Purify Your Bride

For in the holy books where Christ the Lord is revealed, his Church is also made known.

But, though the Donatists come to know Christ only in the scriptures, with an amazing blindness they do not recognize his Church through the authority of the divine writings but design their own church through the vanity of human lies.

3. They recognize Christ along with us when we read, They have pierced my hands and my feet; they have numbered all my bones. But they saw me and looked upon me. They have divided for themselves my clothes, and they cast lots for my tunic. (Psalm 22:17-19)
But they refuse to recognize the Church in what follows a little later, All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will adore in his sight, for kingship belongs to the Lord, and he will have dominion over the nations (Psalm 22:28-29).

They recognize Christ along with us when we read, The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you (Psalm 2:7). But they refuse to recognize the Church in what follows, Ask me, and I shall give you the nations as your heritage and the ends of the earth as your possession (Psalm 2:8 ). They recognize Christ along with us in what the Lord says in the gospel, It was necessary that Christ suffer and rise from the dead on the third day (Luke 24:46). But they refuse to recognize the Church in what follows: And that repentance be preached in his name through all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Luke 24:47).

And countless are the testimonies of the holy books, which I should not squeeze into this book.

Augustine is so strong against the schismatic Donatists it is amazing that so many schismatic protestants respect him so much. I blogged about this before from a different angle looking at the question of whether heresy is a good enough reason to start a new church. Augustine said it was not. This is a bit different. Here he sees a parallel between Jews accepting Moses and rejecting Jesus and schismatics accepting Jesus and rejecting His church. Augustine thinks the NT talk about the Catholic church is just as clear as the OT talk about Jesus. That does not mean someone who does not want to see it won’t be able to miss it.

This makes a lot of sense to me. The act of accepting the church was a step of faith just like the act of accepting Jesus was so many years earlier. It was, by grace, accepting more of God and therefore the parts of me that contradicted God were more obvious. So major rethinking and repentance was required. There was a long period where it was totally rational. But then there was a time to surrender.