Passover was a while ago, but I’m not late on this post. I’ll explain that in a minute. The Spring always seems to bring up the debate over Passover and Easter. The long-forgotten Quartodeciman Controversy of the 2nd century has made a resurgence in the past few years, and ironically, both sides seem to use the controversial debate to support their arguments. That doesn’t seem plausible, but when you realize both sides are misusing the crux of the controversy, you’ll see how it all falls apart.
During the season of Passover, I joined in a conversation about Quartodecimanism to try and set the record straight about the nature of the debate and which side should hold more weight historically. Naturally, the other guy had a different take on the Quartodeciman Controversy and shared an article (which I will link to later) to prove his point. The conversation concluded soon afterward, and a tab to that article has been open in my browser ever since. I finally got around to reading it, and as suspected, this view of the controversy misses the point of the disagreement by leaving out some information. It’s one of my pet peeves that people leave out information that could change the nature of their position, so I decided to write this article about the Quartodeciman Controversy (henceforth called The QC). Let’s get into it.
There are usually three positions that people take when it comes to Quartodecimanism. But I discovered a new one while doing some quick research to refresh my memory. I’m going to try and address them all as concisely as I can. Here are the four typical positions:
- Easter replaced Passover.
- There was just a disagreement on which day to celebrate the resurrection.
- Those in Rome wanted their own (liturgical) calendar so they didn’t have to wait for the Jews to tell them when to celebrate the resurrection.
- (The new one) Quartodecimanism was orthodox until the Council of Nicaea voted that it was heretical.
I should begin by defining Quartodeciman. It is a Latin word that means fourteenth. Quartodecimanism is the belief that the Paschal feast should be on the ‘fourteenth’ of the first month according to the lunar calendar. In other words, according to the Jewish reckoning of time (months). Here’s some quick history. Around 155 CE, Polycarp (bishop of Smyrna) and Anicetus (bishop of Rome) disagreed on the date. Polycarp said it should be on the fourteenth, and Anicetus said it should be on the Sunday following the fourteenth. According to a letter Irenaeus wrote to Victor some decades later, the disagreement appears to be about when to hold the Eucharist (Communion). It is unclear if the churches only had communion once a year at that time, but that’s what’s in the letter. Almost four decades later, Polycrates (bishop of Ephesus) and Victor (bishop of Rome) had a more heated argument about the dating, but it was about when to hold the fast. That is not a typo. It’s not about a feast or even the Eucharist. Polycrates said they observed the Paschal feast on the fourteenth and then fasted until the Sunday to celebrate the resurrection, no matter what day of the week the fourteenth was on. Victor only wanted to fast on the Sunday after the fourteenth to commemorate the day of the resurrection. That’s the short version of the controversy. Now let’s get to each of the arguments listed above.
Easter Replaced Passover
This is the common position for those who believe that Easter is a pagan holiday and should be avoided. That’s a whole other topic that we don’t have time to get into here. I’m just going to address this one from the point of the controversy. First off, the word Easter does not come from Ishtar or Eostre, the names of fertility goddesses. It was in 725 that Bede, an English writer, wrote a book entitled De Temporum (About Times) in which he stated that “The Saxon month of Eosturmonath, which corresponds to our month of April, was named after an ancient Saxon goddess Eostre.” Ironically, he also says that Eosturmonath is translated as “Paschal Month.” At that time, the English called the celebration of the resurrection Pascha or Pasch. They didn’t call it Easter. Bede is the one to come up with the idea and it spread. As for The QC, the word Easter is nowhere associated. That comes from a poor translation.
Eusebius wrote Ecclesiastical History, or The Church History, around 312 CE in Koine Greek. My copy is an English translation that has the heading about The QC as The Controversy over Easter. Eusebius shares writings from Polycarp, Irenaeus, Polycrates, and Victor, but none of them use the word Easter. They are all writing about the Passover or the resurrection. Usually, those who are arguing that the controversy was over Easter replacing Passover are using an English version that uses the word Easter improperly and are ignoring the text itself. The controversy has nothing to do with Easter.
When To Celebrate the Resurrection
The article that was shared with me holds this point of view. It’s from Grace Communion International, and you can view the article here. They say, “Scholars disagree about the controversy’s details. They do agree that its arguments revolved around whether the primary Christian spring festival should happen on a day of the month (Nisan 14, the Passover day) or on a day of the week (Sunday).” A few paragraphs later, they say that the primary Christian spring festival in question is that of Christ’s resurrection. To say that Scholars disagree is kind of a shock to me. They point out in the article that Eusebius is the primary source for The QC, and if you just read everything that Eusebius compiled on the subject, it should be clear what the debate was about, but I digress.
If in fact, it was only about what day to celebrate the resurrection, the article makes some good observations and conclusions. One example would be that they pointed out how none of the Quartodecimans thought that we shouldn’t celebrate the resurrection, nor did they argue about the day of the resurrection. They only thought the celebration of the resurrection should coincide with the Passover. Not only is that a perplexing conclusion, but it ignores the facts in the case. I wrote an article about an Abraham Lincoln anecdote (if it’s real) where he said in a jury trial, “You’ve got all the facts. You’ve just drawn the wrong conclusions.” (You can find that article here.) In this case, some facts are missing which led them to the wrong conclusions. The QC was NOT about when to celebrate the resurrection.
A Calendar Separate From The Jews
This point of view comes from the purported third stage of The QC. It is believed that the controversy ended at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE when they voted on when to celebrate the resurrection. I don’t even know if those who hold this belief have even read about the controversy from the writings of Eusebius. But they conclude that the Council abandoned anything Jewish and set a date for keeping Easter separate from Passover. (Again, with the Easter assertion.) While it is true that Constantine later outlawed anything to do with the Jews, such as observing the Passover and the Sabbath, because he believed that Christians “shouldn’t be seen doing anything like the detestable Jews,” the vote at the Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with the original controversy in the middle and late second century. The Council of Nicaea is another topic altogether.
Quartodecimanism Used To Be Orthodox
Here, the argument is made that Quartodecimanism was an orthodox view but was declared a heresy at the Council of Nicaea. That sounds like a radical swing from the doctrine of the early church. But you can see in the nearly 40 years from Polycarp to Polycrates that the disagreement went from agreeing to disagree and live in peace to an order to excommunicate the Quartodecimans. It’s not hard to see how the Council declared Quartodecimanism a heresy. It was meant as a defining moment of unity but became a salvation issue. By calling it a heresy, they essentially declared that you cannot be a part of the body of believers if you hold that view. And Constantine made that clear when he outlawed all “Jewish” things. The article was written by Justin L. Daneshmand (Univ. of Manchester) and can be viewed here.
Mr. Daneshmand starts off the article on a good foot. He correctly identifies the Quratodecimans as those observing the Last Supper on the fourteenth to coincide with the Passover. Although, he does equate the Last Supper (or Passover meal) with the Eucharist and says that other Christians would partake of the Eucharist on Resurrection Sunday. Yes, the Eucharist is supposed to represent the Last Supper, but it only involves the bread and wine as described at the Last Supper. There’s a difference between having a Passover meal and only taking the bread and wine. He also makes an odd claim that “Quartodecimans defended their Passover tradition against internecine efforts to eradicate it for at least a few hundred years beginning with the inception of Christianity.” Mr. Daneshmand has a lot of footnotes in his article, but there isn’t one on this statement. Where does this idea come from? The first recorded disagreement about the date is in 155 CE, 125 years after the resurrection. And there’s another interesting misstep in this article. It’s just the opposite of what the article from Grace Communion International said. GCI said that the disagreement was about what day to celebrate the resurrection. Mr. Daneshmand said the disagreement was on which date or day they should have the Passover meal. Maybe he was equating it with the Eucharist again, but he had previously said that they didn’t just partake of the Eucharist annually.
The second half of the article is where he goes off the rails. Or does he? He correctly points out where the factions are. The Palestinian bishops agree with Rome and sent letters to Alexandria to assure that they were all on the same page and keeping the same Sunday date. Only the bishops in Asia Minor hold the Quartodeciman view. And then he rightly questions if Paul was a Quartodeciman. You can read that part in his article, but the conclusion was yes. Paul kept the Passover on the fourteenth and taught the churches to do the same, according to his letter to the Corinthians. But he also points out that Corinth was represented at the Council of Nicaea and voted against Quartodecimanism. Did they break from Paul’s teaching?
When I first read this article, I thought the first half was good with a few caveats but the second half agreed that Quartodecimanism was wrong. After reading through it a couple more times, I think we are in agreement. Paul, John, and Philip did teach the keeping of the Passover on the fourteenth.
What Is The Real Disagreement?
I need to wrap this up, so you’ll have to look up The Church History and read it all for yourself. You can find the Controversy in Book 5, chapters 23-25. I’ll just give some highlights.
Eusebius clearly says the dioceses in Asia were keeping the paschal festival on the fourteenth. That does not mean just the bread and wine from the Last Supper. Victor only wanted to observe the Sunday after the Passover. But before that, we have to look at Polycarp and Anicetus. We don’t have any writing from Polycarp about visiting Anicetus. It is believed this visit took place in 155 CE, and it is also said that Polycarp was martyred in 155 CE. It could be that he didn’t have time to write about it. It was the letter of Irenaeus to Victor that told the account of Polycarp’s visit to Rome. Here is where the Eucharist comes into question. Irenaeus said that Polycarp took the Eucharist on the 14th and Anicetus took it on the Sunday after. It sounds like they are only taking the bread and wine once a year. Both GCI and Mr. Daneshmand said that wasn’t the issue because the churches took the Eucharist more often than that. I wonder if it is a translation issue. What does it say in the Greek that was translated as the Eucharist? If anyone has a Greek copy of Ecclesiastical History, let me know what it really says.
Here’s the conclusion Irenaeus told to Victor. “Anicetus could not persuade Polycarp not to observe it (the fourteenth), since he had always done so with John, our Lord’s disciple, and the other apostles whom he knew. Nor did Polycarp persuade Anicetus to observe it, who said that he was bound to the practice of the presbyters before him.” (EH, 5.24) Irenaeus told Victor that the disagreement was minor and they agreed to allow the other to hold their views on the matter.
That brings us back to Polycrates. He wrote to Victor and gave him a list of bishops and elders and Disciples that taught them to keep the fourteenth. The list included Philip and his three daughters, John the Beloved, Polycarp, and four other well-known bishops, including Mileto of Sardis, who all kept the fourteenth and passed that tradition down to them. He also mentioned his family members, of whom seven had been bishops before him that kept the fourteenth. Upon all of his listing of support for the Quartodeciman position and saying that he would not accept threats by men to change his ways, he quoted Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men.” He concluded that all of the bishops of Asia Minor were in agreement with him but didn’t list their names because they were many.
Victor wanted all of the Asian churches excommunicated for being in disunity. Irenaeus wrote for Victor to choose a path of peace for the sake of unity. Eusebius wrote that Irenaeus also believed (in agreement with Victor) that the Lord’s resurrection should only be celebrated on a Sunday (translated as Lord’s Day). This is an interesting switch. Previously, it was about when to take the Eucharist, but now Eusebius says it’s about when to celebrate the resurrection day. But, he shares part of Irenaeus’s letter which says, “For the dispute is not only about the day but also the practice of the fast.” Irenaeus says that some fasted for one, two, or even more days, and some would fast for forty day-night hours. (Interestingly, the 40 hours were to commemorate the time that the Messiah was in the grave. That creates a conundrum with the 72-hour belief. But I like to give you all the information.)
It appears that the disagreement had gone from what day to have the Eucharist (or Passover meal) to which day to celebrate the resurrection, with the added conflict of how long to fast. I don’t know if we can ever figure out how the confusion between the Passover meal and the day of the resurrection became so mixed. It’s not like He died and rose on the same day. Everyone understands that. So how did the disagreement become a thing when they are two different events? Could it be the days of fasting complicated things? Or was it just those in Rome that wanted to abandon “Jewish” things before Constantine made that official?
I’m sure this debate will continue, and I’m sure people will still bring up the controversy while leaving out some of the facts. But here’s something to ponder. Polycrates (and even Polycarp) had Apostolic teaching that was handed down to them. Polycarp learned from John himself. Anicetus and Victor both claimed they were taught by the bishops of Rome before them, but they never gave any connection to the Apostles for that understanding. And the bishops of Palestine were said to agree with the bishops of Rome. That’s not surprising if you know the history of Palestine. Emperor Hadrian destroyed a lot of Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132-136 CE. He banished all of the Jews and removed all of the bishops of Judea that were circumcised. He replaced them all with uncircumcised men that he approved of. If all of the Christian bishops of Judea (then changed to Syria Palaestina) were replaced by men who were approved of by a homosexual Roman Emperor who just tolerated Christianity, would you trust those bishops to be faithful to God’s Word and the teachings of the Apostles?
When it comes to The Quartodeciman Controversy, I think the nod to who is correct leans heavily on those who can trace their actions and beliefs to the Disciples of the Messiah and the Apostle Paul who told the Corinthians, “Let us therefore celebrate the (paschal) festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Corinthians 5:8). If the Council of Nicaea declared Quartodecimanism to be heretical, then they just condemned the Apostles as heretics.
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