How Can You be the Anti-Pope When There was No Pope?

Website: https://www.centerforchristianhistory... Instagram: Instagram: centerforchristianhistory Facebook: Facebook: christianhistorytoday Donate: https://www.centerforchristianhistory... Hippolytus of Rome has long been called Christianity’s first antipope—a rival church leader who supposedly challenged the authority of the bishop of Rome. But what if that familiar story imposes a later understanding of the papacy on a much earlier church? And what if the writings attributed to Hippolytus were not all written by the same man? These questions take us into the complicated world of Christianity in the second and third centuries, when believers were still working out how congregations should be organized, who had authority to teach and lead, and how Christian doctrine and worship should be expressed. Rome was not necessarily a single congregation with one bishop presiding over every Christian in the city. Its Christian communities developed over time, and the process by which one bishop came to be recognized as the leading bishop of Rome is central to understanding the Hippolytus controversy. A Hippolytus is remembered among the Christian martyrs associated with the persecution under the Roman emperor Maximinus Thrax. Ancient evidence connects him with Pontianus, bishop of Rome, who was exiled to Sardinia in AD 235. Later accounts presented Hippolytus as a rival bishop who had opposed Roman church leaders and was ultimately reconciled with the church. But the evidence is more tangled than that straightforward account suggests. The name Hippolytus became attached to different writings, traditions, and biographical details, leaving historians to ask whether the familiar portrait combines more than one early Christian figure. The Rev. Dr. Alistair C. Stewart, an Anglican priest and scholar at Codrington College in Barbados, joins Nick Walters of the Center for Christian History to examine the historical Hippolytus and the development of the early church. Codrington College serves the Anglican Church in the Province of the West Indies and has a relationship with the University of the West Indies. Dr. Stewart’s scholarship includes The Original Bishops, on the emergence of episcopal leadership, and Hippolytus on the Apostolic Tradition, a study of one of the most influential and debated texts associated with Hippolytus. Was Hippolytus really the first antipope? Dr. Stewart challenges the assumption behind the label: it presumes a single Roman bishop with the kind of authority that developed later. His account instead explores a city of Christian communities whose leaders gradually moved toward a more unified structure. The interview also considers how later historians helped establish the popular image of Hippolytus as an antipope—and why a nineteenth-century interpretation should not automatically be treated as a description of third-century Rome. The conversation then turns to the Apostolic Tradition. Often associated with Hippolytus, this work has been used to reconstruct early Christian practices, from ordaining bishops to celebrating the Eucharist and baptizing new believers. Yet the text has a complicated history: it survives through later versions and translations, and scholars disagree about its author, date, composition, and original setting. Dr. Stewart explains why it cannot simply be opened as a complete, untouched instruction manual for the Roman church of AD 215. Even the question of which Hippolytus, if any, should be connected to it requires care. That uncertainty does not make the Apostolic Tradition unimportant. Its prayers and descriptions of worship have had a remarkable afterlife. Dr. Stewart draws connections between material associated with the text and ordination prayers used in Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. He also explores its influence on modern Eucharistic prayers, including prayers familiar to Roman Catholics and Anglicans, and on baptismal rites that ask candidates to profess the Christian faith. Ancient Christian words and practices continue to shape worship, even when the history of the surviving text is difficult to reconstruct. These examples open a larger historical question: when modern Christians say a prayer or practice comes from the early church, what exactly does that claim mean? Is a text a direct record of what one congregation did, a collection of practices assembled over time, or a later reconstruction of an earlier tradition? How did the growing authority of bishops affect the language of ordination and worship? And what can similarities across Christian traditions tell us about their shared inheritance? Learn more about Dr. Stewart and his scholarship: [https://codringtoncollege.edu.bb/pers...](https://codringtoncollege.edu.bb/pers...)