Thoughts on the Antidicomarianites

J. Neil Daniels

When Epiphanius of Salamis (AD 310–403) wrote about the Antidicomarianites in the fourth century, he considered them little more than troublemakers, a sect whose only defining feature was their rejection of Mary’s perpetual virginity. To him, they were a thorn in the side of the church’s growing devotion to the Mother of God, men and women unwilling to honor her in the way tradition was beginning to demand. And yet, in their own way, they raise questions that Christians still wrestle with: what role does Mary play in our faith, and how do we keep our view of her anchored in Scripture rather than speculation?

The Antidicomarianites (like Tertullian, Helvidius, Jovinian, and Bonosus) were not denying Christ’s miraculous birth. They confessed that He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin. Their dispute was over what happened next, whether Mary went on to live a normal married life with Joseph and raise a family, or whether she remained forever set apart in celibacy. In rejecting the latter, they implicitly pushed back against a creeping tendency to exalt Mary beyond her biblical place. For them, Mary was indeed blessed among women, chosen for a singular honor, but she was still fully a woman, not an untouchable icon removed from ordinary human experience.

Here is where the tension lies. The early church was beginning to elevate Mary as a symbol of perpetual purity, and the Antidicomarianites seemed to threaten that trajectory. But one could argue that their instinct—to keep Mary firmly within the story of ordinary human life—actually preserves something important about the gospel. Jesus was born into a real family. He had brothers and sisters, and He shared in the rhythms of a household that was, in many respects, no different than our own. To make Mary so utterly unique that she ceases to be a true mother, or Joseph so overshadowed that he never really was a husband, risks (and arguably does, in fact) making the Incarnation less, not more, believable.

Of course, Epiphanius condemned them. In his eyes, they denied Mary’s sanctity and diminished her role in salvation history. But perhaps there’s another way to read their witness. Maybe they remind us, however clumsily, that holiness is not the same as distance from ordinary life. The Son of God entered the world not through an eternal virgin queen of heaven, but through a woman who said yes to God’s call, bore the weight of scandal, endured the pangs of labor, and, if the Antidicomarianites were right, knew what it was to raise children in the rough-and-tumble of a household.

What strikes me most is how easily debates like this show the church’s tendency to swing between extremes. On one side, an instinct to honor Mary slides into a devotion that Scripture never commands. On the other, an instinct to correct excess can easily sound dismissive of the genuine honor she deserves. The Antidicomarianites may have leaned too hard against the former, but their very existence reminds us that even in the earliest centuries, Christians were asking: how do we keep Christ at the center? May we ask the same.