantoms of strange new gospels supervene upon our sight, 
things bringing in their train a spectacle ofI know not what grotesque 
ventures in argumentation. 

[7J Whose schooling was it that possessed him of the idea that there 
are no predestined ends for human lives? Where in holy scripture has 
he ever heard that men were assigned the straggling indeterminacy 
he speaks of? If the vault of heaven has, as the prophet says, been 

1 cxo'\acTLKov: I venture this translation, instead of the more usual 'public advocate' or 
'sacred orator', in view of the scholastic tone and setting of the work, and especially its 
emphasis on 7Tal8EvcLC. Cf the Quaestiones physicae which, as Westerink (p.535) points out, 
was designed "for public presentation before a jury or board of teachers," the occasion 
being "either a school contest or an examination." 

2 Greek title supplied by \Vesterink on the basis of titles to section II and Quaestiones 
physicae. 

3 Approximate sense of the missing part of the sentence. 



90 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

measured by the divine hand, and the number of angels has been 
decided by God's creative wisdom (to purfle my utterance for you 
with the words of Moses' also), if bounds of nations and divisions of 
peoples have been allotted among the various angels, and God has 
numbered the hairs of our head, surely predestined ends are set for 
men's lives too, coming into existence by what I may call a Creator's 
providence, Did not our Maker according to scripture portion every­
thing out by measure and weight? Bah, the absurdity of the man! 
The sun, says scripture, stood in his appointed course and the moon 
knows her own nature;5 "from the end of the heavens is their rising, 
and their circuit is to the end of the heavens";6 «for signs and for 
seasons and for years"7 were they appointed by their Producer. This 
being so, it was by a kind of active disposing on the part of a supreme 
artistry that the whole universe was ordered by the majesty, mighty 
in performance, of the God who produced everything.s Did He who 
gives names to the stars, who decided everything before Creation and 
sets both seasons and times under his own control, bring our lives into 
being without predestined limits? Far from it, indeed. 

[27] What place will you assign to "the season of every man has 
come before me,"9 or "the days of your death have drawn near,"lO or 
"my Spirit shall not continue indefinitely in the sons of men, but their 
days shall be a hundred and twenty years"?l1 This I ask you, champion 
as you are of that outlandish indeterminacy and introducer of those 
strange doctrinal novelties, portentous and like a kind of Platonic 
Ideas, phantasms of the mind and toys of a frivolous brain-impro­
viser in fact of an evil Academy for the churches in all too Greek a 
fashion. Again, had not the sojourn ofIsrael in Egypt been determined 
at four hundred years, you lover of indeterminacy and recoiner of the 
unrephrasable doctrines of the Faith? What will have become of that 
pronouncement so particularly espoused by the psalmist, «the days 
of our years are seventy years or eighty"?12-that is, of discrimination 

'Deut. 32.8, LXX. 
5 .pVCtv: so H, Westerink. I think this may be a corruption for 8octv, "the moon knows 

her going down," with allusion to Ps. 103.11. 
8 Ps. 19.6. 

7 Gen. 1.14. 

8 Cf Pind. fr.57; Basil. Hom. 3.8 (PG 31.216c). 
8 Gen. 6.13. 
10 Deut. 31.14. 
11 Gen. 6.3. 

11 Ps. 90.10. 



CHARLES GARTON 91 

and capacityP Indeed, if a sacred law had not bridled our mouths 
against indulgence in uncontrolled laughter,14 the thing is so laugh­
able that I could have given way to a seething surge of cachinnation, 
constrained as I feel to laugh over your enterprises in argumentation. 
Have you never heard that David led the choir and sang "Lord, let 
me know my end and what is the number of my days, so that I may 
know how fleeting my life is" ?15 

[46] No, sir, in the church's name, "but come, now, change about," 
as Homer puts it.16 Change over to our side, ridding yourself of that 
helpless kind of pilotless drifting. You fought against the yoke and 
were punished with loss of truth, but if you admit defeat you will have 
in full what you have been deprived of. Old and full of days the 
patriarchs have been, have they not, when they were laid to rest. 
What do you think scripture implies by this? To my mind it implies, 
to quote the great Basil, "when the terms of their lives were ful­
filled."17 Actually not a sparrow shall fall without our Father in 
heaven, you thoroughbred investigator and instantaneous word­
weaver! The saying "Woman, what have you to do with me? My 
hour has not yet come,"18 and Christ's flight from the Jews because 
the hour of the cross had not yet come, surely these instances will 
contradict your doctrines, they will like catapults bombard your 
arguments, and winnow them like chaff which the wind sweeps off 
the face of the earth. 

[62] Who was it who passed on to you in his cups all this mytho­
logical balderdash? Why did you let yourself be sold a load of vacuous 
pettifogging and now look supercilious about it? What kind of gain 
accrues to your account in, as the prophet says, weaving a spider's web 
and fabricating on the loom puny unsubstantial notions in opposition 

13 rijc 8W.CTOAfjC KaL 8vvafL€wc: I take these genitives as a descriptive appendage added to 

the "seventy years or eighty" of the preceding question, the purpose being to reconcile this 
sCriptural text with Gen. 6.3 cited above, which gives man's lifespan as a hundred and 
twenty years. The latter, Theophylact means, may be the theoretical limit, but the span 
during which we have real use of our faculties is shorter. Westerink is inclined to take the 
genitives as an independent exclamation meaning "What discrimination and arbitrariness 
(in my opponent)!"-but this involves the difficulty of supposing the first noun sarcastic 
and the second not. 

14 Basil. Regulaefl.lsius tract. 17.1 (PG 31.961A-B). 
15 Ps. 39.4. 
18 T~V 1TolTJnv: to Theophylact Homeric epic is ~ 1TO{TJCLC par excellence; cf infra n.21. The 

reference here is to Gd. 8.492. 
17 Basil. Hom. 9.3 (PG 31.333B). 
18 John 2.4. 



92 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

to mighty dogmas? Why have you thrust aside the garment of con­
templation that is woven on high and clad yourself in garments of 
the human intellect, which are garments of skins and coarser? The 
people who should put these on are people who have drifted out of 
safety, who are being banished from heaven's Eden of the mind,19 
thanks to the inanity of their venturing, which anyway was forbidden 
them. Grey-haired orthodoxy should put you out of countenance; it 
is old like the church, and the church's seniority you must respect. It 
is practically always true that what is younger and newer is less to be 
esteemed. When we rule that new is bad, it is a sentiment with which 
even tragic actors on the stage align themselves.2o So do not say, "I 
am younger and newer." You are aware that Homer,21 too, disesteems 
what is newer. This also explains why time is given a bad name by the 
representatives of pagan wisdom and culture.22 They say it is always 
oedematous with strange things and diseased with innovations. Ask 
furthermore your fathers and they will report to you, ask your elders 
and they will tell you, that it is when the predestined terms of life are 
completed that deaths are brought on. 

[81] Judges, councillors and guardians of the law: I have presented 
an adequate defence of the case presently before us. Now is the 
moment when I should be on the way to carrying off the victor's 
prize, when I should be assigned the award that indicates superiority. 
It is time to put on the crown of success in the debate and enter the 
chancel of the church dancing and singing along with you a song of 
victory to the Lord. For a mouth speaking wicked words was stopped, 
a sea of error has divided, we diverted as it were the billow of it, the 
force of the enemy is overwhelmed by sea and drowned, rider and 
horse in their boldness have vanished from sight, and every argument 
that sat in command against us has been destroyed. But on our side 
we raise a spiritual paean; we do not veil our exultation nor hide our 
trophy, but cry with the angels, "Let us sing to the Lord, for He has 
gloriously triumphed."23 

19 TfjC 8fi{ac nvv v07)J.LaTwV TpVq,fjC: Tpvcf>fJ was believed to be the Greek equivalent, ety-
mologically, of 'EStJ.L, Eden or Paradise. The 'Eden of the mind' is true doctrine. 

20 Eur. Andr. 184. 

21 T~V 1TO{7)Ct": Hom. II. 3.108; Od. 7.Z94. Cf supra n.16. 

22 Perhaps partly an allusion to Soph. Aj. 646ff. (Theophylact quotes this play at III, 
lZ0-21 below); but there is clearly more pointed allusion to some other classical passage, as 
yet untraced. 

28 Exod. 15.1. 



CHARLES GARTON 

II 

Essay of the same Theophylactus in dramatized form, putting 
case that there are no predestined ends set for human lives 

THEOPHRASTUS AGAINST THBOGNOSTUS 

93 

[LINE 1] As Theognostus has gotten a throat that is an open grave 
and armed his tongue like a sharpened razor, with anger swelling up 
his words after the manner of a snake; as he is bloated with his in­
solences, prides himself on vices, sticks out his neck in reviling and 
says, HOur lips are with us: who is our master?" ;24 as he did not, to 
quote the prophet, set at naught a bragging tongue but thinks of 
himself more highly than he ought to think, showing disobedience in 
this to the inspired Paul,25 I will punish his words with a rod and his 
speechifying with scourges. His heart indeed towered above the 
cedars of Lebanon, he forgot David and all his meekness,26 and raised 
too high the eyes of his mind, occupying himself in great matters and 
not calming and quieting his spirit, as it says in holy writ, but elevating 
his soul after stripping off the dignity of angelic discretion. We know 
that the law of God instructs us to deal with the fool according to the 
self-will of his folly, in case, luxuriating in the breadth of our indul­
gence, such men go off and fall into a deeper pit of wrongdoings for 
want of the reproof of our admonitions. Well, then, here I come against 
you the proud one (amalgam of presumptuous education and own 
thinking as you are),27 to begin from scripture and beautify the pre­
ludium of my discourse with a smatch of divinity. 

[22] If there are predestined ends for human lives, you quibbling 
censorious mouth (I will ask you questions and you answer me, as is 
said, I think, by the Declarer of ineffable mysteries to the man of 
many sufferings),28 how does it happen that populous cities suffer 

2& Ps. 12.4. 
25 Rom. 12.3. 
26 Ps. 132.1; 7Tpa.Orq'TOC (H) is the reading of LXX. 
11 l80v EyeO J7Tl c~ 'T1}v ~fJplc,.p,a,v Ka.l7Ta.l8rocw Ka.l 8,avo,a,v: The first six of these words are a 

quotation fromJer. 50.31 (27.31 in LXX), in which ~fJplc'Tp,a,v is feminine because 'you' is the 
city of Jerusalem. Theophylact keeps the feminine and justifies it by making the word 
qualify the two feminine nouns following, i.e. "you who are, who personify, presumptuous 
education and thinking." The end of the sentence, however, requires that in a translation 
the Biblical quotation be kept (a) intact, (b) recognizable to the reader, and (c) distinct from 
the added words. The only way to achieve this is to parenthesize the latter. 

28 Job: see Job 38.3. 



94 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

calamities when the air overhead is infected and imparts a kind of 
pestilential decay to those who have been exposed to it? Is there, I 
wonder, is there a predestined limit of a year set for their lives, at 
which precise point the countless races of men are swept up in a 
dragnet to their deaths? Again, how is it that often when two-hundred­
ton merchant ships have unfurled, so to say, their fine drapery and 
stemmed the greatest seas, they have come to grief under the wild 
onset of winds, sinking with all on board, so that young men and 
girls, old men and children are drowned as it were in unison? Is it, I 
wonder, is it that one single and unalterable end was predestined for 
the voyagers? But again, when the foundations of the earth are 
quaking there at hand, one may perhaps witness the simultaneous 
destruction, in what the holy apostle calls the twinkling of an eye, of 
limitless masses and every age-group of people who through a single 
accident are accorded a single grave, ... the nation-wide character of 
the destruction.29 What need is there to present you with the parallel 
arguments about gaping fissures in the ground? Or the defeats affect­
ing the marshalled regiments in military engagements-what place 
will you mentally assign to these, dear sir and artful dodger?30 
Occasions, I mean, where often we find not a member surviving of the 
sex that urinates against a wall31-to produce against you in turn 
some little tum of phrase from sacred history. 

[44] Again, "men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their 
days"32-how are you to take that? Answer! "Because," you say, 
"their predestined terms are cut short through proclivity towards 
evil deeds and failure to heed the better course." In that case it is un­
true that men's deaths are brought on when the predestined terms of 
their lives are fulfilled, you paragon of monks and best lOgician 
among them, because any lopping off from a predestined term that 
manages to slip into the picture absolutely destroys the term in 
question. Does not Paul, too, proclaim something like this with 
piercing effect when he declares to the Corinthians, "That is why 

29 riic 8£a,cp8opiic 'TO l7Tl&qp.ov: The phrase cannot be construed without torturing the 
Greek. This applies whether we take it as a kind of accusative in apposition to the sentence 
or as an exclamatory comment. Westerink is now inclined to think that it was originally 
governed by a participle missing from H: hence my indication of a lacuna. 

30 8£rt{Ja:r£KW'Trt'TF.: for this word in the sense indicated, i.e. 'slippery customer', cf schol. ad 
Ar. Nub. 448, LSJ S.V. 

31 I Sam. 25.22 and 34, and several times in I and II Kings: a Hebraism for the male sex. 
31 Ps. 55.23. 



CHARLES GARTON 95 

many of you are weak and ill, and some have died" ?33 The implication 
is that sin is cutting off before their time the lovers of itself and sending 
them to perdition. For we have it on the authority of our Lord's own 
voice that" every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and 
thrown into the fire"34 and burned. 

[56] I also know of a people being destroyed through recording of 
their numbers. When David made over the Jewish nation to be 
counted and committed his subjects so directed to official record, so 
that a people which was God's peculiar possession was being sub­
jected to a census, it was a needless provocation of the supreme God, 
and this was counted as a sin to David. It was for this reason that one 
of three blows had been ordained against the King and he was being 
forced to make a choice of misfortune. When the calamity proved 
ineluctable and the evil had been accepted as a matter for the exercise 
of choice, it was death that David as it were voted into power over the 
people, and mastery of the populace was entrusted to the misfortune 
chosen. David made death his choice, says scripture, rejecting both 
famine and war and declaring, "I will fall into the hands of the Lord, 
for his mercies are very many: in enemy hands I refuse to be en­
snared."35 In Aaron's offering of incense and in the lifting up of the 
serpent, was not the power of death being broken through? Was not 
Moses' holding up of his hands salvific of Israel when it was locked in 
battle? And when Job was being put to the ordeal did not his sons and 
daughters have their human lives brought to an end by a change that 
affected them collectively? It was not then because the predestined 
terms of their lives had been fulfilled that deprivation of children was 
brought to bear upon that champion in suffering, but by way of a test 
of his steadfastness of soul. Take the young daughter of Jephthah: 
was it not on account of the harsh requirement of his vow that she 
was being sacrificed? And how does the fratricidal killing of Abel 
happen, Sir Oracle, if the brother who was treacherously murdered 
was accorded a predestined term of life? If you mean that it is pre­
cisely because the term of his life had been fulfilled that he had then 
been handed over to death, why in that case is Cain sentenced to 

groaning and trembling, and why was he being given special protection 
against the like fate? 

38 I Cor. 11.30. 

84 Matt. 3.10; Luke 3.9. 
IS I Chron. 21.13; see the whole passage 1-14. 



96 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

[80] Again, how is it that he who draws the sword shall perish by 
the sword, if men have predestined ends set for their lives? How have 
fasting and prayer been able to rescue the suppliant from the hand of 
death if the predestined bounds of his life have been reached and do 
not admit of removal by artifice? How will encounters with wild 
animals and the acddents that happen to men from the passing 
moment be able to keep to predestined ends of life? Have you not 
heard that David in a hymn to the supreme God cries out the words, 
"You have preserved my soul from death"?36 Was there, I wonder, 
was there a single preset term of life for the inhabitants of Sodom and 
Gomorrah or for the host of Pharaoh which was destroyed at the Red 
Sea as if by spedal arrangement? 

[92] Again, if it is possible to find in scripture a person asking and 
receiving life and length of days, to find posterity of the wicked being 
completely destroyed, and the lawbreaker done away with as are 
grass and young green herbage when they wither, those predestined 
ends of life you speak of would have the ground taken from under 
them. Have you not heard that" an upright man shall flourish like a 
palm tree and be increased like a cedar in Lebanon,"37 "in a little 
while the sinful man will not be there any more, you will seek the 
place where he is and not find him,"38 "again I came by and was 
struck to find that he did not exist" ?39 How are we to take "were it not 
for anger of enemies, to prevent their long enduring"40-you with 
your chatter about predestined ends of lives and execration of the 
teachings of Moses? Is not the Lord's face set against doers of evil, so as 
to blot the memory of them from the face of the earth? Is it not the 
case that in schooling the upright man the Lord will school him with­
out handing him over to death? of whom is it true that their days 
came to nothing, amid emptiness, and their years amid anxiety? Is it 
not those who are casting piety away from them? And of whom does 
scripture say "let his days be made few,"41 if not of those who do not 
fear the Lord? On this account the prophet cries out with bared head 
for the wickedness of sinners to be brought to an end. Whose days did 

34 Ps. 56.13. 
87 Ps. 92.12. 
38 Ps. 37.10. 
at Ps. 37.36. 
'0 Deut. 32.27, text as in LXX. 
Ups. 109.8. 



CHARLES GARTON 97 

He make a few handbreadths? As for "Rescue my soul from prison"42 
and "Do not take me hence in the midst of my days,"43 how is it 
possible to take holy writ as prescriptive if predestined ends of life 
that retain their validity in an unshakable way have been laid down 
symbiotically with human beings? How was a supplement of life 
bestowed upon Hezekiah because of his tears ?44 Or who will endure 
to accept a predestined term that admits of diminution or increase, 
you noble layer down of the law and exerciser of arbitrary power45 

to the point of real hubris! 
[118] Mimickings of Greek mythology they are indeed, and wraiths 

of insubstantial, metaphysical Destiny, those empty monstrosities 
you utter out of such frivolous earnest! I would have you skip and 
dance and give a demonstration of the Pan performance chanting a 
paean. You gathered the winds into your bosom with your sophistries. 
You nurture mental arrogance with images of your vain dreams, and 
in your dreams the sea has parted for you. You are a greater thauma­
turge than Moses; a king's adjutants and chariots have met destruc­
tion at your hand; you beat the drum of your own blown-up character 
and give us a replica of David in your dancings forth, by which, how­
ever, you escort solemn verbiage instead of a holy tabernacle.46 You 
all but resemble people in a state of Corybantic frenzy and assimilate 
yourself to the melancholy-mad, having neither acquired under­
standing of letters nor perused the confines of theoretical contempla­
tion. 

[130] Now if, members of the panel, I crowned myself with victory 
in the contest, I do not expect to be garlanded by you with parsley and 
wild olive, but to be rewarded with the instrument47 of approbation, 
illumined by the vote of ratification, and glorified by the applause of 
confirmation, so that today I too may cry with the prophet, "Truth 
has risen up from the earth, and justice stooped from heaven to look 
in upon our tribunal."48 

42 Ps. 142.7. 
43 Ps. 102.24. 
44 Isai. 38; II Kings 20.1-11. 

45 MvaJUv: In Greek of this period 3vvaJLtc often has the sense of 'arbitrary power', 
'arbitrariness', cf supra n.13. 

46 II Sam. 6.12-23. 
47 .mAlf': It is obscure what exactly the 'instrument' is. Perhaps the notion of accolade is 

implied. 
48 Ps. 85.11. 



98 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

III 

By the same Theophylactus on the same problem 
at issue, verdict in dramatized form 

THE ADJUDICATORS Bv ANGELUS AND THEOPEMPTUS 

[LINE 1] To the God who loves judgement and justice, who gives 
utterance in the opening of the mouth, shedding grace upon the lips 
and preparing the tongue and lending beauty to it as to a writer's 
pen; who guides with reins the motions of the heart, and the mind as 
with a tiller towards right apprehensions; who gives a bodying of 
knowledge to every seeker ofit, every knocker at the door of heavenly 
contemplation, and introduces him to the inmost sanctuaries of 
thought, filling his cup with wisdom and letting the thirsty drink as it 
were from a sovereign stream of instruction: to such a God shall each 
of us now pray that we may show forth a riddle and a dark saying like 
light, articulate it with all clarity in fair form, and deliver ourselves 
of a goodly theme which takes its course along a road that is royal, 
evangelical, smooth, and involves no crookedness causing devious 
aberration. 

[14] Well, then, for our part, cogitating upon the doctrine which 
lies before you for examination, we neither affirm predestined terms 
of life which all, for everyone, and of necessity retain their immova­
bility-for this is a Greek concept, a proprium of an autocratic Destiny, 
and alien to the law laid down by the church; but neither do we up­
hold that profuse indeterminacy stretching to an abyss of infinity, 
which we see as in every way clashing with nature, since to God alone 
is infinitude to be attributed, because of the surpassing degree of his 
incomprehensibility. The upshot is that it is of our own free choice 
that there ensue for us both length of life and the curtailment arising 
from death. There are appointed for us virtue, vice, the kingdom of 
heaven, darkness everlasting, the unsleeping worm, unquenchable 
fire, and everything that was prepared for punishment or paradise by 
the judgement of God, which is impartial and abhors evil. Correspond­
ingly, both supplementation of life and bringing on of death are 
literally mortised to the human race through virtue or vice. 

[29] Surely it is the case also that the divinely-molded living 
creature, the first human being fashioned of clay from the earth, had 



CHARLES GARTON 99 

his being in the region between mortality and immortality. It was 
part of his nature, if he had in no respect disobeyed the command, not 
to taste death, or conversely if he had gone astray through shrinking 
from virtue and heedlessness of the better course, to return to dis­
solution of decay and, having sinned, to make his homeward trek to 
the bosom of the earth. Well, then, life does have predestined terms 
inasmuch as, being children of earth, to earth we shall all go when we 
make our departure; but supplementation or abridgement is super­
imposed upon men's lives because of either virtue or vice in their souls. 

[39] Whose bodies fell in the wilderness749 Surely the bodies of 
those who hankered after eating flesh. Was not the poison neutralized 
by prayer of him who fasted, when through the inclusion of the wild 
gourd those who partook of the meal were going to be in jeopardy750 
Is it not the case that "Phinehas stood up and made propitiation, and 
the plague was stayed"751 That Abraham, Moses and David "were 
gathered in a good old age to their fathers" 752 That "each one shall 
die for his own sin"53 and "evil is the death of sinners" 754 Does not 
holy writ say that "the impious shall soon be utterly destroyed,"55 
and again, "day by day He will increase the years of the king" 756 "If 
you turn again and listen to the Lord your God and do all his com­
mands, the Lord your God will greatly prosper you in the fruit of 
your body and in the produce of your ground and in the fruit of your 
cattle"57-did not the word of God so teach? Does not scripture say, 
"See, I have set before your face today life and death"?58 "If you obey 
the commandments of the Lord your God, you shall live and be 
multiplied and the Lord your God will bless you"59-did not the 
Mosaic injunction so legislate? "If your heart turns away and will not 
listen, you shall die the death and shall not be long-lived in the 
land"60-did not holy writ so proclaim 7 Does not the Lord say to 

UNum. 14.29,32; Heb. 3.17. 
60 II Kings 4.38-41. 
51 Ps. 106.30. 
n Gen. 25.8; Deut. 32.50, 34.7; I Kings 2.10. 
53 JeT. 31.30. 
ups. 34.21, text as in LXX. 
55 Cf. Deut. 28.20. 
5& Ps. 61.6. 

67 Deut. 30.8-9. 
i8 Deut. 30.15. 
51 Deut. 30.16. 
60 Deut. 30.17-18. 



100 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

Moses, "You shall see the land in front of you and not enter it, because 
at the waters of strife you did not bless me" ?61 

[61] Why then should we expatiate upon similar matters in more 
methodical detail, and why do we thicken our speech with a burden 
of many words? We know that good men's prayer often avails to 
bring on both life and death. Was not the child who had died handed 
over alive62 by the man who commanded the heavens, bridled the 
rain with his tongue, and guided the reins of a chariot of fire on which 
he rode? Did not the Shunammite woman receive the body of her son 
alive, the necrosis apparently dissolving away through the return of 
life to him?63 Indeed, "women received their dead by resurrection."64 
Is it not the case that when boys were jeering at him Elisha pro­
nounced sentence of death on them because of their jibe ?65 Did not 
Ananias together With his wife fall dead at the feet of the apostles 
when Peter condemned the cheap unreliability of their words?66 We 
also know of children perishing because of their parents' wickedness, 
for otherwise the firstborn would not have been destroyed by the 
angel of destruction in Egypt. Also, a father's piety can substitute for 
children who have sinned. It is on account of David that in the days of 
Solomon the kingdom is not tom from his hand, nor the scepters 
split, nor do the penalties for idolatry beset him round. We know 
that thanks to a king's due advertence, catastrophe to both a dty and 
a people is deferred: let Nineveh declare the great things that re­
pentance can do, even after God's proclamation through his prophet, 
"In another three days Nineveh shall be overthrown."67 The result 
was that they trusted in God, proclaimed a fast as scripture, I think, 
relates, and put on sackcloth. The king of Nineveh stood up from his 
throne, removed his robe, dad himself in sackcloth and sat among 
ashes. "And God," it says, "repented of the evil which He had 
threatened to do to them, and did not do it:'68 

[88] Did not the voice of God make this pronouncement to the 
wisest among kings: "If you walk in my ways and keep my injunc-

n Deut. 32.51-52, text as in LXX. 
81 I Kings 17.17-24; 'the man' is Elijah. 
88 II Kings 4.8-37; the agent of the miracle is Elisha. 
" Reb. 11.35. 
8S II Kings 1.23-24. 
88 Acts 5.1-11. 
17 Jonah 3.4-10. 
88 Jonah 3.10. 



CHARLES GARTON 101 

tions and my commandments, as your father David did, I will 
lengthen your days"?69 Does not the saying "I will kill and I will 
make alive"7o imply due recompense for the lives we have led? If we 
do not turn again, did He not threaten to draw his bow and burnish 
his sword, He who does not desire the death of sinners but their life 
and repentance from their sins? And this despite the fact that the 
human race has it at heart to despise the riches of his kindness, for­
bearance and patience. Nor must we overlook, either, the words, 
"Fear of the Lord prolongs a man's days, but the years of the wicked 
shall be made short."71 Differently to be accounted for is the case of 
the children murdered at Bethlehem and of the choir of those who 
have suffered martyrdom, on which it is not germane to the present 
moment to expatiate in our review. But it does not, we think, lie out­
side the supremely discerning greatness of mind of our Creator, 
either when, or how, or to what point the full term of the life of each 
of us is delimited, though neither is our sinning or not sinning to be 
attributed to the all-pervading foreknowledge of the supreme God-a 
subject on which not a few treatises, and excellent ones, too, have 
been painstakingly composed in many places by many before us. 

[108] These are, and will be, the fruits of our present and future 
cogitations. For your part, do not henceforward be children of wrath, 
but assume a spirit of gentleness and enter into awareness of your­
selves. Cease from wrath, and with David leave your anger in owner­
less neglect. Mortify the spirit of braggartry, amputate the limbs of 
self-exaltation, lull to rest the fiery heat of your nature. Humble the 
spirit and loftiness of your arrogance; make humility your peculiar 
possession, and do not adopt as your own any attitude that is ram­
pant or brute and beastly. In the words of the holy apostle, outdo 
each other in showing respect. He who chases after the first place is 
assigned the last, according to the gospel. Let no one be puffed up by 
wealth of knowledge. Our knowledge is only partial, and we see in a 
glass and perplexingly, as the holy apostle puts it.72 "We know nothing 
distinct, but wander about" :73 pagan literature has laid that down as 
a law for mankind, and we shall bear with it as behooved us. As for 

89 I Kings 3.14. 
70 Deut. 32.39. 

71 Prev. 10.27. 
72 I Cor. 13.12. 
73 Soph. Aj. 23. 



102 THEOPHYLACT, ON PREDESTINATION: A FIRST TRANSLATION 

doctrinal hairsplittings, tissues of questionings and recourses had by 
investigations, let us eschew them with a greater simplicity and piety, 
having turned giddy at the abysses of matters not entrusted to our 
keeping. Otherwise He who catches the wise in their knavery may lay 
a stumbling-stone before the precipitancy of our tongue, and we may 
crash into it and be shattered and then hear Paul saying, "Where is 
the wise man, where the scribe, where the debater of this age?"" 
et cetera. So then, changing your dogmas along with your characters 
and your rhetoric, let each of you go home disappointed of his wish. 

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, BUFFALO 

September, 1972 

" 1 Cor. 1.20.