Timotheans

Timotheans a section of the Alexandrian Monophysites (q.v.), so named from Timotheus Elurus, a bitter opponent of the canons of Chalcedon. During the patriarchate of Proterius, Timotheus established schismatical assemblies in Alexandria, having persuaded a few bishops and monks to join him in his secession from the communion of the patriarch. On the death of the emperor Marcian, he succeeded in obtaining consecration from two heretical and exiled bishops, and Proterius was murdered by the partisans of the usurping patriarch on Good-Friday, A.D. 457. After maintaining his position for three years, he was banished to the ancient Cherson, near Sebastopol, but was recalled by the emperor Basiliscus, and took possession of the patriarchal throne of Alexandria in 470. The opinions of Timotheus and his party went the full length of extreme Eutychianism. In some fragments of a work of his which still exist (Mai, Nova Collect. 7:35, 277, 304,305), he is found saying that the nature of Christ is one only-that is, divine; that in the first starting-point of conception by his mother he had one substance with human nature, but that he was not born of the Blessed Virgin in the ordinary way of birth, or her virginity could not have been preserved. This form of Eutychianism thus repudiated the reality of Christ's human nature, and was practically identical with the opinion of the Docetse.

⇒See also the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.