Cyprian of Carthage
Cyprian was one of the most important Latin-speaking leaders of the early church. As bishop of Carthage he led the church through fierce persecution, and the crisis over the “lapsed,” who had denied Christ under threat and then sought readmission, drove him to think deeply about the church. In On the Unity of the Catholic Church (251) he argued that schism is never justified and that schismatic bishops cannot administer the sacraments.1
For Cyprian the church’s unity was episcopal, resting in the bishops in succession from the apostles, and he made salvation depend on belonging to the bishop’s church. He gave the church a famous saying:
He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the church for his mother.2 Cyprian of CarthageOn the Unity of the Church 6
He died a martyr in 258.
His Legacy
Sam Storms calls Cyprian “the final link in the early development of the monarchical bishop.” He taught that there is no salvation outside the church, was one of the first to teach baptismal regeneration plainly, offered a system of penance the Roman church would adopt, and was important to the development of the Mass. Yet he held that the bishop of Rome was only first among equals, a view the Eastern churches kept and Rome did not. Augustine carried his ideas into the Middle Ages, and even Calvin, as Gregg Allison notes, favorably quoted his saying on the church as mother.3
