Systematic Theology – The State

Donatism and the State

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 23

Dictation Name: 23 Donatism and the State

Year: 1970’s

Let us begin with prayer.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, as we face the powers of darkness, sitting enthroned in the councils of state, we come to thee who art the author and the governor of all things, and we beseech thee, O Lord, to act against these, thine enemies. It is time for thee, O Lord, to work, for they have made void thy law. Confound them in their iniquity, turn the hearts of the people unto thee, and make of us again a godly nation dedicated to thy service, and faithful to thy law-word. Bless us this evening as we prepare ourselves for thy service. In Jesus name. Amen.

As we continue our studies in the doctrine of the state, our first subject this evening is Donatism and the State. There heresy of Donatism is an ancient but a continuing one. It first began around 311 A.D., and it continued into the fifth centuries when the Donatist churches began to wane and disappear.

The movement was a very, very powerful and important one for a time. Donatism was a movement, occasioned by the end of the persecutions of the church. During the last great persecutions, there were churches and pastors, as well as members who, when faced with the threat of death, either renounced the faith or took out a state license, and became a part of the officially-approved cults of Rome. When the persecution ended, the church split over the issue as to whether or not these apostasyzing churches, pastors, and members could be received back into communion again. The Donatists said no. The main body of the church said yes, upon repentance.

There was another aspect to this that was very, very serious. The Donatists, in terms of this, said that if a pastor apostasized, whether under persecution or, assuming there were no persecution, became immoral, denied the faith, and departed from the church, all the acts performed by him as pastor would become invalid, all the marriages he performed would be invalid. All the baptism services he conducted would become invalid. Now, consider the implications of this. It would mean you would not know whether you were really married, or really baptized until your pastor died, and died still in the faith.

The result was, there could be no assurance for the Donatists. The orthodox position was, it is not the life of the pastor, nor of the church, which saves a man, but the triune God and the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Thus, the orthodox party held all baptisms performed in the name of the Trinity are valid. The validity is in God’s act, not in man’s act.

But Donatism, despite his serious heresies, did raise questions that were never fully answered at the time. This was partly because the Donatists institutionalized their ideas, so it became a conflict between churches to a degree. The unanswered questions run something like this. When does a church that has departed from the faith and has, in effect, supplanted grace with other doctrines, ceased to be a valid church? Now, this has been a problem to the faithful over the centuries.

For example, there was a time when, for a period of years, the pornocracy{?} ruled in Rome. This was at horror to the faithful. A couple of very immoral women, who had tremendous power through their family prestige and power, named their lovers to be popes and controlled the Vatican, and so a series of men who were not even Christians became popes. It was a time of great grief to people everywhere. Then again, the great schism, when there were for a time, two popes, and then for a brief time, three popes. Who was the true pope, and where was the true church in all of this? And so, in a sense, the issue of Donatism and the questions raised by it were still alive.

Moreover, at the time of the Reformation, the same kind of question arose, because the Anabaptists pushed to similar extremes in some instances. Calvin attacked them for this saying there were too many who were ready to abandon the church, he said, “on account of every trivial difference of sentiment.” And instead of doing what every member is required to do, which is, he said, “to exert himself for the general edification, according to the measure of his grace, provided he do it decently and in order.” Calvin continued to observe, “But bearing with the imperfections of life, we ought to carry our indulgence a great deal further, for this is a point in which we are likely to err, and here Satan lies in vain to deceive us with no common devices. For there have always been persons who, from a false notion of perfect sanctity, as if they were already become disembodied spirits, despise the society of all men in whom they could discover any remains of human infirmity. Such in Ancient times, were the Cathary{?}, and also the Donatists, who approached to the same folly. Such in the present day are some of the Anabaptists, who would be thought to have made advances in piety beyond all others.”

Calvin went onto say that the validity of the sacrament, contrary to the Donatists, depends on God, not upon a priest or pastor, for, “We are baptized, not in the name of any man, but of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and consequently, it is not the baptism of man, but of God, by whomsoever it is administered.”

Now, we have to say this before we go further, that both the Donatists and the Catholics at the time of the persecution separated themselves from the compromising pastors and churches, and from the compromising members. So that, during the persecution under Rome, both Catholics and Donatists agreed, we cannot have communion with those that compromise. The question was, after the persecution ended, can we receive them back into communion upon repentance? Thus, that was a point of division, and again, as to whether or not the sacraments of defecting churches or pastors were invalid for all time.

Now, our concern, however, is more specifically with Donatism and the state. We have had to go into the meaning of Donatism and its history to understand what the problem is, because there are some who’ve seen Donatism with regard to certain concepts of the state. Now, very early, church and state, at times, saw the other as unworthy of obedience, and over the centuries, this became a very real problem, because very often, in Europe, a particular king, or the Holy Roman Emperor, would show a contempt for God and his word, and at other times, the church would do the same, and so we had problems where one was trying to deal with the other, but before we go to that, we find, as we saw last month, the doctrine as it developed was that true dominion belongs only to God. It comes from God and it is held by those who are faithful to him, so the true Christian is the only rightful Lord of the earth. He alone has dominion.

The ungodly have power, but they do not have dominion. One medieval writer, Hortensius said, “It seems to be that the coming of Christ, every office and all governmental authority, and all lordship and jurisdiction was taken from every infidel lawfully and with just cause, and granted to the faithful through him who has the supreme power and who cannot err.”

However, a modern political scientist and scholar, Muldoon{?}, has called this an extension of Donatism to political office. Is this true?

Well, before we go into that question, let’s look at a little history. This question is an important one, because what we are saying is, “Can we say at times that it is right to deny the authority of the state?” or is it a blanket authority? We find, as we look at medieval history, that there is a great deal of readiness on the part of church and state is say that the other had lost its authority. For example, on January 24, 1074, the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, called the Synod of Worms, and declared Pope Gregory VII to be deposed. Now, Henry IV had deposed popes before and his own father had deposed four of them. A few generations later, by the late, the Council of Constance deposed three, and the church agreed to it. A month after Henry IV deposed Gregory VII, on February 22, 1076, Gregory VII deposed Henry IV for rebelling against the church and for spiritual disobedience, and Pope Gregory VII had more reason to do it than Henry had to depose him.

Again, in 1208, a couple hundred years later, Innocent III placed all England under an interdict in 1208, and in 1209, King John himself was excommunicated, but there is a difference in these actions and Donatism. First, Donatism held that the church lost its authority when it compromised or denied the faith. None of its previous acts had validity. However, neither the pope nor the emperors, when they deposed one another, denied the validity of previous actions or previous authorities, and there was restoration on repentance, as with Henry IV when he came to Canossa.

Then second, Hortensius did not affirm Donatism. All he said in terms of Psalm 2 was that Christ had been placed by God in a position of authority over all nations. God had given Christ all governmental power and authority. This however, did not give individuals the freedom to deny the rule over them of ungodly rulers. Paul is emphatic on this in Romans 13, as we have seen. Paul does not give a license for a revolution, and he affirms regeneration, not revolution.

What Donatism did was to say that we can make an ultimate judgment on a church or a man. We can immenatize{?} and bring into history God’s judgment, a final verdict, whereas, what the popes and emperors did was in terms of a particular act, or a group of acts, to say, “Your authority is no longer valid. You have stepped beyond the bounds of legitimate authority.” Now, there’s a world of difference between the two. It was specific acts that let to deposition in the Middle Ages. It was not the deposition of all authority.

We do have Donatism today in such things as the tax revolt. The tax revolt people say that the federal government is not to be obeyed any longer, because it is unconstitutional, and therefore, they are in rebellion against it, but the weakness of their argument is that they subscribe to the kind of myth Reinhold Niebuhr held to, and the title of his book, Moral Man in an Immoral Society sums up. There is no such thing as such a situation. If men in the United States are basically moral, you will have a moral country. If men are immoral, you will have an immoral country. The antithesis between moral man an immoral society is environmentalism, and it is a part of the liberal doctrine from which we suffer so much, and it leads, like all Donatism, to Phariseeism, because the Donatists would up as Pharisees. This is what killed them. They could say, “This church is forever finished, because we say it has done this and that,” and that ends it.

Moreover, the position of the church in the Middle Ages and of the state, that it could declare, on occasion, that authority was invalid, for certain reasons, was a biblical one, because all authority, except for God’s, is conditional. It is conditional upon the word of God. I do not have any authority to mistreat my family. I do have an authority to govern my family wisely. I do not have any authority in any capacity or in a position I hold to do that which is wrong. If we give a blanket authority, then we are saying anyone who is in a position of authority has license to sin, has a license to rob the till, has a license to do as he chooses, and that, of course, would be an evil doctrine. All authority, in any and every human realm, is conditional upon God and his word. To be outside of Christ is to be separate from legitimacy, and so it is that it is not Donatism to work against or to challenge the authority of any ungodly authority. It is, on the contrary, a positive, Christian duty.

Now, this point is important because one of the things we are facing today with a growing militancy is the fact that many Christians are saying that it is a sin to fight in the courts against the state. I was told by one minister a good many years ago, about twenty years or more ago, that it was sinful of me to criticize the Federal Reserve. It’s interesting that such people don’t hesitate the challenge the authority of their pastor or their denomination. In other words, the only authority they seem to recognize as beyond challenge is that of the state, and sadly, there are many husbands who feel the same way about their authority over their children and over their wife, but all authority in every human realm is condition upon obedience. No man nor no institution, church, state, or school, has the authority to sin, and so we must work to make every order godly, to bring it into conformity to the every word of God, which is the only basis of authority.

End of tape