Augustine: Correction of the Donatists

This is something I had to write for my church history class at Biblical Seminary.

1. Summary

“Of the Correction of the Donatists” is a letter from Augustine to Boniface, a government official in Africa. Augustine explains in this letter why the Donatists are in error, why the secular state is justified in using force against the Donatists, and why the Catholic Church is correct in admitting reformed Donatists back into fellowship.

Augustine first explains that the Donatists’ error consists in breaking from the authority of the Catholic Church. The Donatists, he notes, do not espouse any of the extant Christological or Trinitarian heresies. In fact, the Donatists’ error is particularly foolish, Augustine asserts, because they purport to esteem the scriptures highly. They recognize that the scriptures clearly teach the truth about Christ, but they ignore scripture’s teaching on the Church. The Donatists are happy to learn of Christ from the scriptures, but they build their understanding of the Church “from the vanity of human falsehood. . . .” In contrast, “the evidence of all the several scriptures with one accord proclaims the Church spread abroad throughout the world, with which the faction of Donatus does not hold communion.”

Augustine then responds to the Donatists’ argument that the civil authorities should not interfere with an internecine Church dispute about the legitimacy of disputed Bishoprics. He argues that the civil law, under the authority of Christian magistrates, operates as a form of divine discipline. When a Christian magistrate punishes schismatics, no less than when a physician administers a bitter medicine, the pain inflicted is an act of love. The sermons of Catholic preachers, the laws of Catholic princes, and the example of those who heed both kinds of warnings, all work together to reform society towards the goal of unity and salvation in Christ.

In the midst of this discussion, Augustine offers an excursus on civil disobedience and persecution. It is true, Augustine notes, that a righteous person ought to obey civil laws that are contrary to God’s truth. It is equally true, however, that those who disobey civil laws that are consistent with God’s truth are thereby condemned. It follows that those who are punished for failing to obey true laws gain no reward. “True martyrs” are those who suffer for the sake of righteousness. Augustine illustrates this point with reference to the Biblical figures of Hagar and Saul, who suffered just punishment, and therefore could not be considered “martyrs.” Thus, secular rulers need not fear that they are acting impiously by “persecuting” wayward people such as the Donatists. In persecuting the Donatists, secular princes are doing God’s work.

Augustine follows his discussion of the proper role of persecution with a critique of the Donatists’ excesses in seeking martyrdom. He notes that “vast crowds” of Donatists gathered at pagan festivals with the hope of being martyred, while others committed suicide. If a Christian prince acts harshly towards such people, he is doing so in order to save them from the worse fate of false martyrdom.
According to Augustine, the Donatists were not content to seek their own destruction. In addition, they acted violently against Catholics, seizing property, burning homes, and extracting extortionate protection payments. When some of the schismatics in Carthage began to return to the Catholic party after further schism among the Donatists, the Donatist leaders became even more fierce in their persecution of the Catholics, bringing general civil disorder to the region. This further demonstrates that is was appropriate for the civil authorities to step in and suppress the Donatists.

After this discussion of the need for civil order, Augustine offers another excursus on the theology of governmental force. Here he draws on two strains from scripture: the notion that kings should serve the Lord with “fear” and “trembling”; and the eschatological vision that all kings and nations will serve God. These theological principles, Augustine asserts, show that it is proper for secular princes to use force to compel schismatics to return to the true Church. This is confirmed by many examples of such uses of power in scripture, including Hezekiah’s destruction of high places, the Ninevite King’s decree that the people of his city turn to God, and Nebuchadnezzar’s law outlawing blasphemy against God.

Augustine then addresses the argument advanced by Donatist leaders that true faith cannot be compelled by force. Quite curiously, he quotes aphorisms of Roman playwright Publius Terentius concerning the discipline of children. He ties this to scriptures, mostly from Proverbs, about the discipline of servants. In addition, he offers the example of Paul, whom he says was compelled by the force of the Damascus Road experience to convert to Christianity. Finally, he offers the picture of Jesus as a shepherd, who must tame his sheep by the pain of the whip if they will not answer to more tender encouragements. Likewise, he suggests, the Church, and by extension kings who acknowledge the Church, are empowered to compel heretics and schismatics to return to the fold.

In Chapter Seven, Augustine discusses what sort of force is appropriate for a Christian prince to employ. He notes that he at first was convinced that only defensive force should be used. However, the savagery of the Donatists changed his mind. He learned, for example, of the assault on the Bishop of Bagai, who was beaten, stabbed, and dragged through the dust. This convinced Augustine that defensive force was not sufficient. Active, offensive force was required to root out the violent offenders and to deter others from joining their ranks.

Augustine then responds to the charge that the Catholic Church seeks to employ the law against the Donatists out of a desire for wealth and plunder. He argues that the Catholic Church is the true “society of the just,” tasked by God with the care of the poor and the proclamation of the gospel. It is the Donatists, then, who are acting selfishly by withholding from the Catholic Church the property and offerings that the Church could properly employ in its true mission.

Finally, in Chapter Eleven, Augustine briefly explains why such strong measures should be taken to encourage the Donatists to return to the true Church if, by defecting from the Church, members of the Donatist party have committed an unpardonable sin. Augustine argues that the “sin against the Holy Spirit” cannot truly be unpardonable while a person still lives, or else no one could ever be saved. The unpardonable sin must refer to a persistent refusal to acknowledge the truth through the end of a person’s mortal life. While a person is still living, he may repent and return to the true Church. If a person dies unrepentant of schism, however, he is lost forever.

2. Analysis

This document is significant because it establishes a framework for the relationship between the Church and the secular state that has persisted through the present day. Augustine and other orthodox thinkers believed that the temporal success and unity of the Church was a sign of the truth of the gospel (per, e.g., Athanasius in “On the Incarnation of the Word”). Moreover, they held to a strong ecclesiology in which the Church, through its Bishops, was the true successor to the Apostles. In that context, it was a forceful argument to suggest that God uses leaders of civil government as instruments of the Church’s triumph over evil. This line of thought provided theological heft to the transition from the pacifism of some of the early Patriarchs to the forcefulness of Constantinian Christianity.

Augustine’s notion that the civil state can encourage authentic faith through the coercive power of the law survives today in some versions of Christian political / legal theory. Indeed, it is employed in a modified fashion by many evangelicals in North America. For example, some of the arguments of those who support Constitutional amendments banning “gay marriage” hearken back to Augustine’s notion that civil law can serve as a loving moral corrective to bring sinners to God. Contemporary evangelicals tend to refract this idea through the lens of neo-Calvinism, particularly through the political theory of Abraham Kuyper and John Calvin. Nevertheless, the underlying tie between “common grace” and the role of the civil magistrate is essentially Augustinian.

I personally think this Augustinian heritage is both good and bad. The law indeed can be a moral teacher, civil magistrates are Biblically commissioned to promote justice and restrain evil, and common grace does operate in the sphere of civil government such that civil law can reflect to some extent the divine moral law (see, e.g., various Proverbs, Micah 6:8, Romans 13). However, the particularly Augustinian tie between the Church and the civil State is in my view troubling. I think many contemporary evangelicals fail to appreciate the ways in which such ties always implicate the Church in quite un-Christ-like coercion and violence – symbolic political “violence” if not actual physical violence.