21. ep. 179.9; CSEL 43.696; cf. nat. et. gr. 37.43–44.
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 189 it an exclusive place meant solely for the inviolable. From the first appearance of the human family up through Christ's second coming, the church will prove to be an ecclesia permixta of saint and sinner. It is a threshing floor where true praise is persecuted, sadly oftentimes by those within and closest to the church. This stress on the church of necessarily both saint and sinner was a key inclusion for Augustine's use of Abel. This also helps us to understand why he chose an ecclesia ab Abel and not, say, ab Adam.
Is there an anti-Pelagian apologetic in the eponymous church of Abel? Was there anything at risk in Augustine's depiction of an ecclesia ab Abel? As the first human person for whom no personal sin is reported, some followers of Pelagius used Abel to represent the possibility of human immaculateness. Eve disobeys. Adam concurs. Cain murders. Yet no sin is ever mentioned for Abel. The Bishop of Hippo acknowledges Genesis's silence but nonetheless understands that Abel is indeed a fallen son of Adam and has therefore contracted original sin like the rest of the human race. Abel represents the church because he too suffered the debilitation brought about by the originale peccatum de Adam, but whether or not he had committed sin in his own person (non in seipso ipse commiserat) is still open to debate.21 Abel is enlisted to play a very complex three-fold role. First, as son of Adam, he represents all those tainted by original sin; second, in his alleged personal sinlessness, he is the anticipation of all the infants who carry about the stain of that same Adam unawares; and third, in the possibility of his having sinned, he becomes the prototypical recipient of Christ's redeemed church.
Augustine's providing for Abel's sin (despite the scriptural lacuna) emphasizes how no human heart escapes the conflict of warring loves. In this struggle the two cities become visible:
21. ep. 179.9; CSEL 43.696; cf. nat. et. gr. 37.43–44.