Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CAECILIUS, GREETING. Although I know well, dearest brother, that throughout the whole world a great many bishops set by God's favor over the Lord's churches hold fast to gospel truth and to the tradition the Lord handed down, never departing through some new human device from what Christ our teacher both taught and did, still, because some — whether out of ignorance or plain simplicity — fall short, in sanctifying the Lord's cup and serving the people, of the very practice that our Lord and God Jesus Christ, the author and teacher of this sacrifice, himself established, I judged it both a duty of religion and a plain necessity to write to you on the matter, so that whoever remains caught in that error might, once the light of truth is seen, come back to the wellspring from which the Lord's own tradition rises. And do not think, dearest brother, that we set down here anything of our own devising or human contrivance, or that we take this upon ourselves boldly by our own will, since we always keep our poor self within a humble and modest restraint. But when something is enjoined by God's inspiration and command, a faithful servant must obey his Lord, and stands excused before all for presuming nothing of himself, since he is compelled to fear offending his Lord unless he does what he is bidden.
Know, then, that we have been admonished to preserve the Lord's tradition in offering the cup, and to do nothing other than what the Lord did first on our behalf: that the cup which is offered in his memory should not be offered without wine. For since Christ says, "I am the true vine," the blood of Christ is certainly not water but wine. And his blood, by which we have been redeemed and given life, cannot be seen to be present in the cup when the cup lacks the wine by which the blood of Christ is shown forth — that blood which is proclaimed by the mystery and testimony of all the Scriptures.
For we find in Genesis, in connection with the sacrament of Noah, that this same thing was foreshadowed beforehand, and that a figure of the Lord's passion existed there: that he drank wine, that he was made drunk, that he was uncovered in his own house, that he lay stretched out with his thighs bared and exposed, that his nakedness was pointed out by the middle son and reported abroad, but was covered over by the other two, the elder and the younger, and the rest of the details which there is no need to pursue — since it is enough to grasp this alone, that Noah, showing a type of the truth to come, drank not water but wine, and so expressed an image of the Lord's passion.
So too, the mystery of the Lord's sacrifice stands prefigured through the priest Melchizedek, just as divine Scripture testifies when it says: "Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High, and gave Abraham his blessing." That Melchizedek carried a type of Christ is shown by the Holy Spirit in the psalms, where the Father addresses the Son directly: "Before the daystar I begot you; you are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." This priestly order plainly traces back to, and flows out of, that earlier sacrifice — the facts that Melchizedek served as a priest of God Most High, that bread and wine were what he offered, and that Abraham received his blessing. For none is more truly a priest of God Most High than our own Lord Jesus Christ: it was he who made an offering to God the Father, presenting this very same thing Melchizedek had once presented — namely bread and wine, standing for his own body and blood. And that earlier blessing bestowed on Abraham belonged, in fact, to our own people. For if Abraham put faith in God and this was counted to him as righteousness, then surely anyone who believes God and lives by faith likewise stands justified, already blessed and made righteous long before in Abraham, that man of faith — as the blessed apostle Paul confirms, saying: "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. Know then that those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham." And Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the nations through faith, told Abraham beforehand that in him all nations would find blessing. So then, those who live by faith share the blessing given to faithful Abraham. Hence we find in the gospel that children are raised up out of stones, meaning gathered from among the nations, to become sons of Abraham. And when the Lord praised Zacchaeus, he replied, "Salvation has come to this house today, since he too is a son of Abraham." So then, in order that the blessing concerning Abraham recorded in Genesis might be duly performed through the priest Melchizedek, an image of sacrifice went before it, set in place through bread and wine; and it was the Lord who, bringing that image to its completion, offered bread and a cup mixed with wine, he who is fullness itself fulfilling the truth toward which the earlier image had pointed.
But through Solomon too the Holy Spirit foretells a figure of what the Lord would sacrifice, touching on the slain victim, the bread and wine, and likewise the altar and the apostles. "Wisdom," it says, "built her house and set up seven pillars. She slew her victims, she mixed her wine in the bowl, and she prepared her table. And she sent out her servants, calling with a lofty proclamation to the bowl, saying: 'Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me.' And to those lacking understanding she said: 'Come and eat of my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.'" It speaks of wine mixed — that is, by a prophetic voice it announces beforehand the cup of the Lord mixed of water and wine, so that it might appear that in the Lord's passion that very thing was done which had been foretold before.
The blessing of Judah signals this very truth as well, and there too Christ's figure appears: that his own brothers would praise and worship him, that the hands with which he carried the cross and defeated death would press down the backs of fleeing, yielding enemies, and that he is none other than Judah's lion, lying down asleep in his passion before rising again, himself the hope of every nation. To these things divine Scripture adds and says: "He will wash his robe in wine and his garment in the blood of the grape." And when the blood of the grape is spoken of, what else is shown but that the wine of the Lord's cup is his blood? So too in Isaiah the Holy Spirit bears witness to this very point about what the Lord suffered, saying: "Why are your garments red, and your clothing as though from treading a winepress full and thoroughly trodden?" Could plain water redden garments, or is water what gets trampled underfoot in a winepress or squeezed out by its press? Surely mention is made of wine for this reason, so that the Lord's blood might be understood by wine, and that what was afterward made manifest in the Lord's cup might be proclaimed by the prophets foretelling it.
The treading and pressing of the winepress is likewise reckoned in this: for just as one cannot come to drink wine unless the grape is first trodden and pressed, in the same way, Christ's blood could not have been ours to drink had he not first undergone the treading and pressing himself, and been first to drink from that cup before offering it to those who believe.
Whenever the holy Scriptures name water by itself, baptism is what is meant, as we can see is signified in Isaiah. "Do not," it says, "call to mind earlier things, and do not dwell on what is old. See, I am making new things, which shall soon come into being, and you shall come to know them; I will open a way through the desert, and rivers in a dry place, so as to water my chosen race, my people whom I have claimed as my own, that they might declare my mighty works." There, through his prophet, God announced ahead of time that among the nations, in places once dry, rivers would later overflow and water God's chosen race — meaning those made sons of God through the begetting that baptism is. So too it was foretold long beforehand that the Jews, should they come to thirst and seek out Christ, would find drink among us — that is, would come into baptism's grace. "Should they thirst in the desert," it says, "he will guide water to them; from the rock he will draw it out for their sake — the rock will be split open, and, as the water pours out, my people will drink." This finds its fulfillment in the gospel: Christ, the rock, is pierced by the spear-thrust in his passion, and, pointing to what the prophet had earlier foretold, he cries out: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me — as Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow out from within him." And to make it plainer that here the Lord means baptism rather than the cup, Scripture continues: "But this he said about the Spirit, which those believing in him were about to receive." The Holy Spirit is received precisely through baptism, and so it is those baptized and having received the Spirit who go on to drink the Lord's cup. No one need be puzzled that, while it is baptism divine Scripture is describing, it still speaks of our thirsting and drinking, since the Lord likewise says in the gospel: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" — for what is taken up with an eager, thirsting desire is absorbed all the more fully and richly. In just the same way, the Lord tells the Samaritan woman elsewhere: "Whoever drinks from this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks from the water I shall give will never thirst again." This very fact signals the saving water of baptism too, in that it is received a single time and never repeated. But the Lord's cup within the church is something forever both longed for and drunk.
There is no call, dear brother, for a great pile of arguments to establish that "water" always stands for baptism, and that this is how we should read it — since the Lord himself, at his coming, revealed clearly the truth of both baptism and the cup. He decreed that faithful water, the water of eternal life, be given to believers at their baptism, yet through his own example he showed that the cup ought to be mixed from wine joined with water. For, on the day of his passion he took the cup, blessed it, and handed it to his disciples with the words: "All of you, drink from this; this is the blood of the covenant, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins. Truly I tell you, this fruit of the vine shall not touch my lips again before that day I share it new with you, in my Father's kingdom." From this it is clear the cup the Lord offered contained a mixture, and that the wine was what he named his blood. So it follows that Christ's blood goes unoffered wherever the cup contains no wine, and that the Lord's sacrifice cannot be celebrated with proper sanctity unless what we offer corresponds to his passion. How, then, could we hope to drink new wine from the vine together with Christ in the Father's kingdom, if we fail to offer wine in the sacrifice belonging to God the Father and to Christ, and fail to mix the Lord's cup as the Lord's own tradition requires?
The blessed apostle Paul as well, called and dispatched by the Lord and made a herald of the gospel's truth, records these same words in his letter, saying: "The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and declared: 'This, given for you, is my body — do this in remembrance of me.' In like fashion, after the meal, he took the cup too, saying: 'This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood; whenever you drink it, do this in memory of me.' For whenever you eat this bread and drink from this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." If, then, the Lord commands this, and his apostle likewise confirms and transmits it — that whenever we drink, we should perform this act in memory of the Lord, just as the Lord himself performed it — we discover that this command goes unfulfilled among us unless we too carry out exactly what the Lord did, mixing the cup in the same fashion, keeping faithful to his divinely given instruction. And that we must in no way depart from the gospel precepts, and that disciples too ought to observe and do steadfastly and firmly the very things the teacher taught and did, the blessed apostle teaches elsewhere still more forcefully, saying: "I am astonished that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by grace, to a different gospel — which is not another gospel, except that there are some who trouble you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel to you other than what we have preached, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what you received, let him be accursed."
Given, then, that no one — not the apostle himself, not even an angel sent down from heaven — has authority to proclaim or teach anything beyond what Christ once taught and his apostles once announced, I find it altogether astounding that, against gospel and apostolic practice, water by itself gets offered in the Lord's cup in some places, water that on its own cannot stand for Christ's blood. On this mystery the Holy Spirit does not keep quiet, even in the psalms, where the Lord's cup is mentioned: "Your cup which brings drunkenness is exceedingly good." Now a cup capable of intoxicating must be mixed with wine, since water alone can make no one drunk. And the Lord's cup intoxicates just as the wine Noah drank in Genesis made him drunk. Yet because the intoxication brought by the Lord's cup and blood differs from that of common wine, when the Holy Spirit spoke in the psalm of "your cup which brings drunkenness," he added "exceedingly good" — signifying that the Lord's cup intoxicates in a way that produces sobriety, drawing the mind toward spiritual understanding, so that each person, moving past worldly taste, comes to his senses in the knowledge of God. And just as ordinary wine loosens the mind, relaxes the soul, and dissolves every sorrow, so too, after the Lord's blood and saving cup have passed one's lips, what fades away is remembrance of one's former self, forgetting the old worldly way of living; and the heart, once weighed down and grieving under the burden of sin, finds relief in the gladness of God's mercy — a gladness that can genuinely delight one drinking within the Lord's church, provided that what is drunk preserves the Lord's own truth.
What a backward, contradictory thing it would be if, after the Lord turned water into wine at that wedding, we went and turned wine back into water — when the very mystery of what happened there should instruct and warn us to offer wine, not water, in the Lord's sacrifices instead. Because spiritual grace had run dry among the Jews, wine ran dry too, since the house of Israel is described as the vineyard belonging to the Lord of Hosts. Christ, however, by turning water into wine, was demonstrating that the gentile peoples would step into that place, and that we ourselves would later, through the merit of faith, arrive where the Jews had forfeited their standing — in other words, he was showing that once the Jews had dropped away, it would be the gentile peoples flocking together to the wedding feast of Christ and the church. That waters stand for peoples is something divine Scripture states plainly in Revelation: "The waters you saw, on which that harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues" of the heathen. And this too, we clearly recognize, is bound up within the mystery of the cup.
For since Christ, who bore our sins, bore us all, we see that in the water the people are understood, while in the wine the blood of Christ is shown. But when water is mixed with wine in the cup, the people are united to Christ, and the believing multitude is joined and knit to him in whom it has believed. And this joining and union of water and wine is so mingled together in the cup of the Lord that the mixture cannot any longer be separated one from the other. As a result, nothing has power to sever the church — meaning those who, faithfully and steadfastly established within it, persevere in what they have believed — from Christ, so that it goes on clinging to him and abiding always in undivided love. But just as water alone cannot be offered in sanctifying the Lord's cup, so neither can wine alone. For if one should offer wine alone, the blood of Christ begins to be without us; but if it should be water alone, the people begin to be without Christ. But when both are mixed and joined together by a blended union with one another, then a spiritual and heavenly mystery is accomplished. In the same way, the Lord's cup consists neither in water by itself nor wine by itself, unless the two are mixed together — much as the Lord's body cannot exist as flour by itself or water by itself, unless both are combined, joined, and pressed together into the solid mass of a single loaf. By this same mystery our people too are shown to be made one: for just as many grains, gathered together and ground and mixed, make one loaf, so in Christ, who is the bread of heaven, let us know that there is one body, to which our multitude is joined and made one.
So there is no ground at all, dear brother, for anyone to imagine some people's custom deserves following, just because certain individuals once believed water by itself ought to be offered in the Lord's cup. We must ask instead whom those individuals themselves were following, for in the sacrifice Christ offered, only Christ is to be followed — meaning we are bound to obey and carry out precisely what Christ did and ordered to be done, since he says in the gospel: "If you keep what I command you, I call you servants no longer, but friends." And the Father himself, speaking from heaven, testifies that Christ alone deserves to be heard: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." So if Christ alone must be heard, our attention should fall not on what somebody before us supposed ought to be done, but on what Christ — who precedes everyone — did first. What we ought to follow is not human custom but God's own truth, since God, through the prophet Isaiah, says: "They worship me in vain, teaching human commandments and doctrines" — and the Lord echoes this very point again in the gospel: "You set aside God's commandment in order to establish your tradition." And in yet another place he states: "Whoever breaks even one of these smallest commandments, and teaches others to do so, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." If it is forbidden to break the smallest of the Lord's commandments, how much graver a wrong to tamper with matters so weighty, so momentous, so tightly bound to the mystery of the Lord's passion and our redemption — or to alter through human custom what has been divinely established into something else entirely? For since Christ Jesus, our Lord and God, is himself high priest before God the Father, offered himself up as a sacrifice to the Father, and commanded this be repeated in remembrance of him, then the priest who truly fills Christ's office is the one who imitates Christ's own act — offering, in the church, a genuine and complete sacrifice to God the Father, provided he begins his offering in the very manner he sees Christ himself to have offered.