Theodore (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Theodore is known only as a recipient of letters from Isidore of Pelusium, the ascetic and exegete active in the eastern Nile Delta of Egypt in the early-to-mid 5th century. Isidore most often addresses him as scholasticus, a trained advocate or legal pleader, and once as a deacon, and writes to him as an educated correspondent capable of argument: counseling him to restrain or rightly direct his sharp tongue toward defending the wronged and refuting heretics and pagans rather than browbeating litigants, debating the relation of praise to deliberate choice versus fortune, urging the philosophic life under slander, weighing the limits of lawful self-defense and revenge, and instructing him that faith without works does not save. The tenor is that of a learned teacher correcting and sharpening a clever but combative younger man. Beyond these letters he is otherwise unattested.