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Palestine, Cyprus; 315 - 403 AD
- Women are weak, untrustworthy and not
intelligent
- Women priests in the Collyridian heresy?
- Nowhere has a woman exercised the
priesthood
- Also in the New Testament women have not been made
priests
- Deaconesses belong to an ecclesiastical order, but
they are not priests
- Epiphanius never ordained deaconesses
- The creation story of Adam and Eve should be taken
literally
- Both man and woman are made in God's image
Women are weak, untrustworthy and not
intelligent
Panarion 79, §1. ‘Who are there that teach such things
apart from women? In very truth, women are a feeble race, untrustworthy and of
mediocre intelligence. Once again we see that the Devil knows how to make women
spew forth ridiculous teachings, as he has just succeeded in doing in the case
of Quintilla, Maxima and Priscilla’ .
Women priests in the Collyridian
heresy?
Panarion 79, § 1., cont. “Some women decorate a sort of
bench or rectangular litter, spreading a linen cloth over it, on an annual
feast day, placing on it a loaf and offering it up in the name of Mary; then
all communicate in that loaf . . . . They tell us that certain women, come here
from Thrace, from Arabia, make a loaf in the name of the Ever-Virgin, assemble
together in one selfsame place and carry out quite irregular actions in the
name of the Blessed Virgin, undertaking to do something blasphemous and
forbidden and performing in her name, by means of women, definitely priestly
acts .”
Note. Epiphanius is concerned with the
Collyridian heresy, a word which comes from a Greek word, signifying ‘a
little loaf.’ The women offered some sort of worship to the Blessed
Virgin, in the course of which these loaves were offered on a table.
F.
J. Dölger, in Die eigenartige Marienverehrung der Philomarianiten oder
Kollyridianer in Arabia, has made a lengthy study of all the details of
this singular sect. The ‘Lord’s table’ seems to be a sort of
stool or square seat The ‘collyris’ is a little loaf of pure flour
such as is given to children. The feast day is perhaps an ancient Marian
festival. The text in any case is evidence of some form of irregular devotion
to our Lady; the sect itself is, according to Epiphanius himself, of Thracian
origin. No doubt we have represented in it some sort of symbolic action, where
Mary takes the place of a goddess and the women exercise some kind of
priesthood.
Nowhere has a woman exercised the
priesthood
Panarion 79, § 2. “Courage, servants of God, let us
invest ourselves with all the qualities of men and put to flight this feminine
madness. These women repeat Eve’s weakness and take appearance for
reality. But let us get to the heart of the subject . . . Never, anywhere, has
any woman acted as priest for God, not even Eve; even after her fall she was
never so audacious as to put her hand to an undertaking so impious as this; nor
did any of her daughters after her ever do so . . .Many men in the Old
Testament offered sacrifices] but nowhere has a woman exercised the
priesthood.”
Also in the New Testament women have not
been made priests
Panarion 79, § 3. “I come now to the New Testament. If
women had been appointed to act as priests on behalf of God, or to perform
official liturgical acts in the Church , it must surely have come about that
Mary herself, who received the privilege of carrying in her bosom the Sovereign
King, the heavenly God, God’s Son, would in the New Testament have
exercised the priestly office. But she did not judge such action to be right.
She was not even entrusted with the bestowal of Baptism, since the Christ
himself was baptized not by her but by John . . . . It was the Apostles who
were entrusted with these ministries and they appointed their successors . . .
Never has a woman been appointed amongst bishops and priests. But, someone will
say, there were the four daughters of Philip, who prophesied. Yes, but they did
not exercise the priestly office. And it is true that there is the Order of
Deaconesses in the Church . But they are not permitted to act as priests or
have anything to do with that office.”
Deaconesses belong to an ecclesiastical
order, but they are not priests
Panarion 79, § 4. “Deaconesses serve bishops and
priests on grounds of propriety, it may be in connection with the care of women
who are sick, it may be in connection with the Baptismal Rite . . . That is why
the Word of God does not permit a woman to teach in the Church, or to lord it
over men . . .This you must also carefully observe that only the office of
deaconesses was necessary in the ecclesiastical order; also ‘widows’
are mentioned by name, and among them the seniormost are called
‘elders’ (Greek: presbytidas), but they have never been made
women presbyters (presbyteridas) or women priests
(sacerdotissas).”
Epiphanius never ordained
deaconesses
Letter to John, Bishop of Jerusalem, §2. (394 AD) “For
many bishops in communion with me have ordained presbyters in my province whom
I had been unable to capture, and have sent to me deacons and subdeacons whom I
have been glad to receive. I myself, too, have urged the bishop Philo of
blessed memory, and the reverend Theoprepus, to make provision for the Church
of Christ by ordaining presbyters in those churches of Cyprus which, although
they were accounted to belong to my see, happened to be close to them, and this
for the reason that my province was large and straggling. But for my part I
have never ordained deaconesses nor sent them into the provinces of others, nor
have I done anything to rend the Church. Why, then, have you thought fit to
be so angry and indignant with me for that work of God which I have wrought for
the edification of the brethren, and not for their destruction?”
The creation story of Adam and Eve should
be taken literally
Letter to John, Bishop of Jerusalem, §5. “Of one
position which he (Origen) strives to maintain I hardly know whether it calls
for my tears or my laughter . . . .I pass over his idle explanation of the
coats of skins, and say nothing of the efforts and arguments he has used to
induce us to believe that these coats of skins represent human bodies. Among
many other things, he says this: "Was God a tanner or a saddler, that He should
prepare the hides of animals, and should stitch from them coats of skins for
Adam and Eve?" "It is clear," he goes on, "that he is speaking of human
bodies." If this is so, how is it that before the coats of skins, and the
disobedience, and the fall from paradise, Adam speaks not in an allegory, but
literally, thus: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;" or what
is the ground of the divine narrative, "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to
fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the
flesh instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made
He a woman" for him? Or what bodies can Adam and Eve have covered with
fig-leaves after eating of the forbidden tree? Who can patiently listen to the
perilous arguments of Origen when he denies the resurrection of this flesh, as
he most clearly does in his book of explanations of the first psalm and in many
other places? Or who can tolerate him when he gives us a paradise in the third
heaven, and transfers that which the Scripture mentions from earth to the
heavenly places, and when he explains allegorically all the trees which are
mentioned in Genesis, saying in effect that the trees are angelic potencies, a
sense which the true drift of the passage does not admit? For the divine
Scripture has not said, "God put down Adam and Eve upon the earth," but "He
drove them out of the paradise, and made them dwell over against the paradise."
He does not say "under the paradise." "He placed ...cherubims and a flaming
sword ...to keep the way of the tree of life." He says nothing about an ascent
to it. "And a river went out of Eden." He does not say "went down from Eden."
"It was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison
...and the name of the second is Gihon." I myself have seen the waters of
Gihon, have seen them with my bodily eyes. It is this Gihon to which Jeremiah
points when he says, "What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt to drink the
muddy water of Gihon?" I have drunk also from the great river Euphrates, not
spiritual but actual water, such as you can touch with your hand and imbibe
with your mouth. But where there are rivers which admit of being seen and of
being drunk, it follows that there also there will be fig-trees and other
trees; and it is of these that the Lord says, "Of every tree of the garden thou
mayest freely eat." They are like other trees and timber, just as the rivers
are like other rivers and waters. But if the water is visible and real, then
the fig-tree and the rest of the timber must be real also, and Adam and Eve
must have been originally formed with real and not phantasmal bodies, and not,
as Origen would have us believe, have afterwards received them on account of
their sin.
Both man and woman are made in God's
image
Letter to John, Bishop of Jerusalem, §6. “For, among
other wicked things, Origen has presumed to say this, too, that Adam lost the
image of God, although Scripture nowhere declares that he did. Were it so,
never would all the creatures in the world be subject to Adam's seed-that is,
to the entire human race; yet, in the words of the apostle, everything "is
tamed and hath been tamed of mankind." For never would all things be subjected
to men if men had not-together with their authority over all-the image of God.
But the divine Scripture conjoins and associates with this the grace of the
blessing which was conferred upon Adam and upon the generations which descended
from him. No one can by twisting the meaning of words presume to say that
this grace of God was given to one only, and that he alone was made in the
image of God (he and his wife, that is, for while he was formed of clay she was
made of one of his ribs), but that those who were subsequently conceived in the
womb and not born as was Adam did not possess God's image, for the Scripture
immediately subjoins the following statement: "And Adam lived two hundred and
thirty years, and knew Eve his wife, and she bare him a son in his image and
after his likeness, and called his name Seth." And again, in the tenth
generation, two thousand two hundred and forty-two years afterwards, God, to
vindicate His own image and to show that the grace which He had given to men
still continued in them, gives the following commandment: "Flesh ...with the
blood thereof shall ye not eat. And surely your blood will I require at the
hand of every man that sheddeth it; for in the image of God have I made man." .
. . . Paul, too, the "chosen vessel," who in his preaching has fully maintained
the doctrine of the gospel, instructs us that man is made in the image and
after the likeness of God. "A man," he says, "ought not to wear long hair,
forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God." He speaks of "the image"
simply, but explains the nature of the likeness by the word "glory."
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