The Bishop as Disciplinarian in the Letters of St. Augustine (review)

In this work Doyle advances "the hypothesis that any study of Augustine's understanding of episcopal ministry must pay careful attention to the specific role the bishop plays as disciplinarian" (xxi, see 216). He makes his point. The strengths of the book lie in the success of his argument and in his intensive knowledge of the primary sources and his wide reading in the secondary literature.

The reader is promptly reminded that 'discipline' in this work refers not only to punishment for wrongdoing but to therapeutic actions as well (35ff, 43). Doyle sees discipline as including the "encouragement, consolation, . . . correction and counsel" necessary to promote adherence to the "demands and expectations" called for in a particular life style (6). He studies disciplina in terms of etymology, in terms of usage in the Bible and the North African tradition, and lexically. This last (27-61) is particularly interesting inasmuch as the many meanings of the word range from 'habit', 'tradition', 'lifestyle' through "the divine plan or order" and 'correction' to 'teaching', 'doctrine', and 'church law'.

Illustrating that discipline can be therapeutic, Doyle draws examples from (among others) Letters 93 and 185. It is unfortunate that he refuses to discuss these letters in context on the grounds that they involve "the delicate matter" of the collaboration between Church and state in the exercise of discipline (xx, see 99). The topic is too important to be omitted here. The letter to Vincent in 405 (#93) and that to Boniface ten years later (#185) explain why Augustine came to endorse 'conversion' of the Donatists through coercion by the state. The bishop never doubted that the path he followed to his own conversion—a long journey of prayer, intellect and will—was the better one, but he came to believe that for those who could not or would not follow this path coercion was a kindness. He likened it to rescuing an unwilling man from a burning house. Why Doyle considers the admissibility of state intervention in ecclesial affairs "delicate" is not immediately clear. He must know that Augustine would not have been a man of his age if he had thought otherwise. The ethos of the fourth and later centuries is shown not only in Augustine's position vis-à-vis the Donatists but again later when he appealed to the imperial court in the Pelagian controversy. I think the implicit reason for "delicate" is that Doyle recognizes such intervention to be out of step with Western modernity. Elsewhere in the work he makes explicit comparisons between Augustine's behaviour and what is acceptable now. Such comparisons are unnecessary and jarring.

The author argues that Augustine was indebted to Roman law, which he knew well but which he considered flawed because it derives from the human city. He owed much more to the Bible for his understanding of church discipline. Doyle describes Augustine's attitude to the Bible briefly but well (233-44), and he stresses the bishop's belief in its inerrancy. But when he moves on to Augustine's use of his predecessors' writings, the position is badly presented. In the space of seven lines (228) Doyle remarks that "[e}ven Augustine was compelled to recognize that theologically the Donatists were the true heirs of Cyprianic Christianity" (quoting Marcus, Saeculum, 110). He continues immediately with a comment:

Here, Augustine was using the moral authority that Cyprian rightly enjoyed . . . as a means to correct the mistaken practices of the Donatists. Not even Cyprian dared to rebaptize heretics because they have the same sacraments; baptism performed by schismatics is not baptism at all.

Doyle is trying to make the point (correctly) that for Cyprian schismatic baptism was no baptism because schism breaks the unity of the church. But, for Augustine, schismatic baptism was valid (but not efficacious) although he, too, saw the...