PHILOPONUS, JOHN. - Monophysite philosopher and theologian of the 6th century, also called John the Grammarian, b. in Alexandria toward the end of the 5th century, d. after the year 566. The appellation of F. (ἐν ὀνλόπους) corresponds to the name given to the members of certain associations of ascetics and zealous Christians that flourished in the first centuries (cf. S. Petridès, Spondosi et Philopones, in Echos d'Orient, 7 [1904], pp. 341-48, and also 4 [1901], pp. 225-31). John, in his youth, almost certainly belonged to one of these associations.
A disciple of the Neoplatonist Ammonius, son of Hermias, he distinguished himself above all as a philosopher and commented on the following works of Aristotle: the Categories, the two Analytica, the Physics, the Meteorology, the De generatione et corruptione, the De Anima and the Metaphysics. These commentaries have come down to us, published by various authors from the 16th century to the present. They have been included in the Corpus of Aristotle's commentaries published in Berlin (1887-1901), and occupy volumes XIII-XVIII. In them F. shows himself an eclectic philosopher; he sometimes goes so far as to abandon even Aristotle in order to follow Plato or Stoic theories, especially in physics.
As a theologian, F. had an enormous importance in the Christological controversies of the 6th century. He was the first to introduce into these controversies the notion of abstract or universal nature, that is, common to all individuals of the same species: the οὐσία or the φύσις ἑστῆρα of Aristotle, and this terminology was used by F. to put the Catholics, who upheld the definition of Chalcedon on the two φύσεις of Christ, in contradiction, to sow confusion among the Monophysites themselves and to give rise to new sects. The controversy went beyond the Christological field and extended to the theology of the Trinity.
Giving to the word φύσις the same meaning as to the words ὑπόστασις and person (ὑπόσωπους, πρόσωπον), F. logically came to attribute to the Trinity three φύσεις or οὐσίαι μαρτυαί. For this he was accused of tritheism. In reality, F. did not deny the numerical unity of the divine essence, but wanted to affirm the trinity of the persons or hypostases, each of which is really identified with the divine essence (v. TRITEISMO).
Besides the commentaries on Aristotle, F. wrote many treatises on grammar, philosophy, science and theology. The last are the most important. Mentioned are: 1) The Diaitetes (ὁ διαιτητής), that is, the "Arbiter," in which the author sets out his Christological terminology. This work, preserved in Syriac translation, was published in Latin together with other theological opuscules by A. Sanda, Opuscula monophysitica Ioannis Philiponi (Beirut 1930). St. John Damascene cites a long passage of it in the original text in De haeresibus liber, VII: PG 94, 745-53; 2) The Hexaemeron, a work edited by G. Reichardt, Ioannis Philiponi de opificio mundi libri VII (Leipzig 1897); 3) Against Proclus on the eternity of the world, published by H. Rabe, Ioannes Philoponus, de aeternitate mundi contra Proclum (ibid. 1899), a work in which the author refutes Proclus' 18 arguments in support of the thesis of the eternity of the world; 4) On the resurrection, a lost work, in which F. denied the identity of the resurrected bodies with our present bodies, basing himself on Aristotelian philosophy; 5) Opuscule on the Pasch, edited by C. Walter (Jena 1899). The author maintains that Jesus instituted the Eucharist on the 13th of uhde, with leavened bread, and that he did not celebrate the Jewish Passover; 6) Against the fourth Ecumenical Council, a lost work, divided into 4 parts, according to what Photius tells us in his Bibliotheca, cod. 55 (PG 103, 97): however, Michael the Syrian has preserved some extracts of it for us in his Chronicle, published by G. B. Chabot, Paris 1899-1910, I. VIII, ch. 13 (French trans., II, pp. 101-102). F. violently attacks St. Leo the Great, accusing him of Nestorianism, and denies that the Roman primacy is by divine right (cf. M. Jugie, La primauté romaine d'après les premiers théologiens monophysites, in Echos d'Orient, 33 [1934], pp. 187-89).
Bibliography7 works
Martino Jugie