His work continues with the trajectory between the Roman Community of the first century and that of the late second-early third century, in what Lampe has described as a fractionalized community of house churches in a loose confederation under a secretarial figure who communicated with external churches in the name of the whole.
Anticipating
Lampe's work before he became personally aware of it in an article
published in 1987, Brent traced in his major work on Hippolytus the
tensions between such house Churches, in the literature falsely
attributed to a single writer called Hipplytus who was in fact
one of three writers in the school of the anonymous author of
the Refutatio Omnium Haeresium.
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The revolution began by Callistus with the object of creating an episcopal monarch (but not completed as Lampe implies) finally succeeded with Pontianus who has true regnal dates in the archetype of the Chronographer of 354. It was then that Hippolytus and his group, as successors of those who had clashed with Callistus, were reconciled with the latter's heirs, and won in Christology what they lost in acknowledgement of their former leader's office. |
Brent's work was reviewed critically but with commendation by Professore Manilio Simonetti of the Pontifical Lateran and State (La Sapienza) universities of Rome.
Two practical implications have arisen from this research project.: