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.
The title “high priest”, however, is not used by Ignatius, and in the extant Christian literature first occurs in Tertullian, _On Baptism_ 17 (_ca._ 205); Hippolytus also uses “high-priesthood” of the episcopal office in Philosophumena, Proem. 6. Similarly Tertullian calls the presbyters “priests” in his _Exhortation to Chastity_ 7, 11 (_ca._ 210), and in 9. 2 of our treatise Hippolytus describes their work as “priesthood”.
This appearance of sacerdotal titles for Christian ministers—something that is foreign to the New Testament—was a consequence of the adoption of sacrificial terms for Christian worship:[159] sacrifices are offered by priests. So Didache 13. 3 describes the prophets as “your high priests” (compare 15. 1), while Ignatius (_Philadelphians_ 4) writes “one altar, as one bishop”. Consequently it is more than probable that “high priest” and “priest” were in common—although by no means universal—use among Christians by the middle of the second century. Hippolytus’s distrust of innovations corroborates this; apart from anti-modalist additions the terminology of his consecration prayer can scarcely be thought to depart much from the forms in use in his younger days.
Otherwise the bishop is said to “feed the flock”, a New Testament phrase[160] that was of course traditional; to Hippolytus it would include both correct teaching of doctrine and faithful administration of the sacraments. Since in Philosophumena IX, 7 he inveighs fiercely against Callistus’s claim to absolve grave sins, “to remit” here can refer only to minor offences. “To assign the lots” strictly construed would mean “to appoint the clergy”, but compare on 9. 1. “To loose every bond” is probably only a traditional liturgical generality.
THE CHRISTIAN “SACRIFICES”
Sacrificial terms in the New Testament, except when used to describe the Atonement, are employed within Christianity only in a transferred sense: the Christian sacrifices are either acts of righteousness,[161] the rendering of prayer and praise,[162] or gifts given to fellow-Christians.[163] In the post-apostolic age this last sense was popular and in one particular application it was made a definitely technical term. Christian worship and Christian social life centred in a “table-bond”; the specifically Christian act of worship was the eucharist, which in apostolic times was regularly celebrated in conjunction with a meal of some sort,[164] and even in Hippolytus’s day had not lost all traces of the earlier custom (chapters 5-6). But the Christians were extremely fond of other common meals as well, the “agapes”, of a less sacred but still definitely religious nature (