Benjamin Safranski organizes this study as an evaluation of the criticism of Cyprian's understanding of the episcopal college that was offered by the Russian émigré theologian Nicolas Afanasiev in a series of studies during the twentieth century. Afanasiev claimed that Cyprian had introduced an authority higher than that of the individual bishop, whose own authority was based in the eucharistic communion as a full instantiation of the church. The universal episcopal college, with its legal rights of governance over the individual churches, he asserted, inevitably led to the hierarchy of episcopal authority culminating in the Roman papacy—despite Cyprian's explicit assertion of the equality of all bishops. Safranski concludes that, whatever the value of Afanasiev's criticism of the development of the episcopate, he misinterpreted Cyprian's teaching and practice.
The project is an exercise in historical theology, prepared as a dissertation at the Catholic University of America. The danger in using a modern question, such as Afanasiev's criticism of episcopal hierarchy, is narrowing the range of historical investigation and overlooking issues that do not appear immediately relevant to the modern question. The ancient thought and practice may not be allowed to challenge the modern formulation from a different angle. In this instance, Safranski gives inadequate attention to episcopal collaboration within Africa and the collegial structures of provincial organization that functioned efficiently during and after the Decian persecution.
The first chapter deals with the making of a bishop, around whom an individual community was organized, and the formation of the episcopal college that joined these bishops into a larger, functioning unity. Safranski attempts to specify the functional criteria and procedures for the appointment of bishops and to clarify the role of Peter—as an individual apostle—in the foundation of the episcopal system. He accepts the current consensus that, in Cyprian's judgment, Peter represented each bishop and the unity of the episcopal college, rather than the bishop of Rome as its head.
The second chapter, on the episcopal college, focuses on the maintenance of doctrinal and disciplinary unity and the “bond of union” arising from the shared power conferred by the gift of the Holy Spirit. In discussing Cyprian's view of the bishop of Rome within the episcopal college, Safranski isolates Cyprian's ep. 20 from its context and thereby fails to appreciate the degree to which Cyprian was pushing back against the criticism that the Roman presbyters had directed at him. Similarly, Cyprian's remarks on the role of the Roman church in the unity of the episcopate in ep. 59.14.1 are read as deferential to Rome rather than as a rebuke to Cornelius for his failure to withstand the rebellious Carthaginian deacon Felicissimus.
The third chapter moves to the exercise of collegial authority in the disciplining of the clergy. Safranski attempts to distinguish the role of a local congregation and the universal episcopal college in the removal of an unworthy bishop: in Rome (Novatianus), in Spain (Basilides and Martialis), and in Provence (Marcianus). Safranski proceeds cautiously because of the tenuous evidence for the role of bishops outside the province or region in which the problem arose. He devotes less attention to successful exercises of collegial discipline within Africa, where the church's means of communication permitted more successful regional collaboration.
The fourth chapter performs a parallel analysis for doctrinal issues: reconciliation of the lapsed and rebaptism of heretics or schismatics. The analysis of the shifts in Cyprian's position on the reconciliation of the lapsed occasionally lacks precision. For example, the decision of the council of Carthage in 253 (reported in ep. 57.1.1)—that reconciliation of a penitent on earth was a condition for admission to divine forgiveness in heaven—rejected the Novatianist practice of allowing penitents to die unreconciled on doctrinal rather than pastoral grounds. Omitting it results in a distorting of the analysis of the excommunication of Marcianus of Alres and the binding authority of collegial decisions.
The final chapter (the longest in the book) presents and evaluates Nicolas Afanasiev's criticism of Cyprian for setting the episcopal college as a legal entity above—and even detached from—the eucharistic communion of the church. Here the oversights in Afanasiev's analysis of Cyprian and Safranski's use of that analysis as a guide to his own research take their toll. The link between the power to sanctify—in baptism and eucharist—and the authority to govern the church was not fully explored. Afanasiev's charge might stand more plausibly against Augustine or against the subsequent distortion of African sacramental theory in the Latin church that broke the causal link between human holiness and the episcopal power to sanctify and authority to teach and govern the church.
This study of Cyprian's thought and practice is limited and perhaps even distorted by its organization around the evaluation Afanasiev's proposal. Still, the reader will find it a careful, well documented, clear, and even sparely written account of some of the central aspects of Cyprian's thinking about being and acting as a bishop within the regional and, occasionally, universal church. Safranski's documentation of the secondary literature on the issues he treats will lead the careful reader to fuller and more adequate treatments of that topic. Indeed, Benjamin Safranski shows that he might have written such a study himself, but for his decision to focus on evaluating Nicholas Afanasiev.
