History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

4. Even Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, with all their spiritualistic and idealizing turn

of mind, are no exception here. The latter, in the words: "Out of the church no man can be

saved,"

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39 brings out the principle of the catholic exclusiveness as unequivocally as Cyprian. Yet

we find in him, together with very severe judgments of heretics, mild and tolerant expressions also;

and he even supposes, on the ground of Rom. 2:6 sqq., that in the future life honest Jews and

heathens will attain a suitable reward, a low grade of blessedness, though not the "life everlasting"

in the proper sense. In a later age he was himself condemned as a heretic.

Of other Greek divines of the third century, Methodius in particular, an opponent of Origen,

takes high views of the church, and in his Symposion poetically describes it as "the garden of God

in the beauty of eternal spring, shining in the richest splendor of immortalizing fruits and flowers;"

as the virginal, unspotted, ever young and beautiful royal bride of the divine Logos.

5. Finally, Cyprian, in his Epistles, and most of all in his classical tract: De Unitate

Eccelesiae, written in the year 251, amidst the distractions of the Novatian schism, and not without

an intermixture of hierarchical pride and party spirit, has most distinctly and most forcibly developed

the old catholic doctrine of the church, her unity, universality, and exclusiveness. He is the typical

champion of visible, tangible church unity, and would have made a better pope than any pope before

Leo I.; yet after all he was anti-papal and anti-Roman when he differed from the pope. Augustin

felt this inconsistency, and thought that he had wiped it out by the blood of his martyrdom. But he

never gave any sign of repentance. His views are briefly as follows:

The Catholic church was founded from the first by Christ on St. Peter alone, that, with all

the equality of power among the apostles, unity might still be kept prominent as essential to her

being. She has ever since remained one, in unbroken episcopal succession; as there is only one sun,

though his rays are everywhere diffused. Try once to separate the ray from the sun; the unity of the

light allows no division. Break the branch from the tree; it can produce no fruit. Cut off the brook

from the fountain; it dries up. Out of this empirical orthodox church, episcopally organized and

centralized in Rome, Cyprian can imagine no Christianity at all;

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 not only among the Gnostics

and other radical heretics, but even among the Novatians, who varied from the Catholics in no

essential point of doctrine, and only elected an opposition bishop in the interest of their rigorous

penitential discipline. Whoever separates himself from the catholic church is a foreigner, a profane

person, an enemy, condemns himself, and must be shunned. No one can have God for his father,

who has not the church for his mother.

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 As well might one out of the ark of Noah have escaped

the flood, as one out of the church be saved;

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42 because she alone is the bearer of the Holy Spirit

and of all grace.

In the controversy on heretical baptism, Cyprian carried out the principle of exclusiveness

even more consistently than the Roman church. For he entirely rejected such baptism, while Stephen

held it valid, and thus had to concede, in strict consistency, the possibility of regeneration, and

hence of salvation, outside the Catholic church. Here is a point where even the Roman system,

generally so consistent, has a loophole of liberality, and practically gives up her theoretical principle

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Hom. 3 in Josuam, c. 5. "Extra hanc domum, id est extra ecclesiam, nemo salvatur."

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"Christianus non est, qui in Christi ecclesia non est."

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"Habere non potest Deum patrem, qui ecclesiam non habet matrem."

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"Extra ecclesia nulla salus." Yet he nowhere says "extra Romanam nulla salus."

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History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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of exclusiveness. But in carrying out this principle, even in persistent opposition to the pope, in

whom he saw the successor of Peter and the visible centre of unity, Cyprian plainly denied the

supremacy of Roman jurisdiction and the existence of an infallible tribunal for the settlement of

doctrinal controversies and protested against identifying the church in general with the church of

Rome. And if he had the right of such protest in favor of strict exclusiveness, should not the Greek

church, and above all the Evangelical, much rather have the right of protest against the Roman

exclusiveness, and in favor of a more free and comprehensive conception of the church?

We may freely acknowledge the profound and beautiful truth at the bottom of this old

catholic doctrine of the church, and the historical importance of it for that period of persecution,

as well as for the great missionary work among the barbarians of the middle ages; but we cannot

ignore the fact that the doctrine rested in part on a fallacy, which, in course of time, after the union

of the church with the state, or, in other words, with the world, became more and more glaring, and

provoked an internal protest of ever-growing force. It blindly identified the spiritual unity of the

church with unity of organization, insisted on outward uniformity at the expense of free development,

and confounded the faulty empirical church, or a temporary phase of the development of Christianity,

with the ideal and eternal kingdom of Christ, which will not be perfect in its manifestation until

the glorious second coming of its Head. The Scriptural principle "Out of Christ there is no salvation,"

was contracted and restricted to the Cyprianic principle: "Out of the (visible) church there is no

salvation;" and from this there was only one step to the fundamental error of Romanism: "Out of

the Roman Church there is no salvation."

No effort after outward unity could prevent the distinction of all Oriental and Occidental

church from showing itself at this early period, in language, customs, and theology;—a distinction

which afterwards led to a schism to this day unhealed.

It may well be questioned whether our Lord intended an outward visible unity of the church

in the present order of things. He promised that there should be "one flock one shepherd," but not

"one fold."

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 There may be one flock, and yet many folds or church organizations. In the sacerdotal

prayer, our Lord says not one word about church, bishops or popes, but dwells upon that spiritual

unity which reflects the harmony between the eternal Father and the eternal Son. "The true

communion of Christian men—’the communion of saints’ upon which all churches are built—is

not the common performance of external acts, but a communion of soul with soul and of the soul

with Christ. It is a consequence of the nature which God has given us that an external organization

should help our communion with one another: it is a consequence both of our twofold nature, and

of Christ’s appointment that external acts should help our communion with Him. But subtler, deeper,

diviner than anything of which external things can be either the symbol or the bond is that inner

reality and essence of union—that interpenetrating community of thought and character—which

St. Paul speaks of as the ’unity of the Spirit,’ and which in the sublimest of sublime books, in the

most sacred words, is likened to the oneness of the Son with the Father and of the Father with the

Son."

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John 10:16. It was a characteristic, we may say, an ominous mistake of the Latin Vulgate to render 

ποίμνη by ovile

(confounding it with 

αὐλή). The Authorized Version has copied the mischievous blunder ("one fold"), but the Revision of 1881

has corrected it.

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Hatch, l.c. p. 187 sq.

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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