The Issue
There is an image that often circulates in the health and fitness forums that is meant to be convicting for those who tend towards idolizing one’s body. In this photo, an obese man, facing away from the camera, is seen exercising on an elliptical or treadmill. A wide band of sweat runs from the nape of his neck down into the small of his back, extruding also from his armpits. Below him, superimposed on the photo are the words: “making fun of a fat person at the gym is like making fun of a homeless person at a job fair.” The meaning should be clear: the gym is where a person goes to exercise in order to get stronger and faster and to aid him in his journey to losing weight and becoming healthier over all. In other words, perfect health and fitness are not prerequisites for going to the gym. If a person is going to the gym, it is assumed that he has something that he needs to work on, just like it is assumed that a person attending a job fair needs a job.
A similar assumption is often made about those who attend church services or that call themselves Christians. This assumption claims that, in order for a person to be made right with God, he must first make himself right before God in order to be acceptable to God, so that God can then declare him right before Himself. As absurd as this may sound, especially in the way that I stated it above, the thought is commonly held. Such thoughts are even encouraged in the Church; especially during the time leading up to the Eucharist. During this time, the pastor may read from Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 11 we read:
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. (ESV)
The purpose of the passage is to encourage the person in the pew to identify her sins and then confess them in order to be able to come forward and participate in the Lord’s Supper, which is clearly right and good.
Where this pattern begins to look like the image I described at the beginning of this essay is in its often pietistic application. As we shall see, should a person find that she cannot confess all of her sins rightly, then she is lead to assume that she is underserving of the Lord’s Supper. Yet, for her to conclude that all of her sins have been adequately confessed, and her actions in the last week have been adequately righteous enough, then she will be able to conclude that she is worthy enough to come to the Table. In other words, and to draw on the original illustration, a person should first determine whether or not she is in good enough shape to enter the gym.
Enter Saint Augustine. In his life, Augustine dealt with numerous issues, including schisms and heresies. “Most of the heresies and schisms of the early church are still around today in one form or another” (Longenecker, 2020). And though heresies are often perceived as more dangerous than schisms (and they often are), schisms, and the ideas that lead to them, are often long-lasting because of their ability to stay just outside of the orthodoxical periphery. The most important schism that Saint Augustine responded to was the Donatist controversy.
Definitions
Donatism began in the closing years of the third century. During that time, Roman Emperor Diocletian sought to persecute those whom he believed to be responsible for the plagues that had been inflicting suffering on the empire. His initial target was the Ma-
nichean sect, but the persecution was eventually directed at the Christians. In response, many of the Christians responded to the localized persecution by handing over their holy texts and swearing allegiance to the emperor. When the persecutions stopped, many of those who left the Church sought to return, including bishops. The Donatist believed that those who left the Church during times of persecution were not truly believers and should thus not be allowed to return to Christ’s Church. The Donatist movement was born out of a desire to maintain the sanctity and purity of the Church and of the sacraments that Christ uses through His Church. The primary concern here was that of the purity of the Church. “Donatism led to the belief that the church was contaminated by the presence of sinners within it” (Bray, 2015, pg. 37). The Donatist movement was about purity; specifically, the purity of the Church.
As the Donatist argument began to gain strength in northern Africa, a new concern arose: If a bishop - that is, the lead pastor/administrator of a local congregation - who left the Church during persecution, could not be allowed to return because he was impure, then what did that mean regarding the sacraments that he performed for those in his parish? The bishop’s presence sullies, not only the reputation of the local congregation but the very Church herself. It is because of this issue, and the matter of who can be allowed to be a part of the Church, that the Donatist controversy stands out so much to this author.
According to Father Dwight Longenecker, Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and blogger, there are five key features in Donatism, all of which can be seen today. The Donatistic drive for purity is first evident by its spirit of revolutionary resistance. Though force is not required under this paradigm, the use of force in order to rally against resistance is still acceptable. This feature is seen in the early monastic movements, which were repeated in the Anabaptist movements, and exist today wherever you see stark contrasts against culture in any form that the culture may take. This leads to the second feature of Donatism which is sectarianism; a holier-than-thou mentality that pits the Donatist against all others who are viewed as lesser for some reason or another. Saint Paul is generous when he discusses this very issue in Romans 14. Self-righteousness and the need to blame others flow out directly from the sectarian aspect, which leads us into a fourth feature: the Donatist, while turning against outsiders, also often turns against those within his own circles. Remember that purity is the ultimate goal of the Donatist. “Donatists believed that only the most rigorous discipline could protect the church’s purity, but since it was they who decided what ‘impurity’ was, they could easily target people for unworthy reasons under a cloak of sanctity” (Bray, 2015, pg. 37). This willingness to turn on other Christians, or those they declared to be outside the foal, was often focused on those who held most strongly to the Donatist ideology. Fifth and final is the “denial of validity of [the] sacraments based the bishop or priest’s wrongdoing” (Longenecker, 2020). Pastorally, this is the most important aspect of Donatism, and is the most applicable to those in our Lord’s Church today.
For the Donatist, the efficacy of the sacraments is directly related to the piety and moral standing of the one doing the baptizing or offering the elements during the Eucharist. If the Donatist is correct, then anyone who has been baptized by a person who is no longer living morally, then that person’s baptism is no longer valid; he is not a Christian. In other words, a person’s righteousness before God is no longer dependent upon “God who justifies” (Romans 8:33), but upon the priest or bishop. Donatism, as an officially recognized schism, was short-lived and was secluded almost entirely to northern Africa. But as we will now see, the idea of Donatism still exists today.
Pietism is a word that has been in regular use in the evangelical world for almost four centuries. Though the word now has negative connotations, the original concept was a positive one, and maybe even a needed one for the Church at that time. Pietism has its roots in the early Lutheran Church. As the freedom of the Reformation seeped into the praxis of the Protestant denominations, an unforeseen issue arose: if salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, then does this exclude any outward signs of that salvation? In other words, what emphasis should there be on the fruit of the vine of grace in a person’s heart?
Pietism is interested in the religious renewal of the individual believer. As an ideology, Pietism encouraged devotion and the express practice of that devotion in the public sphere. Though the core of Pietism’s distinctive ideologies are drawn directly to Philip Jacob Spener’s book, Pious Desires, published in 1675, the movement had several forms, across continental Europe and Britain, all of which began at roughly the same time. I believe that this was likely the case because there was a real need for an outward sign of one’s salvation. And what could be more convincing of a personal change than that change which takes place in one’s behavior or thoughts. Clearly, this is the most directly experienced change that can take place in a person’s life. And we see these kinds of changes taking place in a person’s heart when the Holy Spirit begins working in a person’s heart. Saint John the Revelator’s first epistle to the Church makes this change of heart abundantly clear. This movement has begun to resurface in the modern theological sphere through Revivalism and even in the new Puritan movements, though the scope of this essay will not allow for a detailed discussion of those two movements. As concerned as Donatism was with the purity of the Church universally, Pietism is concerned with the purity of the individual. Donatism looks outward, while Pietism looks inward.
The ideology of Pietism begins to mimic the Donatist controversy when it is applied to the doctrine of justification. Justification is the idea that a person is declared just, or righteous before God. Saint Paul writes extensively on this topic in his letters, particularly in those letters to the congregations in Galatia, Rome, and Corinth. The doctrine of justification is important to the Christian because it is through justification that a person is made right with God, and this being made right before God is done for Christ’s sake and by Christ. Once a person is declared righteous before God’s throne, he stands righteous forever (John 10:28-29). That is, once a man is made a part of Christ’s Body, he is assured that he will always be a part of Christ’s body. And though the nuances of this doctrine as important for any Christian to understand, Soteriology is beyond the scope of this essay. For a clearer and more detailed look into the topic of Soteriology, see Michael Horton’s book, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace: Who Does What In Salvation?, published by Baker Books.
If one is declared righteous before God, because of Jesus’ works, and because of those works, a person is eternally secure before God, then one’s own works cannot be the basis for one’s salvation, nor the basis for one supposedly falling away from God. Though the scope of this paper does not allow for the discussion of the doctrines of election, grace, and Christ’s preservation of His people, those realities are crucial to the writings of Saint Augustine and to his response to the Donatists, which can serve as a model for how we are to respond to the modern ideology of Pietistic Donatism.
Pietistic Donatism is an ideology that takes the inward focus of Pietism and uses that inward focus as the basis for whether a person is deserving of God’s means of grace. Drawing on the image mentioned at the beginning of this essay, Pietistic Donatism would have a person believe that he is only worthy of being in the gym if he has already spent considerable time exercising, or that his value as a gym-member is directly related to his level physical fitness. In other words: I must not only confess my sins rightly, and fully in order to deserve the Table, I must live a healthy, sinless life, or else I will be eating and drinking condemnation on my soul. Modern Pietistic Donatism sets the entire weight of salvation on the shoulders of the individual believer because the efficacy of the sacraments now depends on the inward state of the believer. If this is true, then the gifts of God are no longer gifts, but justifiably earned merits that are gleaned from Christ-like living.
Why The Issue Matters: Assurance
This neglect of the outward nature of God’s gift of the sacraments to His people is harmful in two ways: despair and pride; both of which require that Jesus’ blood is inadequate to fulfill the purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection. First, the Pietistic Donatistic understanding of the warning in 1 Corinthians 11: 28-29 leads a person to despair. When presented with the command to examine oneself before the Eucharist, the average Evangelical Christian is told to understand that any unconfessed sins could result in eating or drinking judgment upon himself. Whereas confession is key to forgiveness - which is what the Eucharist is - the idea that a person’s sins may be too great to allow a person at the Table assumes that there are sins too great for Christ’s blood to cover. Recall the previous verse: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” If Holy Communion is the proclamation of the Lord’s death, and a person refrains due to a sin that, though it has been confessed, is believed to be too great for forgiveness, he is stating that the work of Jesus is not good enough to atone for his sins, thus leading to despair because, if this is true, how can anyone be forgiven? This is the worldly grief that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 7:10, thus this approach cannot be true.
Second, the Pietistic Donatistic understanding of the warning in 1 Corinthians 11: 28-29 leads a person to pride. Just as stated before, when presented with the command to examine oneself before the Eucharist, the average Evangelical Christian is told to understand that any unconfessed sins could result in eating or drinking judgment upon himself. Therefore, when a person examines himself and sees that his sins were either not great enough to be kept from the Table, or that he refrained from sins enough that he can come to the Table, then he is essentially saying that, though the blood of the Lamb was good enough to cover his sins, his own actions, or inactions are what is making him worthy of the Table this week. In other words, the person makes himself worthy here. This is pride. Pride to believe that a person can make himself right before God, even if on a weekly basis. This approach assumes “that the source of moral goodness is within oneself, and Christ is functionally no longer necessary, except as an enabler and example” (Atkinson, 1995, pg. 417). This approach cannot be any more true than the first because God says “to the boastful, ‘Do not boast,’ and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horn’”(Psalm 75:4).
If Modern Pietistic Donatism encourages pride or despair, then what can the Christian do? How can anyone ever be considered worthy of God’s grace? The answer is clearly in the question: a person is considered worthy of God’s grace by the nature of God’s grace. Wrong though the Donatists may be regarding the efficacy of the sacraments, “Donatist baptism is not invalid, because the sacraments are the Lord's” (Levering, 2013, pg. 62). The sacraments, as a means of grace, are the Lord’s and therefore dependent upon the nature and work of the Lord, and are thus graces given to His people. The editors of the New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology argue that Jesus Christ Himself is more than just the source of grace, but the very content and basis of grace altogether: “Grace is God’s being and action in Jesus Christ, both to forgive humankind’s spiritual and moral failure, and to offer the perfect human response to God’s moral demands” (Atkinson, 1995, pg. 417). And though “believers remain sinful within themselves,” they are made righteous in Christ and “only in Christ”(Atkinson, 1995, pg. 417).
The role of grace in the sacraments, and whether a person may have access to those sacraments can be found in that person’s standing before God, as we’ve already discussed. This standing, that is, a person’s election is based upon the love of God for His people (John 3:16), and the time of Holy Communion, and specifically the time of examination before Communion is the appropriate time to be reminded of His grace. This reminder of God’s grace is done by way of confession. Confession is the admittance of guilt to one who is capable of forgiving us of that guilt, thus leading to reconciliation with the offended party.
This reconciliation is the desire of the psalmist: “cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:11-12). In this confession, one is to admit responsibility for any transgression. True confession is preceded by conviction which, as the psalmist taught us in Psalm 51, is guided by the Holy Spirit, which is most clearly taught in 1 Corinthians 12:3: “no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.” Regarding this confession of faith, and one’s confession of guilt before God, “‘Christ crucified’ is the ‘confession of faith’ upon which confession and reconciliation are based” (Atkinson, 1995, pg. 246). In other words: “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11: 26).
Therefore, confession its crucial on the part of the believer. We must be careful not to stray into Antinomianism here. But the quality of the confession is not what makes one right before God; it is the work of the Holy Spirit that convicts of sin, then leading to confession, which teaches the believer that he is hopefully reliant upon Christ for his righteousness before the Father. In this way, the confession of the believer is a “daily baptism” (Augustine, Sermon, 213:8) by which he is reminded of his need for and hope in Jesus Christ. In other words, when one confesses his sins before the time of Eucharist, he is not examining himself in order to see whether he has done enough, or refrained from enough sins in the previous week. Instead, the child of God is saying:
Great King of Nations, hear our prayer, while at your feet we fall, and humbly, with united cry, to you for mercy call.
The guilt is ours, but grace is yours, O turn us not away; but hear us from your lofty throne, and help us when we pray.
Our fathers’ sins were manifold, and ours no less we own, yet wondrously from age to age, your goodness has been shown.
When dangers, like a stormy sea, beset our country round, to you we looked, to you we cried, and help in you was found.
With pitying eye behold our need, as thus we life our prayer; correct us with your judgments, Lord, then let your mercy spare. (Trinity, 1990, 713)
Reconciliation is the focus of confession, and the Eucharist is the sign and seal of our being reconciled to God, and it is reconciliation that Augustine says is the answer to Donatism. Though Saint Augustine wrote a number of times directly against the Donatists, his clearest work against the ideology of Donatism can be found in his Homilies on the First Epistle of John. This should not be surprising since the theme of 1 John is one of the love of God filling His people, and overflowing into the community of believers, which can be summarized in benevolent love and charity.
In his commentary on Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Matthew Levering argues that the purpose of Saint Augustine’s writing on 1 John, is to encourage the Donatists to put aside their schismatic tendencies and to focus on being reconciled to one another, just as they were reconciled to God.
Augustine wants to persuade the Donatists that they have misunderstood Christ’s Body the Church […]. In his prologue, [Augustine] states that reading 1 John should ignite a fire of love within us, “so that we all may rejoice in one charity. Where there is charity there is peace, and where there is humility there is charity.” No enemy can truly harm us so long as we love God. Even so, how are we to rejoice in charity, humility, and peace when there are divisions among those who claim the name of Christ? (Levering, 2013, pg. 49)
Augustine does this by first agreeing with the Donatists that perfection is the goal of the Christian life, but this goal, that is, Christlikeness, is done through charity to the Body of Christ, because “perfect charity is the goal of the Christian life” (Levering, 2013, pg. 50).
Charity is so central to the Christian life because it is through God’s charity to us, that is, by His grace to us, that we have been reconciled to Him. This grace is shown to us through His Son Jesus Christ. As Christians, we are called to be like Christ. Therefore, to be like Christ means to be charitable to others for the sake of reconciliation.
Just as the Donatist must put aside his desire to create divisions in the Church by calling what is clean unclean, so too should the Modern Pietistic Donatist put aside his desire to create division by declaring himself unclean if he is, in fact, clean by having been washed in the blood of the lamb (Colossians 1:20). Regarding this cleansing blood, Levering states, “In baptism, we are truly cleansed. We may have been old and near death as regards our sins, but by confessing ourselves in need of Christ and be receiving baptism, we are reborn” (Levering, 2013, pg. 51).
Like the Donatists of Augustine’s time, the Modern Pietistic Donatist is correct in assuming that perfection is important. But if the hope for perfection comes only through the living of a perfect life, or even a better week than the week previous, then what hope can there ever be for anyone? Is there hope for forgiveness? Levering answers this question:
No matter how slight, these sins weigh us down. Only when we have sufficient humility to confess our sins can we be said to love […] To receive Jesus’ cleansing, we must acknowledge our need for his mercy. […] The answer is that if we confess our sin in humble repentance, Jesus will be our advocate. Our only security is to recognize that we are beggars and to trust ourselves entirely to his mercy. (Levering, 2013, pf. 51)
Our hope for life is in Jesus. What then does this have to do with unity? Every Lord’s Day, as the people gather in faithful obedience and joy, we are invited to participate in the Lord’s Supper. During this time, as a unified Body, the Church confesses her sins, both individually and corporately, and then receives the gifts of God’s grace, through the ordinary elements of bread and wine. And, as Saint Paul tells us, as often as we do this, we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).
Proclaiming the Lord’s death means that we are acknowledging our absolute fallenness and need for His grace. Proclaiming the Lord’s death means receiving the grace that He has given. Proclaiming the Lord’s death means acknowledging that all believers - living, dead, and yet to be born - are also saved by this grace and as such, are unified, that is, brought together as a singular Body, which we call the Church. Participating in the sacraments is participation with the Body of Christ. In this participation, we acknowledge the charity that has been shown to us through Christ’s grace, and in so doing, are called to extend that charity to others by forgiving them of their sins, just as we have had our sins forgiven. Forgiveness, which here may be considered synonymous with charity, is to be the living praxis of the Church. Is this not the lesson of our Lord as recorded by Saint Matthew? Matthew records for us the following conversation between Jesus and some of His disciples:
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”(Matthew 18:15-35)
As Christians, we have been washed in the blood of Christ; atoned for; made right with God; declared righteous. We have been forgiven much. To not be willing to forgive another is as great a sin against Christ as this servant’s offense against his king. There can be no greater division in the Body of God’s Church than to be unwilling to forgive because it is by forgiveness that we live as the Church.
Christ came to heal the sick, to save the sinner. The Donatist insisted on cleansing the Church in order to present her as blameless before God, though it is Christ who makes His bride clean (Ephesians 5:26). In like manner, the Modern Pietistic Donatist insists on cleansing himself in order to present himself blameless before God, though it is Christ who makes His people clean (Titus 2:11-14). Therefore, we are called, as cleansed children of God, to love those whom God has given us to love; that is, to love sinners because it is for sinners that Jesus died. “Rather than loving only those who are holy, Christians are called to love sinners”(Levering, 2013, pg. 52).
Saint Augustine encouraged the Church during his time to seek reconciliation and unity. This was done through the acknowledgment that we, as the Church, are sinners saved by God’s grace. Having been forgiven for such guilt, we are then called to seek further unity by extending to others the very charity that we as forgiven sinners received through Christ. The Donatists sought perfection according to their own standard; a standard that likely changed according to their own purposes or experiences. Similarly, the Modern Pietistic Donatist seeks perfection through his own standards by comparing his works either to the works of others or to his own works from previous times. In so doing, both groups ignore the gracious gift of God’s grace which has been extended to them; the very gift that covers them. “We deny Jesus’ coming in the flesh when we refuse to forgive our brethren because he came out of love in order to forgive sins” (Levering, 2013, pg. 61), this includes the failure to acknowledge the fact that we ourselves have been forgiven. To make light of the spilled blood of the lamb is the greatest way to partake of the bread and the cup in an unworthy manner because by doing so, we belittle the very purpose of Christ’s ministry. It is by this ministry that the Body was saved. It is by this ministry that the Body is unified. And it is by this ministry that we, both as a collective Body and as individual saints, are sustained and strengthened every day.
Praise be to God for His incredible gift!
Artwork
I Cried For You, by Nik Helbig.
Donatus Magnus, from the Nuremberg
Resources
Atkinson, David J. David F. Field, Arthur Holmes, Oliver O’Donovan. New Dictionary of Christian Ethics & Pastoral Theology. (1995). InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL.
Bray, Gerald. Augustine on the Christian Life: Transformed by the Power of God. (2015). Crossway: Wheaton, IL.
Castaldo, Chris. (2017, May 25). Augustine on Justification. Castaldo.com
Levering, Matthew. The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works. (2013). Baker Academic: Grand Rapids: MI.
Lonenecker, Dwight. (2020, July 30). Donatism Today. Father Dwight Longenecker. https://dwightlongenecker.com/donatism-today/
Spener, Philip Jacob. Pia Desideria. (1964). Fortress Press: Minneapolis, MN.
Trinity Hymnal. (2000). Great Commission Publications: Atlanta, GA.