Using Paul’s image of the body of Christ, Cyprian developed the idea that fullness and unity are attributes of the whole church, and each local manifestation is merely a member or part of that whole, not itself possessing catholicity. The Catholic Church is the sum of its parts, like the branches of a tree.But universal ecclesiology is not the only means to Christian unity, and it was not the pattern of the primitive church. This was eucharistic ecclesiology. In the early centuries, every local church was autonomous and independent. This was not just historical circumstance; it was a doctrinal assertion that the eucharist assembly constituted the church. The Universal Church idea, when it took hold, represented a change in both circumstance and doctrine. Recent Orthodox theology has sought to reclaim eucharistic ecclesiology as being more authentically Orthodox and more suitable to a conciliar church.
I am glad to hear that not all Orthodox hold these strange ideas about how there is no universal Church.
his words do lead to the idea of an "invisible" Church that is not identical to the visible Church
Hardly. St. Cyprian would simply say that anyone who dies outside the visible church is damned.
I don't plan to read the whole article, but I note that it was by a Quaker writing about Orthodoxy, apparently with an advisor at Holy Cross (someone deeply involved in ecumenical activity of the more questionable sort.)
It would seem to reflect only one aspect of the Orthodox understanding of the Church as I tried to articulate it above, at the expense of the other.
I am not claiming that St. Cyprian believed in an invisible Church. I'm saying that if you want to believe that his statement was true *and* believe that there will be those saved who are not part of one's visible Church, however one defines it, then one is forced into the gymnastics of saying that people are members of a church to which they have not given their assent. Call it what one wills, it is an "invisible church" theology.
Many Orthodox, myself included, would prefer simply to take the attitude that his statement is incomplete or incorrect.
I'm not sure you are correctly paraphrasing St. Cyprian here. "St. Cyprian would simply say that anyone who dies outside the visible church is damned."
As I recall, but I may be wrong, St. Cyprian was a little more nuanced in what he said. I think what he actually said was, "He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother. If anyone who was outside the Ark of Noah was able to escape, then whosoever is outside the Church escapes."
The Church is our means of salvation. To attempt our own salvation outside of the Church built for us for that purpose by Christ our Lord is like a person in Noah's day attempting to escape the Flood without entering the Ark of Noah.