ST. CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE (SEPT. 15TH)

St. Cyprian of Carthage (Approx. AD 200 – Died September 14th, AD 258) 

Edited by Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

Today, the 15th of September, is the Feast Day of St. Cyprian on the Western Orthodox calendar! Blessed Feast day of an early bastion and contender for the One, True Faith! 

St. Cyprian was bishop of Carthage and a notable Early Christian writer of Berber descent, many of whose Latin works are extant. He is also recognized as a Father of the Church and an early authority on the theology of ecclesiology. He was born around the beginning of the 3rd century in North Africa, where he received the traditional Roman education of a lawyer. He became a bishop in 249 AD, soon after converting to Christianity. A controversial figure during his lifetime, his strong pastoral skills, firm conduct during the Novatianist heresy and outbreak of the Plague of Cyprian (named after him due to his description of it), and eventual martyrdom at Carthage established his reputation and proved his sanctity and truthfulness in the eyes of the Church. His skillful Latin rhetoric led to his being considered the pre-eminent Latin writer of Western Christianity until Jerome and Augustine. He is generally more esteemed in Eastern Christianity than subsequent Western theologians. 

St. Cyprian is famous for the saying, "Outside of the Church there is no salvation," and is found in his masterful apology against heretics, “On the Unity of the Church.” Western Orthodox would agree with St. Cyprian that God does not save outside of His Church, but we would not, like some contemporary Orthodox, associate the canonical boundaries of the modern Eastern Orthodox Communion with the totality of the Church. Those canonical boundaries did not exist at the time of St. Cyprian's writing, a time when local bishops were, in every way, equal to the Patriarchs and Archbishops of later years. St. Cyprian, on the contrary, wrote to preserve this equality of bishops and the primacy of the local church over those political centers that would later take control of church administration. 

The contemporary primacy of some local synods over others, a Byzantine imperial innovation in which only Byzantine churches were preserved by the power of the Holy Spirit, keeping doctrinal “purity” as opposed to other ancient churches, and the authority inferred from these judgements against the ecclesial claims of other apostolic communities of Christian believers. These ideas now color how the Eastern Orthodox interpret St. Cyprian’s important principle, and lead them to a place where they cannot recognize Nicene, orthodox, catholic and apostolic brothers and sisters in Christ as even being a part of the Church. Such an unfortunate event has crippled the Orthodox world in the Schism of Greek and Russian Churches since 2018. 

This is truly unfortunate, and St. Cyprian must weep in heaven as he sees Orthodox Christians treating each other in such a way that their internal unity with Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit within their Churches has become mutually unintelligible. 

Brethren, let us pray for unity and godly love between all Churches that confess Christ as truly God and truly Man, the Holy Trinity, the Holy Scriptures, the Nicene Creed, the Universal Church, and the remission of sins through Baptism, the Gift of the Holy Spirit through the Laying on of Hands, Apostolic Succession, and the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist! For the peace and tranquility of all the churches of God, let us pray to the Lord!

The Collect

ALMIGHTY GOD, who brought Cyprian to faith in Christ, 

Made him a bishop in the Church

And crowned his witness with a martyr's death:

Grant that, after his example,

We may love the Church and her teachings,

Find Thy forgiveness within her fellowship

And so come to share the heavenly banquet

Thou hast prepared for us;

Through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord,

Who livest and reignest with Thee,

In the unity of the Holy Ghost,

One God, world without end.

Amen

(Opening paragraph largely taken from the Wikipedia article on St. Cyprian of Carthage)