For
the Lord has said that the nations are to be baptized in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and that in baptism past sins are to be
remitted. . . . (Epistle 27.3.3, in The Letters of St. Cyprian, Volume 1 [trans.
G. W. Clarke; Ancient Christian Writers 43; New York: Newman Press, 1984], 114)
Commenting on Cyprian’s theology
of water baptism, Clarke noted that:
Cyprian
is alluding, of course, to the conclusion of St. Matthew’s gospel, 28.19, a
passage which he actually quotes in his accompanying letter to the Roman
confessors, Ep. 28. He will exploit the verse discussing the Trinitarian
baptismal formula in Ep. 3.4.1 ff.
. . . Cyprian never cites any formula used at the exomologesis,
the penitential ceremony. Cyprian’s argument is based on the premise that even
the most heinous of sins (and this includes idolatry) are characteristically
cancelled by baptism—and that is achieved in the name of the Trinity. It is as
if the laxist priest had been claiming that the martyrs did for the apostasy of
the lapsed what God did only in baptism for prebaptismal sins, that is, cancel
them out without requiring any penance for them. The passage is a good example
of Cyprian’s taste for a verbal level of argument. (Does there remain any trace
of unspoken assumption in this argument that such major delicts committed after
baptism, would normally be “reserved for God”?) For the close connexion in Cyprian’s
thought between baptism and the remission of sins, see, for example, Epp.
67.9.7.2, 73.7.1f., 73.15.1; Ad Fort. praef. 4. (Ibid., 361 n. 24)
