Christian Unity (the book) - The Maranatha Community

and literature, concentrating solely on the Christian Scriptures. In his rejectionof Greek pagan ideas he was like Tertullian (c.170-200 AD), another greatchurch leader in Carthage, who once wrote, ‘What has Jerusalem to do withAthens?’ Some Christian leaders in the Early Church, like Clement of Alexandria(c.150-215 AD), had tried to encompass some aspects of Greek philosophywithin Christian truth; not so Cyprian or Tertullian.Cyprian is particularly important to a history of Christian Unity in that he livedand suffered during times of persecution and had to deal with the question of‘Does the Church have a place for Christians who have fallen away from thefaith but want to be restored to the Church? Is the Church only for those whoare strong and pure, or has it a place for the weak and sinning?’This is a question that Christians in Eastern Europe had to face on the demiseof Communism at the end of the 1980s. During the 1960s and 70s I got toknow one or two churches behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ and saw how one churchdealt with one of its members who had, for 20 years, gone over to theCommunists, becoming a Party member and spying on his fellow Christians.When he wished to rejoin the church he had left, it is good to record that hewas freely welcomed back into fellowship.Cyprian had fled in the Decian Persecution (205-251 AD), the first systematicpersecutions of Christians, and, returning to Carthage, found that the Churchthere (and generally throughout the empire) was bitterly divided about whatto do with the ‘lapsed’. The Emperor had demanded that all citizens shouldmake a pagan sacrifice and some Christians did (named the ‘sacrificati’); others(the ‘libellatici’) bought certificates (‘libelli pacis’) saying they had sacrificedwhen they had not.Cyprian also found that those who had stood firm (known as the ‘confessors’)were easing the lapsed back into the Church. Cyprian influenced two churchcouncils in Carthage which followed (251 and 252 AD) to lay down themoderate discipline that the lapsed should only be allowed back into Churchafter due repentance and penance. But for Cyprian it was the local bishopswho had the rule in the matter.The persecution had given rise to schisms of believers who could not acceptsuch easy restoration of the lapsed, and Cyprian’s high view of the authority ofthe bishop came into play. As long ago as the middle of the 1 st Century,Ignatius of Antioch had insisted that nothing ought to be done without thePage 37