THE ROLE OF THE LAYMAN IN THE ANCIENT CHURCH Williams, George Huntston Greek and Byzantine Studies; Jul 1, 1958; 1, 1; ProQuest pg. 9

THE ROLE OF 
THE LAYMAN 
IN THE 

ANCIENT CHURCH* 

GEORGE HUNTSTON WILLIAMS 

Harvard Divinity School 

T HE AUTHORITY of Kenneth Scott Latourette may be ad­
duced for the fact that the lay members of the ancient 

churches were not conspicuous for sustained missionary activity 
either at home or as itinerants: 

It would probably be a misconception [he writes] to think 
of every Christian of the first three hundred years after 
Christ as aggressively seeking con'TYerts. Such pictures as 
we have 0/ these early communities in the New Testament 
... warrant no such conclusion. In none of them does 
any hint occur that the rank and file of Christians regarded 
it as even a minor part of their duty to communicate their 
faith to others. l 

*Paper read bdore the working party gathered by the Depart1\1ent on the Laity 
of the Wodd Council of Churches, New Haven, Connecticut, July 21, 1957. 
It is being concurrently published in somewhat reduced form in The Ecumenical 
Rel'ieu'. X (1958), 225-248. 

IThe Mission and Expansion of Christianity, I (New York/London, 1937), 117. 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

But if none rose up with the same vocation as the first apostles 
and evangelists, the fact remains that the expansion of Chris­
tianity in the hostile environment of the first three centuries, 
and its eventual conquest of the seats of political authority 
has ever since been considered so phenomenal as to be one of 
the clearest proofs of the divine credentials of this new people, 
this third race under God, neither Jew nor Barbarian. 2 Despite 
Latourette's stricture, we instinctively feel, even though the 
documentation is meagre, that the witness in life and death of 
unnamed multitudes of lay members contributed as much to 
the spread of Christianity as the writing and preaching and the 
valiant martydom of their more articulate clerical leaders. a 

For all Christians were aware of being, not only a third race, 
the peculiar people of God the Lord of Hosts, but also a royal 
priesthood (I Peter 2: 9; Rev. 1: 6 ) with a divine commission 
to bring salvation to the whole world. Hence the doctrine of 
the priesthood of all believers emerges as a basic concept for the 
interpretation of the laymen in the ancient Church and their 
mISSIon. 

Significantly, most of the major work in the last score of 
years on what has been commonly thought of as a basically 
Protestant emphasis in ecclesiology has been done by Roman 
Catholic scholars, notably in France and Belgium. It was mani­
fest from the first that irenic, ecumenically minded Catholics 
could find in a liturgical reconception of «Luther's doctrine" 
the means of establishing a congenial point of contact with 
Protestantism while at the same time rectifying, as they also 
openly acknowledged, the disproportionate clerical emphasis 
which had come in with Tridentine Catholicism. In these num­
erous and often very moving studies, most of them dogmatico­
historical with a good deal of reference to recent papal pro­
nouncements, the great hope expressed is that Catholic laymen 

20n the missionary significance of this conviction, see Emanuel Kellerhals, "Das 
dritte Geschlecht," Evangelisches Missions-Magazin, XL (1946), 101, 133. 

aThere is considerable incidental material on lay witness and lay evangelism in the 
very useful and attractive account by John Foster, After the Apostles: Missionary 
Preaching of the First Three Centuries (London: S.P.C.K., 1951). 

10 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

will recover their ancient place in the liturgy, in Christian 
action, and in what is commonly called today the lay aposto­
late. 4 Yet even here, when the tnissionary role of the ancient 
layman comes under scrutiny, the Catholic writer, like the Pro­
testant, is restrained in his deductions because of the paucity 
of documentation.!'5 

All this is to say that we shall therefore examine all the 
functions of the ancient layman, content with an occasional 
glimpse of specifically missionary lay activity as it may open up 
for us in the sparse documentation. 

Our understanding of the laity will be shaped, not primari­
ly in terms of ordination and the lack thereof, nor of theological 
education and the relative want thereof, but rather in terms of 

'See "The Lay Apostolate in the Roman Catholic Church," Laity, I (February, 
1956). The most comprehensive study is that of Yves M. ). Congar, lalons pour 
une theologie du larcat (Paris, 1954 [American translation, 1957]). A more popu­
lar presentation, in part inspired by Congar, is that of Gerard Philips, The Role of 
the Laity in the Church, translated from the French by ). R. Gilbert and). W. 
Moudry (Chicago, 1956). Paul Dabin, prematurely taken by death, had prepared 
the way with two companion collections of documents and commentary in Le 
sacerdoce royal des fideJes dans les livres saints (Paris, 1941) and Le sacerdoce 
royal des fideles dans la tradition ancienne et moderne (Brussels / Paris, 1950). 
Earlier, in the midst of widespread disaffection from Rome among Belgian work­
ers and intellectuals, Dabin had inaugurated his life's work with the programmatic 
L'Apostolat la"ique (1933). Other Catholic writings, dogmatic and canonistic, and 
contemporary more than historical in character, may be mentioned: Engelbert 
Niebecker, Das allgemeine Priestertum der Gliiubigen (Paderborn, 1936); G. 
Thils, "De taak van de leek in onze opfatting van de Kerk," Het christeli;k 
Oosten en Hereniging (1949); N. Rocholl, Yom Laienpriestertum (Paderborn, 
1940); P. F. Palmer, "The Laical Priesthood: Real or Metaphysical?" Theological 
Studies, VIII (1947), 574ff.; Ernst Rosser, Die SteJiunK der Lai.en in deT Kirche 
nach dem kanonischen Recht (Wiirzburg, 1949); Rudolph MUller-Erb, "Der Laie 
in der Kirche," Theologische Quartalschrift, CXXX (1950), 184-196; O. Kohler, 
"Der Laie im katholischen Kirchenrecht," Stimmen der Zeit (April, 1950); 
Oswald von Nell-Bruening and H. Keller, Das Recht der Laien in der Kirche 
(Heidelberg, 1950); E. Boularand, "Sacerdoce de I'Eglise, sacerdoce du baptise," 
Revue d' Ascetique et de Mystique, XXXII (1956), 361. 

The corresponding Orthodox studies and statements are as follows: N. 
Afanasev, Sluzhenie miryan v Tserkvi [The Lay Authority in the Church] (Paris, 
1955); for Greece primarily: I. Kotsones, He Thesis ton laikon (Athens, 1956), 
which draws heavily on the councils and canon law, and Panagiotes Trempelas, 
Hoi Laikoi en t'li ekklesil1i (Athens, 1957); for Russian Orthodoxy: L. N. Parij­
skij, "Die Rolle des Laien im Leben der Russisch-Orthodoxen Kirche," Kirche in 
der Zeit, XII (1957), 12-16; and the same from a Western point of view, Bern­
hard Schultze, S. J., "Die byzantinisch-slawische Theologie tiber den Dienst der 
Laien in der Kirche,"Ostkirchliche Studien, V (1956), 243ff. 

"For example, ). Bauer has to make do with inferences from a commentary by 
Theodoret when he deals specifically with our theme, the only such tide I have 
come across. "Die Missionspflicht des einzelnen nach der Lehre vom mystischen 
Leib Christi," Theologische-Praktische Quartalsch1-ift, CI (1953), 296. 

11 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

the Church gathered for WGrship, instruction, and delibera­

tion (ekklesia) over against the equally important uchurch" 

diffused or scattered or seeded in the work-a-day world (dias­
pora) as leaven in the lump (not as wheat among tares!).6 

On this view even the ordained cleric is, in a sense, in his action 

as husbandman and citizen a ulaic." As it turns out, however, 

we shall not be able to slight the role of the laity in ekklesia as 

distinguished from the laity in diaspora, because our largely 

clerical sources give us relatively little about laymen outside the 

meeting! 

We shall limit our sketch of the evolution of the layman 

In ekklesia and in diaspora from Pentecost to the end of the 

persecutions. 7 The recognition of Christianity by Constantine, 

as for so much else in church history, clearly ends a period in 

the evolution of the laity as a true order (taxis) with its own 

often distinctive liturgical, constitutional, disciplinary, elee­

mosynary, and witnessing role; and marks the climax of the 

gradual differentiation of the laos tou theou into laity and 

clergy, and the accompanying atrophy of lay functions. 

At three points is the position of the laity markedly differ­

ent in the ante- and the post-Nicene epochs. In the very first 

days of the Church's self-consciousness as a new people set 

apart, the whole of the Church as the laos tou theou was seen 

over against the people of the old covenant, while the baptismal 

recruits were understood to have entered into a priestly king­

dom, neither Jew nor Gentile, no longer in bondage to the 

world about them, yet servants of the King to come. Then, 

with the maturation of sub apostolic Christianity, this historico­

theological conviction made room for the functional differen­

tiation between the clerical officers of the priestly people of 

6The contrast ekklesia-diaspora has been suggested by Hans-Ruedi Weber in "The 
Church in the House," Laity, No.3, April, 1957. 

'This treatment parallels another study, made by the author, of the evolution of 
the clergy in the ante-Nicene period. The Ministry in Historical Perspectives, 
H. Richard Niebuhr and Daniel Williams, eds. (New York, 1956), ch. ii. 

12 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

God and the unordained faithful" in a process which was com­
pleted before the end of the persecutions and which was in­
deed abetted by them. The bishop had become an awesome 

monarch. The orders of church discipline expressly call him 
basileus and rex. Finally, with the conversion of Constantine 
and the Christianization of his office, Christianity in the 
period of the great councils found itself contrasting not clergy 
and laity as in the ante-Nicene period, but clergy and the chief 
of the laity, namely, the Christian emperor. The sudden 
emergence of a layman preeminent above all the rest and over­
shadowing even the bishops of the great sees of Rome, Alexan­
dria, Antioch, and presently Constantinople, found the Church 
in her manuals of discipline, in her liturgy, and in her theology 
insufficiently prepared to cope with the imperious royal­
priestly claims of the Christianized head of state; and thus, 
while depressing still further the role of ordinary laymen, she 
for the most part acquiesced in accepting the sacral authority 
of the Christian emperor. Eusebius styled Constantine episkopos 
ton ektos. The Council of Chalcedon hailed Marcian as at once 
priest, king, and didaskalos tes ekklesias. 

The first difference, then, between the ante- and the post­
Nicene situation in respect to the laity is that, where Christians 
had once worked out their tensions in terms of priesthood and 
laity, in the Constantinian era they fought it out in terms of 
Church and State, that is, specifically, as episcopate over against 
sacral kingship. The "lay" ascetics, on becoming organized in 
the fourth century as coenobites, almost alone perpetuated in 
the age of imperial favor the ethos of the militia Christi of the 
days of persecution. Nevertheless, though monks (in the East, 
up to modern times) have been, for the most part, laymen on 
the matter of ordination, they have not been laymen in the 
sense of participating in the life of the world in diaspora, and 

.. The differentiation here stressed need not be taken to imply a primitively amor­
phous or fully "democratic" church. The strict gradations within the "oligarchic­
democratic" Dead Sea Community with priests and Levites throw light on the 
distribution of authority in the constitution of the Primitive Church. On this 
see Bo Reicke, "The Constitution of the Primitive Church," The Scrolls and the 
New Testament, Krister Stendahl, ed. (New York, 1957}, ch. x; translated 
from Theologische Zeitschrift, X (1954), 95-113. 

13 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

therefore they will not be taken into consideration in what 
follows. 

A second point of difference between the two epochs is 
the complete clericalization, by the opening of the fourth 
century, of all the outstanding functions in the Church from 
doorkeeper to bishop, the assimilation of these several degrees 
of the clergy to the cursus honorum of civil administration, 
and the concurrent shriveling (at least in the West) of the 
older feeling that one might serve for life as deacon, lector, or 
exorcist without aspiring to a higher degree. The professional­
izing of all the churchly functions concurrent with the with­
drawal of the ascetics into the wilderness left little dignity in 
the ordinary lay status. With the cessation of persecution the 
layman was not even called upon to witness to his faith, unless 
it be in the riots between the various Arian and the orthodox 
parties. 9 To be reduced to the indignity of receiving lay com­
munion was a common form of punishment meted out to post­
Nicene bishops. 

Another aspect of the clericalization of most of the big 
and little functions of the Church was the virtually complete 
assimilation of teaching and healing in the office of the bishop 
with delegated catechists under his supervision. Earlier, teach­
ing and healing had been free or charismatic. In the ante-Nicene 
period the teachers had indeed formed a {(choir" (choros) 
alongside the clergy and thus were, in one sense at least, laical. 

The third and most important difference between the 
two epochs and directly connected with the sudden imperial 
or "ecumenical" assignment laid upon the Church, was the 
recruitment of a new type of convert and the loss of the pre­
Constantinian feeling for a radical distinction between church 
and world. 

During the period of the persecutions when some of the 
secrets of the faith were guarded by the faithful even from 

oJ have given some attention to the role of the faithful, Christophorous laity in 
"Christology and Church-State Relations in the Fourth Century," Church History, 
XX (1951), No.3 and No.4. 

14 



The Role 0/ the Layman in the Ancient Church 

prospective converts (the disciplina arcalla) , the laity was 
clearly an order not to be confused with the catechumenate 
and still less with the "world." With the rapid expansion of 
Christianity consequent upon imperial favor, however, the 
laity tended to be assimilated with the turbulent masses'" of the 
city population, and the bishop, from being the liturgical 
representative of the whole royal priesthood, became the quasi­
civic spokesman of the largely disfranchised citizenry of the 
late imperial municipalities. Because secrecy was no longer 
essential as once to the intensely disciplined militia Christi 
(constituting a veritable i111 perium in im,perio) , the catechu­
mens, from the homes of both pagans and old Christian fam­
ilies, no longer withdrew at the Mass of the faithful, while even 
committed pagans might, without drawing attention to them­
selves, enter the new basilicas that were arising everywhere 
under imperial patronage and listen to the new oratory of the 
Christian pulpit. Chrysostom, for example, deplores the conse­
quent recession of a sense of participation and liturgical re­
sponsibility which the theater-like character of basilican wor­
ship had induced in the laity. He movingly retraces the full 
meaning of the royal priesthood of God in which cleric and 
laic are on the same level, alike in the eucharistic offering and 
the communion, in the prayers for mutual fortification in 
Christ, and in the disciplinary functions of the church. There­
upon he challenges his congregation: 

Now I have said all this in order that each aile of the laity 
also may keep his attentioll au)ake, that u/e may ullderstalld 
that we are all Ol1e body, having such difference amongst 
ourselves, as members with members; and may 110t throw 
the whole 11 pall the priests; but ourselves also so care for 
the whole church, as for a body common to us. 1I 

To summarize this third point, in the post-Nicene Church, 
the layman was, despite exhortations and convictions like those 

lOWell illustrated in canon 13 of the council of Laodicea (mid·fourth century) 
which deprives the ochlos of their right of participation in the election of priests 
exercised by the laos in the days of persecution. 

llIn II Cor. hom., xviii, 3. 

15 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

of Chrysostom, brought down to the level of the catechumen 
or even the casually interested pagan, whereas in the days of 
persecution the laity had been clearly set off by baptismal 
({ordination" from the catechumenate; and even within the 
company of the baptized and confirmed laity there had been 
gradations moving imperceptibly from teachers and lay 
seniores12 on the male side and "enrolled widows" and dea­
conesses on the female side, through confessors who were often 
honorary presbyters, up to the not yet fully clericalized so­
called "lower orders." Moreover, still other groupings within 
the laity were keenly felt despite Paul's asseverations about the 
oneness of the body and the tearing down of the wall of 
separation; for example, the natural distinctions of male and 
female, young and old, the cultural distinctions of rural and 
urban, of slave and free, of propertied and poor, and the 
moral distinctions of the penitent and the steadfast, of those 
ignobly and those acceptably employed in the work of the 
world. 

Before going on to discuss further the nature and functions 
of the pre-Constantinian laity, we must first ascertain the 
theological conception of the rank of the layman in the 
Church; and for this purpose we may adduce evidence beyond 
the confines of the meagre documentation on this head from 
the first three centuries. 

LAITY, LAles, LAYMEN 

Henceforth we shall render in English the diverse Greek 
and Latin nomenclature for laymen as follows: for laos (tou 
theou) and plebs, "the laity"; for the nominative laikos and 
laiClts, "laic"; and for the adjectival form, "lay" men or women. 

Clement of Rome was the first to use lay man, about A.D. 
9 5, concluding his brief reference to the participants in the 
liturgy with the assertion: " ... the lay man is bound by the 
lay ordinances. "13 Thus a first stage in the Christian specializa­
tion of laos and its derivatives was connected with the corporate 

12See below, nn. 48-51. 

131 Clement, 40, 5. 

16 



The Role 0/ the Layman in the Ancient Church 

thanksgiving of the Church, the eucharist. Laics in their 
eucharistic role of bringing in the bread, wine, and other offer­
ings were comrrlOnly called prospherontes. It is significant that 

the generic term for the non-clerical members of the Church 
is intimately related, by way of I Peter 2 :9, with the eucharist. 
For in this locus classicus of the doctrine of the priesthood of 
all believers the royal priesthood (basileion hierateuma), God's 
own laos, is thought of as engaged in the corporate but spiritual 
sacrifice of the eucharist. 14 Not only are Christians the new 
Israel, says the preacher of the baptismal sermon, but also the 
only authorized or effectual priesthood. Corporately they are 
the successors of the priesthood in old Israel, having been 
vouchsafed the right of corporate but otherwise direct access 
to God through the unbloody or spiritual or rational sacrifice 
of thanksgiving made possible through Christ. Justin Martyr 
restated the principle of the priesthood of all believers when he 
wrote: <to .. being inflamed by the word of His [Christ's] 
calling, we are the true high-priestly race of God."15 The 
Athenian apologist Aristides asserted that all Christians could 
trace their genealogy from the High Priest Jesus Christ.16 

And Irenaeus in Gaul could say: <tAll who are justified through 
Christ have the sacerdotal order."17 

<tOrdination" to the laity was effected by the sacrament 
of baptism and the accompanying unction (later, in part, 

"Traditional Catholic and critical Protestant scholarship have until recently joined, 
from diverse impulses, to spiritualize, interiorize, and individualize the meaning 
of the sacrifice in I Peter 2: 5 and 9, minimizing its setting in a baptismal homily, 
presumably connected with the first communion of neophytes; hence, its liturgical 
significance has been obscured. Edward G. Selwyn, though conservative on the 
matter of the authorship of the epistle, sees clearly the eucharistic significance of 
the priesthood of the laos. The First Epistle of St. Peter (London, 1848), 295ff. 
On the priesthood of all believers, besides works cited in n. 4, the following 
specifically on the doctrine in antiquity may be mentioned here: J. Lecuyer, 
"Essai sur Ie sacerdoce des fideles chez les Peres," La Maison Dieu, XXVII 
(1951/3), 7-50; idem, "Le sacerdoce royale des Chretiens selon saint Hilaire de 
Poitiers," L'Annee The%gique, IV (1949), 302-325. 

l~Dia/. c. Tryph., cxvi. 

"'Apo/., ii (in the Syriac version which is closest to the original Greek text) 
and xv (in the adapted Greek text). 

17"Omnes enim justi sacerdotalem habent ordinem." Conlr. Haer. iv, 8, 3. The 
original Greek text has not survived. It is instructive that John of Damascus, 
when he cites this passage, alters Irenaeus' wording when he writes: ":Every 
righteous king has the sacerdotal order." 

17 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

differentiated as the sacrament of confirmation). In the baptis­

mal unction catechumens were enrolled in the royal (and pro­
phetic) priesthood, for it was likewise by anointment that 
Israel's kings and priests had been consecrated. Tertullian 

stresses the priestly character of baptismal unction when he 
writes: 

Thereupon as we come forth from the laver, we are 
anointed with the holy unction, just as ill the Old Dis­
pensation priests were anointed with oil from the horn 
of the altar. Whence the term Christus, from the chrism 
which is the anointing, a name that is now appropriated 
to the Lord.t8 

Tertullian held that baptismal uordination" qualified the recip­
ient of grace to baptize in his turn, for uwhat is equally re­
ceived can be equally given."19 At the same time, before joining 
the Montanists, he argued for the sake of order that what 
was lawful might not be expedient, that lay men only should 
perform the sacrament and only in the absence of a cleric 
and that lay women should never presume to baptize in any 

circumstance. 

Although the indelibility of baptism was long in dispute 
m the ante-Nicene Church in connection with the admission 
of heretics and schismatics, the theological ideal of an indelible 
character came firmly to undergird the three sacraments of 
baptism, confirmation, and ordination. Jerome states this view 
precisely in our terms in connection with the return of a 
penitent to the bosom of the Church. He places his under­
standing of it on the lips of an orthodox arguing with a follower 
of Lucifer of Cagliari who has insisted that repentant Arian 

bishops must be reordained, whereupon the orthodox asks, 
knowing there can by this time be only one answer: 

"IDe baptismo, 7. 

lolbid., 17. 

18 



T he Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

Does the penitent lay aside the priesthood of the laic 
(saccrdofiul1z laici) , that is, of baptism, and 0111y then 
do I pardoll him? For it is written [Rev. 1 :6]: "He has 
made us a kingdom and priests to God His Father," and 
again [[ Peter 2:91: ffa holy 11atioll, royal priesthood, a 
purchased people."20 

Many other post-Nicene writers may be adduced for the 
later patrlstic formulation of both the moral (royal) priest­
hood of all believers and more specifically the "cultural power 
of the baptized." The monk Hesychius, presbyter in Jerusalem 
(d. c. 450), in his gloss on Isaiah 61: 6: (t ••• but you shall be 
called priests of the Lord," amplified as follows: "All the 
faithful, because the baptized are anointed with sacerdotal 
chrism.":''' Isidore of Pelusium (d. c. 435) wrote in comment­
ing on Rom. 12: 1 that «every [Christian] is ordained 
(kecheirotolletai) priest of his own body."22 Nestorian Narsai 
(head of the school of Edessa, 437) movingly declared that 
"To this end He [ChristJ gave the priesthood to the new 
priests [«the new people"] that [all] might be made priests to 
forgive iniquity on earth."2:1 Particularly influential in the West 
have been the statements of Augustine and Leo I of Rome. 
And Augustine, quoting Rev. 1 :6, goes on: " ... as we call all 
believers Christians on account of the mystical chrism, so we 
call all believers priests because they are members of the one 
Priest."H Leo, in his Sermon IV in commemoration of his 
elevation to the episcopate, cited I Peter 2: 5 ,9 in support of 
his conviction that the whole of the Christian plebs are identi­
fied with the action of Christ in the priestly action at the altar. 

On the prophetic role as well as on the royalty and the 
priesthood of every baptismally anointed laic, coheir of Christ, 

''''Dial. contr. Lucif., 4. On indelibility, see also Pseudo-Maximus of Turin, De 
baptismo, tract. iii, P.L., 57, 777ff. 

21M. Faulhaber, ed. (Freiburg, 1900), 191. 

22Ep., lib. iii, 75. 

2:oLiturgical Homilies, R. A. Connolly, ed., Texts and Studies, VIII, No. 1 (Cam­
bridge, 1909), 63. 

21De ,iv, xx, 10. 

19 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

the divinely anointed Priest, Prophet, and King two other 
post-Nicene Fathers are particularly precise. Says Chrysostom: 

So also art thou thyself made king and priest and prophet 
in the laver [of baptism]: a king, having dashed to earth 
all the deeds of wickedness and slain thy sin; a priest, in 
that thou offerest thyself to God, and in having sacrificed 
thy body, and in being thyself slain also, for if we died 
with Him, saith he [Paul, II Tim. 2: 11], we shall also 
live with Him; finally a prophet, knowing what shall be, 
and being inspired of God (enthous) and sealed. For as 
upon soldiers a seal, so is also the Spirit put upon the faith­
ful. And if thou desert, thou art manifest by it to all. 
For the Jews had circumcision for a seal, but we, the 
earnest of the Spirit. Knowing then all this, and consider­
ing our high estate, let us exhibit a life worthy of grace.25 

And Aphrahat the Sage of Persia (c. 280-345), after discussing. 
the vision of the grape and vine in Isaiah 65: 8 and the tree of 
knowledge, refers to the healing of the olive trees and suggests 
that sacramental unction reopens the doors of paradise to the 
newly baptized: 

But to those seeking peace the door is opened and confusion 
flees from the mind of many; the light of the mind has 
begun to shine; the splendid olive trees have produced their 
fruits in which is the sign of the sacrament of life whereby 
Christians are made priests, kings, and prophets. 26 

Besides his ordination as royal priest, the laic in some 
quarters, notably in the Alexandrian tradition, could aspire to 
the status of the ideal gnostic, whose gradual, post-baptismal 
illumination and growth in inner discipline and grace enabled 
him to go through the spiritual grades of deacon, presbyter, 

'lc.ln II Cor. hom., iii, 7. 

26Demonstratio, xxiii, De aeino, 3; Patrologia Syriea, pars prima, Vol. II, col. 10. 

20 
.. . . - . 

• ; ,'.J 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

and bishop, some day "to sit down on the four-and-twenty 
thrones, judging the people," even perhaps the less spiritual 
clergy (Clement, Stromata, vi, 13)! 

To sum up, the laic in the ancient Church had an indelible 
uordination" as priest, prophet, and king, no longer in bondage 
to the world, but freed through Christ to know the truth in 
the illumination of the Spirit, to exercise sovereignty over the 
inner temple of self, to join in the corporate thanksgiving of 
the redeemed, and to forgive the brethren in Christ's name. 

It will now· be our task to ascertain what exactly were the 
laic's rights and duties, liturgical, constitutional, disciplinary, 
eleemosynary, and evangelical, in the period before Constantine. 

THE LITURGICAL FUNCTIONS OF LAICS 

Clement of Rome, already cited as the first to employ the 
term laikos, made specific what he meant by the "lay 
ordinances" when he wrote in the next paragraph: 

Let each of us brethren, in his own order make eucharist 
(eucharisteito) to God, keeping a good conscience and not 
transgressing the appointed rule of his liturgy.27 

We have two subsequent glimpses of laics at worship in Rome, 
enabling us to fill out the picture into the third century. 

Justin Martyr, in his Apology for pagan eyes, remains in­
tentionally general in his account of the eucharist but describes 
both a baptismal and an ordinary Sunday eucharist, remarking 
that after the prayers of the liturgical president (the bishop), 
<tall the laity present shouts assent, saying <Amen'''; and he 
proceeds to explain the affirmative meaning of the Hebrew. 28 

270p. cit., 4l. 

2 N Apol., I, 65. Cf. I Cor. xiv: 16 and Theodoret of Cyrus, Comm. in II Cor. i, 20. 
See P. Rouget, Amen, Acclamation du peuple sacerdotale (Paris, 1947). 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

In talking with Trypho the Jew he can be somewhat more 
specific about the eucharist and about the role of the laic 
therein: 

... we are now the true high priestly race of God, as God 
Himself bears witness [Mal. 1: 1 IJ, saying that in every 
place among the Gentiles there are those bringing [pros­
pherontes: almost a technical term for the laicsl pure 
sacrifices acceptable to Him. 

God therefore has long since borne witness that all 
sacrifices offered by His name, which Jesus the Christ 
enjoyed, namely, at the eucharistia of the bread and 
the ClL p which are presented in every place on earth by 
the Christians, are well pleasing to Him. But those that 
are made by you and by means of those priests of yours He 
utterly rejects . ... 29 

It is clear from this passage that Justin has in mind the liturgy 
of the whole priestly people and not merely that of the more 
specialized celebrants. 

The later Fathers and theologians following them speak 
freely of the specialized priesthood of the ordained as derivative 
from or participant in that of the heavenly High Priest; but 
with equal propriety one may go on to say that it is both theo­
logically valid and historically sound to see the functional 
priesthood of bishops and presbyters as derived from the 
priestly laos, since clerics but concentrated in their persons an 
action that continued to belong to the whole baptismal com­
munity of the reborn in Christ. 

2!JDial. cum Tryph., 116f. In language which suggests familiarity with this pas­
sage, Origen a century later asks: 

Or do you not recognize that the priesthood has been given to you also, 
that is to the whole Church of God and the nation of believers? .. You 
have therefore a priesthood, being a priestly nation, I Pet. ii, 9. Therefore 
you ought to offer to God a sacrifice of praise, of prayers, of pity, of purity, 
of righteousness, of holiness. To offer this aright you have need of clean 
garments, of vestments kept apart from the common clothing of the rest 
of mankind; and you must have the divine fire, God's own fire which he gives 
to men, of which the Son of God says, Luke xii :49: 'I have come to send fire 
on earth.'-In Let'it., hom. x, 1. 

22 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

Hippolytus, the rigoristic rival of Bishop Callistus of 
Rome, provides us in his Apostolic Tradition, about a half­
century after Justin, with another glimpse into the liturgical 

action of laics. Here we see them as prospherontes, offering at 
the eucharist not only the bread and the wine, but also occa­
sionally oil, cheese, and olives for eventual distribution. The 
instructions to the bishop on receiving the oil can be quoted 
to evoke the whole liturgical scene in Rome c. 200: 

If anyone offers oil, he [the bishop] shall make 
eucharist as at the oblation of bread and wine. But he shall 
not say word for word [the same prayer] but with similar 
effect, saying: 

o God who sanctifiest this oil, as Thou dost grant unto 
all who are anointed and receive of it the hallowing where­
with Thou didst anoint kings and priests and prophets, so 
grant that it may give strength to all that taste of it and 
health to all that use it.30 

Another manual, The Testament of Our Lord of much 
later recension, preserves or elaborates important formularies 
chanted by the laity in the canon of the Mass. For example, 
after the bishop, it bids the laity say likewise: 

Remembering therefore Thy death and resurrection, we 
offer to Thee bread and the cup, giving thanks to Thee 
who alolle art God for ever and our Saviour, since Thou 
hast promised to us to stand before Thee and to serve Thee 
in priesthood. Therefore we render thanks to Thee, we Thy 
servants, a Lord. 

At communion each lay recipient chants: 

Holy, Holy, Holy, Trinity ineffable; grant me to receive 

:IOOp. cit., G. Dix, ed., v, 1 and 2. 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

unto life this Body, and not unto condemnation. And 
grant me to bring forth the fruits that are pleasing to 
Thee . ... 3' 

The degre( of participation in the Syriac tradition repre­
sented by the Testament is extraordinary. But during the pon­
tificate of Bishop Damasus (366-84), we learn, the Christian 
populus of Rome, fearing God rather than the emperor and 
their pontiff, uauthor of wickedness and a murderer," felt 
free to congregate in the cemeteries of the martyrs and cele­
brated "stationes sine clericis." Whether these "stations" were 
penitential or eucharistic gatherings is uncertain. 32 In the 
Graeco-Roma~ world it was ordinarily only among heretics 
that laics could, in the absence of the clergy, proceed to the 
enactment of the eucharist on their own. Tertullian, after he 
had become a Montanist, asks the question: 

Are not even we laics priests? It is written [Rev. 1 :6]: 
rrA kingdom also and priests to His God and Father, hath 
He made us." It is the authority of the Church and the 
honor through the sessions (consessus) of the ordo sancti­
fied to God which has established the difference between 
the ordo and the plebs. Accordingly, where there is no 
session of the ecclesiastical ordo, thou offerest the 
eucharist, and baptizest (tingues) and art a sacerdos for 
thyself; for where three are, there is the church, albeit 
they be laics.33 

Besides the eucharistic liturgy there was the love-feast, 
sometimes accompanying it, sometimes observed separately in 
the homes of the more aflluent members. The bishop would be 
invited to break the bread. Tertullian describes such an agape 
and, by good fortune, mentions the role of the laics: 

'HOp. cit., i, 23; trans!' James Cooper and Arthur Maclean (Edinburgh, 1902), 73; 
see another long formulary, 83f. 

32See Christine Mohrmann, "Satio," Vigiliae Christianne, VII (1953), 224. At 
the same :period in the East, Basil of Caesarea countenanced laymen, during 
persecution~ in keeping the communion at home and partaking of it with their 
own hands at appropriate intervals. He cites the current usage of the laity in 
Egypt and the practice of hermits in the wilderness where there is no priest. Ep. 
xciii. 

33De exhort. (asl., 7. 

24 



The Role 0/ the Layman in the Ancient Church 

After washing of hands and the lighting of La l1ZPS 

11umbers are invited to stand out and sing to the best of 
their ability either from sacred scriptures or something of 

their own com posing; which gives a test of how much 
they have drunk. 34 

He is here defending the assembly from pagan charges of 
license! He goes on to say that uthe feast ends, as it began, 
with prayer." 

We have already quoted Tertullian even while still ortho­
dox on the lawfulness of the lay performance of baptism in 
the absence of a cleric. Long before him the oldest church 
manual of discipline, the Didache, assumed that any Christian, 
including a laic, might baptize provided he fasted, like the one 
to be christened, "for one or two days beforehand."35 The 
fourth-century Ambrosiaster, looking back on the early days, 
says, "everyone baptized;"36 and his contemporary Jerome re­
marked that, "if necessity so be, even laics may and frequently 
do baptize."37 The Iberian council of Elvira (c. 306) in canon 
38 makes rather specific the meaning of such necessity: 

During a sea voyage, or in general, if no church is near, 
a laic who has not soiled his baptismal robe and is not a 
digamist [twice-married as a result either of widowerhood 
or religiousZ,y prompted divorce from an ul1believillg 
spouseJ, may baptize a catechumen who is at the point 
of death. 

It should be added for completeness that in the baptism 
and unction of female catechumens widows and deaconess€s 
who were essentially lay persons had, from the beginning, 
taken an active part in helping the bishop or presbyter in all 
but the anointment of the head. 

'HApol., 39. 

350p. cit., 7. 

:IfiComm. in Eph. iv: 11. 

3' Dial. contra Lucifer., 9. 

25 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL ROLE OF THE LA1Ty 3H 

The choosing in Acts 1: 15 of a successor of Judas in the 
presence of precisely one hundred and twenty of the umulti­
tude" (this same number requisite in a Jewish community in 
order to elect members to the Sanhedrin) and in Acts 6: 5 the 
choosing of the deacons, also by the whole multitude, served as 
a pattern and apostolic sanction for the lay election of clerics 
throughout the ante-Nicene period. The Didache, after deal­
ing wi th inspired prophets and teachers visi ting as i tineran ts, 
goes on quite simply: 

Elect therefore for yourselves bishops and deacons of the 
Lord, men meek, and not lovers of money, and truthful, 
and approved; for they too minister to you the ministry 0/ 
the prophets and teachers.39 

But elsewhere, and especially later, the procedure was not nearly 
so direct and simple. Distinctions came to be made between 
the divine vocation, the lay recognition of the call or election, 
the liturgical sacring, and the installation. Nevertheless, to the 
end of our period and well into the Constantinian age, the ~aity 
played an important part in the elevation of their bishop. Hip­
polytus in the Apostolic Tradition records the aforementioned 
refinements; but the bishop is still uelected by all the laity."-lO 

Origen observes that the chief must be ordained "in the 
presence of the whole laity in order that all may know for 
certain that the man elected to the priesthood is of the whole 
people the most eminent ... and ... to avoid any subsequent 
change of mind or lingering doubt."4l 

aMThe most recent specialized study is that of P. Trempelas, "He summetoche tou 
laou en tei eklogei ton episkopon," Epist~monik~ Epeteris of the Theological 
School of the University of Athens (1954-1955), 1-27. See also C. Jenkins, "The 
Position of Clergy and Laity in the Early Church in Relation to the Episcopate," 
Episcopacy, Ancient and Modern, Claude Jenkins, ed. (London, 1930). 

390p. cit., 15. 

400p. cit., ii, L 

4l1n Levit., hom. 3_ The text survives only in Latin, and the key terms are sacerdos 
and populus. 

26 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

Cyprian makes a similar point: "The bishop should be 
chosen in the presence of the laity who have most fully known 
the life of each one of several possible choices, and have looked 

into the doings of each one as respects his habitual conduct."42 
Cyprian also insists that just as the laity has the power of 
recognition, they have also the power of withdrawing from the 
jurisdiction of an unworthy cleric: 

... the laity, obedient to the dominical precepts and fear­
ing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful pre­
I ate (prae positus) and not associate themselves with the 
sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest (sacerdos) , especially 
since they themselves have the power either of choosing 
(eligere) worthy priests or of rejecting (recusare) un­
worthy ones. 43 

So well known was the power of Christian laics to ap­
prove or disapprove their leaders that even the Emperor Alex­
ander Severus (222-235), who was sufficiently well informed 
to know about their golden rule and who desired to erect a 
temple to Christ as one of the gods, adopted from the Chris­
tians the practice of posting the names of his nominees to 
public office for the sake of securing public testimony as to 
their character, saying «it was unjust that, when Christians and 
Jews observed this custom in announcing the names of those 
to be ordained," it would be "monstrous that such a precau­
tion should be omitted in the case of provincial governors to 
whom were committed the lives and fortunes of men."44 

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH 

Admission to the communion of the saints was effected 
by baptism. Excommunication of the faithless and the way­
ward members, an originally unforeseen disciplinary action, 

~2Ep. lxvii, 5. In Ep. x, 8, he speaks of Cornelius of Rome as made bishop by the 
judgment of God and Christ, by the testimony of the clerics, and by the vote 
(wffragio) of both the priests and the plebs. 

':IEp., lxvii, 3. 

HVita Alex., 45, 7. 

27 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

developed its forms more slowly and therewith also still other 

constitutional procedures for the readmittance of the penitent. 

Paul commanded by letter (I Cor. 5) that the Corinthian 

church assembled, with his spirit present, excommunicate a 

particularly diseased member, consigning him to Satan. In 

Matthew 16 the prince of the apostles was expressly given the 

power of the keys, the power to bind and loose. Over against 

both this dominical authorization and the notable apostolic 

action, which would subsequently serve as a model for every 

bishop, was the "competing" authorization of communal action 

in Matthew 18: 15 -20, which undoubtedly transcribed the 

usage of the community at an early date and then served as 

another authoritative pattern for assembling the whole church 

for a final act of corporate excommunication of an unworthy 

member thrice warned. But eventually the apostolic-episcopal 

pattern came to prevail over that of communal action. Through 

the sacrament of penance the pastor (bishop or sacerdotal 

presbyter) assumed responsibility for the excommunication 

and readmission of the subordinate members of the church, lay 

and clerical, while the bishops corporately in council deter­

mined on the terms of excommunication and reinstatement 

of their episcopal colleagues. 

But this process was completed only in the Constantinian 

age. In the first three centuries, the struggle over the authority 

respectively of the apostolic bishop, the college of presbyters, 

the confessors, and the laity, especially in the problem of deal­

ing with members who had lapsed during persecution, was 

vigorously fought out. Ante-Nicene Church history is the 

story of innumerable small and large, regional, "national," and 

class schisms over the issue of rigorism and laxism. It is signifi­

cant that in the numerous manuals of church law, which were 

commonly ascribed to the apostles but which, of course, re­

flected the usage and experience of the growing Church, the 

28 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

communal disciplinary session portrayed and authorized in 

Matthew 18 was gradually converted into the pattern for the 

lay acclamation of a bishop-elect who before the whole church 

was thrice declared to be faultless and hence worthy of the 

headship of the church. 45 

Although the clerical control of disciplinary action comes 

to prevail in the old Catholic Church, as distinguished from the 

rigoristic schisms and some of the heretical sects, we must 

sample the evidence of the strong persistence of the communal 

voice in the disciplinary action of the ante-Nicene Church. 

Clement of Rome, who (c. 95 A.D.) deplores the constitu­

tional revolution in Corinth, does not so much contest the right 

of the laity to eject their liturgical leaders as chastize them for 

having presumed to do so when their leaders had in fact «offered 

the sacrifices with innocence and holiness."46 Although this is 

more of a constitutional than a disciplinary matter, we have 

in another Apostolic Father, Polycarp of Smyrna, a clear indica­

tion that the whole church and more specifically the laity with 

their presbyters have the right to depose and excommunicate 

one of their presbyters, Valens by name and his wife, who 

had fallen into error apparently in connection with defalcation 

of the communal funds. Polycarp urges the whole church to 

restore the couple if theirs proves to be a «true repentance."47 

"5Cf., for example, the wording of the electoral procedure in the Constitutions of 
the Holy Apostles, viii, 4. There is a clear echo of the participation of laics (Us 
synodou kai tou plethous) in disciplinary action in Chrysostom, Hom. in Act., 
XXXVII. As late as the middle of the ninth centurY in the Syriac tradition I find 
that the corporate disciplinary action of the ChurCh is remembered and perhaps 
practiced. Bishop Ish6dad of Merv (c. 850) in J~s commentary on Matthew 

declares: "By means of the person of Simon He' promised [the keys] also to all 
congregations of believers, those that share in His tonfession; for His power is 
one with that of all priests and orthodox persons."-Margaret Gibson, ed., Horae 

Semiticae, No. V, Vol. I (Cambridge, 1911), 66. On the episcopal monopoliza­
tion of the prerogative of all spiritual men to judge all things (I Cor. 2:15), see 
Albert Koeniger, ed., "Prima sedes a nemine judicatur," Festgabe Albert Ehrhard 
(fronn, 1922), 273-300. 

4"Op. cit., 44. 

47 0/1. cit., 11. 

29 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

For North Africa we have evidence that primitive usage 
persisted vigorously and even developed new constitutional 
forms of lay authority in the realms of discipline and temporal 
administra tion. North African writers from T ertulli'an to 
Augustine mention besides the presbyteri (seniores ecclesiastici) 
an apparently collegiate group of seniores laici. 1s They may 
have been elected by the whole body of the faithful,1H but 
were, more likely, simply the most respected of the laity, hav­
ing, one might add, sufficient leisure and sufficient means to 
serve with the bishop. There seems also to have been a distinc­
tion felt among the lay seniores between the weightier elders ex 
plebe or locoru.m seu urbiul1z (who are listed after the clerical 
presbyters and before the deacons), and the elders of the 
church (seniores ecclesiae, who are listed after the deacons). 
The latter may have been limited to the caretaking tasks of 
fabric and furniture, but the seniores "from the laity," possibly 
nominated by and surely responsible to them, clearly had im­
portant administrative and judicial functions. In his Apology, 
Tertullian says that rrprobati seniores who have received the 
honor not by payment but by public testimony preside" at the 
church sessions, which he likens to a curia. 50 But this lawyer­
theologian may, at this point, be adapting his speech to the 
pagan audience; he has preferred the general term seniores to 

the more esoteric (clerical) presbyteri. 51 

Tertullian vividly describes the humiliating public confes­
sion of grievous sin and points up for us the individual and 
collective action of the bishop, the presbyters (here there is no 
mention of lay elders as a distinct group), and the faithful 
laity: 

Exomologesis is a discipline consisting in prostration and 
hluniiiation, imposing 011 the offender such a demeanor as 

H<See most recently Pier G. Caron, "Les seniores laici de l'Eglise africaine," Revue 
internation(z/e des Droits de I' Antiquite, VI (1951), 77, 2; also his basic study, 
I Poteri giuridici del laicato nella Chiesa primitiva (Milan, 1948). 

~ "So. Caron on the basis of an epitaph, but one would need more evidence. 

500p. cit., 39. 

:>ICaron holds that they are seniores ex plebe. 

30 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

to attract nurcy ... to exchange his sins for harsh treat-

1nent of himself; ... in general, to nourish prayers with 
fasting, to groan, to weep and l1zoan day and night to the 

Lord his God, to prostrate hi111self before the presbyters 
(prrsbyteri) , and to kneel before God's dear ones [cari, 

possibly the confessors]; to invoke all the brethren 

(/ratres) as sponsors of his prayer for 1nercy.52 

Cyprian makes even more specific the rigoristic and perhaps 

even vindictive motivation of the laity in testing the penitent 

and also his own episcopal role in the readmission of schismat­

ics, writing to the bishop of Rome, Cornelius: 

Oh, if you could, dearest brother, be with us here when 

those evil and perverse men return from schism, you would 
see what effort is mine to persuade patience to our brethren 
that they should calm their grief of mind and consent 
to receive and heal the wicked. At the return of the sub­

missive they are filled with joy, but great is the outcry at 
the reception of the incorrigible . ... Scarcely do I per­
suade the laity; nay, I extort it from them that they should 
suffer such to be admitted. And the just indignation of 

the brotherhood is vindicated perhaps in the fact that 

one or another who, not withstanding the opposition and 

gainsaying of the laity, havil1g been admitted through 
1ny indulgence (facultas), have proved worse than they 
were before . ... 5" 

Many times the penitent schismatics and the lapsed, held 

back from readmission by the laity more severe than their 

bishop, sought out the prayers and specifically the certificates 
sometimes granted by confessors who, having themselves been 

more than meritorious during persecutions, exercised a moral 

authority in the community or, in some cases, arrogated to 

52De poenit., 7. 

J"Ep. lix (liv) , 15. 

31 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

themselves the privilege of forgiving less steadfast fellow Chris­
tians. In Cyprian's time they constituted a threat to the more 
orderly procedures of the church in session. Confessors were, 
of course, a class that transcended the distinction between 
clerics and laics; but laics, being in any event more numerous 
than clerics, naturally predominated among the confessors. 
Tertullian, with characteristic irony, excoriates the grievous 
sinners: "most eager to gain access to the prison who have lost 
the right of entrance to the church.""· 

After the age of the persecutions it was the laity or the 
faithful as a whole, and not the clergy, who usually deter­
mined the valid confessors and martyrs and who led in elaborat­
mg in the fourth century the cultus of the saintly martyrs."" 

Cyprian's contemporary in Rome, Cornelius, gives us a 
picture similar to that of North Africa as to the role of the 
laity in the disciplinary action of the church. Certain named 
confessors who had defected with Novatus returned . 

. . . they made known in the presence both of a number of 
bishops [not just the bishop of Rome, perhaps not includ­
ing], and also of very many presbyters and lay men, be­
wailing and repenting of the fact that for a brief space 
they had left the church under the persuasion of this 
treacherous and malicious wild beast. 5

" 

One of the three simple and rural bishops whom Novatus had 
brought in to ordain him repented. With him Cornelius there­
upon had communion, however, "as a laic, all the laity present 
interceding for him." At an earlier date, under bishop Zephy­
rinus, N atalius, another confessor, was lured into being ordained 
a heretical bishop, attracted by a salary of 150 denarii a month. 
Visited by Christ in visions, he finally desired to return to the 
orthodox community: 

HAd martyres, l. 

~"On the communal voice in the canonization of the saints, see E. E. Kemp, 
Canonization in the Western Church (Oxford, 1948), ch. i. Eventually, of course, 
canonization, from being a popular and then an episcopal prerogative, fell, in the 
West, within the sole authority of the bishop of Rome. 

""Cornelius apud Eusebius, H.E., vi, 43, G. 

32 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

... he arose at dawn, put on sackcloth, covered himself 
with ashes, and with all haste prostrated himself in tears 
he/ore Zephyriulls the bishop; and, rolling at the feet not 
0111y of those in the clergy but also of the laics, he moved 
with his tears the compassionate church of the merciful 
Christ. a7 

THE ELEEMOSYN AR Y ROLE OF THE LAITY 

Luke describes in Acts (2:44; 4:32ff.) the communism 
of the saints in Jerusalem as though to tell the Gentile world 
that its dream of the return of the golden age had in a sense 
been realized in the Church, as likewise the prophecies of the 
Old Testament had been fulfilled in this partial r~storation of 
the goodness of paradise. The communism of the Dead Sea 
Essenes has recently provided us with fresh analogues and ante­
cedents. The communistic motif after the first generation, 
though it was largely turned in the direction of monasticism, 
now needs fresh investigation, for the late credal addendum 
on the communio sanctorum may well have in its ultimate 
background not only the communion of the departed saints 
but the community of things made holy in the fellowship of 
the liturgy. 58 The liturgical offerings of olives, cheese, and oil, 
mentioned previously in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, 
had as their destination beyond the altar the poor and the needy 
of the parish. Pseudo-Clement, who incorporates a good many 
Pythagorean and Stoic ideas about the golden age and com­
munism,"" declares in his letter written to James as bishop of 
Jerusalem that, "as it is wicked for you to undertake secular 
cares ... so it is sin for every laic if they do not stand by one 

~ 7The anonymous author of the Little Labyrinth, Eusebius, H.E., v, 28, 8-12. 

~"'Barely suggested by F. }. Badcock, The History of the Creeds (London, 1930), 
ch. xviii. See further the chapter on the Ebionites in K. Stendahl, ed., op. cit., ch. 
xiii. We need more monographs like that of Arthur O. Lovejoy, "The Com­
munism of St. Ambrose," Journal of the History of Ideas, III (1942), 458-468; 
G. Sodeur, Der Kommunismus in der Kirchengescbichte (1920); and F. Meffert, 
Der Kom11lunismus J esu und der Kirchenvater (1922). I have touched on the 
subject incidentally in "The Golden Priesthood and the Leaden State," Harvard 
Theological Review, XLIX (1956), No.4, esp. 45ff. 

5"See Hans von Schubert, Der Kommunismus der Wiedertaufer und seine Quellell, 
Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, S. B. philo-hist. Kl., X:ll (1919). 

33 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

another even in their daily needs (biotikais chreiais). "00 The 
Ebionites retained longest the ideal of the community of goods, 
but, at last, it became a way of life for monks only. 

Tertullian describes the common chest of a later date and 
in another tradition and the voluntary character of the offer­
mg: 

T hough we have a kind of money-chest, it is not for 
the collection of official fees, as if ours were a religion of 
fixed prices. Each of us puts in a small donation on the ap­
pointed day in each month, or when he chooses, and only 
if he chooses, and only if he can; for no one is compelled 
and the offering is voluntary. This is as it were the deposit 
fund of kindness. For we do not payout money from this 
fund to spend on feasts or drinking parties or inelegant 
sprees, but to pay for the nourishment and burial of the 
poor, to support boys and girls who are orphan or desti­
tute; and old people who are confined to the house; and 
those who have been shipwrecked; and any who are in the 
mines, or banished to islands, or in prison, or are pen­
sioners because of their confession, provided they are 
suffering because they belong to the followers of God. OI 

The idea of bequests, a quota for the poor and for the 
benefit of the soul of a departed member, is first clearly trace­
able in the fourth century;02 but the Testament of our Lord, 
which though later, preserves older usage, has instructions on 
beQuests to the church, representing no doubt the survival of 
a more primitive view that such gifts should be made during 
the believer's lifetime: 

If anyone depart from the world, either a faithful man or 
a faithful woman, having children, let them give their 
possessions to the Church, so that the Church may provide 

6uHom., cp. Cl., Paul de Lagarde, ed., Clementina (Leipzig, 1865). 

olApolog., 39. 

62See Eberhard Bruck, Kircbenvater und soziales Erbrecbt (Berlin/Gottingenl 
Heidelberg, 1956). 

34 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

for their children, and that from the things which they 
have the poor may be given rest, that God may give 
mercy to their children and rest to those who have left 
them behind. But if a man have no children, let him have 
not much possessions, but let him give much of his pos­
sessions to the poor and to the prisoners, and only keep 
what is right and sufficient for himself. 63 

Irenaeus, without the trace of calculating charity in Tertullian 
and the Syriac Testament, movingly describes the philanthropic 
outreach of Christian worship and the Christian's giving of his 
talent to the whole world: 

Wherefore, also, those who are in truth His disciples, re­
ceiving grace from Him, do in His name perform 
[miracles], so as to promote the welfare of other men, 
according to the gift which each one has received from 
Him. For some do certainly and truly drive out devils, so 
that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits 
frequently both believe [in Christ], and join themselves 
to the Church. Others have foreknowledge of things to 
come. They see visions and utter prophetic expressions. 
Others still, heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, 
and they are made whole . ... And what shall I more say? 
It is not possible to name the number 0/ the gifts which the 
Church, [scattered] throughout the whole world, has re­
ceived from God ... and which she exerts day by day for 
the benefit of the Gentiles, neither practising deception 
upon them, nor taking any reward from them. For as 
she has received freely from God, freely also does she 
minister [to others]. 64 

Justin Martyr among many others refers to the convert­
ing example of Christian lives. 65 Dionysius of Alexandria 
describes the nursing and burying of those felled by the plague 
and contrasts the action of the "presbyters, deacons, and many 

630p. cit., ii, 5. 

64Adv. haer. ii, 32, 4. Very similar is Aristides, Apol., xv (Syriac version). 

6sApol. I, 16. 

35 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

of the laity transferring death to themselves" to succor others, 
with the ignoble behavior of the pagans, who left even their 
closest loved ones in selfish haste. 66 

From this tribute to lay workers in time of plague we may 
turn to the quite specialized religio-medical practice of exor­
cism in the Ancient Church and the role of the laity therein. 
Exorcism and the renunciation of the devil and all his works 
was an integral part of the baptismal rite and the bishop pro­
nounced the formulas. But besides this solemn, sacramental 
exorcism, there was the kindred therapeutic exorcism carried 
on by charismatic and commonly lay practitioners. The heal­
ing ministry of prayer to Christ to drive out the devils of in­
sanity and sickness on the apostolic pattern is briefly referred 
to by Origen who says, "it is mostly people quite untrained 
who do this work." 

Not a few Christians exorcise sufferers, and that without 
manipulations and magic or the use of drugs, but just by 
prayer and an invocation of the simpler kind and by such 
means as the simpler kind of man might be able to use. 67 

Effective cures were among the most convincing creden-
tials of Christians seeking to convert their pagan neighbors. To 
the role of the laity in the communication of the Gospel by 
example and precept we now turn. 

THE COMPETENCE OF THE LAITY 

IN THE FORMULATION OF DOCTRINE, 

IN TEACHING AND IN 

MISSION AR Y CONVERSION 

As we turn from good works and the exercise of discipline 
to the communication of the tradition by missionary evangel­
ism, instruction, catechizing, and the definition of doctrine in 
synod, we find that here too, after a period of rather full 
participation with the ordained clergy, the role of the laity 
declines, until it is virtually extinguished by the opening of 

66Letter to the brethren, c. 252, apud Eusebius, H.E., vii, 22, 7f. 

67Contra Celsum, vii, 4. 

36 



The Role 0/ the Layman in the Ancient Church 

the era of the great councils, except insofar as Arianizing lay 
philosophers have their influence on one side of the great debate 
(undoubtedly to the further detriment of the reputation of the 
laity for competence in dogmatic formulation) and again inso­
far as the royal-priestly emperors do indeed represent the laity 
In the definition of the faith. 68 

Originally, «everyone taught" the redeeming faith that 
was his, says Ambrosiaster, looking back into the ante-Nicene 
period before the bishops as successors of the apostles came alone 
to exercise the magisterial function in the church. 69 To the 
compiler of the Didache, for example, the divinely called pro­
phet and teacher (neither lay nor clerical in terms of a later 
nomenclature but "charismatic") is clearly to be supported 
by the laity (and lacking such itinerants the laity is to elect 
bishops as "teachers" in their stead) .70 The Apostolic Constitu­
tions of a much later date reflects the coming to a close of the 
tradition of the charismatic teacher when it grudgingly orders 
that, "even if a teacher is a laic, still if he be skilled in 
the word and reverent in habit, let him teach .... "71 In be­
tween the Didache and the Constitutions we may place the 
transitional emergence of the teaching order as the charas in­
termediate between the clergy and the laity. Justin Martyr and 
Origen were notable members of the "choir of teachers."72 

Yet Origen, the greatest theologian of his time, was re­
buked by his bishop in Alexandria for preaching and teaching, 
on invitation, in the presence of bishops. His bishop, Demetrim, 
also rebuked the responsible bishops (of Jerusalem and Caesa,... 
rea) for permitting a laic to sit in the episcopal cathedra and 

680n the authority of the emperors see Francis Dvornik, "Emperors, Popes, and 
General Councils," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, VI (Cambridge, 1951), 1-23. Two 
ancient historians mention laics skilled in dialectic participating in the Council 
of Nicaea in 325: Socrates, H.E., i, 8; Sozomen, H.E., i, 17. 

69Com. in Eph., 4:11. 

700p. cit., 13. 

7l0p. cit., viii, 31. 

721 have brought together some of this material in Ministry in Historical Perspec­
tives, 46-48. See Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen, Kirchliches Amt und' Geist­
liche Vollmacht (Tiibingen, 1953), ch. viii. 

37 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

preach. Their self-defense is preserved by Eusebius in a docu­
men t suggesting that such usage, despite their own magnani­
mity' was indeed on the way out. They report that Demetrius 
added, in his letter to them: 

that such a thing had never been heard of, nor taken place 
hitherto, that laics should preach (homilein) in the pres­
ence of bishops; though I [Alexander or Theocritusl do 
not know how he comes to say what is evidently not true. 
For instance, where there are found persons suited to help 
the brethren, they also are invited to preach to the people 
by the holy bishops, as, for example, in Laranda Euelpis 
by Neon, and in Iconium Paulinus by Celsus, and in 
Synnada Theodore by Atticus, our blessed brother bishops. 
And it is likely that this thing happens in other places 
also without our knowing it.73 

More significant for our present purpose than the feats 
of such learned laics as Origen and the lay succession of bril­
liant heads of the catechetical school in Alexandria of which 
he ~as one, was the role of the unnamed and less tutored laity 
whe seemed to have participated rather actively, not only in 
the disciplinary sessions of the church, but also in the synods 
convened for the clarification of the faith and practice received. 
Our most interesting and conclusive material happens to center 
in actions connected with Origen and more generally with 
Egypt. 

In the newly discovered, stenographically recorded papy­
rus on the debate of Origen with Heraclides74 we have first­
hand evidence of the modest but essential part played by the 

73~usebius, H.E., vi, 19, 18. Adolf Harnack notes how far-fetched the examples 
are and calls these men the last preaching teachers known by name besides 
Origen. For other pertinent material see his The Mission and Expansion of Chris­
tianity in the First Three Centuries (English translation), 2 vols. (New York, 
1908). 

74 Jean Scherer, ed., Entretien d'Origene avec Heraclide et les eveques sur Ie Pere, 
Ie Fils, et I'tlme, Publications de la Societe Fouad et de Papyrologie, Textes et 
Documents, IX (Cairo, 1949); translated in the Library of Christian Classics, 
II (Philadelphia, 1954). 

38 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

simple laity in doctrinal formulation; for we can literally over­
hear the great (essentially lay) theologian himself solemnly 
asseverate in an Arabian synod (called to deal with problems 
of the Trinity and the final resurrection) : uAccordingly, with 
the permission of God and secondly of the bishops [there were 
several in the debate with him], and thirdly of the presbyters 
4nd of the laity, I say again what I think on the subject." 
Then after summarizing his position he again takes cognizance 
of the laity: "If you agree to these statements, they also with 
the solemn testimony of the laity shall be made legally bind­
ing and established."75 It appears that at the end of the synod 
the doctrinal formulations were formally set forth, the whole 
assembly including the laity ratifying them. Moreover the laity 
probably had a good deal to do with initiating the original 
petitions which occasioned the synod. 76 

The doctrinal competence of the laity in the sense of 
their feeling responsible for an explicit faith and of having the 
right to demand clarification on disputed points of tradition 
and scripture comes out vividly again in a letter of Bishop 
Dionysius of Alexandria preserved by Eusebius. A certain 
Nepos, on the basis of the book of Revelation, had been teach­
ing a rather fleshly millennium. The Church's view of the 
Kingdom and the place of Revelation in the still incompletely 
clarified canon of New Testament scriptures was thus at stake­
scarcely adiaphora! The bishop tells how he went out to the 
center of the affected region, Arsinoe, to discuss the whole 
problem reasonably and with charity: 

Now when I came [c. 254] to the [nome] of Arsinoe, 
where, as thou knowest, this doctrine of Nepos had long 
been prevalent, so that schisms and defections of whole 
churches had taken place, I called together the presbyters 

7·'Scherer, op. cit., 128 and 134. 
7!l In two other synods at which Origen dealt with doctrinal matters the laity are 

known to have been present, surely in more than the role of auditors or spectators 
for otherwise their presence would not have been notic!,!d in such brief accounts. 
Eusebius, H.E., vi, 37; Carl Lommatzsch, ed., Opera omnia, XVII, 9. "A great 
majority of the laity" were also present in the important synod of eighty-three 
bishops in Carthage of September 1, 256; aplld Cypr. 

39 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

and [lay] teachers of the brethren in the village-there 
were present also such of the brethren as wished; and I 
urged them to hold the examination of the question 
publicly. 

Then follows a description of a friendly give-and-take. Diony­
SIUS expresses: 

greatest admiration for ... their firmness, love of truth, 
facility in following an argument, and intelligence, as we 
propounded in order and with forbearance the questions, 
the difficulties raised and the points of agreement, on the 
one hand [their] refusing to cling obstinately and at all 
costs (even though they were manifestly wrong) to opin­
ions once held; and on the other hand [their] not shirking 
the counter-arguments, but as far as possible attempting 
to grapple with the questions in hand and master them. 77 

Dionysius goes on to admit he could not always understand the 
Apocalypse and acknowledges further that, "if convinced by 
reason" on the part of these nimble-witted and earnest presby­
ters, lay teachers, and simple laics, he was not "ashamed to 
change our [episcopal] opinions and give our assent .... " 

Besides their teaching in catechetical classes and their 
limited but significant doctrinal competence in synod, the laity 
were also engaged in the direct communication of the gospel, 
each believer on his own, and not infrequently in the course of 
his or her martyrdom. 

One Papylas, presumably a lay member of the church in 
Pergamon, during the persecution under Marcus Aurelius 
proudly addressed the interrogating proconsul who had asked 
whether he had any children: "In every district and city I 
have children in God ... yes, and many of them, thanks be 
to God! "71. The Phrygian physician Alexander, renowned 
in Gaul for his love toward God and his boldness of speech, 
ufor he was not without a share of the apostolic gift," encour­
aged the confessors and then was himself seized and taken with 

71Apud Eusebius, H.E., vii, 24, 6. 

T"E. C. E. Owen, Some Authentic Acts of the Early Martyrs (Oxford, 1927), 42f. 

40 



The Role of the Layman in the Ancient Church 

them into the amphitheater. 79 The martyred centurion Marcel­
lus (d. 298), in court martial under the Prefect of the Praeto­
rian Guard, by his Christian «soldierly" exalTlple in responding 
to the enraged examiner converted the court stenographer, 
Cassian, who threw down his notebook in disgust and followed 
the Christian way. so 

Of the missionary teachers, most of them in his day laics 
rather than clerics, Origen has the following description: 

... as far as they are able Christians leave no stone un­
turned to spread the faith in all parts of the world. Some, 
in fact, have done the work of going round not only cities 
but even villages and country cottages to mak,e others also 
piOlLS towards God. One could not say that they did this 
for the sake of wealth, since sometimes they do not even 
accept money for the necessities of life, and if ever they 
are compelled to do so by want in this respect, they are 
content with what is necessary and flO more, even if 
several people are willing to share with them and to give 
them more than they need.81 

But a more eloquent observer is Celsus, the philosophical 
foe of Christianity, to the refutation of whose charges Origen 
devoted a major work. We may properly close our account of 
the role of the laity in the period of the persecutions with the 
former's disdainful caricature of the little people (men, wo­
men,'''2 and children) ever ready for a martyr's death, who car­
ried the Gospel into the recesses of society and who, though 
nameless and despised by such cultured and informed observ­
ers as pagan Celsus, probably did more even than bishops, apolo­
gists, and theologians to prepare for the sudden conquest of the 
Graeco-Roman world in the fourth century: 

7!1Eusebius, H.E., v, 1, 49. 
""Owen, op. cit., 121. 
8'Contra Cel. iii, 9. We know that an earlier head of the catechetical school of 

Alexandria, the lay teacher Pantaenus, was said to have been sent as a missionary 
to India. Eusebius, H.E., v, 10. 

82J. Foster, op. cit., has underscored the prominence of women among the laity in 
the quiet propagation of the Gospe1. He quotes effectively among others, Paul, 
Tertullian, the Apostolic Constitutions, Julian the Apostate, and Libanius. 

41 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

In private houses also [Celsus writes] we see wool-workers, 
cobblers, laundry-workers, and the most illiterate and 
bucolic yokels, who would not dare to say anything at all 
in front of their elders and more intelligent masters. But 
when they get hold of children in private and some little 
old women with them, they let out some astounding state­
ments as, for example, that they must not pay any atten­
tion to their father and school-teachers, but must obey 
them; they say that these talk nonsense and have no under­
standing, and that in reality they neither know nor are 
able to do anything good, but are taken up with mere 
empty chatter. But they alone, they say, know the right 
way to live, and if the children would believe them, they 
would become happy and make their home happy as well ... a 

Disparagingly, a philosophical publicist here describes 
better than he knew how in fact it was the little people, the 
lay men and women of the ante-Nicene Church, who built 
the foundations of that spiritual mansion (we need not insist 
on the happy home) in which even an emperor, a very practical 
layman, was one day to choose to live. 

83Quoted by Origen, Contra c..f!l. iii, 55. 

42