One thing is for certain about the history of Christianity: There has been no shortage of movements – all the way up to today – that have staked their claim in having the entire truth of Christian belief and practice. The first five centuries alone were a hot mess of various Christian movements locking horns in what seemed to be never-ending theological battles.
First, it was Jewish Christians against Gentiles. Next, Gnosticism, Marcionism and similar movements were at odds with the growing unity and theological continuity among Catholic related churches. Then, in the early fourth century, around the same time that Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity (Irvin and Sunquist 168), the Arian and Donatist movements rose up and rolled in with even more perplexing challenges to Christian theology.
This would carry on for the next couple of centuries, including the fifth century Pelagian movement following the divisiveness trend. And because Christianity now had the Roman empire’s backing, the various Christian movements could ask the government to step in and help adjudicate their differences, or even use force on dissenters (Irvin and Sunquist 168, 169).
Which eventually led to Augustine, the fifth century bishop of Hippo and crucial Catholic apologist who well refuted the heretical movements surrounding him and the church at large. He was particularly concerned with Donatists and Pelagians, as they had their own axes to grind against Catholic teaching.
To understand this rift better, it is first important to understand the Donatist and Pelagian positions on what qualified as correct belief and was in keeping with orthodox practices. Aptly named after Donatus, a then well-known presbyter who was one of two bishops sharing authority in North Africa, Donatists launched a crusade against Caecilian, the second of the two bishops, and who was condemned for allowing fallen away Catholics to be reincorporated into the Church (Irvin and Sunquist 168).
The tension was so thick between Donatists and Caecilian that, in 313, Donatists presented their case to Constantine. The point was to determine whether the bishops who allowed former apostates back into the Church, or who went into hiding themselves and then returned, were still validly ordained. Traditor was the word of the day to describe all the Catholic bishops that Donatists saw as invalidly ordained, and therefore were providing invalid sacraments to boot (Irvin and Sunquist 168, 169).
Presenting this case did not bode well for Donatists: Constantine deferred it to Miltiades, the bishop of Rome, who ended up ruling in Caecilian’s favor anyway. And what could be seen as a sore loser kind of situation, the Donatists turned around and accused Miltiades of being a traditor as well. This meant a reboot council meeting the following year, only for Caecilian to gain another win. And while it did not stop the Donatists from doubling-down on their campaign, it did prompt Constantine to keep them from frequently disrupting the church unity he had enabled and supported (Irvin 169).
Fast forward to the fifth century: Donatists were still a thorn in the Catholic church’s side, while another dissenter, Pelagius, had his own theological bone to pick with the church. In this case, his movement of Pelagianism claimed that baptized Christians were imbued with a free will that could quell evil and prevent sin. This included negating infant baptism — namely, the idea of original sin, or that humans could not entirely free themselves from sin, was absent from Pelagian theology (Irvin and Sunquist 233).
In his work, Nature and Grace, Augustine gets right to the core of Pelagius’ claims about free will versus grace. He partially does this by quoting from Pelagius’ work, On Nature (Coakley and Sterk 210), and then uses several examples from Scripture and church history to punch holes in the claims. Over and over, Augustine boils down his argument to a point he makes early on: “If justice is derived from human nature, then Christ died in vain. But if he did not die in vain, then human nature can in no way be justified and redeemed from the most righteous wrath of God, unless through faith and sacrament of blood in Christ” (par. 2).
From there, Augustine explains why salvation is called “grace” in the first place, that humans were created fundamentally good but then defied God, and that Scripture consistently shows the need for God’s grace (par. 4, 6, 7). Augustine sums all of this by quoting Matthew 9:12-13: “I am not come to call the just, but sinners” (par. 19).
Next stop – the Donatists. In his pointedly titled, On Baptism Against the Donatists,” Augustine spends much of this work showing glaring contradictions in the Donatists’ claim that their view on former apostates is in line with Cyprian. The history here involves a debate started in the third century, under Cyprian’s authority, as to whether lapsed Christians should be allowed back into the church – and, if so, whether they should be rebaptized. After having called a council on this, Cyprian went ahead and generally allowed fallen away Christians to be reinstated. The only exception was that bishops or presbyters could not be reinstated as clergy (Irvin and Sunquist 138, 139).
This move also helped deal with the issue of baptism: Cyprian upheld the belief that, through the laying of hands, the Holy Spirit was central to apostolic succession and the sacraments that bishops and presbyters continued as part of Catholic tradition. Therefore, all successions and sacraments conducted within the church were still valid. This included baptism – though the sacrament did still have conditions. For example, if a person had been baptized by outcast clergy, that person would have to be rebaptized once readmitted into the church (Irivin and Sunquist 139).
Augustine draws on this history to call out the Donatists’ view that Cyprian did not completely align with the church on how to deal with heretics and the validity of their baptism. Augustine points out that Donatists have too narrow of a view, when they should be looking at the greater good of lapsed Christians wanting to return to the church, as well as keeping the church unified overall. Augustine asks this, “…why do ye claim the authority of Cyprian for your schism, and reject his example when it makes for the peace of the Church?” (Augustine ch. 3).
Augustine even quotes Cyprian to drive the point home even further: “Judging no one nor depriving any one of the right of communion if he differs from us” (Augustine ch. 5). And though Augustine continues to hammer the same point throughout his work, he later ties it all up with this statement: “For in the same bond of peace in which Cyprian conceived that, through the mercy of God, those whom he considered to have been admitted to the Church without baptism, were yet not severed from the gifts of the Church, we also believe that through the same mercy of God the rebaptized can earn their pardon at His hand” (Augustine ch. 14).
Overall, Augustine’s message to both the Pelagians and the Donatists was one of keeping to church unity, adhering to Scripture, not straying from the Gospel handed down throughout the centuries, and not being so quick to judge.
Works Cited
Irvin, Dale T., and Scott W. Sunquist. History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001.
Augustine. On Nature and Grace. Readings in World Christian History, Volume 1: Earliest Christianity to 1453. New York: Orbis Books, 2004.
Coakley, John W., and Andrea Sterk. Readings in World Christian History, Volume 1: Earliest Christianity to 1453. New York: Orbis Books, 2004.
Augustine. On Baptism Against the Donatists Book II, Chapters 1–15 (paragraphs 1–20). http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf104.v.iv.iv.i.html