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To: The_Reader_David
Thanks a lot. Don't go out of your way to find it and please take your time. I was stunned that you said St. Cyprian did not defend the "C of P" - I had always read that he had and, after your post, I could not find anything that stated any differently. If there are writings of his that I haven't seen contrary to what I have seen, I would love to read them.

Thanks for helping me out.

31,506 posted on 03/04/2002 4:36:13 AM PST by american colleen
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To: american colleen
Someone seems to have the Sherrard book out of our Mission library. I was, however, able to find citations to one of St. Cyprian's letter (lxvi, 8) in which he wrote "The Bishop is in the Church and the Church in the Bishop," after describing the Church as the faithful gathered around their shepherd, the bishop, thereby defining the Church's mode of existence without any reference to the See of Rome.

The Orthodox interpretation of St. Cyprian's "Chair of Peter" passages has always been that St. Peter is for Cyprian the prototype of the bishop, while the Apostles gathered around him are the prototype of the college of presbyters. The accords well with the approximately contemporaneous writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch. (Incidentally ACW in the Bevenot citation is an abbreviation for a standard work often cited by Church historians and patristic scholars: Ancient Christian Writers).

31,576 posted on 03/04/2002 8:36:52 AM PST by The_Reader_David
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