The Church and the Sacraments

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. EPHESIANS 5:25–26

This is the chapter on which Augustine’s readers most often part company. Catholics read him as a bishop of the one Catholic church, devoted to its unity, its sacraments and its altar, who could say that he would not believe the gospel unless the authority of the church moved him. Protestants read him as the great teacher of grace alone, who taught Luther and Calvin how to read Paul. Both are reading the same man. An old saying among Protestant scholars puts it well: the Reformation was, in a sense, the triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the church. That is a Protestant way of putting it, and a Catholic would put it differently. But it names the tension honestly, and the fairest thing this book can do is to let the whole Augustine speak.

A mixed field

Augustine’s thinking about the church was hammered out in a bitter African quarrel. In the great persecution of the early fourth century, some clergy had handed over copies of the Scriptures to the authorities to be burned. When one of them was said to have taken part in consecrating a bishop of Carthage, a party of rigorists refused to recognise him and set up a rival church. They came to be called Donatists, after one of their leaders. By Augustine’s day they were a large and powerful church across Africa, in many towns the larger of the two. They held that they alone were the pure church, that Catholic clergy were polluted, and that sacraments given by unworthy ministers were no sacraments at all. They rebaptised Catholics who joined them.

Augustine answered with two convictions that have shaped Christian thinking ever since. The first is that the church on earth is a mixed body. It contains wheat and tares, and it always will until the harvest. The church is holy, not because every member is holy, but because Christ is holy and is making it holy.

That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. EPHESIANS 5:27

The second is that the sacraments belong to Christ, not to the minister. In his homilies on John’s Gospel he makes the point unforgettably: whether Peter baptises or Judas baptises, it is Christ who baptises. The grace does not depend on the purity of the hand that pours the water. This is a great comfort to any believer who has discovered, painfully, that the minister who baptised him or taught him was not what he seemed. Christ was never absent.

Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism. EPHESIANS 4:3–5

Signs and grace

Augustine gave the Western church much of its language about sacraments. A sacrament, for him, is a sacred sign: a visible thing that points to and conveys an invisible grace. He is remembered for saying, in his homilies on John, that when the word is added to the element, it becomes a sacrament — the water of baptism is not just water, because the word of Christ comes to it. In the Enchiridion he explains that baptism signifies our death to sin and our rising with Christ to new life, whatever the age of the one baptised.

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ROMANS 6:4

On the Lord’s Supper, he spoke both of receiving the body and blood of Christ and of the sacrament as a sign whose reality is the unity of Christ’s body, the church. In a famous sermon to the newly baptised he told them, in effect, that they were receiving on the altar the mystery of what they themselves were. Catholic readers have found in him a strong sense of the real presence; Reformed readers have found in him their sacramental signs. Each has something to point to, and a fair reader will admit that he did not frame the question in the terms of the sixteenth century.

For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:17

Where Protestants will hesitate

There are places where Protestant readers will not follow him, and should say so without rancour. In the Enchiridion he teaches that the souls of the faithful dead may be helped by the offering of the sacrifice of the altar and by alms given on their behalf, and he raises, tentatively, the possibility that some believers pass through a kind of purgatorial fire after death — though he calls it a matter that may be inquired into and left doubtful. The Reformers rejected these teachings as lacking warrant in Scripture, and they were right to test them there. It is worth noticing, all the same, how tentative Augustine was, and that in the very same pages he insists that everything rests on the one Mediator and the free grace of God.

Two dark pages

Two parts of his teaching on the church must be named as plainly as possible. The first concerns infants. Believing that every child is born guilty in Adam, and that baptism washes away that guilt, Augustine concluded that infants who die unbaptised are lost. He softened it as far as he felt he could: the Enchiridion says that “the mildest punishment of all” will fall upon them. But it remains a hard conclusion, and many Christians in every tradition, including later Catholic teaching, have drawn back from it, trusting the mercy of the Lord who took children in His arms.

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. MARK 10:14

The second concerns coercion. For years Augustine held that the Donatists should be won by argument alone. Then, after imperial laws were passed against them and he saw towns return to Catholic unity, he changed his mind. In his letters he defended the use of fines, confiscations and exile, and he appealed to the words of the parable, compel them to come in (Luke 14:23). He pleaded with officials not to put Donatists to death, and he did not approve of cruelty. But the argument he built was used for a thousand years to justify the persecution of dissenters, and it is simply wrong. Christ does not build His church with the sword.

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight. JOHN 18:36

What remains

Take away what must be taken away, and a great deal remains. Augustine loved the church as a mother, bore with her imperfections, refused to leave her for a purer sect, and taught that her holiness is Christ’s. In an age of endless splits, that has something to say to every tradition.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 1 CORINTHIANS 3:16

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Have you been tempted to leave a church because its members are not holy enough? Weigh that against Christ’s patience with His mixed field.

2. If you were baptised or taught by someone who later failed, thank God that it was Christ who baptised you and Christ who was at work.

3. Come to the Lord’s Table next time remembering that you receive not only Christ but your belonging to His one body.

4. Where your tradition differs from Augustine’s, state the difference to yourself charitably and test it by Scripture rather than by party.

5. Examine whether you have ever wished to see those you disagree with forced into line. Repent of it, and pray for them instead.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You loved the church and gave Yourself for it, and You are making it holy though it is not holy yet.

Keep me from despising Your people for their faults, and from trusting in the purity of any minister rather than in You.

Forgive the church where it has tried to build Your kingdom with force, and keep me from that spirit.

Make us one bread and one body, washed and fed by You, until You present us to Yourself without spot or wrinkle. Amen.