www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology St. Cyprian

What do you think?

I think one persons opinion is one persons opinion and that complex issues of belief can't be reduced to one liners and/or separated out of their context.

The problem with discussions of this sort is that they rapidly become dominated by people saying that the only possible interpretation of what St Cyprian wrote that is valid is that of (by and large) twentieth century American theologians writing in a post Vatican I and II context.

This is a serious problem, because clearly St Cyprian was not writing in the twentieth century, so it is quite pointless and unhelpful to debate whether his writings support an interpretation of primacy that did not exist in his lifetime (or for a long time afterwards).

If we want to debate whether he (and many other saints in the first millennium Church) saw a far greater role for the Bishop of Rome than some other fathers, then that is reasonable. But we should be able to do so without getting sidetracked by the quite silly fear of some easterners that admitting that St Cyrpian envisioned substantive implications of Roman primacy means that he must have been unknowingly channeling or supporting some sort of post-Tridentine viewpoint; unfortunately this is too often is the level of discourse.

As was usually the case with all the Fathers, Cyprian's view of the Bishop of Rome depended on how much he needed his support at that particular moment. It also helps to know if one is using a Greek or Latin recension of Cyprian, and which one should have priority, but that's another matter.

I quite agree with Otsheylnik on this point and is one reason I refuse to respond to several posts that deserve a response but would do no good to do so.

Perhaps, the only question that arises is that maybe those 20th century authors, at least those mentioned here, havent been read!
If one is proposing better to read forum members than books aknowledged for their value then that is another issue!