Jerome, substitutes for Chalcis "in Greece," "in the East," whence some modern critics have concluded that Methodius suffered at Chalcis in Syria. But no weight can fairly be attached to this correction of Sophronius; and it is more probable that a Methodius whose name tradition had preserved as a martyr at Chalcis under Decius was wrongly identified with the better-known Lycian bishop. The evidence that the latter was a martyr at all is weak, and the silence of Eusebius is a difficulty; but Theodoret calls him bishop and martyr, as do the late Greek writers, while the Menaea make the mode of death decapitation.
Methodius wrote much, and his works were widely read and highly valued. Jerome several times refers to him: Epiphanius calls him ἀνὴρ λόγιος καὶ σφόδρα περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας ἀγωνισάμενος; Gregory Nyssen or Anastasius Sinaita (for the authorship is disputed), ὁ πολὺς ἐν σοφίᾳ; Andrew of Caesarea, ὁ μέγας; Eustathius of Antioch, ὁ τῆς ἁγίας ἄξιος μνήμης; and he is quoted by Theodoret, besides many later writers. Photius has preserved copious extracts (Codd. 234–237); other shorter extracts are to be found in Catenae, and others are given in the Nitrian MSS. (see Wright, Cat. MSS. Syr. in Brit. Mus.). The works of which we have knowledge are:
(1) The only one extant entire is the Symposium, or Banquet of the Ten Virgins. It reveals Methodius as an ardent admirer of Plato, from whom he probably derived his preference for dialogue form. In the present case he has not only imitated him in several passages, but has taken from him the whole idea of his work. As in Plato's Symposium the praises of Love are celebrated, so here are proclaimed the glories of Virginity. The imitation of the form of Plato's work is even kept up in not presenting the dialogue directly, but as reported by one present at it. Eubulius, or Eubulium, receives from a virgin Gregorion an account of a banquet in the gardens of Areté, not under Plato's plane-tree, but under an agnus-castus, in which ten virgin guests, at their hostess's command, pronounce ten successive discourses in praise of chastity. At the end of the banquet the victor Thecla leads off a hymn, to which the rest standing round as a chorus respond. But Methodius has caught very little of Plato's style or spirit. He has little dramatic power, and there is often little to distinguish one speaker from another. Of his general soundness on our Lord's Divinity there can be no doubt; and we have not found anything in the writings ascribed to him which an orthodox man might not have written, especially before the Arian disputes had made caution of language necessary. Elsewhere (Cod. 162) Photius mentions Methodius with Athanasius and other great names as one from whose writings Andrew had produced extracts garbled and falsified so as to teach heresy.
(2) In the Catalogue of Jerome he gives the first place to the writings of Methodius against Porphyry. He elsewhere refers to them (in Comm. in Dan. Pref. c. 13, vol. v. pp. 618, 730; Apol. ad Pammach. vol. i.; Ep. 70 ad Magnum, i. 425), stating in Ep. 70 that they ran to 10,000 lines. Philostorgius (viii. 14) rates the reply of Apollinarius to Porphyry as far superior to either that by Eusebius or by Methodius. All three replies have perished.
(3) On the Resurrection.—This work has been lost, but large extracts have been preserved by Epiphanius, Haer. 64, and by Photius, Cod. 234, see also Johan. Damasc. de Imag. Orat. 2. The text as given by Combefis and reprinted by Migne suppresses the heretical portions of the Epiphanian extracts. This work also is in the form of a Platonic dialogue, and is in refutation of Origen. The Origenist speakers deny the materiality of the resurrection body, and urge that it is enough if we believe that the same form shall rise again, beautified and glorified. In heaven our bodies will be spiritual; and so St. Paul teaches: "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body"; "Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Man had been originally in Paradise, that is, in the third heaven (II. Cor. xii.), having there none but a spiritual body; having sinned he was cast down to earth, where God made him "coats of skins," that is to say, for a punishment clad him in our present gross material bodies, which clog and fetter the soul and out of which spring our temptations to sin; for without the body the soul cannot sin. When we rise therefore to dwell where sin cannot be, we shall be like the angels, liberated from the flesh which has burdened us here. In reply, Methodius acutely points out the inconsistence of teaching that the soul cannot sin without the body, and at the same time that the body had been imposed on the soul as a punishment for sins previously committed; and in truth the body is an instrument for good as well as for evil. Paradise and the third heaven are not identified (II. Cor. xii.); two distinct revelations are spoken of. It is said that we shall hereafter be as the angels, that is, like them, not subject to change or decay; but not that we shall be angels or without earthly bodies. God does not make mistakes; if He had meant us to be angels He would have made us so at first. His creatures are diverse: besides angels, there are thrones, principalities, and powers. By death He does not design to turn us into something different in kind from what He at first meant us to be; but only as an artificer, when a work of his is polluted with stains which cannot otherwise be removed, melts it down, and makes it anew; so by death we shall be remade free from the pollution of sin. Similarly the world will not be destroyed, but made into a new and purer earth, fit for the risen saints.
(4) De Pythonissa.—Jerome tells us that this work, now lost, was directed against Origen. We may presume, therefore, that its scope was the same as that bearing the same title by Eustathius of Antioch, viz. to refute the opinion held by Origen after Justin Martyr that the soul of Samuel was under the power of Satan, and was evoked by the magical art of the witch of Endor. Methodius's view, however, could not have been the same as that of Eustathius, for a passage at the close of Photius's extracts from the treatise on the Resurrection implies a belief that the appearance of Samuel was real.
