Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Dearest brother, what you mentioned in your letter does not trouble us at all — that the Novatianists rebaptize those they lure away from us — since whatever the church's enemies choose to do is simply none of our concern, so long as we ourselves keep the honor due our own authority and stand firm in reason and truth. Novatian, like the apes that mimic human behavior without being human themselves, wants to claim the catholic church's authority and truth as his own possession, even though he is not himself within the church — worse, he has set himself up, and remains, as a rebel and foe opposing it. He is well aware that baptism is one single thing, and it is this single claim he seizes for himself, so he can announce that the church stands with him and brand the rest of us heretics. We, however, who possess the root and head of that one church, are certain and confident that he has no rightful standing outside the church whatsoever, and that the one baptism belongs with us — the very place where he himself was baptized earlier, back when he still kept hold of reason and truth regarding divine unity. Yet if Novatian supposes that people baptized inside the church must be rebaptized once outside it, as though by some foreign heretical rite, then he should have started the practice on his own person, submitting first to a rebaptism performed by an outsider and heretic — he who imagines that baptism belongs outside the church, after it, indeed opposed to it. What kind of logic is it that, simply because Novatian ventures to act this way, we ought to conclude we should not act likewise? What follows, then? Because Novatian also seizes for himself the honor belonging to the priestly seat, are we therefore obliged to give up that seat? And because Novatian, against all propriety, tries to set up his own altar and offer his own sacrifices, must we abandon our altar and sacrifices, for fear of appearing to hold rites equal and identical to his? It would be utterly pointless and foolish for the church to abandon truth itself merely because Novatian, standing outside it, lays claim to truth's mere image.
For us, meanwhile, judging that those coming to the church from the heretics must be baptized is nothing new or sudden — a great many years and a long stretch of time have passed since, in an assembly under Agrippinus of blessed memory, numerous bishops gathered together and settled this matter; and from that time to this day so many thousands of heretics turning to the church across our provinces have neither refused it nor hesitated over it, but have taken it up gladly and with good reason, so as to gain the grace of that saving, life-giving washing. Nor, indeed, is it hard for a teacher to plant true and lawful things in someone who arrives wanting to learn, having condemned heretical wrongdoing and discovered the church's truth, and who learns precisely so that he might live. Let us not hand heretics the shock of finding us complicit and agreeable — instead, they will submit to the truth freely and eagerly.
Clearly, I found it written in the letter whose copy you forwarded to me that who did the baptizing is not the question, so long as the person baptized was able to receive the forgiveness of sins in keeping with what he believed — and I did not think this point ought to be skipped over, all the more because in that same letter I also noticed Marcion mentioned, in such a way that even those coming from him need not, it says, be baptized again, since they already appear to have received baptism in Jesus Christ's name. We ought, then, to weigh the faith of those who believe outside the church, and ask whether that same faith could win them any grace. For if the heretics share one faith with us, then one grace could belong to both alike. And if the Patripassians, Anthropians, Valentinians, Appelletians, Ophites, Marcionites, and the rest of these plagues, swords, and poisons bent on subverting truth confess, along with us, one Father, one Son, one Holy Spirit, and one church, then baptism there too could be a single thing — provided the faith really is a single thing.
So as not to drag things out running through every heresy and cataloguing each one's follies or lunacies — since describing things one finds either horrifying or shameful to know brings no pleasure — let us for now examine only the case of Marcion, whom your letter to us happened to mention, and ask whether his baptism's logic can hold together. After rising from the dead, the Lord, sending his disciples out, teaches and instructs them in how baptism ought to be performed, saying: all authority in heaven and on earth has been granted to me. Go therefore, teach every nation, and plunge them beneath the water calling on Father, Son, and Spirit-all-Holy as one name. A threefold mystery is signaled there — the very rite by which the nations were washed. Does Marcion keep to that three-in-one at all? Is the God he names as Father and Creator the same one we worship? Does his Christ match ours — born of the virgin Mary, the Word turned flesh, bearer of our sins, conqueror of death through dying it, the man whose own rising set the flesh's resurrection moving for the first time, its proof laid bare before the followers who watched him stand again wearing the very body he had worn in dying? Marcion's faith stands far apart from ours, and so does every other heretic's. In fact there is nothing among them except treachery, blasphemy, and a quarrel picked with soundness and truth alike. How, then, can someone baptized among them be thought to have gained forgiveness of sins and the grace of divine mercy through his faith, when he lacks the truth that faith itself requires? For if, as some imagine, a person could receive something outside the church simply by his own faith, then certainly he received exactly what he believed. But believing something false, he could not come away with something true — instead he received something corrupt and unholy, matching what he believed.
This very point about profane and adulterous baptism the prophet Jeremiah subtly touches on when he says: why do those who grieve me prevail? my wound is stubborn; how shall I be healed? while it happens, it has become to me like deceitful water, having no faithfulness. The Holy Spirit, through the prophet, makes mention of deceitful water that has no faithfulness. What is this lying and faithless water? Surely it is that which counterfeits the image of baptism and, by its feigned pretense, cheats one of the grace of faith. But if someone could be baptized outside according to a false faith and obtain remission of sins, he could also, according to that same faith, obtain the Holy Spirit, and there would be no need for the laying on of hands upon him when he comes, so that he might receive the Holy Spirit and be sealed. For either he could obtain both by his own faith outside, or he who was outside received neither of them.
It is clear, though, where and through whom the forgiveness of sins can be granted — that same forgiveness given, of course, in baptism. The Lord gave this power first to Peter, the one on whom he built the church and from whom he set up and displayed the source of its unity, so that whatever Peter loosed would count as loosed. After rising, too, he addresses the apostles: just as the Father sent me, so I send you. A breath followed those words, cast upon them along with the command: receive the Holy Spirit. Whoever's sins you release, that person's sins are released; whoever's you hold fast, those are held fast. From this we grasp that only those set over the church, grounded in gospel law and the Lord's own ordinance, are permitted to baptize and grant forgiveness of sins — while outside, nothing whatsoever can be bound or released, since there is no one there capable of binding or releasing.
Nor, dearest brother, do we propose this without the authority of divine scripture, that we say all things have been divinely arranged by a fixed law and a proper ordination, and that no one may usurp for himself, against the bishops and priests, anything that does not belong to his own right and power. For Korah and Dathan and Abiram too tried to usurp for themselves against Moses and Aaron the priest the license to sacrifice, yet they did not do with impunity what they dared unlawfully. And the sons of Aaron, who placed foreign fire upon the altar, were immediately struck dead in the sight of the indignant Lord. This same punishment awaits those who falsely bring foreign water into baptism, so that divine judgment may avenge and vindicate the fact that heretics do against the church what belongs to the church alone to do.
As for the claim some make — that once the apostles Peter and John arrived among those already baptized in Samaria, hands were merely laid on them so they might receive the Holy Spirit, without any rebaptism taking place — we see, dearest brother, that this instance bears no relevance whatsoever to the question now before us. Those who had come to belief in Samaria had done so with genuine faith, and they had already been baptized inside the one church — the sole place permitted to bestow baptism's grace and release sins — by Philip the deacon, sent there by those very apostles. Since they had thus already received a valid, churchly baptism, there was no need to baptize them a second time; what Peter and John supplied was simply what was still missing, so that through prayer offered on their behalf and hands laid upon them, the Holy Spirit might be called down and poured out over them. The same thing still happens among us today: those baptized within the church are brought before its leaders, and through our prayer together with the laying on of hands, they receive the Holy Spirit and are sealed with the Lord's mark.
There is no reason, then, dearest brother, why we should suppose we must give way to heretics, or imagine that the baptism entrusted to the one church alone should be handed over. A good soldier defends his commander's camp against rebels and foes; a glorious general keeps safe the standards placed in his charge. Scripture says: the Lord your God is a jealous God. Having received God's Spirit, we ought to carry a zeal for divine faith — the very zeal that pleased Phinehas and, by earning God's favor, calmed his rightful anger while the people were dying off. Why would we credit to their side something corrupt, foreign, and opposed to divine unity, when we recognize only a single Christ and a single church belonging to him? The church, mirroring paradise's pattern, has shut fruit-bearing trees within its own walls, and whichever of them fails to produce good fruit gets chopped down and thrown into the fire. Four rivers water these trees — namely the four gospels — through which it pours out baptism's grace in a saving, heavenly flood. Could someone standing outside the church possibly draw water from the church's own springs? Could a man perverse, condemned by his own doing, exiled from paradise's fountains, and dried out by an unending thirst, possibly hand anyone paradise's wholesome, health-giving drink?
The Lord calls out for whoever thirsts to come and drink from rivers of living water flowing out of his own body. Where, then, will the thirsty person go — to the heretics, among whom there is no spring or stream of life-giving water at all, or rather to the church, the single church built, by the Lord's own word, upon the one man who also received its keys? This is the single church holding and possessing her bridegroom and lord's entire authority. Here we preside; for her honor and her oneness we contend; her grace together with her glory we guard through loyal devotion. By God's own permission we give drink to his thirsting people, and we keep watch over the borders of those life-giving springs. If we retain the right belonging to what is ours, if we recognize the mystery of unity, why then should anyone reckon us traitors to truth, betrayers of unity? The church's water — faithful, life-giving, holy — cannot be tainted or defiled, just as the church herself remains uncorrupted, chaste, and pure. Should heretics be devoted to and situated within the church, they could then make use of her baptism and her other saving gifts as well. But since they are not within the church — worse, they act against it — how could they possibly baptize using the church's own baptism?
It is no trivial or minor thing that gets granted to heretics when we credit their baptism as valid, since from that point flows the whole origin of faith, the entryway into hope of saving eternal life, and God's gracious stooping down to purify and give life to his servants. For if a person really could be baptized among heretics, then surely he could likewise obtain forgiveness of sins. And if he obtained forgiveness of sins, he was made holy; and if made holy, he became a temple of God — but if he became a temple of God, whose God, I ask, was it? Not the Creator's, since he never believed in him. Nor Christ's, since someone denying that Christ is God cannot become a temple belonging to Christ. Nor the Holy Spirit's — for since the three are one, how could the Holy Spirit be reconciled with someone hostile to either the Son or the Father?
So it is pointless for people beaten by reason to throw custom in our face, as though custom outranked truth, or as though in spiritual matters one shouldn't follow whatever the Holy Spirit has revealed as the better course. Someone who errs out of simple ignorance can indeed be pardoned — Paul, that blessed apostle, says as much of himself: I was once, he writes, a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man, yet I found mercy because I acted without knowing better. But once inspiration and revelation have come, a person who knowingly and deliberately clings to his former error sins with no excuse of ignorance to shield him, since he now leans on a kind of stubborn presumption even while reason overwhelms him. And let no one claim, we simply follow what we received from the apostles, since the apostles handed down only a single church and a single baptism, established nowhere but within that very church — and we can find no case of the apostles ever admitting someone baptized among heretics into fellowship on the strength of that baptism, as though the apostles had endorsed heretical baptism.
As for what some people claim — treating it as though it somehow supported the heretics' cause — that the apostle Paul said: nevertheless, in whatever way, whether from pretext or from sincerity, Christ gets proclaimed, we find that this too accomplishes nothing for those who back and applaud heretics. Paul was not, in fact, discussing heretics or their baptism in that letter at all, so nothing he wrote there could be shown to bear on this question. He was talking about fellow believers — some walking disorderly, against the church's discipline, others upholding gospel truth out of fear of God. He noted that some among them proclaimed the Lord's word steadily and boldly, while others were caught up in jealousy and quarreling; some maintained goodwill and affection toward him, while others harbored ill will and division — yet he himself endured everything patiently, as long as, whether sincerely or as pretext, the name of Christ that Paul was preaching reached the notice of as many as possible, and that still-fresh, still-untrained sowing of the message might spread through the preaching of those proclaiming it. Now, there's a real difference between people inside the church speaking Christ's name and people outside it, acting against the church, baptizing in Christ's name. So whoever champions the heretics' cause should not cite what Paul said about the brothers, but instead demonstrate whether Paul thought anything ought to be conceded to a heretic, or approved their faith and baptism, or established that faithless, blasphemous people could receive forgiveness of sins outside the church.
But if we consider what the apostles themselves thought of heretics, we discover them, throughout all their letters, cursing and denouncing the heretics' sacrilegious corruption. When they describe such people's talk as spreading like a cancer, how could speech spreading that way into listeners' ears possibly grant forgiveness of sins? And when they insist there's no partnership between righteousness and wrongdoing, no fellowship between light and darkness, how could darkness possibly shed light, or wrongdoing make anyone righteous? And when they say such people do not belong to God but instead carry the spirit of antichrist, how can they be doing anything spiritual or divine — being enemies of God whose very hearts the spirit of antichrist has seized? So then, if we set aside the errors born of human quarreling and turn back, with sincere and devout faith, to the gospel's authority and the apostles' handed-down tradition, we understand that nothing of the church's saving grace is open to those who, scattering seeds against and attacking Christ's church, are called adversaries by Christ himself and antichrists by his apostles.
There is, moreover, no basis for anyone to invoke Christ's name in order to sidestep Christian truth, claiming that whoever is baptized in Jesus Christ's name, in whatever manner and wherever it happens, has thereby gained baptism's grace — since Christ himself says: not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord, will enter heaven's kingdom, and he likewise warns and cautions beforehand that no one should be too readily taken in by false prophets and false christs acting in his own name. Many, he says, will come using my name, claiming, I am the Christ, and they will deceive a great many; and he then adds: but you — be on your guard. See, I have foretold everything to you. From this it becomes clear that what gets boasted of in Christ's name should not be embraced right away, but rather what is actually carried out in Christ's truth.
As for why Jesus Christ's name is introduced in the gospels and the apostles' letters in connection with forgiveness of sins, this isn't because the Son alone, apart from or against the Father, could benefit anyone — rather, it was meant to show the Jews, who kept boasting that they had the Father, that the Father would do them no good at all unless they trusted in the Son he had sent (since those who already knew God the Creator as Father ought also to have recognized the Son as Christ), and that they shouldn't flatter themselves over possessing the Father alone while refusing to acknowledge his Son, who also said: no one reaches the Father except through me. That salvation requires knowing both together, he himself makes clear, saying: this is eternal life — that they know you, the one true God, and the one you sent, Jesus Christ. Since, then, by Christ's own preaching and testimony, the Father who sent must be recognized first, and only afterward Christ who was sent, and there can be no hope of salvation unless both are recognized at once, how could those among the heretics who are said to be baptized under Christ's name be judged to have gained forgiveness of sins, when God the Father goes unrecognized — indeed gets blasphemed? The situation of the Jews under the apostles differed from the circumstance of the Gentiles. Since the Jews had already received the ancient baptism belonging to the law and Moses, they still needed baptizing under the name of Jesus Christ as well, following what Peter tells them in Acts: repent, and let every one of you be immersed under the Lord Jesus Christ's name, so your sins may be forgiven, and you shall receive the Holy Spirit as a gift. For the promise belongs to you, to your children, and to everyone still to come whom the Lord our God shall call. Peter brings up Jesus Christ's name not to leave the Father out, but so the Son might be joined together with the Father.