The Donatist Controversy: Sacramental Efficacy
The Donatist Controversy: Sacramental Efficacy
In the previous chapter we noted some of the issues which lay behind the Donatist controversy (pp. 358–60). A central issue, of direct relevance to the material to be considered in this chapter, concerns the personal worthiness or holiness of the minister who administers the sacraments. The Donatists refused to recognize that a traditor – that is to say, a Christian minister whose personal credentials had been compromised or tainted through collaboration with the Roman authorities during the Diocletian persecution – could administer the sacraments. Accordingly, they argued that baptisms, ordinations, and Eucharists administered by such ministers were invalid.
This attitude rested in part upon the authority of Cyprian of Carthage. Cyprian had argued that no true sacraments exist outside the church. Heretical baptism was thus not valid, as heretics did not accept the faith of the church and were thus outside its bounds. Logically unassailable though Cyprian's views may have been, they failed to allow for the situation that arose during the Donatist controversy – that is, ministers who were of orthodox faith but whose personal conduct was held to be unworthy of their calling. Were doctrinally orthodox yet morally inferior ministers entitled to administer the sacraments? And were such sacraments invalid?
Pressing Cyprian's views beyond their apparently intended limits, the Donatists argued that ecclesiastical actions could be regarded as invalid on account of subjective imperfections on the part of the person administering them. The Donatists thus held that those who were baptized or ordained by Catholic priests or bishops who had not joined the Donatist movement required to be rebaptized and reordained at the hands of Donatist ministers. The sacraments derive their validity from the personal qualities of the person who administers them.
This attitude can be seen in a letter written by Petilian, the Donatist bishop of Cirta, to Augustine, criticizing his views on clerical morality. Shortly beforehand, Petilian had circulated a letter to his priests warning against the moral impurity and doctrinal errors of the Catholic church. Augustine's reply did not satisfy Petilian, and led him to write against Augustine in more detail. In this letter, from which Augustine quotes extracts, Petilian sets out fully the Donatist insistence that the validity of the sacraments is totally dependent upon the moral worthiness of those who administer them. Petilian's words are included within quotation marks within Augustine's text.
“What we look for is the conscience” [Petilian] says, “of the one who gives [the sacraments], giving in holiness, to cleanse the conscience of the one who receives. For anyone who knowingly receives ‘faith' from the faithless does not receive faith, but guilt.” And he will then go on to say: “So how do you test this? For everything consists of an origin” he says, “and a root; if it does not possess something as its head, it is nothing. Nor can anything truly receive a second birth, unless it is born again from good seed.”
Responding to this approach, Augustine argued that Donatism laid excessive emphasis upon the qualities of the human agent and gave insufficient weight to the grace of Jesus Christ. It is, he argued, impossible for fallen human beings to make distinctions concerning who is pure and impure, worthy or unworthy. This view, which is totally consistent with his understanding of the church as a “mixed body” of saints and sinners, holds that the efficacy of a sacrament rests not upon the merits of the individual administering it but upon the merits of the one who instituted the sacraments in the first place – Jesus Christ. The validity of sacraments is independent of the merits of those who administer them.
Having stated this key principle, Augustine qualifies it in an important context. A distinction must be drawn, he argues, between “baptism” and “the right to baptize.” Although baptism is valid, even when administered by those who are heretics or schismatics, this does not mean that the right to baptize is indiscriminately distributed among all peoples. The right to confer baptism exists only within the church, and supremely in those ministers whom it has chosen and authorized to administer the sacraments. The authority to administer the sacraments of Christ was committed by him to the apostles, and through them and their successors the bishops to the ministers of the Catholic church.
The theological issue at stake has come to be represented by two Latin slogans, each reflecting a different understanding of the grounds of the efficacy of the sacraments:
The Donatist position is consistent with an ex opere operantis, and Augustine's with an ex opere operato, understanding of sacramental causality. The latter view became normative within the western church and was maintained by the mainstream reformers during the sixteenth century.
The ex opere operato approach to the efficacy of the sacraments was vigorously defended by Pope Innocent III (1160/1–1216) in the late twelfth century. For Innocent, the merits or demerits of the priest are of no consequence in relation to the efficacy of the Eucharist. In the end, the sacraments are grounded in the Word of God, which is not restricted by human weakness or failing:
Nothing more is accomplished by a good priest and nothing less by a wicked priest, because it is accomplished by the word of the creator and not the merit of the priest. Thus the wickedness of the priest does not nullify the effect of the sacrament, just as the sickness of a doctor does not destroy the power of his medicine. Although the “doing of the thing [opus operans]” may be unclean, the “thing which is done [opus operatum]” is nevertheless always clean.
A similar approach was adopted by mainstream Protestant writers during the sixteenth century. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563) state this point clearly:
For those who receive the sacraments which are administered to them by faith and in proper fashion, the effect of Christ's ordinances is not taken away by the wickedness of the minister, nor is the grace of God's gifts diminished. These are effective on account of the institution and promise of Christ, even if they are administered by wicked people.