The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus: Translated into English with Introduction and NotesHippolytus, Antipope
Religion
The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus: Translated into English with Introduction and Notes
Hippolytus, Antipope
Canon law -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Church orders, Ancient
On the other hand it is true, as Connolly argues,[158] that
the rules of chapter 32 are truly third-century. The custom
according to which each Christian kept the consecrated
eucharist in his house and received it each morning is
attested in Tertullian’s _To his Wife_ II, 5, and the reason
given (Mark 16. 18) for receiving fasting is not that of the
later church (compare on chapter 29); Connolly observes
further that the home reservation of consecrated wine as well
as consecrated bread is unknown elsewhere.
Very curious, too, is the phrase “when _thou_ hast given
thanks” in section 3, for the section as a whole is addressed
to the laity. Is there here some reminiscence of earlier
corporately celebrated eucharists, like the agapes in chapter
26? Or are 3-4 a later addition, addressed to the clergy? Or
is there textual confusion?
NOTES
1
Characteristic of Hippolytus’s style are his frequent summaries of the
progress of his treatises; compare 16. 25; 23. 13; Philosophumena,
Proem.; i, 23. 4, etc.
The opening sentence is obscure, but Connolly’s explanation (pp.
161-162) appears the most likely: Man, made in God’s image, went
astray, but through the Incarnation God restored humanity by
presenting to Himself Christ, the perfect Man.
2. On the phrase translated “most important theme” compare Connolly,
p. 161; the original Greek word was presumably κορυφή.
3. If the “churches” are the different Roman congregations—an unusual
sense—Hippolytus speaks simply as a bishop; if the meaning is “at Rome
and elsewhere” he speaks not only as a bishop but as a teacher of
eminent authority.
4. The “lapse or error” is the Zephyrinus-Callistus “schism”. As
Hippolytus speaks of it as a recent event, the date of the treatise
cannot be far from 217.
PART I
Ordination
2
THE BISHOP
An episcopal election is still in the hands of the “multitude”
(compare Acts 6. 2), the clergy as yet having no distinct voice in
theory. Rather curiously no qualifications are given for the bishop;
contrast, e.g., 1 Timothy 3. 2-7 or the expansions in the
Constitutions and the Testament. The bishop’s functions are
essentially the same as in the Ignatian Epistles: as the embodiment of
his church’s unity he is the centre and head of all its activities,
whether in teaching, worship, or discipline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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