 |
| "....To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:19) |
The Church’s liturgical year begins on September 1, a day also known as the Indiction. Tradition teaches that on this same date Christ entered the synagogue and publicly declared His saving work for humanity (Luke 4:16–22). On the same day, September 1, 256, the Council of Carthage led by St. Cyprian with 71 bishops decreed that baptisms performed by heretics were invalid and that all converts from heresy and schism must be rebaptized upon entering the Church, which had been set forth at the preceding council of Carthage in 255. This dispute anticipated later Ecumenical Councils, which resolved the tension between strict rebaptism and lenient reception by adopting a graded approach that combined both akribeia (strictness) and oikonomia (economy).
Following the Decian persecution (250-251), Pope St. Stephen I of Rome (d. 257) held that those converts who had been previously baptized by heretics or schismatics did not need to be rebaptized, whereas St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258), held that rebaptism was necessary for reception into the Church. The dispute between Pope St. Stephen (Rome) and St. Cyprian (Carthage) in the mid-3rd century specifically applied to the Novatianists (Cathari/“Puritans”) – rigorists who denied absolution to the lapsed and baptized their own converts. The Councils of Carthage under St. Cyprian ruled that all heretics and schismatics, including Novatianists, lacked true baptism and therefore had to be rebaptized upon entering the Church, since baptism was valid only within the unity of the Church.
The most simple and standard premise for the Cyprianite position is expressed as follows: