Against Parmenian the Donatist

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.20 · 1.21–2.8 · 2.9–2.25 · 2.26–3.6 · 3.7–3.12 · 4.1–5.2 · 5.3–5.11 · 6.1–6.8 · 7.1–7.3 · 7.4–7.7

1. 1.1Optatus opens by recalling the one faith of all Christians and the peace that Christ left through the apostles to every believer.
2. 1.2Had Christ's peace not been broken by schism, the Donatists would not be acting like the false prophets of Ezekiel, rebaptizing the faithful and destroying souls.
3. 1.3Optatus justifies calling the Donatists brothers from Isaiah: they share one spiritual birth, as Ham remained Noah's sons' brother though he sinned.
4. 1.4Since the Donatists refuse to meet, Optatus answers in writing the treatises of Parmenian, the only one of them who has set out his case.
5. 1.5Optatus sorts Parmenian's treatise into what favors the Catholics, what favors both sides, and what is mistaken, and argues that Parmenian's own praise of the single flood and single circumcision tells against Donatist rebaptism.
6. 1.6Optatus lists the five main points of Parmenian's treatise.
7. 1.7Optatus sets out the plan of his reply in six parts.
8. 1.8Optatus rejects Parmenian's claim that Christ's sinful flesh was cleansed in the Jordan: Christ's flesh was sinless, and his baptism cleansed the water, not himself.
9. 1.9Optatus objects that Parmenian padded his treatise with long-dead heretics, already refuted by earlier Catholic writers, because he had no real charge against the Catholics.
10. 1.10Optatus agrees that heretics lack the church's endowments, being outside the one bride of the Song of Songs, but argues that Parmenian, by joining schismatics to heretics, condemned his own party, since the Donatists are the ones who broke away from Caecilian.
11. 1.11The Catholic Church is constituted by true understanding, one sacrament and unity of minds, while schism arises from envy and quarrels, yet schismatics can only repeat what they learned within the church.
12. 1.12Heretics, who have abandoned the true creed, alone have false baptisms; schismatics like the Donatists still hold the true sacraments they took with them from the church.
13. 1.13Optatus begins his history: in the persecution about sixty years earlier, some African bishops handed over the Scriptures, and he names them, including the self-confessed murderer Purpurius.
14. 1.14At a council in Cirta after the persecution, the bishops confessed to Secundus that they had handed over the Scriptures; when Secundus himself was accused, the case was left to God.
15. 1.15Optatus announces that he will trace the schism to its root: the traitor bishops who ordained Maiorinus at Carthage against Caecilian and so went out from the church that is one throughout the world.
16. 1.16The schism began with Lucilla, a wealthy woman rebuked by the archdeacon Caecilian for kissing the relic of an unrecognized martyr before receiving communion.
17. 1.17Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, summoned to court for hiding a deacon, entrusted the church's gold and silver to certain elders with an inventory, and died before he could return.
18. 1.18After the persecution Caecilian was elected bishop of Carthage and ordained by Felix of Abthugni; disappointed candidates, elders who had kept the church's treasure, and Lucilla broke communion with him.
19. 1.19The Numidian bishops came to Carthage, could prove nothing against Caecilian, and with Lucilla's support ordained her household member Maiorinus as a rival bishop, setting up altar against altar.
20. 1.20To hide their own guilt, the traitor bishops spread by letters the false charge that Caecilian's ordainer had handed over the Scriptures, and so added schism to their crime.
21. 1.21Optatus argues that schism is the worst of sins: God spared Cain and Nineveh, but the schismatics Korah, Dathan and Abiram were swallowed alive by the earth.
22. 1.22Against the Donatist taunt that bishops should have nothing to do with emperors, Optatus quotes the Donatists' own petition to Constantine asking for judges from Gaul.
23. 1.23Constantine granted the petition, and a council of nineteen bishops under Miltiades of Rome met in the Lateran in October 313; Optatus lists them.
24. 1.24The Roman council condemned Donatus for rebaptizing and for laying hands on lapsed bishops, and Miltiades pronounced Caecilian innocent.
25. 1.25Donatus appealed against the Roman verdict, and Constantine rebuked a bishop for appealing as pagans do in secular courts.
26. 1.26While both rivals were detained in Italy, two bishops sent to Carthage declared that the Catholic Church is the one spread through the world, but Donatus returned first and the division was renewed.
27. 1.27An inquiry before the proconsul Aelianus found that Felix of Abthugni, who had ordained Caecilian, had not handed over or burned the Scriptures.
28. 1.28Optatus concludes Book 1: the charges of handing over and schism that Parmenian threw at the Catholics fall back on his own predecessors.
29. 2.1Optatus argues from the Psalms' promises of all nations and the whole earth to Christ that the one church must be the Catholic Church spread through the world, not the Donatist party confined to part of Africa.
30. 2.2Of the church's endowments the first is the chair, and the one episcopal chair was first given at Rome to Peter, head of the apostles, so that unity might be kept in it.
31. 2.3Optatus lists the bishops of Rome from Peter to Siricius, with whom the Catholics and the whole world are in communion, and challenges the Donatists to show the origin of their chair.
32. 2.4The Donatist bishops at Rome, a line of Africans beginning with Victor of Garba who met in a cave outside the city, cannot claim Peter's chair or even enter the apostles' shrines.
33. 2.5Expounding Ps 1:1, Optatus says the Donatists walked in the counsel of the ungodly, stood in the way of sinners and sat in the chair of pestilence, and he gathers texts on peace to show they have rejected it, so that the church's endowments are with the Catholics.
34. 2.6The second endowment, the angel, belongs with the seven churches of Asia addressed in Revelation, which are in communion with the Catholics, not with the Donatists.
35. 2.7The Spirit cannot be confined to the Donatists; Parmenian's charge that Catholics make proselytes into sons of Gehenna rebounds on him, a foreigner brought from abroad to be a Donatist bishop.
36. 2.8The fountain and the seal (the Catholic creed) are endowments that heretics lack; but Parmenian's sixth endowment, the navel of Song 7:2 taken as the altar, is not an endowment at all.
37. 2.9The five endowments belong to the Catholic Church throughout the world, and so also to the Catholics in Africa; the Donatists are branches cut off from the tree.
38. 2.10Parmenian spoke only of the church's endowments and passed over the sacraments, the Trinity and the faith of the believer, in which baptism truly consists and in which the minister contributes nothing of his own.
39. 2.11Parmenian rightly called the church God's garden, but the Donatists confine it, denying God the Christian peoples throughout the world.
40. 2.12The Donatists, who pray in the Eucharist for the one church spread throughout the world, contradict their own prayer by rebaptizing even Christians who come from Antioch and Arabia.
41. 2.13Optatus thanks Parmenian for praising the church as the enclosed garden and only bride, but insists that in Africa there are two parties, not two churches, since Christ's bride is one.
42. 2.14Optatus challenges Parmenian to name any Catholic cleric who persecuted anyone; the Catholics' only "crime" is communion with the apostolic churches.
43. 2.15Under a Christian emperor the church had been united and paganism suppressed, while the Donatist leaders were in exile and the devil grieved in his temples.
44. 2.16The Donatists owed their return from exile to the apostate emperor Julian, who granted it by the same decree that reopened the pagan temples.
45. 2.17On their return under Julian the Donatists seized basilicas and committed bloody attacks on Catholics, until God's judgment cut off the emperor.
46. 2.18Optatus recounts Donatist violence after their return: Catholic deacons killed at the altar in Lemellef and Carpi, and a massacre at Tipasa under bishops Urbanus and Felix, and turns Parmenian's charges back on him.
47. 2.19The Donatist bishops threw the Eucharist to dogs and the chrism out of a window, and Felix of Idicra, after violating a consecrated virgin, deposed an innocent Catholic bishop by laying penance on him.
48. 2.20No one is sinless (1 John 1:8): man wills and runs but God perfects; the Donatists, claiming perfect holiness while praying "forgive us our debts," are like the proud Pharisee of the parable.
49. 2.21The Donatists exorcized Catholics, washed the walls of churches, and degraded Catholic clergy to penitents, which Optatus calls a living murder foretold in the Psalms.
50. 2.22The Donatist people swear by their bishops instead of by God, which Optatus likens to the devil's aim in idolatry, that God should be forgotten.
51. 2.23The Donatists violate the anointing of Catholic priests, against God's command "Touch not my anointed" and his own example with Saul, whose anointing he did not revoke though he repented of it.
52. 2.24By imposing penance on Catholics of every rank, the Donatists killed their honors and fulfilled Ezekiel's woe on those who overturn souls.
53. 2.25Using David's sparing of Saul in the cave, Optatus argues that a priest's anointing, being God's, must not be touched even if he sins, and he condemns the Donatists for destroying Catholic clergy by penance and curses.
54. 2.26The Donatists imposed penance on whole Catholic congregations, innocent women and children included, with arbitrary lengths, fulfilling Ezekiel's woe on the daughters of Israel.
55. 3.1Optatus begins Book 3 on the union of 347: the harsh measures are to be blamed on the Donatist leaders who provoked them, and the Donatists fled though no one was asked to deny God.
56. 3.2Optatus reads Isaiah 22 as a prophecy of the Donatist schism: by rebaptizing they diverted the water of the old pool, the one baptism symbolized by the fish ΙΧΘΥΣ (Christ), and God's grief in the valley of Zion (Africa) foretold the events of 347.
57. 3.3Optatus blames Donatus of Carthage, who rejected the alms that Constans sent to the poor with "What has the emperor to do with the church?", and applies to him Ezekiel's rebuke of the prince of Tyre who said "I am God".
58. 3.4Optatus explains that troops were called in only because Donatus of Bagai gathered the Circumcellions, a violent band whom the Donatist bishops themselves had earlier asked the count Taurinus to suppress; the clash at Bagai was provoked by them.
59. 3.5Some evils are done well, as when Phinehas killed the adulterers at God's command; the harsh measures of the union may likewise have pleased God.
60. 3.6Optatus touches reluctantly on Marculus and Donatus, whom the Donatists venerate as martyrs of 347, arguing that those who refused peace were the cause of their own sufferings.
61. 3.7Optatus defends Macarius by the examples of Moses, Phinehas and Elijah, who killed at God's will those who despised his commands, and answers the objection from Christ's order to Peter to sheathe his sword.
62. 3.8Those who died under Macarius were not martyrs: no one was forced to deny Christ, as in the persecutions of Decius, Valerian and Diocletian, and without charity and confession there is no martyrdom.
63. 3.9Only Africa needed the union, because only there had the garment of the church been torn; the mender who pricks some threads is less to blame than the one who tore it, and Catholics and Donatists still share the same sacraments.
64. 3.10The Donatist party is the ruinous whitewashed wall of Ezekiel 13, built by false prophets who cry "Peace" without peace; the measures under Ursacius, Gregory and Macarius were the storm, rain and stones God threatened against it.
65. 3.11The Donatist slogans "Look behind you", "Redeem your souls" and "Be Christians" contradict the gospel: Christ alone redeems, and one baptized in the name of the Trinity cannot be called a pagan.
66. 3.12The rumor that the imperial commissioners would place an image on the altar proved false, so those who passed from the Donatists to Catholic unity cannot be blamed for changing.
67. 4.1Optatus turns to Parmenian's texts on the sinner's oil and sacrifice, insisting that only God can identify the sinner.
68. 4.2Catholics and Donatists remain brothers, born of one mother church through the same sacraments, and the Lord's Prayer, spoken in the plural, makes each pray for the other.
69. 4.3The sinner of Psalm 50 is identified by what follows: one who despises discipline, slanders his brother and sides with thieves and adulterers, which fits the Donatists.
70. 4.4Optatus lists the commands of Scripture on peace, unity, single washing, the anointed and mutual love, all of which the Donatists despise.
71. 4.5The Donatist bishops, who sit and teach, slander the Catholics in sermons and forbid their people even to greet them, misapplying texts meant for heretics such as Marcion, Praxeas, Valentinus, Arius and Photinus.
72. 4.6The thief of Psalm 50 is the devil, whom the Donatists help when, by exorcizing and rebaptizing Catholics, they drive out God who dwells in them and leave them empty for the unclean spirit.
73. 4.7Ps 141:5 is Christ's prayer not to be anointed by any man, all men being sinners; the Father answered it at the Jordan, anointing him with the Spirit descending as a dove.
74. 4.8Wisdom's saying about the sons of adulterers, if taken figuratively, applies to heretics like Valentinus who corrupt the faith about Christ's flesh, not to schismatics.
75. 4.9Jeremiah's complaint of the forsaken fountain and broken cisterns concerns Israel's idolatry, not the Catholics' baptism; Parmenian has misapplied the prophets.
76. 5.1Optatus begins Book 5 on baptism: Parmenian's own figures of the single flood and single circumcision show that baptism, made holy by the Trinity and not by the minister, cannot be repeated.
77. 5.2Parmenian praised the waters that brought forth life at creation, but the Trinity worked that without any human minister, as it does in baptism.
78. 5.3Since neither side can judge itself, Optatus appeals to Christ's testament in the gospel: "He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again" and "one faith, one baptism" forbid rebaptism, and Catholics receive Donatist converts without it.
79. 5.4Baptism has three elements, the Trinity, the believer's faith and the minister; the first two are unchangeable and decisive, while the minister is a changeable worker, since Scripture says that God, not man, washes.
80. 5.5Christ did not rebaptize those baptized by John; Paul's rebaptism of John's disciples at Ephesus concerned a different baptism, not a different minister, so it gives no warrant for repeating baptism in the Trinity.
81. 5.6The Donatist maxim "How can one who does not have give?" is not in Scripture; God, not the minister, gives in baptism, as Paul and John the Baptist show.
82. 5.7Baptism's gift belongs to God, not the minister: the minister is a workman, like a dyer who cannot give color without the dye, or a vinedresser who cannot make the vine grow, as Paul says of himself and Apollos.
83. 5.8The gospel healings show that faith, not the holiness of the one who acts, brings the gift: the mother whose daughter was raised, the centurion, and the woman with the flow of blood.
84. 5.9Parmenian's use of Naaman the Syrian proves nothing for rebaptism, since Naaman was washed only once and the credit belongs to the Jordan, not to Elisha.
85. 5.10Against Parmenian's reading of the wedding parable, Optatus says the wedding garment is Christ, put on once in baptism; the rebaptized will rise, but stripped of it.
86. 5.11If Catholic baptism were void, those baptized by Catholics who have died would be lost; since the Donatists cannot rebaptize the dead, they should not rebaptize the living.
87. 6.1The Donatists broke, scraped or removed Catholic altars, the seat of Christ's body and blood, on which they themselves had once offered, and so struck Christ as the Jews did.
88. 6.2The Donatists melted down the chalices that had held Christ's blood and sold the metal indiscriminately, even to pagans for idol worship.
89. 6.3Against the Donatist use of Haggai (what the polluted touches is polluted), Optatus argues that no Catholic has been shown polluted and that the invocation of God's name sanctifies, as with the censers of Korah's company kept for the sanctuary.
90. 6.4The Donatists made consecrated virgins do penance and take a second veil, though the veil is only a sign of their profession, not a sacrament; Optatus compares this to a second wedding, which is not celebrated even when a widow remarries, and says it exposed the virgins to abduction.
91. 6.5The Donatists used the secular courts to seize Catholic books and altar cloths, and then washed the cloths but could not wash the books, showing their own inconsistency.
92. 6.6The Donatists washed the walls of churches taken from the Catholics with salt water, an act Optatus mocks as inconsistent and designed to frighten simple people into rebaptism.
93. 6.7The Donatists seized basilicas and cemeteries and refused burial to Catholics, quarreling even with the dead.
94. 6.8Those whom the Donatists win over become in turn their decoys, like the dead and caged birds a fowler uses to lure living ones into the trap.
95. 7.1In the added seventh book Optatus answers the objection that the Donatists, as sons of traitors, should never have been sought for union: handing over the Scriptures under compulsion was a sin of necessity, like Moses' breaking of the tablets or Baruch's surrender of Jeremiah's scroll, the law lives in believers' hearts, and sons do not bear their fathers' guilt.
96. 7.2The Catholics receive the Donatists because no one is sinless and Christ forbade separating the tares from the wheat before the harvest; judgment belongs to Christ alone.
97. 7.3Peter, who denied Christ three times after professing him, still received the keys and was kept in the apostles' communion for the sake of unity, a pattern that shows the church must receive the Donatists.
98. 7.4The Donatists call the Catholics the "dying flies" that spoil the ointment (Eccl 10:1), but it is they who destroy the sweetness of the chrism by rebaptizing and reanointing.
99. 7.5Parmenian likened the Donatists to Moses and the Catholics to his opponents Jannes and Jambres, but the order is the reverse: the Catholic Church came first, and the Donatist founders, once salt of the earth, lost their savor by schism.
100. 7.6Macarius, a layman acting as an imperial agent, never exercised any episcopal function, so communion with him did not pollute the bishops; like a judge he was a minister of God's will, and Moses, Phinehas and Elijah were not excluded for their killings.
101. 7.7Even if Macarius were guilty, the bishops could not condemn him without an accuser, for God himself, though he knew Cain's crime, questioned him and let Abel's blood accuse him.