Introduction
In considering the many major events throughout the Catholic Church’s history, this paper will explore three schisms – Donatism versus Catholicism in the Early Church, Eastern versus Western Churches in the Medieval era, the Council of Trent versus the Reformation – while discussing what the Church did well with them, and what it could have improved.
Catholic – Donatist Schism
Beginning with the Donatist movement in the fourth century, the Catholic Church had already endured some dramatic, sometimes violent, sometimes oppressive growing pains in the first few centuries following Jesus’ execution (and proclaimed resurrection) around ~33 AD. And because the Roman Empire was still master of the domain and kept a close eye on any movement that could potentially rebel against its authority, the Church found itself facing occasional yet brutal persecution for the next two centuries (Irvin and Sunquist 43,44).
This led to a near shocking turn of events in the fourth century, when the Roman government did an about-face and buried the hatchet with Christians, followed by legalizing Christianity in 313 (Irvin and Sunquist 169), and thus paving the way for the Catholic Church to have a gripping influence on Roman authority – and eventually the entire world.
Enter the Donatist movement, which largely sprung up throughout North Africa and used its strength in numbers to rise up against a Church they had viewed as filled with traditores: thosewho either once left the Church out of fear of Roman persecution, but then wanted to return, or those who had more or less stayed with the Church yet allowed dissenters to return. Either way, Donatists judged the Catholic Church as harboring hypocrites, and the Catholic Church judged Donatists as schismatic tantrum throwers who betrayed the Gospel message and the Church overall (Irvin and Sunquist 169, 171).
To add insult to injury, Emperor Constantine deferred all Donatist matters to Catholic authorities, which further shut down any hope the Donatists had in gaining an upper hand in their cause. In fact, Donatists had made such a negative impact on what had become a Catholic-centered government, Roman authorities had to step in and shutdown the outbursts – including by Catholic approved force at times (Irvin and Sunquist 169, 171).
On a more positive note, the Roman empire / Catholic Church marriage in the fourth century allowed Church matters to be adjudicated in the public square, with both sides of the Donatist and Catholic schism presenting their positions before the Emperor, while government checks and balances kept danger and violence to more of a minimum.
However, as the Donatist movement persevered into the fifth century (thought later on phased out altogether), Augustine of Hippo, also from North Africa, spent part of his life’s work rigorously debunking the Donatist position — even suggesting the use of force as necessary to stop the dissension (Irvin and Sunquist 171). This could outwardly portray the Church as being a bully who was determined to be right in end, no matter which path it would take to get there. But Augustine’s arguments had the corroboration of prior Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers to shore up his case.
At the center of Augustine’s position was Cyprian’s teachings about baptized Catholics: While Donatists believed that Cyprian would have supported their desire to flush out traditores from the Church, as well as keep only the non-dissenters and those who were not seeking a do-over baptism (Irvin and Sunquist 232), Augustine believed that Cyprian would have been much humbler and understanding.
In On Baptism Against the Donatists, Augustine writes: “Ye mad Donatists, whom we desire earnestly to return to the peace and unity of the holy Church, that ye may receive health therein, what have ye to say in answer to this? You are wont, indeed, to bring up against us the letters of Cyprian, his opinion, his Council; why do ye claim the authority of Cyprian for your schism, and reject his example when it makes for the peace of the Church?” (ch. 3).
Augustine later follows this with, “What then, ye Donatists, what have ye to say to this? If our opinion about baptism is true, yet all who thought differently in the time of Cyprian were not cut off from the unity of the Church, till God revealed to them the truth of the point on which they were in error, why then have ye by your sacrilegious separation broken the bond of peace? But if yours is the true opinion about baptism, Cyprian and the others, in conjunction with whom ye set forth that he held such a Council, remained in unity with those who thought otherwise; why, therefore, have ye broken the bond of peace?” (ch. 6).
Although Augustine belabors this point throughout his work, he effectively counters the Donatists’ black-and-white approach to the matter. It is also an example of how the Church looked at the entire matter more holistically, thus giving a more credible assessment of the situation.
East-West Schism
Unfortunately, the Donatist movement was not the only schism to drive a wedge in how the Catholic Church continued to grow in its social, political, and theological influence. Having also faced-off with the Arians in the fourth century (Irvin and Sunquist 175, 177), as well as getting caught up in the iconoclast and filioque controversies in the Medieval era, the Church had become geographically and theologically divided into Eastern and Western churches.
The filioque controversy alone would drag on for centuries and never be fully resolved between the East and West — the reason being that the West believed firmly that the Holy Spirit proceeds from *both* the Father and the Son; while the East, using Scripture and early Church documents as a compelling counter argument, generally believed that the Holy Spirt proceeds *through* the Son. With the Arians helping spawn the latter belief, Catholics made a point of figuring out how to include the filioque in the Nicene Creed and hopefully without creating more rifts in the process. But this same point, first thoroughly addressed at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, would be the beginning of a lasting, theological stalemate between East and West (Irvin and Sunquist 299. 300).
Meanwhile, as the Western Church worked on its spread across Europe, the rise of Islam created yet another overwhelming challenge – not only for the Church, but for civilization at large. With Muslim armies spending the seventh through tenth centuries overpowering once major Christian hubs in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and parts of Asia (Irvin and Sunquist ch. 23), the East and West churches now had an apparent need to be allies and perhaps work through their theological differences along the way. Except the complex mix of aligning on both political and theological fronts made for equally complex conversations.
To compound matters, the East’s prized hub, Constantinople, was under a frequent threat of attack by foreign groups, most notably the Normans – though Muslim power was also a serious threat. This, however, did not stop Pope Benedict VIII in 1014 from moving forward with theology-related changes, including adding the filioque to the Nicene Creed. Yet it also did not stop Michael Cerularis, the Eastern patriarch, from not only calling out the filioque as a bad move on the Western church’s part, but also forcing Latin rite churches in Constantinople to bend to Eastern practices. This is all while Pope Leo IX was trying to secure an alliance with the Byzantine government, but then having to move to other negotiations after he was captured by the Normans (Irvin and Sunquist 391, 392).
Then, in another twist – which opened the door for the eventual Great Schism in the late fourteenth century – both the East and West went off the rails and let their culmination of differences lead to the pope and patriarch essentially ex-communicating each other. Now, considering that Cardinal Humberr had a big hand in the excommunication debacle, it did not bode well for the Western Church. After all, if the East and West were truly in dialogue to reconcile their opposing views on the filioque and some liturgical matters (Irvin and Sunquist 391), along with being mutually secure in their defense against foreign invaders, why the deep-seeded power struggle?
Here is a case where the Western church gave the impression that they had the means to coerce the reconciliation in their favor. Both sides had clearly made missteps – yet the Western Church, despite some political hiccups and even Pope Leo IX being captured, had been flirting with imperialist strategies, putting the Church in a boldly authoritarian type of position. This would become more evident when the First Crusade launched in the late eleventh century, followed by the next two hundred or so years of Western commissioned military forces laying waste to anything they deemed heretical. Constantinople ended up in thick of the Crusades, with the Venetians sacking it in 1204, and then becoming vulnerable again in the fourteenth century, even after it had been freed from Venetian rule in 1261 (Irvin and Sunquist 441, 442).
Yet there was clearly a pattern: Each time the East and West found themselves with another in another potential crisis on their hands, both churches gathered clergy together to work through their political challenges while also putting their theological rifts back on the table. At the Council of Lyons, for example, the East and West agreed to keep the filioque in the Nicene Creed. In addition, they had worked out a plan for electing clergy and structuring church hierarchy. (Section II).
Unhappily, the two sides would devolve away from this, only to meet again in the fifteenth century for a last-ditch effort to resurrect the same issues they had been debating for a few hundred years. That had the same, predictable results, but which also could have been a wonderful clincher for a permanent reconciliation. It could be said that the East was perhaps more stubborn than the West, though it is the West that forced the East’s hand to reconcile, particularly because of foreign threats looming over them. Still, both churches had a golden ticket that they were too stubborn to redeem.
Catholic Church – Reformation Schism
As the Catholic Church moved into the 16th century, and several decades after the East and West had finally called it quits on resolving their theological and ecclesiological differences, both continued on as separate entities. In the West’s case (today known as the Catholic Church; the East now refers to the Eastern Orthodox churches), the Church grew mightier as the Crusades had won back lost territories. Along with these successes, monasteries and evangelization efforts were abundant throughout Europe and parts of the Mediterranean. What’s more, the Church’s distribution of indulgences to Crusaders, as well as families that qualified for them, were a big hit with Catholics seeking a more secure salvation and with negotiated penances to boot. The indulgences also helped the Church’s economic well-being and dealing with local governments, many of whom had a close knit relationship with the Church, or with royalty who were also clergy (MacCulloch 388, 555-557).
With this system in-hand, the Catholic Church ended up exaggerating the liberties it thought it could take in ensuring believers’ salvation. And while moral obedience does go hand-in-hand with salvation in Christian theology, the indulgences system spun out of control, including the Church stretching its understanding of Purgatory, as well as purporting that because the pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth, the Church could roll up grace and merits into a package deal on paper (MacCulloch 555, 556).
However, because indulgence agreements often involved some kind of financial kickback to the Church, this caused the system, now 400 years after its inception, to corrupt itself into business-like transactions based more on the “merits” part of earning salvation. All of that haphazard wheeling and dealing was exponentially enough reason for Martin Luther to rise up and face off with then Pope Leo X, whom Luther saw as the last straw in the corruption cycle (MacCulloch 608, 609).
In 1517, after Luther had posted his 95 Theses, which was a litany of issues regarding the corruption surrounding indulgences, Luther turned his indictments against the Church into a crusade to regroup on sin and salvation. At the root of his theological concerns was the need to bring Grace back as the means to salvation. As Luther developed his take on this, and as other Reformers took notice and either agreed with or challenged his position on grace as an exclusive means to salvation, this launched the rise of other splinter movements, all challenging each other or finding points of agreement along the way – and to which continues into modern day.
About 30 years later, as the Catholic Church was assessing the various Reform movements and thoughts on salvation, it was more than time to do its own reform – particularly because of the indulgences scandal – and also to set the record straight on sin, salvation / justification, and canonized scripture. Therefore, the Church, convening at the Council of Trent, produced three key documents — Decree Concerning Original Sin, the Decree on Justification, and the Decree on Canonical Scriptures — to settle the arguments hurled at the Church from the various Reformation camps.
As such, the Church, which drew its position on sin and salvation directly from Augustinian theology, did not see value in Luther’s theology on salvation. And though the Church had learned a crucial lesson from the indulgences debacle, this did not mean that remaining obedient to God’s grace was no longer necessary. Instead, the Church doubled-down on its explanation of justification, which must include a moral life / remaining in God’s grace: “that so they, who by sins were alienated from God, may be disposed through His quickening and assisting grace, to convert themselves to their own justification, by freely assenting to and co-operating with that said grace: in such sort that, while God touches the heart of man by the illumination of the Holy Ghost, neither is man himself utterly without doing anything while he receives that inspiration, forasmuch as he is also able to reject it; yet is he not able, by his own free will, without the grace of God, to move himself unto justice in His sight” (Decree on Justification ch. V).
All that said, because justification involves freeing us from our ultimate problem as humans – sin – let’s explore a little the Council of Trent’s decree on Original Sin, as well the debates among Thomas Catejan, Martin Luther, and Desiderius Erasmus regarding Augustine’s views on sin and freewill.
Considering that Original Sin is at the heart of Christian theology, was developed mostly in Augustine’s works, and was not really disputed much for about the next ten centuries, this topic resurfaced — with an ambitious vengeance — during the Reformation, causing an all-out theological war between Reformers and the Catholic Church.
Of course, the Church’s mishandling of indulgences did not help matters. As Thomas Catejan rightly criticized, how could the Church establish start and end dates for stays in Purgatory and the amount of penance to go with that? At the minimum, this edict desperately needed some, well, reform (MacCulloch 608, 610).
Meanwhile, Luther, having been a champion of Augustine, persistently wanted to bring Christian beliefs back to the basics. Funny enough, agreeing with Augustine’s view that humankind is helpless without salvation / God’s grace blatantly contradicted Luther’s roots in humanism. Still, Luther used a humanist type thought process to rally against scholastic and nominalist perspectives. This led Luther to do an in-depth study of Paul’s letter to the Romans, just as Augustine had done when he wrote his works on why salvation is necessary, how Original Sin is connected to salvation through Christ, and why human beings are unable to merit God’s grace (MacCulloch 606, 614).
However, not all Reformers shared Luther’s view on Original Sin and human nature. Erasmus, for example, had a Pelagian-like view of free will and humankind’s ability to reason. Still, bearing in mind that Luther was a fan of Augustine, Erasmus constructed his work, Free Will, around Augustinian theology – though he still believed that humans were only partially corrupted because of Adam and Eve’s fall (MacCulloch 613).
Despite the increasing division among various Reformers, they pressed on with their indictments against the Catholic Church and theological positions established centuries before. The Church, however, was not one to stand there and take punches in the gut all day long. So it was more than time they set the record straight on the theological challenges. Most of all, the Church had to face the reality of the morally lax mistakes they had made and therefore announce a major do-over.
Overall, although the Reformers and the Church had competing views on Original Sin and its relationship to human nature and free will, the Council of Trent still came out ahead by drawing directly on Augustinian theology to refute the exact positions that the Reformers were claiming.
Nevertheless, here again was another lesson learned for the Catholic Church: On one hand, the Church was righting the wrongs it had let go out of control; on the other hand, it took the Reformation to give the Church a swift kick in a more ethical direction. Yet although this would not be the last of feuds between the Church and splinter movements, the Church’s counter-reformation renewed its base commitment of being the Church that Jesus first bestowed to Peter.
Conclusion
Keeping all above schisms in mind, it is understandable why there is some confusion in our modern world about Church history; its claim of being the One, Holy, Apostolic Church; and why we now have a plethora of Christian denominations. It often leads many people to wonder: maybe this is all one big game – maybe all denominations are wrong. Moreover, with the growing popularity of secular thought and mass numbers of people who have left the Church in recent years, the statistics are certainly sobering.
Nonetheless, although the Church has been a wild road of great triumphs mixed with complicated schisms and some troubling decisions along the way, it is still a reminder that, for Catholic Christians familiar with Scripture and Church history, the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30) may not be a comforting look at the trials that the Church was destined to face. Still, it gives hope that the Church – even despite its current spiritual battle with the unsettling times in which we now live – will continue to weather storms as they hit. Even more important is what Jesus said in Matthew 16:18: “…and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”
Works Cited
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
Irvin, Dale T., and Scott W. Sunquist. History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. New York: Penguin, 2011.
Session 6, “Decree on Justification” and “On Justification”. https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct06.html
The Second Council of Lyons (AD 1274). http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum14.htm