Although Cyprian is venerated as a saint and
martyr in the Catholic Church, the Church did not accept everything he ever
wrote. The inconsistencies and even contradictions in his writings fall of
their own weight. At the Council of Carthage, in 256, Cyprian had proclaimed
that “every bishop has a right to his own opinion,” and “can no more be judged
by another than he himself can judge another.”
Did Cyprian really believe that? Cyprian
had asked the Roman bishop to intervene against Bishop Marcian of Arles,
because of Marcian’s Novatianist leanings. What if Marcian had responded that “every
bishop has a right to his own opinion,” or that he, Marcian, could “no more be
judged by another than he (could) judge another?”
In his treatise De Unitate, Cyprian had compared
the unity of the Church to that of God Himself, writing:
There is one God, and one Christ, and his Church
is one, and the faith is one, and there is one people joined in solid unity of
the body of the glue of agreement.
The baptismal controversy showed why the Church needed
to have this “glue,” or an absurd situation would have resulted. This is
obvious if we consider the alternatives in a purely dialectical way:
1. If Stephen was right. Pope Stephen had
condemned rebaptism as contrary to apostolic tradition, yet without the power
of the keys, Stephen would have been unable to enforce his view. Cyprian, and
virtually all the Africans, would in effect be administering “double baptism,”
with Rome powerless to intervene.
2. If Cyprian was right. According to
Cyprian, baptism by heretics was invalid—utterly null and void. Yet Stephen as
bishop would be refusing, in effect, to give such converts a real baptism. If
so, converts from heresy who entered the church under Stephen were receiving no
baptism at all. Yet “every bishop has a right to his own opinion,” Cyprian had
proclaimed. Consequently, nobody in the Church could make sure that converts
from heresy receive a “real” baptism in Rome.
If all bishops have a right to their own opinion,
there would be no way to resolve the baptismal controversy: thus great provinces
of the Universal Church must resign themselves either to rebaptism (at Africa),
or to no baptism at all for converts (at Rome). Either way, the Church would be
prevented from proclaiming one faith, one Lord, one baptism, as the Scripture
demands Eph. 4, 5).
In reality, nothing of the kind happened. While
the Church venerates the holiness of Cyprian, the great African did not have
the last word in the dispute about rebaptism.
Cyprian had confronted a power greater than
himself. With all his eloquence, all his conviction, all his magnetism and iron
rectitude, he had collided, head first, into the power of the keys.
This time, a saint did not prevail. (Scott Butler
and John Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World: The Evidence for Papal
Authority (33 AD – 800 AD) from Ancient Latin, Greek, Chaldean, Syriac, Armenian,
Coptic and Ethiopian Documents [State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics
International Publishing, Inc., 2021], 42-43)
