Against the Letter of Parmenian

Contents

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1.1–1.14 · 1.15–2.7 · 2.8–2.21 · 2.22–2.32 · 2.33–3.2 · 3.3–3.13 · 3.14–3.25 · 3.26–3.29

1. 1.1Augustine explains that he is answering a letter of the Donatist bishop Parmenian to Tyconius, a Donatist who had argued from Scripture that the church is spread through the whole world.
2. 1.2Against Parmenian’s unproved claim that the churches overseas share the guilt of African traitors, Augustine sets God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all nations would be blessed in their seed, which is Christ.
3. 1.3God promised not to leave Jacob until his word was fulfilled; it is more credible that Parmenian’s envoys were refused communion overseas and spread rumours than that God’s promise to the nations has failed.
4. 1.4The absence of schism overseas does not prove those churches guilty: some offenders stayed hidden, others were convicted and stopped, and uncertain cases were left to God for peace.
5. 1.5Citing Optatus’s account of Lucilla and the Numidian bishops who condemned the absent Caecilian while pardoning their own confessed traitors, Augustine argues that to tolerate unknown or unproved sins in the church is not to consent to them.
6. 1.6Even if traitors had been received overseas through the fault of bad judges, the deceived Christian world would not lose its innocence; God’s promise to bless all nations outweighs Donatist accusations.
7. 1.7Even if Ossius of Cordoba was guilty, the Donatists must prove that others knew it; more likely the Spaniards condemned him wrongly and humbly yielded when the Gauls acquitted him, rather than fall into schism.
8. 1.8The Donatists refused to accept the overseas verdict lest they condemn their own sentence, misusing Gal 2:18; their own Maximianist schism repeated the same error against Primian.
9. 1.9Parmenian’s own party received back Maximianist bishops Praetextatus and Felicianus without rebaptizing those they had baptized in schism, contradicting his rebuke of the Spaniards.
10. 1.10The Donatists themselves appealed to Constantine, lost before Bishop Miltiades of Rome, and then accused the judge; the churches overseas rightly believed the party that had won before church judges.
11. 1.11After losing again at the Council of Arles and before Constantine, the Donatists accused their judges; impartial people believe the judges rather than defeated litigants.
12. 1.12Augustine imagines the church of Philadelphia answering the Donatists: far from Africa and bought by Christ’s blood like all the nations, she rightly believed the neighbouring judges, and Donatist hatred and rebaptism of distant brothers show their condemnation was just.
13. 1.13Against Parmenian’s complaint that Constantine ordered Donatists put to death, Augustine argues that punishment for schism is just and that suffering at the hands of the authorities does not make anyone a martyr.
14. 1.14The Donatists suffer less than they inflict; people mourn bodily wounds but not souls killed by schism, and the Donatists call Catholics persecutors while refusing to debate them.
15. 1.15Punishment by Christian emperors does not make the Donatists martyrs, any more than it makes punished pagans or the demons martyrs; Christ blessed only those persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
16. 1.16Heresies are listed by Paul among works of the flesh, so rulers who bear the sword may punish them as they punish idolatry and sorcery; the Donatists themselves used imperial officers against the Maximianists and the usurper Firmus against Rogatus.
17. 1.17Donatist violence through the circumcellions, now armed with iron as well as clubs, exceeds what the Donatists suffer, yet their bishops disown it while condemning distant churches for African deeds they could not know.
18. 1.18If coercion of schismatics is permitted, as the Donatists’ own use of the courts against the Maximianists shows, their punishments are just; laws took their basilicas after they resisted imperial orders and attacked the bearers of the emperor’s gifts.
19. 1.19Only Julian the Apostate decreed in the Donatists’ favour, and they flattered him that justice alone had a place with him; later laws fined their clergy, confiscated their meeting places, and restricted their bequests.
20. 1.20Catholic mildness leaves the Donatists in many basilicas, and any excessive measures against them displease the faithful of the Catholic Church throughout the world.
21. 1.21Christ said the field is the world, not Africa, and the weeds grow with the wheat until the angels reap at the end; the Donatists, claiming the wheat survives only in Africa, show that they are the weeds.
22. 2.1The Scripture texts the Donatists hurl at Catholics rebound on them: Isaiah’s woe on those who call good evil fits those who call the unity of brothers evil.
23. 2.2The Donatists call their presumption light and God’s fulfilled promise darkness; and either tolerating the notorious Optatus did not stain them, in which case their schism was groundless, or it stained them more surely than unknown African traitors could stain the world.
24. 2.3Isaiah’s woe falls on those who commit or praise evil, not on those who tolerate bad men they cannot remove; the peacemaker corrects, excludes, or disapproves and bears with them while keeping the bond of peace.
25. 2.4The curse on those who call the righteous unrighteous falls on the Donatists, who condemned the whole world unheard while keeping Optatus the Gildonian in communion and who deny God’s promise that the wheat grows everywhere until the harvest.
26. 2.5Augustine sets Christ’s words in the parable of the wheat and weeds against Donatus’s claims, point by point, and asks the Donatists to choose whom to believe.
27. 2.6Isaiah’s description of the wicked harms no good person who tolerates them, as Ezekiel’s sealed men show; it fits rather the drunken, violent circumcellions and their suicidal false martyrdom.
28. 2.7The Donatist council of Bagai itself called the Maximianists ‘asps’ eggs’ swift to shed blood, yet the Donatists readmitted Felicianus and Praetextatus and kept Optatus, the basilisk; their rebaptism sheds blood spiritually.
29. 2.8‘As is the ruler, so are the people’ cannot mean that a bad bishop makes his people bad, since Christ commanded to do what bad teachers say; on the Donatist reading, they are all like Optatus of Thamugadi.
30. 2.9The true ruler of the people is Christ, governor of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the devil rules Babylon; the two cities will be separated only at the final winnowing, and until then the wheat tolerates all things.
31. 2.10Isaiah’s condemnation of bad sacrificers fits the schismatic altar; a bad priest harmed neither Zechariah nor Nathanael, and still less does a bad bishop harm good Christians now that Christ is high priest.
32. 2.11The same sacrament is judgment or grace to each according to his own heart, as Paul says ‘to himself’, so bad ministers harm only themselves; the schismatics who divided families and Christ’s co-heirs should ask whether they eat worthily.
33. 2.12Parmenian cites the law’s demand for holy, unblemished priests, but in Israel the good lived alongside bad priests and peoples without harm, for each carried his own load.
34. 2.13No Donatist bishop, not even Donatus, is without moral blemish, yet the notorious Optatus offered the sacrifice and his people received it; drunkenness and greed, which Paul condemns, are also blemishes.
35. 2.14No one in this life is without sin while the flesh fights the spirit; the law’s unblemished priests prefigured Christ alone, the spotless lamb and high priest who intercedes in heaven, not proud bishops who put themselves in the bridegroom’s place.
36. 2.15If God does not hear sinners, the good among the bad are safe and there is no reason for schism; and John, by saying ‘we have an advocate’, included himself among those who need Christ, the one mediator, whereas Parmenian made the bishop a mediator.
37. 2.16Christians pray for one another, but Christ alone intercedes for all as the one mediator; even Paul asked the church’s prayers as a member of the body, and in Christ the members stay one by bearing with the bad.
38. 2.17Balaam’s blessings were heard though he was bad, so bad bishops’ prayers for the people can be heard; ‘God does not hear sinners’ was said by the blind man before he knew Christ, and the tax collector was heard as a sinner.
39. 2.18The psalm’s rebuke of the sinner who recites God’s statutes means that God’s word does not profit the bad preacher, but it profits hearers who obey it, as Christ taught about the Pharisees.
40. 2.19The psalm describes the Donatists themselves; and if they say others’ sins do not stain them within their party, they admit they had no reason to leave the Catholic unity, so schism is the crime of all of them.
41. 2.20Parmenian cites Jeremiah and other texts to show that those who forsake God cannot give true baptism; Augustine replies that on that reading the Donatists’ own hidden sinners, ‘dead’ men, and the readmitted Felicianus could not baptize either.
42. 2.21If the texts meant that bad ministers cannot baptize, the Donatists’ hidden sinners could not have baptized either; if they reply that the Spirit cleanses the recipient while fleeing the false minister, they have answered for the Catholics too.
43. 2.22The sacraments harm those who handle them unworthily but profit worthy recipients; Augustine offers other readings of the Donatists’ texts: the broken cisterns and lying water are carnal people, the dead are pagan gods, the sinner’s oil is flattery, and the flies are crowds of careless converts.
44. 2.23Spiritual sons are begotten through the gospel and the Spirit, not by the minister’s own holiness, as Judas’s preaching shows; otherwise hidden sinners among the Donatists could not baptize, so it is Christ who baptizes through any minister.
45. 2.24Christ’s gift of the Spirit before the power to forgive sins shows that the Spirit, not the minister, forgives; the Spirit flees a deceitful minister’s heart but not his ministry, as Paul rejoiced that Christ was preached even by envious men.
46. 2.25Nothing is graver than schism, since the good can tolerate the bad without harm and use church discipline when it can be done without division; one departs from iniquity in heart now and will be separated in body at the end.
47. 2.26‘Praise is not beautiful in a sinner’s mouth’ refers to the deceitful, not to every sinner, since the tax collector and Daniel confessed sins; even so, God’s praise from such a mouth remains beautiful to those who hear and believe, as with Caiaphas’s prophecy.
48. 2.27Parmenian’s use of ‘what have you that you did not receive?’ fails, since by the Donatists’ own practice baptism is not lost by leaving a communion; so even Caecilian, if he had left, could still give it, and still more the world from which baptism came to Africa.
49. 2.28Ordination, like baptism, is a sacrament that schismatics do not lose and the Catholic Church does not repeat; returning Donatist clergy are not reordained, and what they had to their ruin comes to be had healthfully through correction.
50. 2.29Baptism given by a layman in necessity, or even unlawfully, remains given; like the emperor’s stamp on coins or the military brand, the sacrament’s mark is recognized and approved on correction, not repeated.
51. 2.30Whether non-Christians can baptize is left to a council, but schismatics both have and can give baptism and ordination, wrongly but truly; the sacraments remain holy in the bad, for reward in the good and for judgment in the bad.
52. 2.31The Donatists readmitted Felicianus, condemned at Bagai, in his rank with those he had baptized in schism, without rebaptism or reordination, proving Tyconius’s saying of them: ‘What we want is holy.’
53. 2.32Against Parmenian’s claim that only a living, healthy, enlightened, clothed, clean minister can give these gifts, Augustine shows from Scripture that God alone gives life, healing, light, clothing, and cleansing, working even through bad ministers such as Judas and the Pharisees.
54. 2.33Parmenian’s text, ‘A man cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven’, says ‘from heaven’, not from Donatus, Parmenian, or even a righteous man; the chain of human givers must begin with one who received from God.
55. 2.34‘Given from heaven’ means looking to God, not the minister; every Donatist rule about who can give baptism is broken by their own practice, and Scripture shows God giving without human intermediaries, as to the apostles at Pentecost and to Cornelius.
56. 2.35Parmenian cites ‘what is crooked cannot be adorned’, but even the Donatists would not rebaptize someone who had held a false belief about Christ when baptized; the sacrament does not adorn the crooked but remains whole in him for judgment.
57. 2.36Christ’s baptism by John shows humility and that the baptizer does not matter, not that one must seek a holy minister; Christ was circumcised by Jews, presented in a temple full of the bad, and lived with Judas, untouched by their evil.
58. 2.37Jehoshaphat was rebuked for helping Ahab sin, not for living among sinners; Paul’s command to ‘come out and be separate’ means not consenting to sin, and the faithful separate from the bad in heart, not by schism.
59. 2.38The Donatists do not glorify God, since they deny the fulfilment of his promises to the nations and despise his baptism; Catholics glorify him by trusting his promises and honouring his sacraments even when handled by the unworthy.
60. 2.39‘Do not take part in the works of darkness’ means not consenting and also rebuking for correction, but always within the peace of unity, lest the wheat be uprooted with the weeds.
61. 2.40‘Do not share in others’ sins; keep yourself chaste’ means not doing, not consenting to, and rebuking evil; Parmenian quoted Tyconius’s point that one need only not do the deeds of the wicked, a third of the truth, only to reject it.
62. 2.41One is ‘mixed with the guilty’ only by consent; the righteous man who neither does nor approves evil stays incorrupt anywhere, and where he can, he also corrects, rebukes, and removes sinners in love, as far as peace allows.
63. 2.42‘A little leaven leavens the whole lump’ condemns the Donatists themselves, who readmitted the Maximianists and kept Optatus; the lump corrupted is only those who consent, though negligence in discipline, where peace allows it, risks consent.
64. 2.43The command to distinguish holy and unholy is fulfilled by knowledge and judgment, as the servants recognized the weeds, while still letting both grow until the harvest.
65. 3.1Church discipline must serve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; the Donatists twist Paul’s ‘remove the evil from among yourselves’ into a warrant for schism.
66. 3.2Paul says ‘remove the evil from yourselves’, not ‘remove the bad’, because one who cannot expel the bad separates from them by not sharing their evil; yet neglect of possible discipline is itself a sin.
67. 3.3In the case of the incestuous man at Corinth, Paul joined the rod with love: he called the church to mourn, handed the sinner to Satan for his salvation, told them to correct him as a brother, and later to forgive and comfort him, lest Satan break the bond of peace.
68. 3.4Whoever Paul meant in 2 Corinthians, he showed that discipline must proceed with love; the Donatists, who misread ‘the righteous will correct me in mercy’, persecuted the innocent Caecilian and flattered the tyrant Optatus.
69. 3.5Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthians’ boasting shows that pride over another’s sin is the leaven that corrupts; Christ, our Passover, taught humility, and the law of Christ is to bear one another’s burdens and keep unity in the bond of peace.
70. 3.6Lest sins be neglected, Paul forbade association with a so-called brother who is immoral, greedy, or the like, while Christians must not shun outsiders, whom they are to win for Christ.
71. 3.7Parmenian quoted only the end of 1 Cor 5, omitting ‘not even to eat with such a one’, because the Donatists themselves share the Lord’s table with greedy men, revilers, and drunkards.
72. 3.8Cyprian lamented greedy, fraudulent bishops in his own communion, yet did not separate from them but shared the Lord’s table with them; either the church still existed then, or the Donatists have no origin.
73. 3.9Greed is no small sin, since Paul calls it idolatry and excludes the greedy from God’s kingdom; Cyprian nevertheless shared the Eucharist with greedy bishops, separating from them in heart to avoid schism.
74. 3.10The church without spot or wrinkle was found in those who groaned over the sins done in their midst, as in Ezekiel, where the wicked are said to be within, among the good.
75. 3.11If communion with greedy bishops destroyed the church in Cyprian’s time, the Donatists have no church to descend from; since the church remains in the good, even guilty men should have been tolerated until the harvest rather than divided by schism.
76. 3.12An objector argues that Paul’s ban on eating with immoral ‘brothers’, while allowing meals with pagans, requires bodily separation from bad Christians, so that tolerating them breaks the apostle’s command.
77. 3.13The church excommunicates a member guilty of a notorious sin when no schism threatens and with love for his correction; when the whole congregation shuns him, he is shamed and healed.
78. 3.14Excommunication works when one notorious sinner stands among the unlike; when sin has spread to many, Paul and Cyprian chose mourning and left correction to God’s scourge, since separation would harm the weak and is sacrilegious.
79. 3.15Correct what can be corrected, bear the rest with love until God amends it or the harvest comes, and remove evil from oneself; any excommunication must aim at healing and keep the church’s peace.
80. 3.16Individuals can be excluded from the clergy, the church’s poor roll, the congregation, or a household table for their correction, but a multitude of sinners is better rebuked in public preaching, especially in times of calamity, as Cyprian did, while keeping unity.
81. 3.17Parmenian used Jeremiah’s ‘What has chaff to do with wheat?’ against Tyconius to claim that the Donatists are already the purified church of the last day, a presumption that breeds every schism.
82. 3.18Augustine mocks the idea that Majorinus, Donatus, and Parmenian winnowed the world, pointing to the circumcellions, drunkards, and usurers in the Donatist party and to Primian’s schism and readmission of Felicianus with those he baptized.
83. 3.19‘What has chaff to do with wheat?’ will be fulfilled in the barn, not in the field or on the threshing floor, as the sheep and goats and the good and bad fish are separated only at the end; now the difference is that the wheat has its heart in heaven.
84. 3.20Isaiah’s ‘depart, touch nothing unclean’ means separation of heart by refusing consent to sin, together with discipline in peace; bodily separation from the known bad means deserting the unknown good.
85. 3.21The Donatists accept the baptism of the Maximianists whom their own Council of Bagai condemned, yet rebaptize the world they never condemned in any council; Augustine ironically suggests they condemn the world at Bagai so as to spare its baptism.
86. 3.22By accepting only the baptisms of Maximianists who returned with their bishops, the Donatists honour Felicianus more than Christ, whose baptism they reject throughout the world.
87. 3.23Jeremiah, Isaiah, and David, whose words the Donatists cite, never separated bodily from their sinful people; David even revered Saul’s anointing; their separation was of heart and consent.
88. 3.24On the Donatist principle, unknown righteous separatists elsewhere could already have left them behind as chaff; just as the Donatists judge splinter groups from their own party, the world securely judges that those who separate from the whole world are not good.
89. 3.25Neither Paul, who tolerated envious preachers, nor Cyprian, who lived among greedy bishops, separated bodily; Cyprian loved the Lord’s house, where vessels for honour and dishonour are found together, and cleansed himself by not imitating the bad.
90. 3.26Psalm 26, which Parmenian quotes, is the prayer of one who loves God’s house and therefore tolerates its vessels for dishonour while asking not to perish with them; the Donatists, claiming to be pure wheat, dare not rebuke their own sinners and flatter them instead.
91. 3.27The righteous are found not in separated assemblies but throughout the city on Daniel’s mountain, groaning over the sins among them; in hope their citizenship is already in heaven, free of the wicked, but in reality they bear them in the Catholic Church until the final separation.
92. 3.28The church promised by God is visible everywhere like a city on a mountain; no good person leaves it, and any schism anywhere can safely be judged the work of pride, envy, worldliness, or fear.
93. 3.29Parmenian urged Tyconius to endure persecution with the Donatists, but punishment for schism is God’s merciful warning, not martyrdom; the Donatists’ own mistreatment of the Maximianist Salvius of Membresa and their acceptance of Maximianist baptism expose them.