Daily Reading for September 13 • Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr of Carthage, 258
In the mid-third century, the church led by Cyprian was defined by its opposition to a new kind of “demonically deceptive imitation” that was identified by its relative leniency toward penitent sinners and the authority granted to martyred saints and confessors. Although the defining issues emerged in the context of the extreme threat posed by the Decian persecution, the outcomes were generated by a clash of competing authorities and either rigorous or lax attitudes toward those who had fallen into the grave sin of idolatry. At first the two competing groups were the confessors [who had survived torture] and the clergy, but soon the groups comprised at least two different church bodies, each asserting that it was the one and true community and each claiming the exclusive power to condemn or absolve sinners and to transmit the Holy Spirit through its sacraments. Individuals staked their eternal salvation on the hope that they had been baptized by the right bishop and in the right church. . . .
The African position, as articulated by Cyprian, recognized baptism as valid only if inside a community under the authority of the duly consecrated bishop. By the end of the persecutions of the mid-third century, the power to cleanse a new convert and to confer the Spirit was limited to those who were within a single, unified body established by Christ when he conferred the power to forgive sin upon the apostles. No other community, clergy, or prophetically inspired individuals could claim to have access to this power, since the Holy Spirit did not reside within them. The flock could have only one shepherd. There could be no halfway position. One was either within the ark of salvation (the true church) or on the outside drowning in the flood. For Cyprian, there could be only one fountain of living water, and that was inside an enclosed garden:
“That the Church is one is declared by the Holy Spirit in the Song of Songs, speaking in the person of Christ. ‘My dove, my perfect one, is but one; she is the only one of her mother, the favourite of her who bore her.’ And the Spirit again says of her: ‘An enclosed garden is my sister, my bride, a sealed fountain, a well of living water.’ Now, if the bride of Christ (that is to say, the Church) is an enclosed garden, then it is just not possible that something which is closed up should lie wide open to outsiders and aliens. . . . And if it is the one and only well of living water and it, too, is found on the inside, then it is just not possible for a man who is placed on the outside to be given life and sanctification through that water; they and they alone who are on the inside are granted permission to drink of it or to make use of it in any way” (Letter 69.2.1).
From “Baptismal Rites and Architecture” by Robin M. Jensen, in Late Ancient Christianity, edited by Virginia Burrus, volume 2 in the series A People’s History of Christianity (Fortress Press, 2005).