Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
16 ST. AUGUSTINE and to caution his people against the enticements of its dualistic logic.
(18) Donatism was a solely North Af rican schismatic movement with heretical tendencies. For Augustine it was the most virulent enemy. Originating in the dispute over lapsed Christians that arose during the Decian persecution and assimilating to itself elements of social and political unrest, Donatism had a profound appeal, particularly in the rural areas, to the North African temperament,^^ that caused it to become the most serious threat to Catholic Christianity in Africa before the coming of Islam. It was a schismatic, puritanical, and sacramental movement.
(19) The Donatists maintained that they were, in fact, the true Christian church and that the Catholic church was a deviant church, created by the Church of Rome in cooperation with the secular society of the Roman Empire. '^^ Their view stemmed from a notion of the Church that had always been strong among African Christians, that the Church was alien to the world which was viewed as something hostile to the people of God and impure. Against this Augustine argued for the universal character of Christianity; he rejected the notion that the Church was an isolated, anti-social society of a pure elite in favor of the concept of a Christian church intermingled with the secular societies of this world. His concept of separation was eschatological; the goats would be separated from the sheep, the tares from the wheat, only at the end. Communion with the universal, apostolic Church was for him the mark of genuineness, the true Catholic church. Ecclesia catholica, mater Christianorum verissima: "The Catholic church, the
53. See, e.g., Tractates 1.14 and 16,8.5, 9-2-
54. See J. Ferguson, "Aspects of Early Christianity in North Africa," Africa in Classical Antiquity {Ihdn, 1969), 189-190.
55. This terminology is taken from J. Keleher, Saint Augustine's Notion of Schism in the Donatist Controversy (Mundelein, 1961).
56. This is a complex topic with an extensive bibliography and a variety of viewpoints. See especially, P. Batiffol, Le catholicisme de saint Augustin, 3d ed. (Paris, 1920), 118-276; Brown, Augustine, 212-215; S. Grabowski, The Church. An Introduction to the Theology of St. Augustine (St. Louis, 1957), 53-55'
198-227; and R. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge, 1970), 105—132.