Early Christianity

We ought to hold firmly and defend this unity, especially

we bishops who preside over the church, so that we may

prove also that episcopal authority is itself one and undi-

vided. Let no-one mislead brotherhood through lying; let

no-one corrupt the faith by perfidious perversion of the

truth. The episcopal power is something of which each part

holds the whole together.

(Cyprian,On the Unity of the Catholic Church5)

Some seventy years earlier, another bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons,

had similarly written that the essential unity of the Christian faith

had been maintained in spite of its dissemination far and wide

across the face of the world:

The church, having received this preaching and this faith

... though dispersed in the whole world, diligently guards
them as living in one house, believes them as having one
soul and one heart, and consistently preaches, teaches, and
hands them down as having one mouth. For if the languages
of the world are dissimilar, the power of tradition is one and
the same. The churches founded in Germany believe and
hand down no differently, nor do those among the Iberians,
among the Celts, in the Orient, in Egypt, or in Libya, or in
those established in the middle of the world.
(Irenaeus,Against Heresies1.10.2, trans. Grant 1997)

Together, Irenaeus and Cyprian bear witness to the notion that

Christianity, in terms of both faith and organization, was united

to a single purpose.

Yet neither Irenaeus not Cyprian was offering a disinterested

description of Christian unity. Both of them were asserting it in

polemical works against enemies whom they accused of trying to

tear Christianity apart. Irenaeus’ work was directed against a

group usually called the Gnostics who were spreading teachings

about Jesus Christ that challenged the idea that there was a single

faith to which all Christians subscribed. Cyprian similarly wrote

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