502
APOSTOLICAL
CONSTITUTIONS
A comparison of the Constitutions with the material upon which they are based will illustrate the compiler’s method. (a) To begin with the DidascalicL. It is unmethodical and badly digested, homiletical in style, and abounding in Biblical quotations. There is no precise arrangement ; but the subjects, following a general introduction, are the bishop and his duties, penance, the administration of the offerings, the settlement of disputes, the divine service, the order of widows, deacons and deaconesses, the poor, behaviour in persecution, and so forth. The compiler of the Constitutions finds here material after his own heart. He is even more discursive and more homiletical in style; he adds fresh citations of the Scriptures, and additional explanations and moral reflexions; and all this with so little judgment that he often leaves confusion worse confounded {e.g., in ii. 57, where, upon a symbolical description of the Church as a sheepfold, he has superimposed the further symbolism of a ship). (5) Passing on to books vii. and viii., we observe that the compiler’s method of necessity changes with his new material. In the former book he still makes large additions and alterations, but there is less scope for his prolixity than before ; and in the latter, where he is no longer dealing with generalities, but making actual definitions, the Constitutions of necessity become more precise and statutory in form. Throughout he adopts and adapts the language of his sources as far as possible, “ only pruning in the most pressing cases,” but towards the end he cannot avoid making larger alterations from time to time. And his alterations throughout are not made aimlessly. Where he finds things which would obviously clash with the customs of his own day, he unhesitatingly modifies them. An account of the Passion, with a curiously perverted chronology, the object of which was to justify the length of the Passion-tide fast, is entirely revised for this reason (v. 14); the direction to observe Easter according to the Jewish computation is changed into the exact contrary for the same reason (v. 17); and where his archetype lapses into speaking of a lull in persecution he naively informs us that the Romans have now given up persecuting and have adopted Christianity (vi. 26), forgetting altogether that he is speaking in the character of the apostles. Above all, he both magnifies the office of the Christian ministry as a whole and alters what is said of it in detail (for example, the deaconess loses rank not a little), to make it agree with the circumstances of his day in general, and with his own ideas of fitness in particular. It is here that his evidence is at once most valuable and needing to be used with the greatest care. To give one striking example of the value of these documents. The Canones Hippolyti (vi. 43) provide that one who has been a confessor for the faith may be received as a presbyter by virtue of his confessorship and not by the laying on of the bishop’s hands; but if he be chosen a bishop, he is to be ordained. This provision passes on into the Egyptian Ecclesiastical Canons and other kindred documents, and even into the Testamentuvi Domini. But the corresponding passage in the Apostolical Constitutions (viii. 23) entirely reverses it: “A confessor is not ordained, for he is so by choice and patience, and is worthy of great honour. . . . But if there be occasion, he is to be ordained either a bishop, priest, or deacon. But if any one of the confessors who is not ordained snatches to himself any such dignity upon account of his confession, let the same person be deprived and rejected; for he is not in such an office, since he has denied the constitution of Christ, and is worse than an infidel.” Who, then, is the author of the Constitutions, and what can be inferred with regard to him? (i.) By separating off the sources which he used from his own additions to them, it at once becomes clear that the latter are the
work of one man : the style is unmistakable, and the method of working is the same throughout. The compiler of books i.-vi. is also the compiler of books vii., viii. (ii.) As to his theological position, different ^■p]0piacet views have been held. Funk suggests Apollinari- and ’date, anism, which is the refuge of the destitute ; and Achelis inclines in the same direction. But the affinities of the author are quite otherwise, the most pronounced of them being a strong subordinationist tendency, denial of a human soul to Christ, and the like, which suggest not indeed Arianism but an inclination towards Arianism. Above all, his polemic is directed against the dying heresies of the 3rd century ; and he writes with an absence of constraint which is not the language of one who lives amidst violent controversies or who is conscious of being in a minority. All this points to the position of a “ conservative ” or semi-Arian of the East, one who belongs, perhaps, to the circle of Lucian of Antioch and writes before the time of Julian. It is hard to think of any other time or circumstances in which a man could write like this, (iii.) The indications of time have been held to point to a different conclusion. On the one hand, the fact that the attempt to rebuild the temple by Julian in 363 is not mentioned in vi. 24 points to an earlier date; and the fact the KOTriarai are not mentioned amongst the church officers points in the same direction, for elsewhere they are first mentioned in a rescript of Constantius in a.d. 357. On the other hand, in the cycle of feasts occur the names of several which are probably of later date— e.g., Christmas and St Stephen, which were introduced at Antioch c. a.d. 378 and 379 respectively. Again, Epiphanius (c. a.d. 374) appears to be unacquainted with it; he still quotes from the Didascalia, and elaborately explains it away where it is contrary to the usages of his own day. But as regards the former point, it is possible that the Apostolical Constitutions actually gave rise to these festivals; or, on the other hand, that the two passages were subsequently introduced either by the writer himself or by some other hand, when the last book of the Constitutions was being used as a law-book. And as regards the latter, the fact that Epiphanius does not use the Constitutions is no proof that they had not yet been compiled, (iv.) As to the region of composition there is no real doubt. It was clearly the East, Syria or Palestine. Many indications are against the latter, and Syria is strongly suggested by the use of the Syro-Macedonian calendar. Moreover, the writer represents the Roman Clement as the channel of communication between the apostles and the Church. This fact both supplies him with the name by which he is commonly known, Pseudo-Clement, and also furnishes corroboration of his Syrian birth; since the other spurious writings bearing the name of Clement, the Homilies and Recognitions, are likewise of Syrian origin. Moreover, the spurious Ignatian epistles, which are also Syrian, depend throughout upon the Constitutions, (v.) But this is not all. It was long ago noticed that Pseudo-Clement bears a very close resemblance to Pseudo-Ignatius. Usher, as we have seen, identified them, and modern criticism accepts this identification as a fact (Lagarde, Harnack, Funk, Brightman). Lightfoot, indeed, still hesitated (Ap. Fathers u. i. 266 n.) on the ground that Pseudo-Ignatius occasionally misunderstands the Constitutions, that the two writings give the Roman succession differently, and that Pseudo-Clement shows no knowledge of the Christological controversies of ISTicaea. But as regards the first of these, it is rather a case of condensed citation than of misinterpretation; the second is explained by the writer’s carelessness as shown in other passages, and all are solved if a considerable interval of time elapsed between the compilation of the Constitutions and the spurious Ignatian epistles. It is clear then that the compiler was a Syrian, and that
