International Conference on Patristic Studies
August 1999
J. Patout Burns
Vanderbilt Divinity School
The bishops of Africa allowed readmittance to the church's communion of Christians who had failed to confess Christ during the Decian persecution and were thus guilty of idolatry. This decision was not a gradual relaxation of standards in the face of pastoral necessity but was based upon the belief that loyalty to the church could win forgiveness of the sin of apostasy. Christians had already accepted the proposition that a denial of Christ could be reversed by a subsequent public confession. In the face of the schisms occasioned by the Decian persecution (250-251), the bishops proposed that submission to the authority of the church could be a form of resisting persecution and thus confessing Christ. This identification of the church with Christ thus entered the peculiarly North African understanding of the unity of the church; as such it contributed to the ferocity of the conflicts over the rebaptism of schismatics in the third century and the purity of the church in the fourth century.
Earlier in the third century, it will be recalled, Tertullian indicated that the ban against the readmission of apostates-even those who had failed under torture-was still firmly in place; he used that prohibition as an argument against the relaxation of standards by forgiving sexual sins.(1) Although Cyprian reported that a council of African bishops had subsequently recommended the practice of reconciling sexual sinners, he did not himself cite that policy as a precedent for dealing with idolatry. In fact, he appealed to it only after the bishops had decided to admit the penitent apostates and then only to demonstrate that forgiveness of that sin of adultery had not actually undercut Christian moral standards.(2) The Decian persecution created an unprecedented problem in the sheer number of lapse and thus excommunicated Christians; it required innovation in coping with the problem of apostasy.
The Decian persecution occasioned the defection and subsequent excommunication of a large number of Christians in Carthage and elsewhere in North Africa. The decree was the first instance in which the state required universal religious compliance; unlike earlier episodic or narrowly targeted actions, this one affected all Christians. The honestiores were threatened with the loss of property and thereby of status; humiliores were subjected to imprisonment and torture. Because the government's objective was participation in common observance rather than extermination of alternative practice, death was a relatively uncommon side-effect of coercive measures such as torture and deprivation of food, light and fresh air. The number of martyrs was relatively small but their witness was sustained though a drawn-out procedure; it attracted the attention and admiration of their fellow Christians.
The majority of Christians in Carthage were not martyrs or confessors; many were apostates. Some Christians voluntarily complied with the imperial decree and required their dependents to follow their example.(3) Others, particularly among the honestiores, used established procedures for evasion-such as the employment of agents to act in their stead and the payment of bribes or fines in place of actually performing the required sacrifice.(4) A significant number of the humiliores also complied with the edict.
The repugnance which the Christian community might have felt for the deserters was mitigated by the circumstances of their failure. Some of these wealthy heads of household who complied with the edict by sacrifice acted to shield their dependents. In addition, some then provided shelter for confessors who had been exiled in the initial stages of the persecution(5) or for refugee Christians who left their villages to seek safety in the relative anonymity of the city . Such lapsed thereby earned the gratitude and support of those whose standing in the communion they had thereby preserved.(6) When the bishops declared that the standard evasions were impermissible because they involved a form of compliance with the imperial decree, the honestiores were genuinely surprised to find themselves excluded from communion. Some of the humiliores initially refused to perform the required rituals but were then overcome by torture and brought to comply. Others, however, were simply overlooked by the persecutors; their place in the church was preserved by their social status and the inefficiency of imperial bureaucracy. Some of these subsequently confessed that under trial they too would almost certainly have failed.(7) As a result, a good number of the Christians standing within the communion had not been required to struggle for their faith and were quite sympathetic to many of the fallen.
Those who proved most courageous in defending their faith against the imperial officials also proved themselves ready to assist the fallen. Tertullian provides evidence that African Christians believed that martyrs had the power to win forgiveness from Christ for the sins of others.(8) During the Decian persecution nearly all the confessors imprisoned in Carthage promised that if they appeared before the throne of Christ to receive the martyr's crown, they would intercede immediately for the forgiveness of particular friends on earth who had fallen from the faith.(9) Some even deputized their fellow confessors to act in their names after their anticipated deaths; they ordered that letters of peace be issued to any lapsed who asked for them.(10) These letters urged or even directed the bishops to admit their suppliants into communion. Although the martyrs' letters often allowed the bishop to judge the conduct of the lapsed after their apostasy, they claimed the power to forgive the primary sin.(11) This episcopal right, moreover, proved difficult to exercise: the lapsed claimed a heavenly patronage which outstripped the authority of the clergy on earth.(12)
During the Decian persecution and immediately afterward, Cyprian strenuously opposed the reconciliation of the lapsed. He gave no evidence, however, of concern that the presence of apostates among the laity would sully the purity of the church.(13) His stance was based instead upon an understanding of the divine intention in allowing the persecution itself. On the basis of a dream-vision, he claimed that the church was being corrected by God because of the Christians' failure to obey the commands of Christ and to promote the unity and cohesion of the community.(14) The persecution was a divine rebuke intended to make the people aware of their failures and to move them to repentance and better practice. When the first set of confessors had violated the moral standards of the church after being released from prison , God had actually intensified the persecution by allowing the Roman officials to introduce torture. Thus Cyprian argued that readmitting the lapsed to communion, even under the patronage of the martyrs, was not only inappropriate but extremely dangerous. While God was still cleansing the church and removing unfit members, the clergy would be restoring them to communion without requiring either repentance or the fuller performance of their religious duties.(15) Further, while the persecution had been provoked by the failure of unity within the church,(16) the lapsed were seeking a private solution and exacerbating the divisions.(17) Surely, such action would outrage God and provoke a further intensification of the persecution.(18) Cyprian urged that the whole church should repent and become more vigilant, lest the standing remnant also fall. Once the divine correction operative in the persecution had been completed, the reassembled church might consider the proper rehabilitation and reconciliation of the lapsed.(19) In the meantime, any of the fallen could immediately regain their standing before God and within the church by a public confession of Christ which reversed their prior failure.(20)
The only exception to Cyprian's policy of penance and delay was forced by the concern of the faithful that penitents be allowed to regain the unity of the church before death. In accord with policy well established elsewhere in the Christian world, he conceded that peace could be granted to penitents who were seriously ill and thus might die and face judgment before the end of the persecution. In first resisting and then permitting the reconciliation of the dying, Cyprian demonstrated both a respect for the intercessory power of the martyrs and a belief apparently not widely shared in his church that penitents might be forgiven by Christ even if they died outside the communion.(21)
The positions which Cyprian upheld during the persecution provoked insubordination among the presbyters and deacons who remained in Carthage to serve the needs of the community-while he was in voluntary exile. Some of them accepted into communion any lapsed Christian who held a martyr's letter of peace, requiring neither penance nor delay until respite from persecution was granted to the whole church. The imprisoned confessors then exacerbated the situation by claiming authorization from the martyrs to declare a full amnesty for all who had failed.(22) Cyprian acted to exclude the rebel clergy but the laxists then formed a distinct communion, competing with that loyal to the bishops. They invited the lapsed and their supporters to join them under the patronage of the martyrs.(23) Paradoxically, this schism provided Cyprian with the opportunity to solve the problem of reconciling the lapsed.
Because the persecution was a divine call to repentance, Cyprian argued that the sustained penance was essential for the recovery of the lapsed. Because some of the repenting lapsed had won the martyr's crown by a second trial during the persecution, Cyprian argued that God had actually accepted their penance and inspired their confession.(24) Penance, then, might be effective as well as necessary. In contrast, by admitting the fallen to communion without requiring penance, the laxist clergy were assuring the damnation of the lapsed by convincing them that serious penance was unnecessary.(25) Those who had been seriously wounded by their first failure were being killed by being convinced not to undertake that serious penance. The laxists were actually continuing the work which the Devil had begun during the persecution.
Thus, Cyprian interpreted the laxist schism and the offer of communion without repentance as a new stage in the persecution, in which the laxist clergy had replaced the imperial commissioners as the Devil's agents in the attack on Christians. By standing firm against the laxist clergy, therefore, the faithful were continuing to confess Christ. In this vein, Cyprian proceeded to proclaim that all who had not actually sacrificed, received a certificate, or joined the schism should be numbered among the confessors.(26) More importantly, by submitting to penance in the unity of the Church, even those who had earlier fallen could actively resist the attacks of the Devil. Wounded but not dead, they were grasping the opportunity presented by the schism to confess Christ. That confession, like the reversal of apostasy by public confession of Christ during the Decian persecution, might also win forgiveness of their sin of apostasy.(27) This interpretation of the schism as a final stage of persecution would allow Cyprian to explain the efficacy of penance and justify the admission of penitents before they met the judgment of Christ.
The principal problem which Cyprian faced was to establish that penance and the church's ritual of reconciliation could be effective in winning forgiveness for the sin of apostasy. Tertullian represented a belief that the church lacked the authority to forgive sins committed against God rather than a fellow Christian, among which he counted both adultery and idolatry.(28) This was not an isolated viewpoint: even when the African episcopacy had voted as a body to extend reconciliation of adulterers, some bishops refused to follow the policy.(29) In attacking the pretensions of the martyrs and the presumption of the laxists, moreover, Cyprian recalled that Christ had not only promised to honor those who confessed his Name on earth but threatened to reject before the Father those who denied him.(30) In the face of such a threat, he asked, how could the martyr claim to change an apostate's standing before Christ; how could the church presume to admit a deserter to communion? By disregarding the threat, the martyrs and confessors undercut the promise.(31)
Cyprian was able to show that although penance might not guarantee the forgiveness of the sin of apostasy, it could be effective by preparing a sinner to confess Christ and thereby reverse the denial. During the persecution, he had urged penance as the means of preparing for the confession of Christ in a second trial.(32) Even as the persecution died down, he argued that penance had been successful in preparing for the confession of Christ and continued to exhort the lapsed to use it in hope of such recovery.(33) But once the opportunity for confessing Christ before the imperial authorities had clearly passed, Cyprian had to identify another objective for penance. The laxist schism allowed him to focus on the loyalty to the church as a type of confession of Christ which the penitents performed in the very process of their public penance.
As the African bishops began to deal with the problem of reconciling the lapsed and integrating them into the church, Cyprian consistently appealed to the service which the fallen had demonstrated toward their fellow Christians. In their first meeting following the persecution, in April 251, the bishops decided to allow the admission of those who obtained certificates on the basis of the penance which they had already performed. In defending this decision, Cyprian pointed to the commitment which the certified had shown to their fellow Christians by shielding them during the persecution.(34) At the same meeting, the bishops decided that the sacrificers would have to continue in life-long penance; they could be admitted to communion only in anticipation of death.(35)
Cyprian then provided an explanation of the effect of the reconciliation of penitents. Although the peace of the church could not promise the forgiveness of their sin, it did avert the certainty of damnation. Those who died within the church were brought before the judgment seat of Christ with the prayer of the church on earth and the martyrs in heaven. For the first time, he implied that anyone who died outside the communion of the church could never win a favorable ruling from Christ. This explained, he suggested, why none of the lapsed were willing to undertaken penance in the church unless they were assured reconciliation before death.(36) In certain instances, moreover, the sequence of events clearly indicated that the repentance had been effective, that God had forgiven the sin of lapse. Peace given to some dying penitents brought them recovery from illness and thus restoration to the communion of the church. Although some Christians were indeed outraged at the prospect of sharing communion with sacrificers, Cyprian read their recovery as a sign of divine approval of the penance and forgiveness of the sin.(37) While the eucharist had been harmful to those who received it unworthily immediately after the persecution, these penitent lapsed were helped by it.(38)
Soon enough, God gave what appeared to be a general approval of the repentance of the lapsed by providing a new opportunity for the public confession of faith. The bishops were warned by dreams and visions that the Roman government would soon renew the persecution. In Spring 253, they decided to offer peace immediately to all the sacrificer lapsed who had been following the penitential regime. Cyprian defended the efficacy of the practice of penance in winning divine favor for the sacrificers by a series of arguments. Once again, he appealed to the crowns of martyrdom won in second trials by Christians who had lapsed and repented during the Decian persecution.(39) The objective of their penance, he recalled, had been to strengthen the lapsed for the public confession of Christ. The penitents themselves bore witness to the efficacy of their exercises of repentance: they proclaimed themselves were fully prepared to confess Christ, to fight for the Name, and thus to win salvation.(40) Now that they were finally to be faced with the demand for such witness, however, the bishops judged that the penitents who had proved their loyalty should be given further strengthening. They would march out to battle from the camp of Christ and fight in solidarity with the church; they would prepare to shed their own blood by drinking the blood of Christ; they would receive the Spirit at the hands of the bishop to inspire their confession of Christ. Indeed, Cyprian argued, withholding such support could make the bishops responsible for the failure of any penitents in the upcoming trial.(41) When the bishop of Rome was arrested and his entire congregation shared his witness by escorting him to prison, Cyprian triumphantly concluded that the penance had succeeded in producing confessors .(42)
Objections were raised: could not the confession of Christ by the penitents itself secure salvation? What need for admission to communion in advance of martyrdom? The bishops argued that all the penitents should be admitted to communion because this persecution would be followed immediately by the eschatological judgment of Christ. Death and judgment were approaching for all Christians; so peace should be extended to all, so that all might be preserved within the church to be presented to Christ.(43) Still, the bishops did not promise the penitent lapsed the forgiveness of their sins: only that they would be presented to Christ who could forgive them.(44)
In actual fact, the essential qualification of the sacrificers who were to be admitted to communion was that loyalty to the church which was being demonstrated by constancy in the penance required by the bishops. Instead of accepting immediate admission to the laxist communion under the patronage of the martyrs and the influence of the Devil, they had proven their fidelity to Christ by confessing that only the church's discipline of penance, the imposition of the bishop's hands and the sharing of the one communion offered the hope of salvation.(45) Now the bishops explicitly asserted that the sinners could not be forgiven by Christ unless they had first been loosed by the bishops. The lapsed who had refused penance and violated the unity of the church remained bound by the bishops and would certainly be rejected by Christ. Those loosed by the bishops, however, could then be forgiven by Christ. If a bishop was deceived by a sham repentance, he could trust that Christ would search the heart and exclude the unworthy. But if a bishop continued to bind the penitents, Christ would hold him responsible for the loss of those who might have been saved.(46)
Cyprian's solution to the problem of reconciling the lapsed was based on the principle enunciated in Matthew 10.31-32: Christ will reward those who confess him and punish those who deny him. Confession was the only way to reverse denial, to escape the sentence of damnation so clearly pronounced by Christ. He appealed to this principle in order to exclude the presumption of forgiveness through the intercession of the martyrs: one and the same statement of Christ promised the martyrs' glory warned of the apostates' condemnation. Nor could he promise that the church's ritual of repentance and imposition of episcopal hands would deliver or win forgiveness for apostasy. Thus Cyprian promoted the ritual of repentance as a means of preparing for that confession of Christ which alone could wipe out the sin of denying him. When the ending of the Decian persecution took away the opportunity for a public confession, he found in laxist schism a new form of persecution and with it the opportunity for a new form of confession. As the imprisoned confessors had endured the coercion of the imperial commissioners, the penitents could reject the appeals of the laxist clergy. By submitting to the word of Christ and the discipline of the church, they would resist the attack of the Devil and align themselves with Christ. Only Christ could judge the sincerity of their repentance but the church could credit their public submission and present them to Christ with its prayer for their acceptance.
During and after the persecution, Cyprian was not primarily concerned that the participation of the lapsed in the eucharistic fellowship would somehow pollute the holiness of the church, either destroying its power to sanctify or making all communicants guilty of the sin of the apostates. Indeed, the sinners themselves were in danger when they came into contact with the eucharist rather than vice versa.(47) During the persecution, he focused instead on protecting the church from the divine wrath; afterward, he sought to give the penitents a chance for entering the kingdom of heaven with Christ. Certainly, he insisted that idolatrous bishops must be deprived of their office; this, however, seems to have been well established practice.(48) Even in the later conflict with the Roman Bishop, Stephen, over the failed Spanish bishops and the baptisms performed by schismatics, Cyprian attacked voluntary collaboration with apostates (among whom he numbered schismatics) which seemed to condone their failure rather than the danger of ritual impurity through sharing communion.(49)
Cyprian's understanding of the role of the church in the process of salvation changed under the influence of his congregation and his episcopal colleagues. During the persecution, he was initially unwilling that the penitent lapsed should be admitted to communion. He urged the fallen to volunteer for martyrdom and so present themselves to Christ. He refused to grant reconciliation to penitents even at the time of death, apparently assuming that they could make their plea for forgiveness before the tribunal of Christ without belonging to the fellowship of the church. Under pressure from his own congregation, the Roman presbyters and eventually his episcopal colleagues, he conceded that all penitents should be reconciled before death. Two years later, in spring 253, Cyprian insisted that penitents could win the forgiveness of Christ only if they had first been loosed by the bishops and admitted to the communion of the church. While insisting that martyrdom in opposition to the church was fruitless, he implied the same of death in defense of Christian faith outside the unity of the communion. Over little more than three years, the church's communion was recognized as the necessary means of access to the kingdom of Christ.
Cyprian's identification of loyalty to the church as a necessary and effective form of fidelity to Christ helped him to solve the problem of the reconciliation of the lapsed without claiming the power to forgive a sin which had been committed against God or lowering the standard of membership in the church. In the context of the controversy with the laxists, this position was integral to the characterization of the rebel clergy as the agents of the Devil, to establishing the equivalence between schism and apostasy, and even to disestablishing the martyrs as mediators of Christ's forgiveness. It helped Cyprian himself to move beyond the position which he might have originally shared with Novatian and his supporters: that salvation could be attained directly from Christ by those who pursued penance outside the communion of the church. Finally, it served as a firm foundation for the African position in the controversy over rebaptism that schismatics had no access to the sanctifying power of Christ. The rejection of schismatic baptism might originally directed against the African laxists and only subsequently applied to the Roman Novatianists.
In contrast to the African situation in which the schismatic laxists offered an alternative communion to Christians who had failed in the Decian persecution, the Roman church experienced a rigorist schism. During the persecution, the Roman confessors consistently supported the clergy and refused to grant letters of peace.(50) Afterward, those who dissented from the episcopal policy supported Novatian in refusing reconciliation to the lapsed, even to penitents and even at death.(51) As a result, the lapsed in Rome found no alternative to the penitential discipline; the bishop experienced no popular challenge to his authority; his communion was the only one willing to entertain the fallen even as penitents. In this situation, loyalty to the church could hardly be interpreted as a confession of Christ, as a struggle against yet another demonic assault.
When the Roman bishop Cornelius allowed schismatic presbyters to retake their positions among his clergy(52) or when he admitted a sacrificer bishop and his entire congregation into communion without sustained penance, he was clearly making concessions in the face of necessity.(53) Cyprian would praise the outcome and even defend the action but he did not let it become a precedent.(54) When Cornelius' successor, Stephen, failed to join the effort to remove a Novatianist bishop, Cyprian called him to his duty in no uncertain terms.(55) When Stephen entered into communion with an apostate bishop who had already been deposed, Cyprian barely made an excuse for his conduct.(56) When the issue of accepting schismatic baptism came to a head, Cyprian was ready to risk a rupture in the union of the two churches to uphold and protect the sanctity of the true church. In all these matters, the Roman church proved itself more ready to make concessions to necessity than the African bishops.
Interestingly, despite numerous attempts, the rigorist schism led by Novatian never took root in Africa as it did in Rome and apparently in Gaul as well. The African bishops had proven themselves adequately demanding in dealing with the lapsed. They upheld the standards of the church.
1. Tertullian, de pudicitia 22, CCSL 2:1328. In his argument, Tertullian indicated the belief that martyrdom would forgive all the prior sins of the confessor.
4. Tertullian indicated that the practice of paying bribes in order to avoid prosecution was widespread among the wealthy Christians of Carthage and even institutionalized in the case of one church. Christians regularly signed or accepted business contracts which were sworn before the Roman deities, though they avoided actually pronouncing the oaths. See idol 23 (CCSL 2, 1123) and fuga 5.3, 12-14 (CCSL 2.1141-1142, 1149-1155).
5. That exile was a penalty imposed in the initial stages of persecution is evident in ep. 13.4.1. Two members of the commission which Cyprian set up to act for him in Carthage seem to have been released confessors. For Caldonius see ep. 24.1.1 and for Rogatianus, ep. 13.7.
9. In contrast, the Roman confessors refused to grant letters of peace and cooperated with the presbyters who required that the fallen undertake public penance. Ep. 21.3.2.
12. Epp. 27.2.2; 33.2.1; 35.1.1.
13. Instead he focused on consent to the evil done by the apostates, the sin of which he could hold the laxists responsible, ep. 55.27.3.
14. The three visions, temporally separated, are narrated in ep. 11.3-5.
15. Ep. 15.2.1-3. Ep. 15.3.2; 16.4.1; 17.1.2. In accepting the lapsed, the presbyters were placing the whole church in danger of offending the Lord, ep. 16.1.2
16. The three visions, temporally separated, are narrated in ep. 11.3-5. It was revealed that the community as a whole had refused to pray for certain particular members, as it had been commanded. It thereby provoked God's wrath. See also Ep. 11.1.2, 5.1, 5.3, 7.2.
17. Ep. 11.7.3-8. This will correct the primary cause of the persecution, the disharmony in prayer, ep. 11.3.1-2.
18. Ep. 11 seems to have been written in late April, 250. Within a few weeks, Cyprian wrote epp. 15-17, dealing with the letters of peace. The reference in the earlier ep. 14.4 may have raised this problem already. Ep. 15.2.1-3. Ep. 15.3.2; 16.4.1; 17.1.2. In accepting the lapsed, the presbyters were placing the whole church in danger of offending the Lord, ep. 16.1.2.
20. Ep. 19.2.3. His subsequent repetitions of this command indicate that he meant it, epp. 25.1.2; 55.4.1-2.
21. Cyprian permitted those who had letters of intercession from the martyrs to be reconciled to the church at the time of death. If the martyrs did have the right to intercede before the tribunal of Christ, then the bishop would agree in presenting the lapsed to them with the support of the whole church. But at that same time, Cyprian refused to extend this privilege to those lapsed who had not secured letters from the martyrs. Though Cyprian's motives in this action are unclear, he may have believed that the excommunicate who had sincerely repented could be judged and even forgiven by Christ, even outside the communion of the church Epp. 18.1.2; 19.1.1. This exclusion of some penitent lapsed even at the time of death was acceptable neither to the people in Carthage nor to the presbyters in Rome. Cyprian finally relented and authorized reconciliation at the time of death for all who had undertaken repentance. Ep. 20.3.2. Cyprian apparently did not oppose the intercessory power of the martyrs as such: rather he insisted that it must not be used to circumvent the process of repentance. The necessity of repentance was integral to his explanation of the divine purpose in the persecution: rebuking the negligence of the church. Lap. 20-21, recalling the themes of ep. 11, and the opening sections of de lapsis.
25. Ep. 43.2-3, lap 15-16,34; unit 1-3; ep 59.12-13
27. The argument begins to be developed in the final letter from exile, ep. 43.3.1-2, 6.3-7.2, and is continued in lap. 15-16, 34-36.
31. After the persecution, Cyprian had effectively classified all the standing as confessors, lap. 2-3.
32. Ep. 19.2.3. His subsequent repetitions of this command indicate that he meant it, epp. 25.1.2; 55.4.1-2. The letters of the Roman clergy agreed that public confession would reverse a failure and bring the lapsed back into the good graces of God and thus the communion of the church. ep. 8.3.1
33. In de lapsis, he argued that penance had armed the fallen for defending the faith, lap 13, and that it might still aid them to win a crown. lap 33-36.
36. Ep. 55.28.1-29.2. He cautioned, however, that appearing before the judgment of Christ did not guarantee forgiveness and salvation to the penitent: Christ would judge the heart and make his own decision. 55.20.3 Only the martyrs could approach his tribunal in confidence.
41. Epp. 57.2.2, 4.2, 4.3-5.2; 58.1.2, 2.1, 7.1, 9.1-2. Equally important, of course, was avoiding their demonstrating that the assistance of the church was unnecessary for confessing Christ. The resources which were within the control of the bishops had to be shown to be essential.
46. Ep. 57.1.1, 3.3, 4.3-5.2. Father Bevenot has constructed a different interpretation of the binding and loosing passage in ep. 57.1.1 on the basis of the grammar of the sentence: what appears to be a subjunctive is used for the loosing and an indicative for the binding, "The Sacrament of Penance and St. Cyprian's De lapsis," Theological Studies 16(1955):175-213, see pp. 210-211. Clarke follows Bevenot's lead here (Letters 3:218 n. 8). The subsequent statements in ep. 57.3.3, however, indicate that the loosing is conditional and in ep. 57.4.3-5.2 that the binding is absolute. For a contrary interpretation of the passage, see Dom Capelle, "L'Absolution sacerdotale chez Cyprien," Recherches de théologie ancienne et medievale 7(1935):221-234.
47. Lap. 22-26. The community's belief in efficacy of both the Christian and the pagan rites and of the moral governance of the universe is evident in these stories; such a view is characteristic of high-group communities.
48. Thus for the case of Trofimus, admitted by Cornelius, ep. 55.11.1-3. In dealing with Felix of Assuras, Cyprian makes the same point but focuses on the divine wrath at the admission of someone whom God has expelled even more than the danger of pollution, ep. 65.3.2. See also, ep. 59.10.2, for other cases in Africa.
49. Ep. 67, esp. 2.1-5.2, 9.1.
50. As evidenced in epp. 21.3.2, 30.4, 31.6.2-7.1, 36.2.1-2.
53. Cyprian characterized the admission of Trofimus in just his fashion in ep. 55.11.1.
54. The comparable argument for Cyprian is that pastoral necessity required that the lapsed be admitted to the status penitents and reconciled at the time of their deaths, ep. 55.15.1-16.3, 17.3, 28.1-3.