Thomas M. Lindsay · 14 of 17

Chapter VII. Ministry Changing to Priesthood. · Part 2

Although the conception that the heads of the Christian churches were the successors of the apostles, in the sense that they possessed the gifts and the powers of the original apostles (now thought of as Twelve only), was really the creation of the Roman Church, it is intimately connected with Cyprian of Carthage, who gave it definiteness as a dogmatic idea. This great ecclesiastical statesman, like Gregory I., has left behind him a collection of letters which reveal the working of his mind, and enable us to see how his thoughts took sharper outline in a controversy which he had to maintain with his own office-bearers in Carthage, and how he aimed at and partly succeeded in giving the Christian Church a polity which enabled it to be one in practical activity as it was one in devotional conception.

Thascius Cyprianus was the most eminent of the many distinguished converts whom Christianity was drawing from the learned and wealthy classes during the second third of the third century, during that long period of “peace” which preceded the outbreak of the Decian persecution in 250 A.D. He was a Roman whose ancestors had settled in Africa. Such men were called Roman Africans. They belonged to a race which had given the capital some of its most distinguished lawyers, and which furnished to the Church such men as Tertullian, Minutius Felix, Cyprian, Lactantius and Augustine. By training and profession he was a pleader, and therefore of the highest social standing. His wealth was great; his house, with its “gilded ceilings” and “mosaics of costly marble,” and his gardens, were famous in the city of palaces. He became a Christian in middle life, drawn by the persuasion of the intellect as well as by the pleadings of the heart. We may see the path he trod towards conversion in his Treatise to Donatus and in the Book of Testimonies he wrote for a friend. After a brief space of time he probably became a deacon; he was certainly an elder when Donatus, the Bishop of Carthage, died. The Christians at Carthage resolved that the most distinguished Christian in the city, although two years had scarcely passed since his baptism, should be their bishop. His reluctance only increased their ardour. “A crowded brotherhood besieged the doors of his house, and throughout all the avenues of access an anxious love was circulating.” Cyprian yielded and was ordained, the bishop, the Papa, the spiritual Father of the Christian community in Carthage. We must forget many of the associations which the word “bishop” inevitably brings with it to understand his position. He was simply the chief pastor of the Christian congregation at Carthage and of its outlying mission districts. He had no diocese and never exercised diocesan rule. He had no cathedral, not even a church. His congregation met in the audience hall of a wealthy Carthaginian burgher. It was the man who made the position he occupied one of such commanding importance as it soon attained to.

Eighteen months of quiet rule were vouchsafed him. During this period he had conciliated the few who had been opposed to the choice of so recently baptized a Christian for the important place of chief pastor. They became, says Pontius, his biographer, “his closest and most intimate friends.”

Decius was one of those stern upright emperors who believed that Christianity was a source of menace to the empire, and that it had to be stamped out. His edict against it was published early in the year 250 A.D. It had been expected by the heathen population of Carthage, and threats against the wealthy and well-known head of the Christian community were freely uttered by the mob. Cyprian, thinking less of his own safety than of the welfare of his people, believed it to be his duty to go into retirement, and a large part of his correspondence deals with the management of his congregation from his place of safety. We find three distinct questions of ecclesiastical organization raised and in the end settled-the right of men supposed to be specially possessed by the Spirit to interfere in the discipline of the local church, the seat of the one supreme authority in the local church, and the best means of giving a practical expression to the unity of the whole Church of Christ. The occasion which demanded solution of all three questions was the fact that many Christians had lapsed and were asking to be restored to the communion of the Church at Carthage. The ecclesiastical questions are so connected with the course of events that these last must be briefly noted.

The persecution resolved upon by the Emperor Decius was begun in swift ruthless Roman fashion. It attacked the Christian Church everywhere simultaneously—in Rome, Egypt, Syria, Armenia, Spain, and North Africa. It aimed at breaking up the Christian communities by destroying their leaders and then coercing their followers. Cyprian speaks of bishops proscribed, imprisoned, banished, and slain. Persecution had been almost unknown in Africa for thirty-eight years, during which time of “peace” the Christian communities had been growing rapidly in numbers and in influence; the results of its renewal seemed at first sight to be disastrous to the Christian faith. Multitudes relapsed into heathenism. The larger half of the Christian community in Carthage and at least one presbyter had been unable to face the terrible risks in which the profession of Christianity had involved them. They relapsed. They appeared before the imperial commissioners, five of whom, called The Commissioners of the Sacrifices, were appointed to act along with the magistrates of the district. They made a declaration that they worshipped the gods and in the presence of the commissioners they took part in the pagan worship, either joining in a sacrifice, tasting the wine and eating of the sacrificial victim (the sacrificati) or throwing incense on the altar of the emperor (the thurificati). This done they received a certificate (libellus), certifying that they had done so. This was registered, and then a copy was posted up in the market place or forum. Some found a way of appearing to comply and yet of escaping from actual participation in the pagan rites. They bribed officials to give them certificates declaring that they had taken part in sacrifices which they had not done (the libellatici). Thus poor Etecusa, a Roman Christian, while she sadly and fearfully was climbing the ascent to the Capitol, where she had to make her declaration and take part in the sacrifices, found an official near the small temple to the Three Fates, who sold her a certificate and she went home again without sacrificing. Many sought safety in flight, hoping to find freedom from persecutions in cities where they were unknown.

Those Christians who were of sterner stuff were imprisoned, awaiting torture and probably death. The torture was repeated over and over again. Even if it produced recantation a second torture was applied. If the confessor stood firm it might be applied time after time until the sufferer expired under it. Such men and women were called confessors before they had suffered, and martyrs after they had been done to death, or had suffered tortures without expiring. The martyrs and confessors were carefully tended while they were in prison by their fellow-Christians; and many of the lapsed, repenting of their weakness, thronged the prisons in Carthage and lavished all manner of attentions on the heroic confessors. These lapsed Christians, especially those of them who had purchased exemption from suffering by means of false certificates, were anxious to be reconciled with the Church, and besought the good offices of the confessors and martyrs to intercede on their behalf with the office-bearers, and beg them to restore them again to communion. The result was that many of the confessors, from the prison where they lay, gave letters (which were also called libelli) to the elders of the Church, the bishop being absent in hiding, asking that the bearers might be restored to the Church which they had abandoned in a moment of weakness. This Decian persecution differed from all preceding ones to this extent, that it had fallen on the whole Church of Christ, and was not confined to any one portion. The question of what was to be done in the case of lapsed members who wished to return to the faith they had abjured was one which was forced upon the whole Church everywhere and at the same time. It was a question of discipline which had to be inevitably faced by every church.

So far as our information goes, the leaders of the Roman Church were the first to see the importance and the urgency of the question. The Bishop Fabian had been one of the first martyrs; to meet and appoint a successor would have been to offer new victims to the persecuting government. The elders of the church took the burden of leadership on their own shoulders; they saw the universal situation and the need for an immediate understanding with sister churches about what it was possible to do at once. They put aside matters that could wait until their church had again its lawful head; but the one matter which pressed for an immediate decision was what ought to be done in the case of lapsed Christians who earnestly desired reconciliation with the Church, and who were on the point of death. They accordingly wrote to the elders in Carthage, advising them to follow a definite rule with regard to the lapsed who were repentant—that if any were taken with sickness, and repented of what they had done and desired communion, it should be granted to them. In the same letter these Roman elders speak not obscurely of Cyprian as the hireling shepherd who deserts his sheep when peril draws near. They in Rome and the elders in Carthage are both deprived of their chief; persecution makes all work difficult, but it must be done. This letter reached Cyprian, who treated it in a very lofty way, and sent it back to the writers with a few grimly sarcastic remarks; but it had a marked effect on him nevertheless. It altered his attitude towards his own elders. Before he had read it he had sent a letter to his elders and deacons, in which he had said: “I beg you by your faith and your religion to discharge both your own office and mine, that there be nothing wanting either to discipline or diligence.” He left the whole work unreservedly in their hands—all his work as well as theirs. The two words used, disciplina and diligentia, are employed by Cyprian to denote the two great divisions of a bishop's work—the term disciplina including everything which belonged to the office of judging and punishing, and diligentia including all that belonged to his work as the head of the religious administration of the congregation, the care of the poor and such matters. In a letter following, however, he distinctly limited the work of his elders and deacons to the diligentia or to the religious administration. “I exhort and command you, that those of you whose presence there is least suspicious and least perilous, should in my stead discharge my duty in respect of doing those things which are required for the religious administration.” In the same letter he refuses to answer a question sent him by four presbyters, which evidently concerned matters of discipline on the ground that in such matters he did nothing on his own private opinion without the advice of his elders, deacons, and people. From this time onwards Cyprian shows himself more and more irritated with his elders. He wrote to the martyrs and the confessors complaining that some of his elders had admitted some of the lapsed to communion; he wrote to his elders and deacons complaining that some of the elders, “remembering neither the Gospel nor their own place, and, moreover, considering neither the Lord’s future judgment nor the bishop now placed over them, claim to themselves entire authority (a thing which was never done in anywise under our predecessors) with discredit and contempt of the bishop.” Their fault was that the elders blamed had communicated with some of the lapsed, and offered and given them the eucharist, “disregarding the honour which the blessed martyrs, with the confessors, maintain for me, despising the law of the Lord, and that observance which the same martyrs and confessors order to be maintained.” He wrote to the people complaining of the action of the elders in almost the same terms, and promised that when he could return a meeting of bishops would be convened and that in the presence of the confessors, and with their opinion, the letters and wishes of the “blessed martyrs” with reference to the lapsed would be carefully considered.

We do not know whether Cyprian got any answer to these letters; but the probability is that he received none, and that people and clergy felt sore that the bishop would neither return and act himself nor allow his elders to do anything in the pressing question of the lapsed. He wrote again to the elders and deacons and for the first time suggested some immediate action. If any of the lapsed had a certificate from one of the martyrs and were in sore sickness they were to be allowed to communicate. This letter brought an answer, which assured him that the elders and deacons had hitherto done their best to follow his instructions, and to restrain the people and especially the lapsed; and Cyprian reiterates the command that if any of the penitent lapsed had a certificate from one of the martyrs, and were at the point of death, they were to be received back into the communion of the Church.

Then comes a curious letter. Cyprian, whose last dealings with Rome had been to send back the letter of advice which the Roman elders had addressed to their brethren at Carthage, now wrote to these Roman elders; justified to them his actions in Carthage; complained bitterly of the way in which the libellatici had pestered the martyrs for certificates; bemoaned the weakness of some of his clergy in admitting some of the lapsed to communion; and declared that he had followed the advice given in the letter from Rome which he had treated so scornfully when it reached him. His letter, however, contains one interesting fact. Cyprian says distinctly that although some of his presbyters had acted rashly in communicating with the lapsed, they had refrained as soon as he had remonstrated with them. Rome, however, had not forgotten his earlier action, and he had to write four times ere he got an answer. When it came it was practically a repetition of what had been written to the elders of Carthage, at least so far as immediate action was concerned: If the lapsed are in severe sickness and are penitent, admit them to communion, whether they have certificates from martyrs or not. But as regards the larger, statesmanlike policy, which belonged to the immediate future, the Roman elders adopted the proposals laid before them by Cyprian, and by intercourse and correspondence they obtained the adhesion of many bishops in Sicily and in some parts of Italy. Cyprian himself had meanwhile gained the adoption of his policy by a large number of bishops in Africa, with whom he had been in correspondence.

Having thus secured the support of the Roman elders and of so many bishops throughout the West for his conception of arriving at a common mode of dealing with the lapsed, Cyprian at once took measures to subdue all resistance in Carthage. He superseded his elders by a commission of five, three bishops and two elders, to whom he entrusted not merely the discipline, but also the relief of the deserving poor. They were to be his vicars. It was this action that produced the subsequent schism in the Church at Carthage, a result scarcely to be wondered at. Why such an arbitrary step should have been taken it is difficult to say. Cyprian himself testifies that his clergy were at one with him; they had with his approval excommunicated Gaius of Didda, a presbyter who had insisted on communicating with the lapsed. However it is to be accounted for it remains a witness to what Cyprian believed to be the power of the chief pastor; and it also seems to imply that at this juncture Cyprian stood very much alone, separated in sympathy both from his clergy and his people.

Such was the situation in Carthage immediately before Cyprian was able to return, and to hold the successive councils of African bishops which exhibited his ecclesiastical statesmanship. Through the whole course of these events one question thrusts itself into prominence—the possibility of the restoration to Church communion of Christians who had lapsed during the persecution, and who penitently begged to be allowed to return. Cyprian had one opinion on this matter and some of his elders had another.

If the earlier usages of the Church be kept in mind, there was much to be said on both sides. Idolatry had always been considered one of the worst sins into which the baptized Christian could fall. It was one of those heinous sins against God which, it was believed, the Church could never pardon. No limits were set to the mercy of God; He might pardon and in the end receive; but the Church could only accept such repentant sinners as catechumens, who could never again approach the Lord’s Table. On the other hand, it had been held that such sins could be pardoned in the Church if a revelation was received from God authorizing the restoration in any particular case. So long as the prophetic ministry lasted, it was believed that a prophet might receive such a revelation. The opinion which silently spread through the Church that deadly sins might receive forgiveness once but not on a second lapse, can be traced back to a prophetic utterance. It was also believed that, besides the prophets, the martyrs were the very men to whom it was likely that God would vouchsafe such a revelation of His mind and will. They too had the right to speak the word of pardon which the office-bearers of the Church dared not do. To speak such pardons, then, was the prerogative of prophets and martyrs; and it was theirs because the Spirit of God dwelt in them in larger measure than in any other Christians, whether office-bearers or not. Martyrs had used this prerogative of theirs in the past. The martyrs of Lyons had pronounced the pardon of the penitent lapsed around them; and we can see from Tertullian, how common a practice it was for men who, by reason of some great sin, were “outside the peace of the Church,” to supplicate the martyrs to procure this peace for them. Hence the elders of Carthage might well plead that they were acting according to the ancient traditions of the Church when they were induced to give communion to those who came with the letters of the martyrs in their hands.

On the other hand, Cyprian felt that the Decian persecution was a crisis which might make or mar the Church of God. The long rest from persecution had made conversion a comparatively easy thing, and the persecution, with the wholesale defections it had produced, had shown how bad these easy conversions had been for the stability of the Church. To make restoration an easy matter might do more harm to Christianity than the persecution itself. He was unwearied in urging, in his earliest letters, that lapsing into idolatry was a heinous sin against God, which must be bitterly repented in protracted sorrow. Hasty restoration was a profanity in his sight, and the demand for it did not seem to him to be a sign of the depth of sorrow that should exist. He knew that the churches had relaxed their former rigid attitude with regard to sins specially heinous; he had no word of disapproval for the practice; he believed that the churches had authority to forgive even the sin of idolatry—at least he must have come to believe that they had; but with that strong view of authority which was his characteristic and with his ideas of orderly Church procedure, he was determined that the whole question of the lapsed ought to be gone into with the greatest deliberation. The dominant idea in his earliest epistles is that after the persecution had ceased the bishop, elders, deacons, confessors and people ought to meet together, and the question of the lapsed, their repentance and their pardon be deliberately dealt with. The scene suggested by his words is what we know was the mode of discipline in the Roman Church after Calixtus’ proclamation that the office-bearers at Rome were prepared to grant pardon for sins of the flesh on due signs of sorrow. Tertullian’s description of the scene, although a caricature by a bitter opponent, conveys a not unfair impression of what must have frequently taken place. Cyprian’s later declaration that he meant to ask the assistance of bishops in the determination of so grave a matter is not incompatible with his earlier promises.

Suddenly he was brought face to face with a question of authority. To the grave Roman lawyer who had become a Christian bishop, the question of authority was the question of questions. Another authority suddenly confronted him within his own congregation. He could afford to be sarcastic in a dignified manner when the elders of the Church of Rome compared him to a hireling shepherd and then proceeded to give advice to his own office-bearers. That was from without; but this was from within; and had moreover some sanction from ancient usage. He felt bound to resist, and he did with all his powers.

Thus this struggle successfully maintained by Cyprian against the right of the martyrs or confessors to pronounce pardon of one who had lapsed, may be looked upon as the last stage of the long contest waged by the office-bearers of the local churches against the ancient supremacy of the prophetic ministry. His success established the complete supremacy of the local office-bearers; it was never again questioned. Carthage had therefore a peculiar place in the development of the idea of the centre of authority in the Church of Christ in addition to the prominence given to it by the genius of its bishop. The martyrs and confessors do not seem to have contested the supremacy of the bishop or office-bearers anywhere else. At Rome, at Alexandria and at Corinth, they all supported the ordinary ecclesiastical authorities. In Carthage alone the confessors and martyrs strove to exert their power against that of the bishop, and found some of the office-bearers ready, at first at least, to accept their decisions as the commands of God.

Felicissimus could say: “God speaks through His martyrs as He spoke in the old days through His prophets, and where God speaks there is His Church”; and the lapsed could send letters to Cyprian written in the name of the Church, because they were written by martyrs; while Cyprian could reply: “God speaks through the bishop as he formerly spoke through His apostles, and the Church is founded on the bishops, and every act of the Church is controlled by these same rulers.” Thus the two authorities faced each other in Carthage—at first within the one community—then, when the tension became too strong, in two separate congregations, in one of which Felicissimus and the five elders represented the old idea of authoritative divine utterance in the midst of the congregation; while in the other Cyprian insisted on the new thought, first proclaimed by Hippolytus and Calixtus in their mutual quarrels, that the bishops speak the divine decisions as the apostles had done.

Cyprian took this position from the first:—No one can be received back into the communion of the Church until penance has been performed, confession made, and the hands of the bishop and clergy are laid upon their heads. This cannot be done in the absence of the bishop, and therefore there can be no restitution of the lapsed until the “peace” comes and the bishop is able to return. But he was too great a man to be a doctrinaire theorist. When he found the strength of the martyrs’ position in Carthage, when his humanity was touched with the thought of really penitent lapsed dying without the reconciliation they longed for, he permitted his elders to communicate with those invalids who had martyrs’ certificates, although he could not be present himself to receive them formally, and by nominating a distinguished martyr to be one of his commission of five, he managed to show the people that the whole strength of the martyrs was not on the side opposed to him. Never from beginning to end did he acknowledge an authority in the local church superior or even equal to that of the bishop. He went the length of superseding his elders, the ancient counsellors of the bishop, when he thought that the influence of the martyrs over them was likely to weaken his. He was the despot, generally a benevolent despot, of the local church. His position might be due to his people, but he never imagined that his authority came from them; it came from God directly. That was his idea from first to last. The old theory that the bishop did not differ from the elders save in having a special seat of honour in the Church and in having the power to ordain, was not his. He was a Roman lawyer, and the analogies of imperial government were always before him. The governors of the imperial provinces, large or small, were nominated by the emperor and were responsible to him alone. It was their duty to govern for the benefit of the people over whom they were set, to take counsel with them and their leaders on the affairs of the province, but they were responsible to the emperor alone from whom their authority came. The Church had begun to copy the imperial organization in many things, as we shall see hereafter, and the analogy of the imperial government was never absent from the thoughts of the leaders during the second half of the third century. The bishops were the dispensatores Dei et Christi, as the governors were the deputies of the emperor. They were in God’s place, set there by His authority, and responsible to Him alone. If their authority was recognized then they might take their people and their subordinate office-bearers into their confidence and into their counsels, but if it was in any way questioned, then they were alone with God against all gainsayers.

According to Cyprian’s idea, the bishop entered upon the rights and duties of his office through ordination, which was the indispensable gate to all office in the Church. His selection was commonly the act of the people, but neighbouring bishops might select him and present him to his people, whose assent must always be obtained before installation. Whatever the mode of selection and of consecration, Cyprian saw in these acts the hand of God. It was God and God alone who made bishops, while it was the bishops who made the subordinate office-bearers. His reason for his strong and reiterated assertions that bishops were made by God appears to have been that the appointment of a bishop, who is, “for the time, judge in Christ’s stead,” is such an important thing, that God who cares even for sparrows, must control the selection of bishops.

Once appointed, the bishop possessed the “sublime power of governing the Church,” and was responsible to God alone for his deeds. He was the autocrat within his own Church, and every act and office culminated in his person, just as the emperor absorbed in one man all the legal powers which under the earlier republican government had been distributed among several officials.

The bishop had entire charge of the discipline of the congregation. It was his care to see that the brethren kept the divine precepts. It was his duty to instruct the people about what the discipline of the Church required, and to promote their growth in holiness. To this end God might vouchsafe to grant him visions which he was bound to communicate to his people for their edification. In all this the elders and deacons might assist, but always under the control of the bishop. To him and to him alone belonged the right of “binding and loosing”—a right which had been given, he maintained, to St. Peter, and then to the other apostles, and which now belonged to the bishops who were for each generation what the apostles had been for the first. No restoration of sinners was possible until the bishop had heard their confessions, until he had approved of their signs of sorrow, or until he, along with the presbyters and deacons, had placed his hands on their head in token of forgiveness. He could institute new laws of discipline, but always in accordance with the Scriptural rules, and more suitably after consultation with other bishops. To him belonged the power to prescribe the signs of sorrow, and to say what were sufficient in the way of prayers and of good works such as almsgiving.

He was also the head of the whole religious administration (diligentia). He was the almoner of the poor and the paymaster of the subordinate clergy. For Cyprian seems to have been the first to make payments to the clergy, a first charge on the tenths and free-will offerings of the congregation. He could give or withhold the monthly payments; and this of itself, when the elders and deacons were dependent on the Church for their livelihood, sufficed to make the bishop an autocrat over the clergy.