Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 14:2 (Spring 1971)
Article: Violence In The Name Of Christ: The Significance Of Augustine’s Donatist Controversy For Today
Author: Gordon R. Lewis

JETS 14:2 (Spring 1971) p. 103

Violence In The Name Of Christ:
The Significance Of Augustine’s
Donatist Controversy For Today

Gordon R. Lewis*

Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries feared for their lives. No longer persecuted by the Roman emperors, they now suffered at the hands of other Christians! Separatists from the catholic (universal) church resorted to violence. The most zealous of the Donatist separatists, the Circumcellions, burned houses and churches, beat people, cut off a bishop’s hands and tongue, and blinded others with a mixture of lime and acid.1

In the wake of recent riots we can again picture the gruesome fate of the minister at Bagai, North Africa.

They rushed upon him while he was standing at the altar, with fearful violence and cruel fury, beat him savagely with cudgels and weapons of every kind, and at last with the very boards of the broken altar. They also wounded him with a dagger in the groin so severely that the effusion of blood would have soon put an end to his life had not their further cruelty proved of service for its preservation; for as they were dragging him along the ground thus severely wounded the dust forced into the spouting vein stanched the blood, whose effusion was rapidly on the way to cause his death. Then, when they had at length abandoned him, some of our party tried to carry him off with psalms; but his enemies, inflamed with even greater rage, tore him from the hands of those who were carrying him, inflicting grievous punishment on the Catholics whom they put to flight, being far superior to them in numbers, and easily inspiring terror by their violence. Finally, they threw him into a certain elevated tower, thinking that he was by this time dead, though in fact he still breathed.2

Not all Donatists went to these extremes of physical torture, but many carried their separation to rather bizarre personal ends. They would not bury Catholics in their cemeteries, bake bread for them, greet them, sit in the same room with them, or answer mail from them.3 If

*Professor of Theology, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

JETS 14:2 (Spring 1971) p. 104

they could usurp the Catholic churches, they evicted the people and washed the walls and floors with salt water.4 Some who would not injure the body did not hesitate to defame the name of their opponents. Failing in the attempt to prove actual guilt for some immorality they raised suspicion. Said Augustine about A..D. 400, “The moment that any crime is either fal...