Who Were They?
The Donatists
Revelation 2:8-11
8And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write;
These things saith the first and the last, which was
dead, and is alive; 9I know thy works, and
tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I
know the blasphemy of them which say they are
Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.
10Fear none of those things which thou shalt
suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into
prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have
tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death,
and I will give thee a crown of life. 11He that hath
an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of
the second death.
[Oldfield]
… I’d like to take you back to our first lessons in this
series. I pointed out that God originally created
an homogenous society – where every aspect of life
was firmly knitted with every other aspect of life.
And of course, at the center of all things
was Jehovah. But then along came sin, with its
thoroughly disruptive tendencies. Satan drove a
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wedge between Adam, Eve, and the Lord, when he
convinced the woman to disobey God, and Adam
willingly followed her. After their expulsion from
the garden, despite the simplicity of the original
family society, sin continued to create disunity – to
the point of murder – fratricide. Ever since Eden,
man has been trying to recreate a monolithic,
homogenous society, uniting religion, politics,
education, economics, and even recreation, but at its
root was sin. And the leaders involved often
resorted to force and violence to accomplish their
goals.
In our second or third lesson, I tried to show
that Bible
Christianity
acknowledged the heterogenous nature of life on
earth. Christ
taught His
disciples
that
they
should render unto Caesar the things that belonged
to Caesar while still rendering unto God the things
that belong to Him. Christ teaches us to realize that
while we live in a godless world, we are not
citizens of this world. Christ is certainly a King –
our King – but He forbids us to pick up swords or
rifles to defend Him or to extend His kingdom. There
will be a day – coming relatively soon – when He
will establish His own thousand-year, homogenous
society, but it is not our job to do it for Him. Zionistic
Jews are wrong, and so are Zionistic Christians.
Christian evangelism is not designed to be culture-
creatin g; it is culture-influencing. Evangelism will
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not unite the disunited United States; it will divide
people as it has done for two millennia. The New
Testament doesn’t
prophesy a
Christian-
world overthrowing the
Satanic-world. Wherever
the gospel is preached, some people walk
away redeemed and looking for the return of our
King, but far more often people will walk away lost
and rebellious. Those two people may live as next-
door-neighbors, but they are very different people.
Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send peace
on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For
I am come to set a man at variance against his father,
and the daughter against her mother, and the
daughter in law against her mother in law. And a
man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” This
is exactly what we see in looking at the history of
early Christianity.
Following the New Testament – during the first
three centuries of the Christian era, we see the on-
going struggle between Christ and Satan – Bible
Christianity and paganism and fallen Christendom.
We see the disrupting influence of sin within the
churches and schools of Christianity. And we see
the hatred of the world against the true saints of
God.
At the beginning of the 4th century, the world was
drastically changed.
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A cataclysmic event took place in the Roman
Empire’s union with professing Christendom. As
early as the year 250, Origin, leader of the school in
Alexandria, was saying – “If now the entire Roman
Empire should unite in the adoration of the true God,
then the Lord would fight for her, and she would slay
more enemies than Moses did in his day.” He was
hinting
that making
Rome
a
homogenous “Christian” society would be a good
thing. He was advocating a “holy” Roman Empire.
But then Emperor Diocletian unleashed the worst
persecution against the Christians history had ever
seen. Thousands of genuine Christians, refusing to
recognize that he was god, and wishing to worship
Christ died under his wrath. Thousands of others
recanted their declarations of faith in Christ,
returning
to
the
heathen
fold.
Eventually,
when Diocletian decided to retire as Emperor, there
was a struggle for Empirical control. To make a
long story short, one of the participants in that
struggle, Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus
Augustus – “Constantine” for short – made a play
for the throne. In the year 303, he looked up into the
sky and saw clouds forming a cross, and he thought
he heard the words “in hoc signo vinces” – “in this
sign conquer.” On that day, he chose to make
the religion of Jesus his own religion and to kill
others
in
the
name
of
Christ. When he
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eventually became Emperor, Christendom became
the only recognized religion of the Empire.
You might be able to imagine the joy that filled
the hearts
of
the
suffering
Christians. Now beyond the
periodic
official tolerance,
there
was a
guarantee that persecution had come to an end. Not only that, but the sword was turned against the
pagan worshipers. Over the next few decades, it
became a capital crime to burn candles or incense to
the old idols. Gathering and teaching in the name of
the old religions was forbidden. Those who had not
already been baptized, were commanded to
attend catechism classes, so they could know what it
was they had to believe. And those who refused to
be baptized at the conclusion of those classes were
put to death. Constantine was trying to create a
homogenous Christian society, at the top of which
was himself. You can easily imagine that the so-
called
Christian
churches
were
instantly
filling with people who were no more Christians
than the man in the moon.
Less than ten years after the rise of Constantine
began the Donatist rebellion or Donatist agitation.
At this point, I need to warn you against believing
everything you read about the Donatists. I didn’t
check this out, because I have a dozen histories in my
library, but if you google the word “Donatist” I
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wouldn’t be surprised if the first references all
castigate these
people. The
reason would
be
because their histories were written primarily
by biased Catholic historians. And among the
Protestants, many continued to be particularly
virulent against them. David Benedict, the American
Baptist
historian
from
the
early
19th century refused to
call
the Donatists “Baptists,” because of what he had
read of them. But then he began his own
independent study of history, and eventually he
wrote and published a book called “A History of the
Donatists” in which he completely reversed his
earlier statements.
The Donatists could be seen in North Africa by the
year 311. But the use of that name came a
generation after their historical appearance. The title
arose from their connection to the bishop of
Carthage in 347. There were two good men, both
with the name Donatus. While Diocletian was
wrecking havoc against the Lord’s churches, many
Christians were choosing to die than to give up their
scriptures to be burned. Mensuruis, then bishop in
Carthage,
began describing some
Christians
as “suicides” rather than “martyrs” and denouncing
those suffered death while taking a stand for the
truth. And when the persecution ended, he welcomed
home, those who “traditors” who had saved their
lives by sacrificing their Bibles and their testimonies.
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One
such
man
was Caecilianus,
who
eventually replaced Mensuruis as pastor of the
Carthage church.
One who objected to this election was Donatus, and
he was able to bring the church to its senses and
Caecilianus and the Catholics were put out of the
church. Pastor Donatus then became known as an
enemy by Augustine and the Roman party. Donatus
denied that the emperor or the bishop of Rome
had any authority over his church or her doctrines.
When Rome
retaliated and
began persecuting
Donatus, other true churches in Africa rallied around
him. Bishop Petilian, another target of Augustine,
wrote, “Think you to serve God by killing us? Ye err,
if ye, poor portals think this; God has not hangmen
for
priests.” Another
Donatist
pastor, Gaudentius wrote: “God appointed prophets
and fishermen, not princes and soldiers, to spread
the faith.” Donatist pastor Petilian instantly saw that
there
was no
difference between
the persecutions which the pagans had poured upon
God’s people and those which the Catholics were
hurling at them. For those who aren’t
aware, Augustine of the Algerian city of Hippo, is
considered to be one of the key leaders in
the development of Roman Catholicism by the
Roman Catholics.
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Just as it was with the Novatians, the enemies of the
Donatists have claimed that they arose out of
jealousy and spite.
What did those persecuted Donatists believe?
Their enemies claimed that the Donatists held
to infant baptism. How is that possible when they tenaciously
clung
to
a converted
church
membership? How is that possible when they
demanded
that only
believers
could
be
immersed. Even the Protestant historians like the
Episcopalian Long, says that they refused infant
baptism. Baptizing
babies and believer’s
baptism with
a
regenerated
membership
are mutually exclusive. D’Anvers, wrote a book on
baptism in which he said that Augustine’s third and
fourth books against the Donatists proved that
they denied infant baptism, which he maintained
against with great zeal.
Crespin, a French historian summarized them as
believing – “First, for purity of church members, by
asserting that none ought to be admitted into the
church but such as are visibly true believers and true
saints. Secondly, for purity of church discipline.
Thirdly, for the independency of each church.
Fourthly, they baptized again those whose first
baptism they had reason to doubt. They were
consequently termed rebaptizers and Anabaptists.”
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David Benedict, rather than reading the Protestant
historians went back to Augustine and Optatus, who
both hated the Donatists, quoted them to say that the
Donatists rejected the growing acceptance of infant
baptism. One explanation for their successful stand,
was their congregational church government,
rejecting the
Roman
hierarchy of
bishops,
archbishops and the Potifex Maximus – the Pope.
They received their doctrine straight from the
Bible, not from headquarters.
Heman Lincoln, was a Baptist historian who often
disagreed with Benedict, but in this case, he
wrote: “It is evident that the Donatists held, at some
period of their history, many of the principles which
are regarded as axioms by modern Baptists. In their
later history, after a stern discipline of persecution,
they maintained, as cardinal truths, absolute
freedom of conscience, the divorce of church and
state, and a regenerate church membership. These
principles, in whose defense they endured
martyrdom coupled with their uniform practice of
immersion bring them into close affinity with
Baptists.”
Dupin, a Roman Catholic, wrote: “The Donatists
maintained that the true church ought to consist of
none but holy and just men. They confessed that bad
might be mixed with the good in the church, but only
as secret sinners, not as open offenders.”
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Edward Gibbon, one of the greatest historians who
ever lived – a secular historian – tied the Donatists to
the Novatians and to the earlier Montanists. He said
that the Donatists refused the fellowship of those
who had delivered “the Holy Scriptures to the
officers of Diocletian” – the traditors. The Protestant
historian Mosheim agreed
with
Gibbon. Neander agreed with both those men and
added that they were contending for “unalienable
human rights – liberty of conscience and the rights
of free religious conviction.” He also tied them to
the Novatian moment. They claimed not to be
starting a new kind of church but continuing one
origination in the time of Christ. He said that they
opposed the Catholic church with its state
support. When Rome tried to assimilate their
churches Donatus replied, “What has the emperor to
do with the church?” And rather surprisingly,
Protestant Neander editorialized, “The
principle
expressed in those words of Donatus, that the church
and state should be kept whole separate from each
other,” identified the principle upon which their
opposition was founded.
Robinson wrote, “At the beginning of the fifth
century… there were in Africa at least four hundred
congregations of Anabaptists, called from Donatus,
the name of two of the most eminent of their
teachers.” They had dissented from the Roman
church two hundred years before this time. The
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Donatists baptized by dipping on a profession of a
particular faith. They thought the Romans had
ceased to be Christian churches on account of their
immorality, they did not hold their baptism valid, and
they rebaptized every one that quitted the Roman
communion to join theirs. Their notion was
that churches ought to consist only of good
men. They were truly and literally Anabaptists, or
re-dippers. It is a violation of all history to say that
the first Anabaptists came out of the 16th century
reformation. As we have seen, from the second
century, those who baptized again those who came to
them from the corrupted churches were called
anabaptists.
I.K. Cross summarizes his chapter on the Donatists
saying: “The Montanists, Novatians and Donatists
worked together without a breach of fellowship. Let
us now list some of the things they held in common
that distinguished them. 1. They were not charged
with being unorthodox as far as the basic doctrines
were concerned. 2. Their churches were independent
and self-governing. 3. They practiced strict church
discipline, holding that church members should be
pure, and were, as a result, called cathari. 4. They
rebaptized those who came to them from other
communions, in their case the Catholics, and were
called anabaptists. 5. They practiced adult baptism,
receiving into their churches only those who were old
enough to receive Jesus Christ as their Savior,
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referred to commonly as believer’s baptism. 6. They
totally rejected the union of church and state. 7. A
simple form of church government. 8. Free speech in
their congregations. 9. They accepted the Scriptures
as absolute authority. These are certainly Baptist
distinctives, as distinct from the badly corrupted
Catholic church of those days.
In
one
of
the