What happens if an influential
bishop, like, above all, the bishop of Rome, along with some of his fellows,
will not appear to stick 'with the glue of mutual concord', but break 'from the
bond of unity'? It was a problem that was to surface, in more recent,
twentieth-century, history, at the Second Vatican Council that wished to assert
episcopal collegiality yet at the same time to maintain papal primacy. We must
rely in that case on the Holy Spirit:
A divergence of view was
impossible on our part, in whom the Spirit is one, and for that reason it is
clear that he does not hold fast to the truth of the Holy Spirit with the rest
of us whom we see holding a different view. (Cyprian, Epistulae 68.5.2.III-14)
Clearly Cyprian does not believe
in the infallibility of the bishop of Rome, despite his acknowledgment of a
Petrine supremacy in some sense. Indeed, if Stephen breaks with the consensus of
Cyprian’s approved episcopal network, then he ceases to be indwelt by the Holy
Spirit. (Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010], 293-94)
