Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives

4. Just War, Schism, and Peace in St. Augustine

4 Just War, Schism, and Peace in St. Augustine phillip w. gray In the scholarly literature on Augustine’s writings, few topics have instigated more discussion or debate than his belief about the use of coercion against schismatics and heretics. Many scholars see his choice to use coercion against the Donatists as a deviation from his usual way of thinking . For instance, as Ernest Fortin wrote about the matter: “The peculiar intractability of Donatists, their continued agitating, and the methods of terrorism to which they frequently resorted, had made of them a persistent threat not only to the religious unity but to the social stability of the North African provinces. Reluctantly and only after having exhausted all other resources, Augustine agreed to turn the matter over to the local civil authorities. . . . What was, for him, a mere concession to necessity or at most an emergency measure designed to cope with a specific situation was later invoked as a general principle to justify the church’s reprisals against heretics and apostates” (1987: 198). Fortin’s interpretation of Augustine ’s request for coercion against the Donatist schism in the 390s A.D. has commanded considerable agreement. But this explanation does not seem to take into account the bishop’s nuanced accounts of peace and the place of the Heavenly City. Indeed, he believed, thanks to the evil of man, that it was necessary to teach humanity per molestias eruditio, “teaching by inconveniences” (Brown, 1967: 237). This is the underlying source for Augustine’s apparently different views on coercion used in just wars and his ideas about the Donatists, where the main point of coercion is to save ∏ 51 the schismatic or heretic from his own weakness and damnation by forcing him into the Church (taking note that forcing someone physically into a church to hear the Good News is different from forcing conversion). But this, too, seems incomplete. Why would Augustine take such a different stand against Donatists and other such schismatics, which seems to go against his ideas both about conversion and about just war (for, to all intents and purposes, the conflict with the Donatists was a war)? The answer lies in Augustine’s views of peace regarding the two cities . How so? The bishop, as part of his justification for just war, declared that an earthly peace allows the Church, as the agent of the Heavenly City on earth, to perform its mission of saving souls. Thus we can derive Augustine’s notions of a just war. But peace is not enough when it comes to schismatics, because the Church cannot pursue its mission so long as they exist. Peace in the earthly city is irrelevant if there is conflict among the agents of the heavenly one. By allowing schismatics to coexist peaceably (or as peaceably as possible) with the true representatives of God, there is no peace conducive to the Heavenly City, and the Church is stymied. For this reason, and not merely for the timely practical convenience Fortin ascribes to him, Augustine may have wished to see the Donatists taken care of in a way the bishop would find disagreeable as regards nations in a just war. In order to bring out these views of Augustine’s, several of his writings will be reviewed in this chapter, especially his seminal City of God and a letter he wrote (in the year 417 A.D.) to the tribune Boniface concerning the Donatists (referred to as Epistle 185). By comparing these two texts, one can see the similarities and differences in Augustine’s views toward schismatics and toward warring nations. From this, along with supplemental information from other works, a coherent perspective on the differences for Augustine between the types of war will emerge. The Setting First, one needs to know something about the setting of the conflict and the societal context in which Augustine lived and wrote these two works. When Augustine wrote City of God, it was in response to the events of “August 24th, 410, [when] the inconceivable happened: a Gothic army, led by Alaric, entered Rome . . . Rome was sacked for three days; and parts of 52 Phillip W. Gray it were, inevitably, burnt” (Brown, 1967: 288). The chaos caused some to question whether the separation from the old gods resulted in the disaster . As such, Augustine used City of God to point out how “the influence of Christianity” had actually made changes for...