Now the question was: Who decides, in this situation. The ordinary doctrine was: those who are “spirituals,” i. e. , those who had become martyrs or had in any other way proved that they were fully responsible Christians.
But against this, which was a kind of remnant from the period of Christianity in which spirit was still fighting with office and office was not yet prevailing, now the office didn’t want this remnant of the past and wanted to take over this decision too. The episcopalian point of view said that the bishop, who is the Church, must decide about it. And he must decide in a very liberal way. He must take those who fell even more than once. In the same way, other mortal sinners must be received.
The Church had become a country Church, a territorial, a universal Church, the Church of the Empire, and so no one could be easily excluded. The decision was now in the hands of the bishop.
But on the other hand the doctrine was still powerful that the Spirit must decide whether or not someone can belong to the Church. So Cyprian said that the bishops are the Spirituals, those who have the Spirit, namely the Spirit of succession from the early Apostles, apostolic succession. In this way the Spirit became the qualification of the office This was the greatest triumph of the office, that now the Spirit is bound to the office and the Spirit is called the Spirit of succession. This was a transition, and shortly after it became clear that the clergy has the graces which belong to it by ordination, and that the highest clergy, finally the Pope, embodies the Divine grace on earth. But this was the transition to it.
A similar very existential problem was the problem: What to do with people who are baptized by heretics and schismatics. You know the difference, I hope. Heretics are people who have a different faith, who have deviated from the order of the Christian congregation. Schismatics are people who follow a special line of church-political development, those who split from the church, perhaps because two bishops fight with each other, or some groups don’t want to accept the Roman bishop. So the separation of the Eastern and Western churches is always called schisma. The Eastern church is considered by Rome not as a heretic church but as a schismatic church. Protestantism is considered by Rome not as a schismatic church but as a heretic church, because their foundations of faith are at stake and not only the non- acknowledgment of the Roman bishop.
Now the question was: How was it possible to receive into one’s own congregation people who are baptised by one of these groups. The answer was, again: It is the objective character of baptism which is decisive, and not the person who has performed it. We will see how Augustine carried this through.
Now behind all this stands Cyprian’s idea of the Church: 1) He who has not the Church as Mother, cannot have God as Father. “There is no salvation outside the Church” – extra ecclesia nulla salus. The Church is the institution in which salvation is reached. This again is a change from the early Christian period where the Church was a community of the saints and not an institution for salvation. Of course salvation was going on within it and those who could be saved, and were saved, from paganism and from the demons were gathered in the Church. But the Church itself was not considered to be an institution of salvation but a community of the saints. This is the first emphasis of Cyprian. It is very consistent with the legal thinking of the West.
