29. gest. Pel. 13.28; Teske, The Deeds of Pelagius (I/23), 353–54.
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 193 understanding of the visible church. It enables him to navigate between equating visible membership in the church while on earth with automatic entry into the kingdom of God, and the a priori impossibility of defining and seeing the church at work in the world. This commixture of two loves, in both the visible church and in the invisible heart, is illustrated by Augustine in a variety of ways—wheat and weeds, grain and straw, and so on.
One of the more frequently employed images found in the Old Testament is that of the ark's carrying all of God's creatures, universally and indiscriminately: "the ark is the Church, constructed from the planks that cannot rot. The planks that cannot rot are the souls of the saints and the just. But it contains both clean and unclean living beings, because as long as the Church is living in this world, and being cleansed by baptism as by the flood, it cannot help having both good and bad members; and that's why that ark contained both clean and unclean animals."28 Against both the Donatist and the Pelagian quoting of Eph. 5:27 and the church's having neither stain nor wrinkle, Augustine is able to understand how the church is still exhorted to pray Forgive us our debts (Matt. 6:21). At present, the pilgrim church staggers along by gathering in people of all kinds of vice and virtue. Yet "at present by God's mercy and truth the holy Church is being guided to that perfection in which it will remain for eternity without stain or wrinkle."29 Mere membership in the church does not guarantee perfection but such a guarantee can be found only in the church of Christ which is oriented toward and being guided to perfect communion with God. This is not to say, however, that church allegiance in this historical realm automatically determines whether one belongs to God eternally or not. Membership is an equivocal term here. The church is never reduced to the
28. s. 264.5; Hill, Sermons (III/7), 231; for more on the ecclesia permixta, cf. en. Ps. 61.6, ciu. Dei 21.24.
29. gest. Pel. 13.28; Teske, The Deeds of Pelagius (I/23), 353–54.