The Missing Factor: Donatist Influence on Augustine's Concepts of the Will
                       Maureen A. Tilley
                          January 2001
            (For discussion only; not for citation)

     In his magisterial biography Peter Brown raises the issue that
Augustine not only grew and changed over the years but lost his useful
enthusiasm. He moved from being a man who firmly believed and hoped that
Christians could reach a sort of perfection in this life to one who
doubted the possibility.  In 404 in _De consensu evangelistarum_ 4.10.20
he postulated this possibility: 

  For those are peacemakers in themselves, who, in conquering and subjecting
  to reason . . . all the motions of their souls, and having their carnal
  desires tamed, have become, in themselves, a Kingdom of God . . . 
  They enjoy the peace which is given on earth to men of good-will . . . 
  the life of the consummate and perfect man of wisdom . . . All this can 
  reach fulfillment in this present life, as we believe it was reached 
  by the Apostles.\1/

     Brown recounts how ten years later in the midst of the Pelagian
controversy, Augustine had become convinced "that he would never reach the
fulfillment that he first though was promised to him by a Christian
Platonism: he would never impose a victory of mind over body in himself .
. . . "\2/ How can Augustine make this turn?  Rightly does Brown reject
the answer in some "sloughing off of 'Neo-Platonism' and the discovery of
some 'authentic' Christianity." He locates the change in the honing of
Augustine's theology in battles first with the Manichees and then with the
Pelagians.\3/ Against Manichaean fatalism, Augustine posited a human will
which was free to choose the good. Against an overly optimistic assessment
of that free will by the Pelagians, Augustine brought forth his own
concept of the conditioned freedom of the human will, a will in bondage
even after Baptism to concupiscence and to habits of sin. Brown attributes
this transformation to Augustine's discovery of the letters of Paul,
especially the Epistle to the Romans on which he preached and wrote during
the last decade of the fourth century.\4/ Brown is certainly not alone in
his assessment. Other scholars and Augustine's own contemporaries, even
his supporters saw a change in his attitude and attributed it up to his
exposure to Paul. His opponents simply accused him of finally revealing
his true Manichaean identity.\5/

     While these explanations may be helpful, they are only partial and
miss a critical bridge between two periods in Augustine's life, that of
his controversies with the Donatists. It is the thesis of this paper that
the period of Augustine's life in which he was most involved with the
Donatists is critical for understanding this shift on the will, and, in
addition, it is what he learned with directly from the Donatists and
indirectly in his pastoral experience with them that made this transition
possible. 

     The two key issues in the passage from _De consensu evangelistarum_
cited above are the motion of souls, including the exercise of the act of
will, and that of the Kingdom of God.  While they are complexly related, I
will examine one of these to highlight its role in the development of
Augustine's theology. I will first examine Augustine's stance during the
period of his activity against the Manichees and then during his
confrontations with the Pelagians.  Then I will show how his borrowings
from and reactions to the Donatists provide the bridge between the two
periods. 

                    The Freedom of the Will

In the anti-Manichaean writings

     In De libero arbitrio, one of Augustine's early works he countered
Manichaean fatalism by teaching that God gave human beings the gift of
free will, a good gift. It was no fault of God if human beings misused the
gift.\6/ Our will would not be our will if it were not in our power.\7/
Thus we, not God, are responsible for evil acts. In _De duabus animis_ he
affirmed that if a person chose evil, it was not because the person had
two souls or principles warring against each other,\8/ but because the
person consciously chose an evil act either by commission or by deliberate
omission. "Sin therefore," he states "is the will to retain and follow
after what justice forbids and from which it is free to abstain."\9/ In
_Ennaratio in Psalm._ 31.2.61 he affirms it is not fate, not chance, not
the devil, but the free exercise of the will in choosing evil which
constitutes sin. 

     But Augustine was careful. He did not locate sin only in a physical
act whether of commission or omission. He had to be, otherwise one could
not distinguish between acts performed by Manichaeans and orthodox
Christians. All would fast from certain foods or from sexual acts and
would thus be equally good in the free choice of their wills.  So in _De
moribus manichaeorum_ he affirmed that a physical act was not enough.
Similar acts were good or bad depending on the end for which they were
done, whether for glorification of the self, for love of self, or, on the
other hand, for love of God and neighbor.\10/

     So we see that early in his career Augustine was a firm champion of
the free will as the locus of human good. We turn now to the later
Augustine for a contrast. 

In the anti-Pelagian writings

     In his battle against the Pelagians Augustine was facing people who
affirmed exactly what he affirmed: humans beings were gifted with free
will and were personably responsible for their actions. If Peter Brown is
correct, the social status of leaders within the Pelagian movement, at
least at Rome, contributed to the tenacity with which they held their
views. In the competitive hothouse of upper-class Rome, a society which
thrived on competition, both choosing good and being tenacious in choosing
good were important.\11/ Their original good gift from God did not
evaporate in the face of evil, in the face of the challenge of temptation. 
According to Marianne Djuth, Pelagians believe that human liberty could
never be lost.\12/

     Augustine attacked this position. He did not deny free will was a
gift of God. He affirmed the gift, but he added that free will even in
those who were baptized was attenuated by the residual damage of sin in
concupiscence. This lingering concupiscence "disposes the will's operation
toward evil so that when free choice is exercised it gives rise to unjust
acts."\13/ This word concupiscence', the disposal of the will to self-love
and hence evil, did appear in Augustine's early works, even those against
the Manichees, but there it was connected with disorder, strictly
speaking, in the senses.\14/ Only after the Pelagian controversy arose was
there a consistent link between disordered desire and Original Sin.\15/ In
412 he first differentiated concupiscence from Original Sin and affirmed
that it inhered in and affected children\16/ and by ca. 415, even baptized
children in _De natura et gratia_,\17/ and _De gratia Christi_, ca.
418.\18/

     That children who could not yet have learned self-love by imitation
are so infected with concupiscence that they are not able to make a choice
for good hardly sounds like Augustine against the Manichaeans. Are we to
attribute the change in Augustine simply to a change in his opponents, to
a Pelagian optimism which has gone too far? I think not.  Rather than
posit a radical volte-face, I would posit continuity and look for a link
between the anti-Manichaean teaching and the anti-Pelagian propaganda in
Augustine's battle with the Donatists. 

In the Donatist Period

     The period in which Augustine is most involved in battling the
Donatists extended from 395, the first days of his episcopate at Hippo,
when he incidentally began a systematic study of Paul, to 411, the year of
the Conference of Carthage, when, at least legally, it was very difficult
to claim a Donatist identity publically. This was not particularly a time
when Augustine wrote directly about free will or concupiscence. The words
do not appear regularly in his writings from this period. Nevertheless,
the events and writings of the period provide good clues to explain the
change from Augustine as proponent of free will to Augustine as the
champion of the power of concupiscence. The basic reason for this change
is his experience with the Donatists. 

     The Donatist controversy was one that had simmered in Africa for over
eighty years before Augustine's baptism. But while he had growing up in
Africa, he had not been formed by African Christianity. As Robert Marcus
so aptly pointed out, his early theological formation was not African, but
on his return to Africa as an adult, he learned quickly to work in a
milieu shaped by the Donatist controversy and by native African
traditions.\19/ Not only was Augustine's own diocese predominantly
Donatist, some of the finer minds of the African church were too. 

     Augustine's Hippo was predominantly Donatist and offered him his
first real exposure to the challenges Donatist theology posed to a
Catholic bishop. Ideas of sin and salvation nurtured within the
Caecelianist or Catholic community were different from those of the
Donatists. As heirs of Cyprian, Donatists doted on the purity of the
community, at least on ecclesiological issues. When there was sin in the
church, they were quick to point it out and root it out. Their literal
interpretation of scripture and their comparison of sin to communicable
disease left them little choice in the matter if they were to consider
themselves faithful Christians.\20/ Catholics, on the other hand, were
slower to root out sinners from the Church.  Likewise as heirs of Cyprian,
they were concerned for the unity of the Church, and thus, were content to
leave the winnowing of the chaff to God in God's own good time, even if
that was the end of the world. 

     Donatists claimed continuity with their hero Cyprian when they valued
the purity engendered by Baptism within their own communion, not the bogus
baptism offered by the Catholic traditor communities. Augustine respected
Donatist veneration of the power of the sacrament. As Peter Iver Kaufman
says: 

  As Augustine pointed out, Cyprian's stipulation [on the necessity of rebaptism
  of heretics] was probably a reaction to the apparent failure of heretical baptism
  to inspire charitable dispositions, compromises, conformity and reunion.
  Heretics baptized to perpetuate their heresies, so there must have been
  something wrong with their baptisms.\21/

Augustine's rejection of the practice of rebaptism among the Donatists was
not to disparage the power of Baptism,\22/ but here and in the Pelagian
controversy, his rejection of rebaptism manifested his own logic. While
Baptism was necessary, it was not sufficient to make good Christians. If
initial purity was not enough in the Donatist controversy, enduring
baptismal purity would not be enough in the Pelagian controversy,

     What could Augustine learn from a socio-religious situation in which
Catholics and Donatists had lived side-by-side in relative harmony since
the death of the emperor Julian?\23/ He learned three sorts of lessons
from pastoral practice which transformed his teaching on free will. He
also learned about the nature of sin directly from two Donatist
theologians. 

     The pastoral lessons took time for Augustine to learn. First, he came
to realize that it was harder to separate Donatists from Catholics than he
had once imagined.  Being a Donatist or a Catholic was not simply a matter
of where one had grown up, near what sort of church, nor was it a matter
of an individual perceiving the truth about which church was the true
Church. There were family and social pressures to stay in one church or to
change to another. Family members would apply pressure to each other to
keep with family solidarity and stay in one church when the person felt
that another was true. Owners and overseers of resident and migrant
laborers promoted the tradition of the groups from whom they felt pressure
and this pressure often extended to the workers themselves.\24/ For the
simple folks, just knowing the truth was not enough to withstand social
and familial pressure to conform to the mores of neighbors and
supervisors. Compulsion often overruled logic or even inclination. 

     Second, direct persuasion by Augustine did not always work. Early in
his episcopal career Augustine had tried to reason with and cajole
Donatists.  He had tried political sloganeering under the guise of a hymn,
the abecedarian _Psalmus contra partem Donati_. He had written many
letters to Donatists, including their bishops. He had traveled to many
debates. Even when he was the obvious winner, as he was in the debate with
Emeritus, his opponents did not leave Donatism. Augustine's efforts had
not produced noticeable results.\25/ Kaufman summarizes Augustine's
response: "He agreed to accept the government's help in suppressing the
schism because he believed his rivals' sinister persistence in error a
striking demonstration of evil's powers over the intellect and
imagination."\26/

     Third, Augustine learned that when logical and rhetorical approaches
fail, sin can be rooted out with a system of rewards and punishments, a
carrot-and-stick' approach. It appeared that if a case of sin were deeply
rooted, one might intellectually be persuaded of the truth and yet not
follow it. If this were the case, one might conclude there was more to the
act of will than Augustine had initially suspected. While the first
statement here directly echoes Augustine's own study of Romans, the second
finds no parallel in the New Testament except the Lukan _compelle
intrare_. Augustine certainly did take this advice and cooperated with the
civil authority in a campaign of counter-repression which he
systematically justified.\27/ Augustine's justification shows that the
Donatist controversy advanced his thought on the freedom of the will from
the days when the Manichees were his opponents. Gone was the youthful
optimism that the will was free to follow what the intellect presented as
true. Instead, the reader sees in Augustine's writings a portrait of the
will severely impacted by his own experience with the Donatists who lived
in his own diocese, those who heard him when he preached on his numerous
trips outside his diocese, people who still resisted the truth. 

     It is this gradual turn toward the pessimistic, conditioned as it was
by the various pastoral experiences on which he reflected in many of his
letters, that has not been fully appreciated in evaluating Augustine's
turn from an affirmation of the will in the Manichaean controversy to his
support for the weakness of the will in the Pelagian controversy. But this
is not the only way Augustine was shaped by the Donatist controversy.
Besides his indirect learning from his pastoral situation, one needs to
appreciate what he learned directly from the Donatists. The two
theologians of note here are Tyconius and Parmenian. The first taught
Augustine how to justify the existence of evil within the Church; the
second taught him how to deal with it. 

     Tyconius (fl. ca. 385-395, d.ca. 400) was the author of the _Liber
Regularum_. It was simultaneously an authoritative manual for the
inductive interpretation of Scripture and an ecclesiological treatise
which focused on an understanding of evil within the Church. Through a
careful consideration of prophetic texts Tyconius found that the
Scriptures themselves revealed that there had to be evil within the
Church. For his revolutionary ecclesiology, he was excommunicated by the
Donatists. Augustine picked up Tyconius' volume and summarized it for his
own clergy. It is my opinion, as I have defended elsewhere, that Augustine
deliberately misinterpreted Tyconius' work to suit his own program,
transforming its program from the typological to the allegorical in _De
doctrina christiana_ begun at the start of his episcopate but probably
completed near the end of his contest with the Donatists.\28/ Tyconius
gave him a way to interpret Scripture against the literalism of the
Manichees and against the typology of the Donatists. In the latter case,
it allowed him to justify the Catholic tradition of interpreting parables
of separation of the good and evil within the Church as happening at the
end of the world.\29/

     The second of the Donatist theologians I wish to consider is
Parmenian, bishop of Carthage (362 - ca. 391). While he was Tyconius'
bishop and the person who excommunicated him for his aberrant theology on
evil within the Church, Parmenian was no fool. He appreciated the
situation in which he found himself. His creative theology became a basis
for Augustine's own. 

     In a rapidly expanding church with a severe clergy shortage,
Parmenian had to find a way to staff the many villages and hamlets lacking
clergy lest Catholic clergy be the only ones available to his partisans.
He did so by admitting to the presbyterate and episcopate men who had
formerly been clergy among the Catholics. The tradition in North Africa
had been that if a man were ordained in one church, he could not attain a
leadership position in another. The formal situation of schism and mutual
recriminations about traditors as ordaining bishops kept both sides from
accepting men from the other. Parmenian's stroke of genius was to take the
traditional Donatist belief that all Catholic sacramental acts were null
and void and to act on it. If these acts were invalid, then the men
inducted had never even been baptized or ordained and therefore lay under
no re-ordination' ban.\30/ The evil which they had done as Catholics was
treated as prebaptismal evil. 

     If the Catholics did not find the logic of the practice cogent, they
at least found a way to emulate the practice of the Donatists. While they
would not normally admit in clerical rank those who had been heretics,
they admitted some men to the Catholic church and to clerical office.
These were men who had been leaders among the Donatists and in the course
of their repentance and return to the Catholic church brought entire
congregations over with them. 

     Augustine learned from the Donatists bishops practices which fit his
theology. If, as Tyconius opined and Augustine agreed, sin were an
integral part of the Church this side of Heaven, and if, as Augustine
professed, the winnowing of the chaff from the wheat was to take place at
the Eschaton, then perhaps it was acceptable to overrule the Cyprian
concern with the purity of the Church and allow sinners to minister in the
Church.\31/

     Finally, such clergy ministered to a congregation of former sinners,
some truly repentant and some _ficti_. If the _ficti_ could profit from
their return to the Church, they did so over the course of time, though
the practice of Christianity in the true Church, the church of charity.
Neither their original baptism nor the act of their reincorporation into
the true Church provided a definite point in time for their reform. The
graced moment extended over time through the re-formation of the will.
this reformation came not from a single act of free will but from a
gradual conformation to Christ.\32/

     Thus we see Augustine in the Donatist controversy move from the
proponent of the free untrammeled will to the advocate of the will which
needs gradual softening and shaping within the Church, a position not
unlike that of the anti-Pelagian Augustine. 

     Were there time we could investigate the role the Church plays in
this same Augustinian pilgrimage. We would, I strongly suspect, see a
similar shift from the Church as the Kingdom of God offering sublime rest
to those still in the flesh as in _De consensu evangelistarum_ cited above
to the Church as the Kingdom available fully only in the heavenly rest as
seen at the end of the _De civitate Dei_. The bridge between the two would
be Augustine's experience in the Donatist controversy. However, like the
dialogue partners of Plato, Minucius Felix and Augustine, we notice time
slipping away and we must await another day. 


NOTES

 \1/Cited in Peter Brown, _Augustine of Hippo: A Biography_ (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California, 1967), p. 147; for the date of _De cons.
evang._, see Allan D. Fitzgerald, "_Consensu evangelistarum, De_"  in
_Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia_, ed. by Allan D. Fitzgerald, et
al. (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), p. 232.
\2/ Brown, p. 147.
\3/ Brown, pp.147-149.
\4/ Brown, p. 151.
\5/ Among modern scholars, see Robert J. O'Connell, _St. Augustine's Early
Theory of Man, A.D. 386-391_ (Cambridge: Harvard, 1968) and _St. Augustine's
Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul_ (Cambridge: Harvard, 1969); cf. the judgment
of Gerald Bonner, "Augustine's Doctrine of Man: Image of God and Sinner,"
_Augustinianum_ 24 (1984), pp. 495-514; repr. in _Doctrines of Human Nature,
Sun, and Salvation in the Early Church_, ed. by Everett Ferguson, vol. 10 of
_Studies in Early Christianity: A Collection of Scholarly Essays_, ed. by
Everett Ferguson, David Scholar and Paul Corbey Finney (New York and London:
Garland, 1993), pp. 71-90. For Augustine's contemporaries, see, e.g., the
references cited in Marianne Djuth, "The Hermeneutics of _De libero arbitrio_
III: Are There Two Augustines?" in _Studia Patristica_ 27 (1991), ed. by
Elizabeth Livingstone (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), pp. 281-189, specifically at
281.
\6/ _De libero arbitrio_ 1.11.21, 2.20.54, and 3.2.
\7/ _De libero arbitrio_ 3.3.8.
\8/  _De duabus animis_ 10.13-14
\9/ _De duab. anim._ 11.15 (English translation: NPNF 4.103).
\10/ _De moribus Manichaeorum_ 13.27-35.
\11/ "Pelagius and His Supporters: Aims and Environment," _Journal of
Theological Studies_ n.s. 19 (1968), pp. 93-114; and "The Patrons of Pelagius:
The Roman Aristocracy between East and West," _ Journal of Theological
Studies_ n.s. 21 (1970), pp. 56-72; both reprinted in _Religion and Society in
the Age of Augustine_ (London: Faber and Faber, 1970)
\12/ Marianne Djuth, "Liberty," in _Augustine through the Ages: An
Encyclopedia_, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans,
1999),  p. 495, with references to _nat. et gr._ 62.72, 64.76; _perf. just._
11.23; _gr. et pecc. orig._ 1.22.24, 24.25, 46.51; _c. ep. Pel._ 4.2.2, 3.3.;
_ep._ 217; _c. Jul. imp._ 1.8.11 , 4.29 and 4.69.
\13/ Djuth, "Liberty," p. 496.
\14/ E.g., _De vera religione_, _De doctrina chrisitana_, and _De morbus
ecclesiae catholicae_.
\15/ E.g., _De Genesi ad litteram_ and   the various works against the
Pelagians.
\16/ _De pecc. et meritis et remissione parv._ 1.9.10: sicut ergo ille, in quo
omnes uiuificantur, praeter quod se ad iustitiam exemplum imitantibus
praebuit, dat etiam sui spiritus occultissimam fidelibus gratiam, quam
latenter infundit et paruulis, sic et ille, in quo omnes moriuntur, praeter
quod eis qui praeceptum domini uoluntate transgrediuntur imitationis exemplum
est, occulta etiam tabe carnalis concupiscentiae suae tabificauit in se omnes
de sua stirpe uenturos.
\17/ _De natura et gratia_ 56.66-57.67, especially, uerum tamen etiam illud
uideamus, utrum illi qui baptizati sunt faciant bona quae uolunt nulla carnis
concupiscentia repugnante.
\18/ _De gratia Christi_ 2.39.44: obesset ista carnis concupiscentia etiam
tantummodo quod inesset, nisi peccatorum remissio sic prodesset, ut quae in
eis est, et nato et renato, nato quidem et inesse et obesse, renato autem
inesse quidem, sed non obesse possit.
\19/ Robert Markus, _Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St
Augustine_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1970), Chapter 5: "_Afer Scribens
Afris_": The Church in Augustine and the African Tradition," pp. 105-132,
especially, p. 115.
\20/ On Donatist exegesis, see Maureen A. Tilley, _The Bible in Christian
North Africa: The Donatist World_ (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997). For an
outstanding example of sin as contagious, see Ps.-Cyprian [Macobius], _De
singularitate clericorum in S. Thasci Caecili Cypriani Opera_, ed. W. Hartel,
CSEL 3/3 (Vienna: Geroldi, 1871).
 \21/"Augustine, Evil and Donatism: Sin and Sanctity before the Pelagian
Controversy," _Theological Studies_ 50/1 (March 1990), pp. 115-126,
specifically at p. 118.
\22/ See Augustine, _De baptismo_ 5.15.18 and 6.1.1.
\23/ Julian had weakly supported the Donatists against the Catholics between
360 and 363. Other than this minor period of conflict the two groups had lived
together without significant conflict since 348.
\24/ Examples include the beating of various bishops and landowners in
Augustine, Ep. 185, _De Correctione Donatistarum_; Ep. 34, a son with Donatist
sympathies who bullies and beats his mother, in Ep. 34; Pammachius' lack of
success convincing his tenant farmers to leave the Donatist fold, in Ep. 58,
etc. See also _Codex Theodosianus_ 16.5.53, paragraphs 5-7,, including the
provisions for fining landowners who had chapels built so their Donatist
workers could worship in a separate place from their Catholic workers.
\25/ For the _Gesta_, see CSEL 53 (1910), pp.  179-196; and Maureen A. Tilley,
_Gesta cum Emerito_ in _Augustine through the Ages_, pp. 381-382.
\26/ Kaufman, p. 119.
\27/ On Augustine's turn to force, see Peter Brown,  "Religious Coercion in
the Later Roman Empire; The Case of North Africa," _History_ 47 (1963), pp.
283-305; and "St. Augustine's Attitude to Religious Coercion," _Journal of
Roman Studies_ 54 (1964), pp.  107-116; both reprinted in _Religion and
Society_.
\28/"Understanding Augustine Misunderstanding Tyconius," in _Studia
Patristica_ 27 (1991) (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), pp. 405-408  (= "Augustín,
interpretó mal a Ticonio?"  Trans. by José Anoz, in _Augustinus: San Augustín
en Oxford [4.o]_ 40 (1995): 297-301.
\29/ See my "A Treasure Hidden in a Field: Unearthing Heretical
Hermeneutics."  _Explorations_ 9/1 (Fall 1990): 55-70; and "Understanding
Augustine," p. 406. For examples of Augustine doing so, see _Actes de la
Conférence de Carthage en 411_, ed. by Serge Lancel, 4 vols., Sources
Chrétiennes 194,195, 224 and 373 (Paris: Cerf, 1972-1991), vol. 224, passim.
\30/ See my forthcoming article, "Theologies of Penance during the Donatist
Controversy," _Studia Patristica_ (2001).
\31/ The implications of this practical theology for a theological
consideration of the minister of the sacrament are obvious: he did not need to
be pure to administer Baptism or the Eucharist. From here it is only a small
step to the division of the Church into the physical and tmeporal Church and
the idealized, Platonized Church of the heavenly kingdom.
\32/ _Civ. Dei_ 10.32; cf. José Oroz Reta, "Conversion," in _Augustine Through
the Ages_, pp. 241-242.
\33/ Inter alia, _De civ. Dei_ 22.22-23 and 29-30.

//end of first article//