St. Cyprian of Carthage and the College of Bishops by Benjamin Safranski (review)

Cyprian famously wrote, "The Church forms one single whole: it is neither rent nor broken apart but is everywhere linked and bonded tightly together by the glue of the bishops sticking firmly to each other" (Ep. 66.8.3). But Cyprian also declared before his fellow African bishops, "For neither does any one of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops or, by tyrannical terror force his colleagues into yielding to him by necessity, since each bishop has his own judgment, on account of his freedom and power: he can no more be judged by another than he can judge another himself" (Sent. Episc. 87 proem). Clearly there is an unresolved tension between these two tenets in Cyprian's ecclesiology—the essential unity of the church based on the unified college of bishops, and the essential freedom of any one of these bishops to form his own judgements, answerable to God alone.

Safranski's monograph explores how this tension played out in Cyprian's administration as bishop in Carthage, among his fellow bishops in North Africa, and in his correspondence with churches in Spain, in Gaul, in Rome and in the wider Mediterranean. For this he examines closely Cyprian's letters, meticulously sifting through his text and carefully documenting his observations with up-todate bibliography. He confronts squarely the role of the see of Rome within this college of bishops and (rightly, in my judgment) concludes that whilst the see of Peter was, for Cyprian, the source and symbol of the unity which was essential to the nature of the church and had the prestige and influence as the foundational bishopric, it had for Cyprian none of the legal authority that has later been attributed to it.

He goes on to show how Cyprian endeavored, through the various crises he had to confront during his bishopric (especially the penitential regime in the aftermath of the persecution of Decius and the [re]baptism controversy), to build consensus and common practice, exercising argument and persuasion, even modifying his own position when confronted by his fellow African bishops meeting in synod (Ep. 55). But there remained still the problem as to how far a bishop could diverge from the major consensus of bishops. This is exemplified in Ep. 68 where Marcianus of Arles is reported to have favored the rigorist penitential regime associated with excommunicated Novatian, whereas "throughout the world without exception we all made the same declaration on the matter. For it is not possible that there should be divergence of opinion among us, seeing that there was in us but one and the same Spirit. Hence it is plainly evident that a man does not hold the truth of the Holy Spirit with the rest of his colleagues when we find that his opinions are different from theirs" (Ep. 68.5.2). The bishops had a duty to police their own members on doctrinal, pastoral, and moral grounds. There was, in practice, a limit to the leeway allowable to individual bishops.

This is all carefully documented and sensibly and clearly argued in the first four chapters. Safranski then goes on, interestingly, in a final fifth chapter, to compare this view of the church with that espoused by Nicholas Afanasiev who criticised Cyprian for introducing a "universalist ecclesiology" based on law and modeled on the Roman imperial ideal. By contrast, Afanasiev's vision of the church was based on the (primitive) local eucharistic assembly where each local church fully manifested the church of God in Christ. Grace and love replaced law, the Eucharist replaced the Episcopate. Whilst this "localist" theory has laudable ecumenical aspirations for reconciling Catholic and Orthodox churches, it also fails to address the crucial question of what happens to communion when churches are in severe disagreement about fundamental issues. For Cyprian such issues were ultimately discerned by the bishops acting in concert.

Safranski has contributed a carefully considered and scholarly study to the growing volume...