Cyprian of Carthage

Cyprian was elected bishop of Carthage in 248 by popular demand. He was a gifted rhetoritician and consistent in his theology. His works are often mined for proof-texts of both Roman and Eastern ecclesiology. But is this actually the case? Certainly, Cyprian is strong on the succession of bishops. However, note that he himself was elected, and it was this election to which he eventually submitted himself to become bishop, not the orders of any kind of supreme "bishop of bishops." And in his De Ecclesiae Catholica Unitate, he maintains that each of the bishops posesses the episcopate in its totality, and in his own life reflected this in his collegiality with other bishops. Never did he look to Rome for an authoritative answer. So when Cyprian speaks of the Church being founded on Peter, it seems as though he is talking about the historical person of Peter, not a "Petrine succession" in Rome.

For Cyprian, the unity of the Church is inseparable from baptism. He is adamant that recognizing the baptisms of heretics and schismatics is to divide the Church. As he says:

Now if rebirth is this washing, that is to say, in baptism, how can heresy, which is not the bride of Christ, give birth to sons, through Christ, to God?

A heretical sect, because it is not the Church, cannot give birth to the elect, and thus cannot have baptism. I think that a desacramentalized Church that encompasses millions and possibly billions of "anonymous Catholics" through some far-fetched "baptism of unacknowledged desire" would have been unconscienable to Cyprian and thoroughly ridiculed by him with his usual withering rhetoric. It is indeed correct to cite Cyprian as supporting that there is only "one holy catholic Church," but it is thoroughly dishonest to do so if you hold that heretical baptism or faith can be effective to salvation, because it is denying the efficacy of such things that gives Cyprian's ecclesiology its shape. In fact, not even schismatics who are otherwise orthodox can have baptism or salvation. For Cyprian, the Church's identity is found precisely in its baptism. To acknowledge that a congregation truly baptizes while denying that it is part of the Church is simply a contradiction of terms.

Second, despite his comments regarding Peter's role in the foundation of the Church, his treatise on the exclusivity of Christian baptism to the Church is directed entirely against the teaching of the bishop of Rome, Stephen. This letter constitutes a denial of the universal jurisdiction and infallibility of the bishop of Rome. In fact, he subtly calls Stephen a heretic, saying:

And the tradition handed down to us is that there is one God and one Christ, one hope and one faith, one Church and one baptism appointed only in that one Church. Whoever departs from that unity must be found in company with heretics; and in defending heretics against the Church, he is launching an attack upon the sacred mystery of this divine tradition.

Cyprian simply cannot be cited in favor of neither the medieval notion nor the mid-19th century notion of the papacy. And, perhaps fortunately, he and Stephen both died martyred within a year or two of this treatise, after which its theology was largely ignored by the practice of the church at Carthage.

One other thing to note...Cyprian's ecclesiology does not give the bishops license of infallibility. Obviously, he believes even the bishop of Rome can err. His insistence on not changing apostolic doctrine one whit certainly does not jive with modern notions of an "organically growing Holy Tradition," either! For Cyprian, traditio is static; it is an unchanging faith explicitly handed down by the apostles. But neither does traditio appear in Cyprian in the usual sense:

For if we go back to the source and fountainhead of divine tradition, human error ceases; we there command a clear view of th enature of the heavenly mysteries, and whatever has lain hidden in obscurity under cover of mist and under cloud of darkness is now brought out into the light of truth...If in any respect the truth has grown faltering or shaky, we must go back to the Lord as our source, and to the tradition of the Gospels and the apostles.

The "apostles" here doubtlessly means the apostolic epistles. It seems that for Cyprian, "tradition" is identical with the contents of the New Testament. And, surpringly (to those who expect Cyprian to be Orthodox or Roman Catholic, anyway), he regards the traditio as sufficiently clear in itself to enlighten with the truth. There is no final appeal to an infallible interpreter, the Living Voice of the Church, or any other version of "look at what we now believe, and that's the correct thing." So, rather than referring to another apostolic authority alongside Scripture passed down orally since apostolic times through the succession bishops (Trent), a unified, living, dynamic mind that includes Scripture among many other things (Orthodoxy), or a Holy Spirit-led, progressive unfolding of divine revelation (Vatican II), Cyprian is simply referring to the apostolic teaching, which is preserved in their writings. I think that he uses the word traditio, not to emphasize that some extra authority besides Scripture is needed, but rather to emphasize both the essential unity of the apostolic teaching and the finality of its authority. In other words, the point is that whether we are talking about Paul, Luke, Peter, Matthew, or John, they are all teaching the same Gospel to the same Church. And furthermore, nothing coming afterward can supercede or add to this authoritative teaching, which judges all teachings. Given the battles the Church was fighting in the 3rd century, how many things were in flux, and how many heresies kept springing up, this makes far more sense than trying to project medieval Catholic concepts back onto it.