32. Ep. 105.5.16 (CSEL 34.2:608–9); trans. Parsons, FOTC 18:209–10.
Against the Donatists 253
Theology of Church: Holiness
The Donatists stressed that the Church here and now is "without spot or wrinkle" and associated its holiness with the "uncontaminated" purity of its bishops. Augustine's view was very different. He saw the Church here and now as a corpus permixtum, a mix of good and bad. In an open letter to the Donatist churches, Augustine invokes a series of Jesus' parables to articulate his eschatological view of the Church's holiness. From Letter 105: (5.16) We do not know why you speak of betrayers (traditores) when you have never been able to prove your charges, never even been able to point them out. I do not say this because it was, instead, your people who were found out and who admitted their crime openly. But what have we to do with the burdens of others, except those whom we are able to amend by chastisement or by some discipline applied in the spirit of mildness and the anxious care of love? As for those whom we are not able to amend, even if necessity requires, for the salvation of others, that they share the sacraments of God with us, it does not require us to share in their sins, which we would do by consenting to or condoning them. We tolerate them in this world, in which the Catholic Church is spread abroad among all nations, which the Lord called His field, like weeds among the wheat (Mt 13:24–30); or like chaff mingled with the good grain on this threshing floor of unity; or like the bad fish enclosed with the good in the nets of the word and the sacrament (Mt 13:47–48). We leave them until the time of the harvest, or of the winnowing, or of the arrival on shore. We tolerate them so as not to root up the wheat, or to winnow the good grain away from the threshing floor (Mt 3:12), and before the harvest time throw it out—as opposed to storing it in the granary—to let it be gathered by the birds (Lk 8:5). We tolerate them so that, after our nets are broken by schism, we do not swim out into the sea of destructive freedom to try and avoid the bad fish. For this reason, the Lord strengthened the patience of His servants by these and other parables, to prevent them from thinking that their virtue would be defiled by contact with the wicked, and thus, through vain and human dissensions, they should lose the little ones, or they themselves should perish.32
32. Ep. 105.5.16 (CSEL 34.2:608–9); trans. Parsons, FOTC 18:209–10.