Not Rebaptized but Baptized

Cyprian to his brother Quintus: greetings.

Lucian, our fellow elder, has told me, dearest brother, that you wanted me to say what I think about people who appear to have been baptized by heretics and schismatics. So that you may know what a number of us overseers, together with our brother elders who were present, decided in council not long ago, I have sent you a copy of that same letter. [c]

I do not know what presumption leads some of our colleagues to think that people who have been dipped by heretics ought not to be baptized when they come over to us. Their reason is that they say there is one baptism — which is indeed one, and one precisely because the church is one, and because there can be no baptism outside the church. For since there cannot be two baptisms, if heretics really do baptize, then the baptism is theirs. And anyone who grants them that advantage on his own authority is giving way to them and agreeing with them: agreeing that the enemy and adversary of Christ should appear to have the power of washing a man, cleansing him, and making him holy.

But what we say is that those who come over from there are not baptized again among us; they are baptized. For they receive nothing there, where there is nothing. They come to us so that here they may receive, where there is both grace and all truth — because grace and truth are one.

Then again, some of our colleagues would rather pay heretics an honor than agree with us. By insisting on one baptism they are unwilling to baptize those who come; and so either they themselves make two baptisms, since they say there is a baptism among heretics, or — and this matters more — they are working to set the filthy and unhallowed washing of heretics ahead of the true and only and lawful baptism of the universal church, and to prefer it to that. They do not consider what is written: “If a man is baptized by one who is dead, what good does his washing do him?” Now it is plain that people who are not in the church of Christ are counted among the dead. And one who is not alive himself cannot make another alive, since there is one church which, having received the grace of eternal life, both lives forever and gives life to the people of God.

They say that in this matter they are following ancient custom. But among the ancients these were still the first beginnings of heresy and schism, so that the people caught up in them were people who had left the church after being baptized in it. Those men, then, when they came back to the church and repented, did not need to be baptized. We keep that same practice today. With people who are known to have been baptized in the church, and to have gone over from us to the heretics, it is enough to lay hands on them for repentance, if they afterward acknowledge their sin, put away their error, and come back to the truth and to their parent. Then, because it had been a sheep, the Shepherd may take the strayed and wandering sheep back into his fold. [j]

But if a man who comes from the heretics has not been baptized in the church beforehand, and comes as a stranger, entirely outside what is holy, then he must be baptized, so that he may become a sheep — because the one water that makes sheep is in the holy church. And so, since there can be nothing in common between falsehood and truth, between darkness and light, between death and immortality, between Antichrist and Christ, we ought by every means to hold to the unity of the universal church, and to give no ground at all, on any point, to the enemies of faith and truth.

And we must not lay this down from custom either; the custom on the other side has to be overcome by reason. For when Paul argued with Peter afterward about circumcision, Peter — whom the Lord chose first, and on whom he built his church — claimed nothing for himself insolently and took nothing on himself arrogantly. He did not say that he held the first place, and that beginners and latecomers ought rather to obey him. He did not look down on Paul because Paul had once been a persecutor of the church. He let in the counsel of truth, and readily gave way to the sound reasoning Paul put forward. In doing that he set us an example of harmony and of patience alike: we are not to be stubbornly in love with our own opinions, but rather to make our own whatever our brothers and colleagues usefully and healthily suggest at any time, if it is true and lawful. [l]

Paul had this in view as well, and, looking faithfully after harmony and peace, laid down this rule in his letter: “Let the prophets speak, two or three, and let the rest judge. But if something is revealed to another who is sitting by, let the first one be silent.” There he taught and showed that many things are revealed to individuals for the better, and that no one ought to hold out stubbornly for what he once took in and has held ever since. If something better and more useful has come to light, he should be glad to take it up. For we are not defeated when better things are set before us; we are taught — above all in matters that have to do with the unity of the church and with the truth of our hope and faith. In these we, priests of God and leaders set over his church, ought to know, by his own favor to us, that forgiveness of sins cannot be given anywhere but in the church, and that the adversaries of Christ cannot claim for themselves anything that belongs to his grace.

This, in fact, is what Agrippinus decreed as well — a man whose memory is worth honoring — along with his other fellow overseers, who at that time governed the Lord’s church in the province of Africa and in Numidia; and they settled it by the carefully weighed examination of a common council. Their judgment is devout and lawful and wholesome, and it agrees with the faith and the church held to everywhere, and so we too have followed it. And so that you may know what sort of letters we have written on the subject, out of the love between us I have sent a copy of them, for your own information and for that of our fellow overseers in your parts. [o]

I wish you well always, dearest brother. Farewell.