Firmilian

Firmilian's reply was received at Carthage about the middle of November. It is a long letter, even more bitter and violent than the letter of Cyprian to Pompeius. It has come down to us in a translation made, no doubt, under Cyprian's direction, and apparently very literal, as it abounds in Greek expressions.[5]

In the letter, Cyprian's arguments against Pope Stephen are reiterated and reinforced. Firmilian says: "We have received your writings as our own, and have committed them to memory by repeated reading" (c. iv). Firmilian's reasoning against the validity of heretical baptism is mainly that of Cyprian, that those who are outside the Church and have not the Holy Spirit cannot admit others to the Church or give what they do not possess: "Very many of us meeting together in Iconium very carefully examined the matter, and we decided that every baptism was altogether to be rejected which is arranged for without the Church."[5]

The argument of Firmilian's letter is written with a bit more vehemence and acerbity than becomes a bishop, chiefly for the reason, as may be suspected, that Stephen had also written to Firmilianus, Helenus, and other bishops of those parts.[5]

The dispute was similar to that which developed over Novatianism, that is, under what circumstances are those who left the faith to be re-admitted to communion. According to Alban Butler, the practice of the Church was to regard any baptism given in the evangelical words, that is, in the name of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, as valid and not dependent upon the moral character of the person administering it. While both faith and the state of grace are required in him who confers any sacrament, any culpable failure in this regard belongs to the minister not the recipient, and does not affect the sacrament's validity.[6]

This was the practice even of the African Church till Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, in the close of the second century, changed it, fifty years before St. Cyprian. Thus, Stephen based his argument on to tradition from St. Peter and St. Paul. Firmilian reassures Cyprian that although at Carthage the custom of rebaptizing may be new, in Cappadocia it has been the custom from the very beginning, and he can answer Stephen by opposing tradition to tradition, and that some time since, he had joined in a council at Iconium with the bishops of Galatia and Cilicia and other provinces, and had decided to rebaptize the Montanists.

The disagreement with Stephen was further complicated in that Stephen viewed it as touching on matters of faith, while Cyprian and Firmilian considered it a question of discipline appropriate to the jurisdiction of individual ordinaries. Stephen threatened to cut off the patrons of the novelty from the communion of the Church. But St. Dionysius of Alexandria interceded by letters, and procured a respite.[6]

Firmilian enables us to gather much of the drift of Stephen's letter to Cyprian. The threat of excommunication only served to incense Firmilian who considered it "ridiculous" that Stephen demanded nothing but the use of the Trinitarian formula. He viewed Stephen's perceived leniency towards heretics as an insult to the Apostles.

Moreover, he disagreed that Rome preserved the Apostolic traditions unchanged, for it differed from Jerusalem as to the observances at Easter and he disputed Stephen's authority to excommunicate them. "I am justly indignant with Stephen's obvious and manifest silliness, that he so boasts of his position, and claims that he is the successor of St. Peter on whom were laid the foundations of the Church... You have cut yourself off—do not mistake—since he is the true schismatic who makes himself an apostate from the communion of ecclesiastical unity. For in thinking that all can be excommunicated by you, you have cut off yourself alone from the communion of all."

Dionysius, in a letter to the Roman priest Philemon , also mentions the Council of Iconium. It was presumably held in the last years of Alexander Severus, ca 231–35.