Augustine’s View of the Church as Revealed in His Use of Cyprian’s Contra Donatistas

by Brett Williams¹

In the winter of 398, the newly appointed bishop of Hippo traveled on an ecclesiastical mission to the Numidian capital of Cirta. En route near Tibursi and through providential circumstances, the great doctor of the church Augustine (354–430) met with the aging Donatist bishop, Fortunius.² Though pressed for time, Augustine entered into a respectful but forceful discussion with the revered bishop despite the continual interruption by an unwelcome throng of observers.³ The topic: What is the Church? This discussion was predicated on the ecclesial schism that centered on whether or not lapsi and traditores (those who accused of denying the faith or betraying other believers during the Decian and Diocletian persecutions) could have a role in the church. Out of that fateful meeting arose a series of vehement oral and epistolary debates regarding the purity and nature of the church. The controversy eventually led to the Council of Carthage in 411, as well as the near eradication of the Roman African exclusivism movement.

During this controversy, Donatist bishops regularly cited Cyprian (c. 210–258), the venerable bishop of Carthage (who preceded Donatus [d. c. 355]), to support their views on lapsi and traditores, baptismal and sacramental purity, and the nature of the church. Cyprian’s idea of the church and its definition as a monolithic entity was considered by most authoritative in the late fourth and early fifth centuries.⁴ Never the acquiescent, Augustine also spent a considerable amount of ink refuting Donatists, particularly in regard to their understanding and use of Cyprian.⁵ In his lengthy treatise De Baptismo, Contra Donatistas (On Baptism, Against the Donatists), written around 400, Augustine expressed his frustration,

I wrote seven books on baptism in answer to the Donatists, who were endeavoring to defend themselves by the authority of the most blessed bishop and martyr Cyprian. In them I taught that there is nothing as powerful for refuting the Donatists and for closing their mouths completely, so that they may not defend their schism against the Catholic Church, as the letters and life of Cyprian.⁶

Many of the seven books in the treatise, along with much of Augustine’s other writings against Donatistic separatism, included a defense and exegesis of Cyprian. Augustine’s apology of Cyprian exposed his ecclesiology perhaps more fully than any other aspect of his anti-Donatism. This article examines Augustine’s view of the nature of the church through his use of Cyprian’s writings and allegories against Donatistic separatism in three ways: 1) exposing Augustine’s dilemma with the Donatists’s use of Cyprian; 2) evaluating Augustine’s use of Cyprian; 3) exploring Cyprian and Augustine on poetic ecclesiastical allegories in Song of Songs and Psalms 45. These steps will demonstrate that Augustine’s use of Cyprian against the Donatists revealed fundamental aspects of his ecclesiology, namely that the church contains both saved and lost and is an irreducibly unified body. Additionally, the church is kept holy, not by purity of those within the body, but by the bride, Jesus Christ.⁷ For Augustine, the church was both a corpus permixtum (mixed body) and innocents simplex et perfecta (innocent, simple/uniform, and perfect).

Exposing Augustine’s Donatist Dilemma

Due in part to his experiences with the Decian persecution and the troubled return of the lapsi to the church, the Carthaginian bishop Cyprian used his influence to concisely distinguish the church from the world.⁸ Separatism, martyrdom, and ecclesiastical purity became greatly emphasized in Roman African ecclesiology. Cyprian’s emphasis on the purity of the church and her members, particularly regarding rebaptism of the lapsi, was readily appropriated to fit Donatistic ecclesiology.⁹ Augustine, in denying Donatistic authenticity, faced a difficult dilemma. Anglican scholar, W. J. Sparrow-Simpson explains that “Augustine’s anti-Donatist work was peculiarly complicated by the fact that the Separatists were able to support their practice of rebaptism by appeal to no less an authority than St. Cyprian … in the question of rebaptism the authority of Cyprian was undeniably on the Donatist side.”¹⁰

Cyprian taught that the church must be one in both practice and belief.¹¹ In De Unitate Ecclesiae (On the Unity of the Church), written in 251, Cyprian wrote,

How can two or three be assembled together in Christ’s name, who, it is evident, are separated from Christ and from His Gospel? For we have not withdrawn from them, but they from us; and since heresies and schisms have risen subsequently, from their establishment for themselves of diverse places of worship, they have forsaken the Head and Source of the truth. But the Lord speaks concerning His Church, and to those also who are in the Church He speaks, that if they are in agreement, if according to what He commanded and admonished, although only two or three gathered together with unanimity should pray.¹²

In other words, Christ does not distinguish between his true church and those contained in it. If the church is doctrinally pure, then it is the church indeed. The visual body is the actual body.¹³ The Donatists’s appropriation of Cyprian’s ecclesiology was especially troublesome for Augustine in three ways. First, Cyprian’s view of the church as the unique people of God or, populus Dei, allowed for a separatistic milieu in the church. According to the ecclesiastical historian W. H. C. Frend, Roman African-style separatism insisted that the true church was a “small body of the saved surrounded by the unregenerate. Its progress had been described in the Parable of the Tares. The field was the world, the tares the false Christians, and the wheat the elect. The tares had increased and it was necessary for the true Christians to separate themselves from them.”¹⁴ Bishops who had allegedly turned sacred writings over to be burned during the Diocletian persecution were labeled among the traditores.¹⁵ Any congregation under these reinstated traditores were considered not only impure, but synonymous with the godless world. The Roman government, which backed these ordinations and lapsi congregations, was also considered a part of this world system, antithetical to the true and pure body of Christ.

Cyprian’s stress of the collectiveness and unity of the church lead to a charge of anathema for not only all those who apostatized, but also for those who participated in their ministries.¹⁶ The Donatists, keen to establish their own legitimacy, utilized Cyprianic ecclesiastical separation by relating their own relationship with the Roman church, which they saw as equivalent to the state.¹⁷ The logic follows: Cyprian taught that every ordained bishop (vicaria ordinatio) steps into the place of Peter, and even Christ, in regards to the remission of sin.¹⁸ An unqualified bishop (whether by ethical or ecclesiastical standings) disqualifies and perverts the administration of Christ simply because he acts as vicar.¹⁹ Thus, anyone who is joined to a group outside of the true church by way of fellowship with these disqualified bishops is not in the true church.²⁰ The Donatists saw the traditores in the same light for anyone who was aligned with the world (consciously or otherwise) necessarily aligned themselves with those outside of the true church. The church was in clear opposition to the world.²¹ As Cyprian said, “That the Church is one, the Holy Spirit declares in the Canticle of Canticles, saying in the person of Christ: ‘…an enclosed garden is my sister, my bride…’ But if the garden enclosed is the spouse of Christ, which is the Church, a thing enclosed cannot lie open to outsiders and profane men.”²²

A second problem for Augustine was that Cyprian held that the true church, being defined in opposition to the world, would suffer and be purified through martyrdom. Cyprian’s view of the purity of the church was eschatological. For example, he wrote, “Let it not disturb you, dearly beloved Brethren, if among certain ones in recent times either uncertain faith waivers or feeble fear of God is vacillating or peaceful harmony does not last. These things have been predicted as about to come at the end of the world.”²³ The Donatists latched on to this millennialist eschatology, pointing to the fact that Cyprian himself followed through with martyrdom in 258, one year after refusing to sacrifice to a pagan deity before the Roman proconsul Aspasius Paternus.²⁴ Recent martyrs were greatly revered in the fourth century.²⁵ Christians feasted at martyrs’s graves, held celebrations in their honor, and even participated in the Eucharist on their behalf.²⁶ In fact, Cyprian was one of the most venerated martyrs in the church. Ironically, the more the Catholic communities persecuted the Donatists, the more the Donatists were identified with the tradition of the martyrs. Augustine shared this dilemma for the more he argued against the Donatists, the greater the persecution, the greater the persecution, the greater the Donatists’s identification with Cyprian.²⁷ This, in turn, reinforced the authenticity of the Donatist movement.²⁸

Third, Augustine faced further Cyprianic support in the idea of rebaptism. In a letter refuting the Mauritanian bishop Jubaianius, Cyprian said,

If any one could be baptized among heretics, certainly he could also obtain remission of sins. If he attained remission of sins, he was also sanctified. If he was sanctified, he also was made the temple of God. I ask, of what God? If of the Creator; he could not be, because he has not believed in Him. If of Christ; he could not become His temple, since he denies that Christ is God.²⁹

If Cyprian’s dictum “salus extra ecclesiam non est” is taken in accordance with salvation being conferred upon baptism, then there is also no baptism outside of the church.³⁰ “Baptism is an act of the church whereby one is brought into the presence of the acting Triune God.”³¹ If baptism is valid, it produces orthodox confessional truth. Thus, anyone outside of orthodoxy cannot have a valid baptism for “what one receives [in baptism] is what one confesses, and to confess a false creed is indicative of not having received a right baptism.”³² The Donatists were quick to contextualize Cyprian’s allowance of rebaptism. They insisted that anyone converting from the Catholic church was to be rebaptized to authenticate the new and pure collective identity.³³ Petilian, a Donatist, argued with Augustine, “He who is washed by the dead, what profiteth him in his washing? …That man is dead who has not been worthy to be born again in true baptism; he is likewise dead who, although born in genuine baptism, had joined himself to a traditor.”³⁴ For Cyprian, there could be no unity outside of the visible church, and thus, no authentic baptism outside the visible unity. For the Donatists, those converting from Catholicism or repenting from following the traditio were outside of the visible church having no salvation, and therefore needed rebaptism, or rather, authentic baptism.

Essentially, Donatist views were those of Cyprian, albeit nuanced to fit fourth and fifth century issues.³⁵ This placed Augustine in a peculiar position. He dared not desecrate the honor of Cyprian and dared not side with the separatists. Salisbury summed up his dilemma,

The Donatists had a strong weapon in the writings of the respected bishop/martyr of Carthage, and they did not hesitate to appeal to his authority. Regarding the relationship between the church and the world, Cyprian had explicitly stated, ‘salvation is not without the Church.’ Both Cyprian and the Donatists had interpreted this to mean the Church was a body of the elect.³⁶

Augustine was forced to walk an ecclesiastical tightrope. In order to avoid this dilemma, Augustine had to redefine the very nature and meaning of the church.³²

Evaluating Augustine’s Use of Cyprian

For Augustine, the Donatist error was more than just an ecumenical disagreement. Such error actually merited everlasting damnation.³⁷ Chester Hartranft describes Augustine’s opinion on the matter of rebaptism and ecclesiastical separatism.

Rebaptism in any case is a sin, but as applied to apostatizing Catholics, is an immanissimum scelus [monstrously wicked deed]. There is only one baptism, that of Christ.… The Church is the owner of the nations which are Christ’s inheritance, and of the ends of the earth, which are his possession; hence it is universal; the seamless robe should not be rent.³⁸

Augustine was not about to allow the Donatists to have an exegetical monopoly on Cyprian. What follows, specifically in De Baptismo, is a systematic reinterpretation of Cyprian that also redefines ecclesiology. First, Augustine clearly showed that instead of Cyprian being the Donatist’s foundation, he is actually their foil.³⁹ Augustine began in Book II to demonstrate that while the Donatists use Cyprian’s ecclesiology, they reject his example. “When Cyprian himself said, as seemed right to him, that he wanted to be in the peace of unity even with those who held a different opinion on this matter, that is what his first discourse at the opening of the same council indicates, which is cited by [the Donatists].”⁴⁰ Augustine wanted to show that just as Paul confronted Peter in Galatians 2, he too could critique Cyprian for rebaptism.

If Peter, I say, contrary to the rule of truth that the Church later observed, could oblige the gentiles to live like Jews, why could Cyprian, contrary to the rule of truth that the whole Church later observed, not oblige heretics and schismatics to be baptized anew? I think that, without any affront to him, the bishop Cyprian is comparable to the apostle Peter.⁴¹

As Paul and Peter practiced tolerance, so too did Cyprian, unlike his Donatist so-called followers. This led Augustine into his second interpretation of Cyprian.

Augustine countered the Donatists by interpreting Cyprian as emphasizing ecclesiastical unity above ethical or even doctrinal purity. He said, “And Cyprian,…by the most persistent tolerance,…came by the confession of martyrdom to the light of the angels, and if not before, at least then, acknowledged the revelation of the truth on that point on which, while yet in error, he did not prefer the maintenance of a wrong opinion to the bond of unity.”⁴² If, according to the Donatists, association with sinners or traditores impugns the purity of the Body, then Cyprian’s ecclesiastical unity and patience would have completely corrupted the church. Augustine then asked the obvious question: “If, therefore, by such communion with the wicked the just cannot but perish, the Church had already perished in the time of Cyprian. Whence then sprang the origin of Donatus? Where was he taught, where was he baptized, where was he ordained, since the Church had been already destroyed by the contagion of communion with the wicked?”⁴³

Using his classic rhetoric techniques, Augustine forced the Donatists into admitting extremes—either sin corrupts entirely or it does not corrupt. If it did corrupt the church during Cyprian’s time, then how could Donatus (who followed Cyprian in the episcopate of Carthage) claim a pure church and pure ordination line? This revealed another important aspect of Augustinian ecclesiology. He asked, “Or is it perhaps that schismatics, when received with baptism, bring no infection, but that it is brought by those who deliver up the sacred books?”³² Heretics or apostates in the church, while incorrect and dangerous, do not “infect” the entirety of the body. While the church is universal, it is not completely interdependent. Additionally, the power of the church to forgive sins was qualitatively greater than any infection in its midst. The Augustinian scholar, J. Burns states, “Augustine argued that the removal of sinful clerics from office was for their own good, to promote their humility and repentance, rather than a signal that the church doubted its power to forgive their sins and thus make the minister fit for office once again.⁴⁴

The issue for Augustine was not necessarily the sin of the offense, but rather the power and nature of the church.⁴⁵ Schismatics and traditores could be redeemed by the church and thus reinstated in their offices. Augustine insisted that Cyprian, emphasizing unity over purity, consciously allowed schismatics in the fold when it was for the good of the church.⁴⁶ Because there was no “contamination” from the lapsi to the better elements of the church, the church remained unified and strengthened.⁴⁷ He wrote, “If people coming from sacrileges of this sort, who were without baptism, as you claim, did not contaminate Cyprian, how were those who were not convicted of being traditores but were made out to be such able to contaminate you?”⁴⁸ His logic was simple; if Cyprian, whom the Donatists viewed as the prime example of purity, was not sullied by traditores, how then is the purity of the church sullied as well? In fact, for Augustine, creating schism for the purpose of purity was more of a sin than if the traditores “had burned them [sacred books] with their own hands.”³²

In Book III, Augustine continued, “Cyprian demonstrated quite well what the Church’s custom was when he says that in the past those who came to the Church from heresy were admitted without rebaptism.”⁴⁹ To rebaptize was particularly damnable because it assumed that the authority of the regenerating baptism of the catholic church is insufficient. If baptism is instrumental in the remission of sins, then even heretics and schismatics, once they have repented and returned to the unity of the church, have that forgiveness, though it may be retroactive.⁵⁰ “The bond of unity” is the element of the church that is both inherent and active. Baptism is the referent of that unity; if it is re-administered, it nullifies the original referent and therefore the catholicity and authority of the church. While Cyprian defined the church as monolithic (salvation being found in whether one was in or out of fellowship), Augustine defined the church by adding nuances to Cyprian’s ecclesiology, emphasizing the unity of the church in addition to its inherent authority and purity. Augustine, did however, hold firmly to Cyprian’s idea of salvation through and by the church.⁵¹ The question was not about the authority of the church concerning salvation, but rather the scope of salvation with the church and the church’s inherent unity as trumping uncleanness. The church was innocents and simplex et perfecta, both inherently blameless and simple while being thorough.⁵²

Exploring Cyprian and Augustine on Poetic Ecclesiastical Allegories

Another area in which Augustine interpreted Cyprian is biblical ecclesiastical allegories. One of Augustine’s hermeneutical maxims was that “all Scripture is literal or figurative or both at once.”⁵³ Even the simplest of Scriptures was likely to have some sort of deeper meaning and the employment of allegory was the best way to contextualize the Scriptures for contemporary times.⁵⁴ Two texts in which one finds examples of Augustine’s ecclesiology by way of interpretation with Cyprian are Psalm 45 and Song of Songs. Late church fathers frequently used the bridal imagery in these two passages as a polygamous relationship between Christ as the bridegroom and individual groups within the church.⁵⁵ Though allegorizing significant marital themes was quite common, many viewed every aspect of the narratives as having their referents in salvation history or ecclesiology.³² Augustine and Cyprian were no exception. First, in the Song of Songs, Cyprian felt that 6:8 and 4:12, 15 described the church, but that the church is one, the Holy Spirit declares in the Song of Songs, saying, in the person of Christ,

“My dove, my undefiled, is one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her.” [Song 6:8] Concerning which also He says again, “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring sealed up, a well of living water.” [Song 4:12, 15] But if the spouse of Christ, which is the church, is a garden enclosed; a thing that is closed up [res clausa] cannot lie open to strangers and profane persons. And if it is a fountain sealed, he who, being placed without, [foris posito] has no access to the spring, can neither drink thence nor be sealed. And the well also of living water, if it is one and the same within, he who is placed without cannot be quickened and sanctified from that water of which it is only granted to those who are within to make any use, or to drink.⁵⁶

The church, as understood as both the bride and the garden, something that Cyprian judges allegorically as res clausa—things that are guarded and closed cannot be open to the profane. The spring, as the church, is not available to those to whom it has been closed. Those not invited to the wedding and those who cannot partake of the spring. Salvation cannot be found outside the church and the church must, as any garden or bride, be undeniably pure. “The bridal image had envisioned a church with a purity which cannot be corrupted even when lapsed believers are reintroduced into communion.”⁵⁷ The Donatists easily identified with these imagery, understanding themselves with “Old Testament ferocity as the chaste single dove, not merely against the pagan world, but against the pseudo-Christian world of the apostate church.”³² The true church was hortus conclusus—a seamless garment and a sealed spring, emphasizing Cyprian’s bifurcation of those inside the church against those outside, also known as his intus/foris distinction.⁵⁸

Interestingly, Augustine refuted Cyprian by using Cyprian.⁵⁹ The institution of the church cannot be described as a “closed garden” because Cyprian himself, according to Augustine, admitted that the “garden” contains both the just and unjust.⁶⁰ Augustine answered,

Now, suppose someone says to me, “How ere those who Cyprian testified had renounced the world in words and not in deeds, and who crept into the enclosed garden and the sealed fountain, still with [the Church]? For if they are there and they are the bride of Christ, is she truly such as to be without stain or wrinkle…. Are they the thorns in whose midst she is like the lily that is mentioned in the same canticle?”⁶¹

Only God can truly separate those who are inwardly a “lily” or a “thorn” because of his “unspeakable foreknowledge” [ineffabilis praescientia].³² Nathalie Henry describes Augustine’s opposition to the “Cyprianic stark dichotomy of intus/foris”: “Although the ‘garden closed’ includes both the ‘lily’ and the ‘thorns’ (the just and the sinners) only the former compose the garden. The just constitute the garden itself, whereas the sinners do not participate in the structure of the garden, but merely happen to be in it.”⁶² Augustine was able to back the Donatists, and Cyprian by extension, into an ecclesiastical corner. Cyprian’s idea of the church is that it is an organization of the pure, but because he was obsessed with maintaining that purity and fighting schisms, he was forced to admit that there were unclean amongst the pure.⁶³ The best example of Augustine’s understanding is found in Book VII,

This [house] is certainly in the good and faithful and in the holy servants of God, who are scattered everywhere and joined by spiritual unity in the same communion of sacraments, whether they know or do not know each other personally. But others are said to be in the house in such a way as to belong to the structure of the house or to the society of the fruitful…but as chaff is said to be in grain. For we cannot deny that they are in the house as well.⁶⁴

Augustine utilized Cyprian’s inconsistencies to show that in his ecclesiology, the church was a corpus permixtum. Thorns are in the garden and will only be exposed when the judgment occurs. The church is pure because of its connection with the Triune God and its bridegroom. In this age, the thorns appear with the lilies in equal visibility.⁶⁵

Another imagery frequently used by the Donatists and reinterpreted by Augustine is the bridal imagery found in Psalm 45. Cyprian understood the king who desires the beauty of his queen as the Lord, “setting forth that His spouse is one, and declaring the sacrament of His unity, says, ‘He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathers not with me scattereth’ [Luke 11:23].”⁶⁶ Using logical transitivity, Cyprian continued, “For if Christ is with us, but the heretics are not with us, certainly the heretics are in opposition to Christ; and if we gather with Christ, but the heretics do not gather with us, doubtless they scatter.”⁶⁷

Conversely, Augustine used this text to a much greater extent to show the plurality and catholicity of the corpus permixtum.⁶⁸ In a sermon in AD 403, at the height of the controversy, Augustine specifically used the imagery of the king’s queen and her multi-colored garment.⁶⁹ He stated, “What are the many colors of her gown? The great number of languages. Variety in color, unity in weave. Many colors, I mean to say, all included in the one woven cloth, embroider it, they don’t tear it. Variety of speech, but unity in charity.”⁷⁰ The church is made up of a plethora of individuals, cultures, and points of view. Augustine then cited Psalm 45:14 from the LXX, “πᾶσα ἡ δόξα αὐτῆς θυγατρὸς βασιλέως ἔσωθεν ἐν κροςωτοῖς χρυσοῖς περιβεβλημένη πεποικιλμένη,” which he loosely translated, “All the loveliness of the king’s daughter is within.”⁷¹ “She is adorned outwardly with fine clothes to be visible, while being inwardly formed by faith to be saved.”³² For Augustine any schismatics, and Donatists specifically, who “cut themselves off from any link with this global reality, neither wish to hear what they read nor to see what they know.”⁷² The unified, universal church is one with inner (spiritual) beauty.⁷³ Thus, in another sermon, Augustine posited, “That she is one, that she is found among all nations, that she is chaste, that she ought not to be corrupted by perverse conversations with evil companions.”⁷⁴ While the church is outwardly beautiful in her external gifts, her element can be possessed by both heretical and pure communities.³² However, the internal beauty is the beauty of salvation which can only be inwardly bestowed on the faithful.³² His attention then turned to the virgin’s identity.

The virgins mentioned in 45:15, 16 were used to further support Augustine’s ecclesiology against Cyprian. The inclusion of the king’s temple refers to an entity that “stands firm in unity; it is not a tumbledown place, or torn apart, or divided against itself.”⁷⁵ This temple of the king is the Church. However, the virgins, which enter into the king’s temple, are also the church.³² David Hunter states,

Unlike Ambrose and Jerome, who assimilated the Christian virgin church as bride of Christ as she entered the temple of the king, Augustine assimilates the church as bride of Christ to the temple of the king itself. Such an exegetical maneuver underscored Augustine’s point that it was only as a member of the church that one entered the temple of the king.⁷⁶

In his epistolary treatise De Bono Viduitatis (On the Good of Widowhood), penned in 414 Augustine explained that “The church itself, of which they are members, is the bride of Christ and the church itself is ever a virgin…. Indeed, it is also a universal church, of which all these are members, that the apostle says: ‘I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ’ [2 Cor. 11:2].”⁷⁷ This dual allegorical identification allowed Augustine to combat and dispel any schismatic notion that the church is only visible or local. Salvation, or entrance into the king’s temple, could be accomplished only inwardly as the true virgins enter. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, the church was also on the outside as a virgin, awaiting entrance. It must therefore be universal and a corpus permixtum.⁷⁸ While the church was virginal, the images for hierarchy and administration were wholly masculine. Originally supportive of the authority of the episcopate,⁷⁹ Cyprian reluctantly supported the legitimacy of Cornelius as bishop of Rome in 251 because his ordination involved both the clergy and laity, though he never mentioned pontifical authority reminiscent of Peter.⁸⁰ The debacle of the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities, however, along with the issues of Basilides, Martialis, and Pope Stephen, likely prompted Cyprian to reject an absolute hierarchical authority.⁸¹ The “sons” and “fathers” mentioned in Psalms 45:17 were taken to be the episcopate, though not seen as uniformly over the laity, nor inextricably tied to the secular government.

For Augustine, the allegory of sons taking the place of the fathers in 45:17 could not be overly stressed. Here, as with many other allegories, Augustine followed Cyprian’s lead, yet expanded the interpretation to fit a fifth century context. In his Enarrationes in Psalmos (Exposition of the Psalms). Augustine offered a clear interpretation of the “sons who have been born…and have been set up as princes all over the world.” He concluded, “This is the Catholic Church: her sons have been set up as princes worldwide, her sons have been appointed in her father’s stead. Let those who are cut off from us recognize this truth, let them come back into unity, let them be led into the temple of the King.”⁸² Extrapolating from the allegory further, Augustine stated, “God has built his Church in every place [ubique], laying the firm foundations of the prophets and apostles. The Church has given birth to sons, and appointed them in place of our fathers as princes over the whole earth.”³²

Two elements are emphasized. First, the hierarchy of the father, sons, and princes within the church universal. This means there is a direct, one-for-one allegorical hermeneutical correspondence. The episcopate of the church, led directly by the Roman pontiff, are the princes of the church, appointed as the apostles were, and given similar monarchial status. Second, the universal nature of the episcopate grounds the universal nature of the church.⁸³ If the church is constructed “ubique,” then the appointed princes must rule in every place and “over the whole earth.” Augustine used Cyprian’s ecclesiastical allegory of Psalm 45 to show that the church was universal and hierarchical. The emphasis on the rights and importance of the laity in church function and authority, upon which Cyprian so heavily relied, was rhetorically changed to fit Augustine’s praxis. Thus, Hunter states, “Profoundly influenced by his struggle against Donatism, Augustine’s reading of Psalm 45 emphasized the authority of the (male) bishop in establishing the universal character of the (female) church.”⁸⁴

Conclusion

As demonstrated, Augustine’s appropriation and use of Cyprian clearly reveals that Augustine viewed the church as visibly universal, corpus permixtum, and innocents simplex et perfecta. While Cyprian stressed the visibility of the church and emphasized purity over unity, Augustine took a different ecclesiastical route. Augustine expertly balanced both the necessary respect for, and cautious correction of, Cyprian’s ecclesiastical heritage. Using Cyprian’s inconsistencies, Augustine showed, especially through the allegorizing of Songs of Songs and Psalm 45, the catholicity of the church. Building on Cyprian’s visible church, Augustine insisted that the church was also world-wide.⁸⁵ Additionally, Augustine recognized the pluriformity of the church, but insisted that unity, especially in hierarchy, superseded diversity.⁸⁶ Purity should never come at the cost of unity.

Contrarily, the growing Donatist movement believed that Cyprian saw the church as pure, emphasizing the intus/foris dichotomy. Augustine used Cyprian’s logic to show that in his view, the church must be a mixed body. “The Church is the society which above all others devotes its efforts to the establishment of the City of God,…though strictly it may contain many unworthy of the City.”⁸⁷ The church was a mix of both the saved and unsaved, with judgment being withheld until the Parousia. In this way, Augustine moved salvation from the membership of the church to the individual.³³ Even though the church contained the unsaved, it did not risk infection or institutional contamination because its purity is based on the merit of Christ. The church is simplex et perfecta in the sense that the purity of Christ affects every aspect of the church in hierarchy and catholicity. This does not mean that everything in the church is perfect, but that Christ’s perfection covers the corpus permixtum. Because of Augustine’s particular use of Cyprian’s examples, the church began to quickly be seen as less of an organism and more of an institution. Similarly, Augustine played on Cyprian’s defense of baptism as the means of regeneration so that baptism became the referent of the Church’s unity and one’s unity with the church. In this way, rebaptism would undermine not only the authority, but also unity of the church.

Augustine’s appropriation of Cyprian became the ecclesiological standard in Christendom for nearly a millennium. For Augustine, the church is to be universal and visible, institutional and ordered, pure yet mixed. Unity was never to be sacrificed for purity. It seems Augustine succeeded, at least until the Protestant Reformation, in “closing the mouths” of the Donatists by using Cyprian to redefine the church.

1. Dr. Williams is Provost and Executive Vice President at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, MN.[↩]
2. Chester D. Hartranft, Introductory Essay on Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. R. King (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Comp., 1886), 377.[↩]
3. Augustine recounts this meeting in Epistula (Letter) 44: “It seems to me that if we would avoid the attendance of a noisy crowd, rather hindering than helping the debate.”[↩]
4. For an Orthodox example see Tamara Grdzelidze, “Using the Principle of Oikonomia in Ecumenical Discussions: Reflections on ‘The Limits of the Church’ by George Florovsky,” Ecumenical Review 56 (2004): 234–46.[↩]
5. Gregory Grimshaw Willis, Saint Augustine and the Donatist Controversy (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 36–76.[↩]
6. Revisions 2.18.45; The Donatist Controversy I, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. Boniface Ramsey and David Hunter, trans. Maureen Tilly (New York: New City Press, 2019), 389.[↩]
7. For a further explanation see Emile Mersch, “Augustine and the Donatist Schism,” in The Whole Christ, trans. John R. Kelly (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 2018), 384–97. Also, Charles A. Bobertz, “The Historical Context of Cyprian’s ‘De Unitate,’” Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990): 107–11.[↩]
8. Matthew A. Gaumer, “The Evolution of Donatist Theology as Response to a Changing Late Antique Milieu,” Theology Today 48 (1992): 178; Cyprian, Epistula 76.3 in Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers, ed. A. Roberts and G. Donaldson, trans. R. E. Wallis (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1848).[↩]
9. Cyprian’s dictums “salus extra ecclesiam non est” (“salvation is not found outside of the church”) and “habere iam non potest Deum patrem, qui Ecclesiam no habet matrem” (“He cannot now/already have God as Father who does not have the church as Mother”) became a rallying cry for the Donatist movement. See Epistula 52 and De Unitate I.6_.[↩]
10. W. J. Sparrow-Simpson, _St. Augustine and African Church Divisions (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1910), 80.[↩]
11. See Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Heresy and Schism According to Cyprian of Carthage, “Journal of Theological Studies 55 (2004), 558.[↩]
12. De Unitate, 1.6, Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers, ed. A. Roberts and G. Donaldson, trans. R. E. Wallis (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1848).[↩]
13. “[Cyprian] did believe that the unity of the church was of supreme importance. Since the actions of the confessors threatened that unity, Cyprian felt that he had to reject those actions and to insist on the need for a synod to decide what was to be done with the lapsed. The church was to be a community of saints, and the idolaters and apostates had no place in it” (Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity, 2 vols., rev. ed. [New York: HarperOne, 2010], 1:104).[↩]
14. W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 166–67.[↩]
15. David Benedict, History of the Donatists (Providence, RI: Nickerton, Sibley & Co., 1875; repr. Gallatin, TN: Church History Research, 1985), 5–7. Benedict describes the backdrop of the three Punic Wars and the Numidian issue with Caecilian.[↩]
16. Epistula 67.3: “Nor let the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the contagion of sin, while communicating with a priest who is a sinner, and yielding their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their overseer, when the divine reproof by Hosea the prophet threatens, and says, ‘Their sacrifices shall be as the bread of mourning; all that eat thereof shall be polluted.’”[↩]
17. Joyce E. Salisbury, “‘The Bond of a Common Mind’: A Study of Collective Salvation from Cyprian to Augustine,” Journal of Religious History 13 (1985): 241.[↩]
18. Epistula 73.7.[↩]
19. For Cyprian’s disagreement with Rome and ordination see Edward White Benson, Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Work (London: Macmillan, 1897), 118–28.[↩]
20. “The spouse of Christ cannot be adulterous; she is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home; she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. If any one could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he also may escape who shall be outside of the Church. The Lord warns, saying, ‘He who is not with me is against me, and he who gathereth not with me scattereth.’ He who breaks the peace and the concord of Christ, does so in opposition to Christ; he who gathereth elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ” (De Unitate 6).[↩]
21. Salisbury, “The Bond of a Common Mind,” 243. Epistula 73.4: “For if the church is not with heretics, therefore, because it is one, and cannot be divided; and if thus the Holy Spirit is not there, because He is one, and cannot be among profane persons, and those who are without; certainly also baptism, which consists in the same unity, cannot be among heretics, because it can neither be separated from the church nor from the Holy Spirit.”[↩]
22. Epistula 69 (To Magnus) in Saint Cyprian: Letters, trans. Rose Bernard Donna (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1964), 244.[↩]
23. Epistula 67.7_.[↩]
24. Cyprian prepared his followers for martyrdom in his treatise _De Exhortatione Martyrii (On the Exortation of the Martyrs). See in The Treatise of S. Caecilius Cyprian, trans. John H. Parker (London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1839).[↩]
25. Frend, The Donatist Church, 131.[↩]
26. Paula Fredriksen, “Augustine on History, the Church, and the Flesh,” in Saint Augustine the Bishop, ed. Fannie LeMoine and Christopher Kleinhenz (New York: Garland, 1994), 115. The original account appears in Edgar J. Goodspeed, The Martyrdom of Cyprian and Justa, part II, in Historical and Linguistic Studies in Literature Related to the NT, vol. 1: Ethiopic Texts (Chicago: University Press, 1903): 57–63. “Augustine…would urge in his sermons that reverence for the dead Christians is realized in the communion for the saints and in celebrating the Lord’s supper in their honor. Augustine is frequently at pains to condemn the pagan practices of lavish meals,…and even dancing at the tombs of the dead. As such practices were gradually extirpated from the Christian community, the Eucharistic celebration in honor of the martyred saints became the norm. It differed from the pagan refrigeria by being public rather than a familial affair, and by the fact that the martyrs were invoked for aid, while lists of names of the faithful dead were also read out in prayerful commemoration” (Augustine Through the Ages, ed. Allen D. Fitzgerald [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999], 747).[↩]
27. See examples in Alan Dearn, “The Abitinian Martyr and the Outbreak of the Donatist Schism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004): 1–18. This was especially the case at Carthage in 411. See James S. Alexander, “A Note on the Interpretation of the Parable of the Threshing Floor at The Conference of Carthage of CE 411,” Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1973): 513; Maureen A. Tilley, “Dilatory Donatists or Procrastinating Catholics: The Trial at the Conference of Carthage,” Church History 60 (1991): 15; Matthew A. Gaumer, Augustine’s Cyprian: Authority in Roman Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 123–28.[↩]
28. “As the Catholic persecution of Donatists, in which he [Augustine] was so instrumental, gathered force, so did the Donatist identification with the tradition of the martyrs: the persecuted Church was the true Church” (Fredriksen, “Augustine on History,” 115).[↩]
29. Epistula 73.12.[↩]
30. William C. Weinrich, “Cyprian, Donatism, Augustine, and Augustana VIII: Remarks on the Church and the Validity of Sacraments,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 55 (1991): 277.[↩]
31. Weinrich, “Cyprian, Donatism, Augustine, and Augustana,” 277.[↩]
32. Ibid.[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
33. Salisbury, “The Bond of a Common Mind,” 243.[↩][↩]
34. Petilian to Augustine as found in Book I, In Answer to the Letters of Petilian, 16–17, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Saint Augustine, The Writings Against the Manicheans, and Against the Donatists, ed. Phillip Schaff (New York: Cosmio, 2007), 525.[↩]
35. Weinrich, “Cyprian, Donatism, Augustine, and Augustana VIII,” 278. Weinrich clearly shows that the three sine qua non of Cyprian’s ecclesiology—(1) unity of baptism; (2) insistence on the rightful bishop; (3) inextricable relationship between true baptism and right faith—were shared by both Cyprian and the Donatists.[↩]
36. Salisbury, “The Bond of a Common Mind,” 244–45.[↩]
37. Hartranft, Introductory Essay on Writings, 374.[↩]
38. Ibid_._[↩]
39. De Baptismo 1.1.1. The Donatist Controversy I, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. Boniface Ramsey and David Hunter, trans. Maureen Tilly (New York: New City Press, 2019), 391: “Donatists keep proposing against us in regard to this issue but also in regard to the authority of the most blessed martyr Cyprian, whereby they try to prop up their perversity in order to prevent it from collapsing under the onslaught of the truth…. [We are doing this] so that all who are not blinded by partisan seal may assess how [the Donatists] are not only not helped by the authority of Cyprian but are completely proved wrong and overthrown by it.”[↩]
40. De Baptismo, 2.1.2.[↩]
41. Ibid. One can clearly see how Augustine is both gently critiquing Cyprian, while being cautiously respectful.[↩]
42. Ibid., 2.6.7.[↩]
43. Ibid., 2.6.8.[↩]
44. J. Patout Burns, “Appropriating Augustine Appropriating Cyprian,” Augustinian Studies 36 (2005): 124–25.[↩]
45. Eugene F. Durkin, The Theological Distinctions of Sins in the Writings of St. Augustine: Pontifica Facultas Theologica Seminarii Sanctae Mariae Ad Lacum (Mundelein, IL: Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary, 1952), 32: “Of the living members of Christ’s Body he says: ‘…Ne viveremus nisi per spiritualem connexionem membra hujus ([Christi]) essumus.’ [‘We would not live if we were not members through a spiritual union with this [Christ]’ [Epistula 187]. What then is to be said of the connection of a mortal sinner who is de facto a member of the Church? How is he to be considered a member of Christ’s Mystical Body? The answer one finds constantly in Augustine’s writings is simply ‘…in carnali obduratione miscetur’ [‘associates with carnal obstinacy’] [De Baptismo 1.17.26]….’ The moral sinner belonging to the Church has an external connection with the Church, but he ‘does not allow himself to be reached internally.’”[↩]
46. “Behold, I see in unity Cyprian and others, his colleagues, who, on holding a council, decided that those who have been baptized without the communion of the Church have no true baptism, and that therefore it must be given them when they join the Church. But again, behold I see in the same unity that certain men think differently in this matter, and that, recognizing in those who come from heretics and schismatics the baptism of Christ, they do not venture to baptize afresh. All of these catholic unity embraces in her motherly breast, bearing each other’s burdens by turns, and endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, till God should reveal to one or other of them any error in their views. If the one party held the truth, were they infected by the others, or no? If the others held the truth, were they infected by the first, or no? Choose which ye will. If there was contamination, the Church even then ceased to exist; answer me, therefore, whence came ye forth hither? But if the Church remained, the good are no wise contaminated by the bad in such communion; answer me, therefore, why did ye break the bond?” (De Baptismo 2.6.8).[↩]
47. “This is quite curious considering Cyprian clearly said, ‘Wherefore, although there have been found some among our colleagues, dearest brethren, who think that the godly discipline may be neglected, and who rashly hold communion with Basilides and Martialis, such a thing as this ought not to trouble our faith, since the Holy Spirit threatens such in the Psalms, saying, ‘But thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee: when thou sawest a thief, thou consented unto him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.’ He shows that they become sharers and partakers of other men’s sins who are associated with the delinquents” (Epistle 67.9). See also Burns, “Appropriating Augustine,” 124. Burns demonstrates that “Contrary to Augustine’s claim, Cyprian was never intentionally in communion with a bishop whom he knew had been guilty of apostasy, schism, covetous idolatry or any other disqualifying sin. This, then, was not an effective response to the Donatist objection to the acceptance of unworthy clerics into office in the Catholic communion.”[↩]
48. De Baptismo 2.6.9.[↩]
49. Ibid., 3.5.7.[↩]
50. “If remission of sins is there conferred by the sacredness of baptism, the sins return again through obstinate perseverance in heresy or schism,…and [once they return] deserve that those sins which had returned on them should be cleansed away by love working in the bond of unity. But if, although among heretics and schismatics it be still the same baptism of Christ, it yet cannot work remission of sins owing to this same foulness of discord and wickedness of dissent, then the same baptism begins to be of avail for the remission of sins when they come to the peace of the Church” (ibid., 3.13.18, emphasis added).[↩]
51. Burns states, “Yet on one very significant point Augustine held quite firmly to Cyprian’s behaviorally defined perspective: no one could be saved outside the unity of the church” (“Appropriating Augustine,” 129).[↩]
52. See De Baptismo 5.18.24; 17.22; Michael Cameron, “Augustine’s Use of the Song of Songs against the Donatists,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, ed. Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 102–3.[↩]
53. Mervin Monroe Deems, “Augustine’s Use of Scripture,” Church History 14 (1945): 197.[↩]
54. Ibid., 200: “The use of allegory by Augustine was not only a means of making Scripture say something, it was also a technique for bringing Scripture down to date, by forcing ancient words to minister, through prophecy, to the weaving of present patterns of behavior or through the summoning to higher ideals. But it was also dangerous for it came close to making Scripture say what he wanted it to say (through multiplicity of allegories of identical Scripture), and it prepared the way for Catholic or Protestant, later, to find in Scripture what he would.”[↩]
55. Elizabeth A. Clark, “The Celibate Bridegroom and His Virginal Brides: Metaphor and the Marriage of Jesus in Early Christian Ascetic Exegesis,” Church History 77 (2008): 11: “Early Christian interpreters of the Song of Songs and of Psalm 45 routinely, and ingeniously, turned the hero of these texts into the Bridegroom, Christ, and represented him as married—quite polygamously—to virgins, to widows, to men, to the Church, and indeed, to all Christian believers. Although the erotic association of ‘Bridegroom’ could not be erased—the original habitat of nuptials ‘hovered over’ the metaphor—skillful interpretation might adjust it to its new home in Christian ascetic culture, betokening (rather tamely) God’s steadfast love.”[↩]
56. Epistula 75.2.[↩]
57. Cameron, “Augustine’s Use of the Song of Songs,” 102.[↩]
58. Gillian R. Evans, “Augustine and the Church,” in Saint Augustine the Bishop, ed. Fannie LeMione and Christoper Kleinhenz (New York: Garland, 1994), 168: “These images have in common the notion of a Church where one must either be ‘inside’ or ‘outside,’ and outside it is impossible to ‘drink’ from the ‘fountain’ of the sacraments.”[↩]
59. Nathalie Henry, “The Lily and the Thorns: Augustine’s Refutation of the Donatist Exegesis of the Song of Songs,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 42 (1996): 258. See Celica Milovanic-Barham, “Three Levels of Style in Augustine of Hippo and Gregory of Nazianzus,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 11 (1993): 8–9.[↩]
60. See Herbert A. Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New York: Columbia Press, 1963), 183–95. Cyprian describes the corruption of some Christians during the time of Callistus: “Each one was desirous of increasing his estate; and forgetful of what believers had either done before in the times of the apostles, or always ought to do, they, with the insatiable ardor of covetousness, devoted themselves to the increase of their property. Among the priests there was no devotedness of religion; among the ministers there was no sound faith: in their works there was no mercy; in their manners there was no discipline. In men, their beards were defaced; in women, their complexion was dyed: the eyes were falsified from what God’s hand had made them; their hair was stained with a falsehood. Crafty frauds were used to deceive the hearts of the simple, subtle meanings for circumventing the brethren. They united in the bond of marriage with unbelievers; they prostituted the members of Christ to the Gentiles” (The Lapsed 6).[↩]
61. De Baptismo 5.27.38.[↩]
62. Henry, “The Lily and the Thorns,” 259.[↩]
63. Ibid., 260.[↩]
64. De Baptismo 7.51.99. See Henry’s explanation (“Lily and the Thorns,” 259).[↩]
65. Cameron, “Augustine’s Use of the Song of Songs,” 108.[↩]
66. Epistula 69.3.[↩]
67. Ibid., 74.14.[↩]
68. Augustine’s exegetical use of the Psalms is well known. The poetic/ anthropomorphic language of the Psalms offers Augustine an ecclesiastical key. The church, like the Psalms, are a mixture of beauty and vice, salvation and sin. Michael C. McCarthy offers his understanding, “To be a member of such a mixed body [corpus permixtum] is to groan mightily at the obvious iniquities and imperfections that incorporation entails. To find oneself in such a body is to share in the laments so powerfully voiced by the Psalmist, ‘My heart bellows its groans….’ Like the expression of other deep emotions, however, the groaning of the Church resists certain definition: it possesses a quality that Augustine calls ineffabilis” (“An Ecclesiology of Groaning: Augustine, the Psalms, and the Making of Church,” Theological Studies 66 [2005]: 26).[↩]
69. Jerome’s Vulgate, used by Augustine, has Psalm 45 as Psalm 44. The Majority Text inverts this order (Biblia Sacra Vulgata [Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994], 825; Johannes van Oort, “Augustine, His Sermons, and their Significance,” Original Research 65 [2009]: 4).[↩]
70. Sermon 360A in Sermons, trans. Edmund Hill, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. John E. Rotelle (New York: City Press, 2003): 355: “Latin speakers talk in one way, Greeks in another, Punic speakers in another, in another Hebrews,…Syrians,…Indians,…Cappadocians,…Egyptians.”[↩]
71. Sermon 360A, 355. The LXX follows the Vulgate ordering.[↩]
72. Ibid., 356.[↩]
73. See Augustine’s, Enarrationes in Psalmos XLIV, trans. Maria Boulding, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. John E. Rotelle (New York: City Press, 2000), 302.[↩]
74. Sermon 138.8. See David G. Hunter, “The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church: Reading Psalm 45 in Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine,” Church History 69 (2000): 298. This is fleshed out in Augustine’s famous De Civitate Dei. In his treatise on Psalms 45 (in which he translated the entire Psalm), Augustine quotes v. 16 in saying, “‘Instead of the fathers, sons are born to thee; thou shalt make them princes over all the earth;’ so out of her sons truly are set up even her father [princes] through all the earth, when the people, coming together to her, confess to her with the confession of eternal praise for ever and ever. Beyond doubt, whatever interpretation is put on what is here expressed somewhat darkly in figurative language, ought to be in agreement with these most manifest things.” Slighting the schismatics, Augustine compares their ecclesiology to the enemy: “Her enemy is the city of the devil, Babylon, which is interpreted ‘confusion.’ Yet out of this Babylon this queen is in all nations set free by regeneration, and passes from the worst to the best King,—that is, from the devil to Christ.” Clearly, Augustine wants to show that contrary to Cyprian’s stark intus/foris dichotomy, the saved are coming from and in the world (city of the devil), and only through personal regeneration can they be seen as the true church. The true church is not salvation, but the container of those regenerated (Book XVII, 16, emphasis added).[↩]
75. Enarrationes in Psalmos XLIV, 31.[↩]
76. Hunter, “The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church,” 300.[↩]
77. 10.13. For Augustine’s views on the connection between, Christ, virginity and ecclesiology, see Gerald O’Collins, “The Beauty of Christ,” The Way 44 (2005): 7–20; Willemien Otten, “Augustine on Marriage, Monasticism, and the Community of the Church,” Theological Studies 59 (1998): 385–405.[↩]
78. Edward J. Hughes, The Participation of the Faithful in the Regal and Prophetic Mission of Christ According to Saint Augustine: Pontifica Facultas Theologica Seminarii Sanctae Mariae Ad Lacum (Mundelein, IL: Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary, 1956), 20: “The union between Christ and His members is a living union. His presence in us as our head is something more than the presence of Christ in a temple. For a temple does not live with the life of the one who dwells in it;…we can say that Christians are members of a living Body united to a living Head…. They do not lose their status as individuals; but rather, they who are many individuals are joined together in a transcendent, supernatural unit.”[↩]
79. De Unitate Ecclesiae 4: “He arranged by His authority the origin of that unity, as beginning from one. Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honor and power; but the beginning proceeds from unity.”[↩]
80. After the persecution slackened in March, sixteen bishops assembled in Rome and elected Cornelius “by the judgment of God and of Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people then present, by the consent of aged priests and of good men, at a time when no one had been made before him, when the place of Fabian, that is the place of Peter, and the step of the sacerdotal chair were vacant” (Epistula 55). See also Patrick Granfield, “Episcopal Elections in Cyprian: Clerical and Lay Participation,” Theological Studies 37 (1976): 41–42.[↩]
81. George Ayliffe Poole, The Testimony of St. Cyprian against Rome (London: James Duncan, 1838), 89–93; Dunn, “Heresy and Schism According to Cyprian of Carthage,” 560.[↩]
82. Enarrationes in Psalmos XLIV. This is an obvious ecclesiastical jab directed against the Donatists.[↩]
83. Hunter, “The Virgin, The Bride, and the Church,” 301.[↩]
84. Ibid., 302.[↩]
85. Simpson, St. Augustine and Church Divisions, 71.[↩]
86. George W. Harper, “Breaking with Cyprian’s Paradigm: Evangelicals, Ecclesiological Apathy, and Changing Conceptions of Church Unity,” Evangelical Review of Theology 32 (2008): 313.[↩]
87. R. H. Barrow, Introduction to St. Augustine, the City of God (London: Faber & Faber, 1950), 157.[↩]