Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

prophets of the days of the Didachē, 24 and the authority of the confessors in the days of
persecution, gave way to the supreme authority of the bishop from now on.
Two more issues were raised at this time. The primacy of the bishop of Rome, the city in
which by tradition both Paul and Peter had died, over the other bishops of the Empire, was
debated. Scholars are not quite clear as to what Cyprian‟s position was on this, though he
disagreed with the Papal teaching that schismatics and heretics did not need to be re-baptised
to enter the one true Church; he was a rigorist on this, insisting that they had not been really
baptised in the former churches (even where that baptism had been Trinitarian).
After the death of Decius, the next Emperor, Valerian, also began to persecute Church
leaders. Cyprian was arrested in 257 AD and the following year was executed.
What issues does all this history raise for us today? One is clearly that an Episcopal form of
Church government was established, rooted in the concept of „apostolic succession‟ of
Clement of Rome and Irenaeus, and that this was to be the unalterable form the mainstream
Church was to take (Orthodox East and Catholic West) for the rest of church history.
When non-episcopal churches appear from the time of the Reformation onwards, either they
are impossible to integrate into a concept of Unity (an impossibility felt by the Orthodox) or
they are somehow (as at present the Catholic Church maintains) to be seen as lesser churches
than the true one.
Another issue is the primacy of the pope (the bishop of Rome), the seed of which doctrine
was clearly sown by Cyprian‟s day. In his On the Unity of the Catholic Church, Cyprian, in
one version of the text of the treatise known as the „Primacy Text‟ writes:
„Again, after his resurrection he says to him (Peter), “Feed my sheep.” He “builds
his church” on him, and to him he gives his sheep to be fed: and although he confers
an equal power on all the Apostles, yet he has appointed one throne and by his
authority has ordained the source and principle of unity. The other Apostles were, to
be sure, what Peter was, but primacy is given to Peter, and the Church and the throne
are shown to be one.‟
Scholars debate whether or not this was Cyprian‟s final view of the Papacy, but the idea took
root and became a central tenet of Catholicism in the West. Pope Damascus I (366-384 AD)
made much of the claim for Peter‟s (Rome‟s) primacy over all other bishops.
This view of the Papacy is a great stumbling block to unity to both Protestants and Orthodox.
Yet another issue is the question of the nature and importance of baptism for unity. Is
Trinitarian baptism enough to establish a person as a Christian? The Catholic/Orthodox
24 Didachē, also called Teaching Of The Twelve Apostles, was the oldest surviving Christian document
on church order, probably written in Egypt or Syria in the 2 nd Century. In 16 short chapters it deals
with morals and ethics, church practice, and the eschatological hope (of the Second Coming of Christ
at the end of time), and presents a general programme for instruction and initiation into the primitive
church.
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