Titus of Bostra

Titus of Bostra (Bosra, now in Syria) (died c.378) was a Christian theologian and bishop. Sozomen names Titus among the great men of the time of Constantius.

Sozomen also tells of a mean trick played upon Titus by Julian the Apostate. It was expected that the reestablishment of paganism would cause riots, as it had elsewhere. Julian wrote to Titus, as bishop of Bostra that he would hold him and the clergy responsible for any disorder. Titus replied that though the Christians were equal in number to the pagans they would obey him and keep quiet. Julian then wrote to the Bostrians urging them to expel Titus because he had calumniated them by attributing their quiet conduct not to their own good dispositions but to his influence. Titus remained bishop at Bostra until c. 371.

According to Socrates Titus was one of the bishops who signed the Synodal Letter, addressed to Jovian by the Council of Antioch (363), in which the Nicene Creed was accepted, though with a clause "intended somewhat to weaken and semiarianize the expression homoousios".

Titus of Bostra is one of various early church writers claimed as an early Universalist by J. W. Hanson (1899) of the Universalist Church of America. Hanson's evidence is based on Titus of Bostra's teaching that the immortal souls of the dead would be purified in purgatory till all were saved:

And the punishments are holy, as they are remedial and salutary in their effect upon transgressors ; for they are inflicted, not to preserve them in their wickedness, but to make them cease from their wickedness.

St. Jerome names Titus among writers whose secular erudition is as marvellous as their knowledge of Scripture; in his De Viris Illustribus, cii, he speaks of his "mighty" (fortes) books against the Manichaean and nonnulla alia. He places his death under Valens.

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