Give a concise summary of the issues at stake in the Donatist controversy.

Ostensibly, the Donatist controversy concerns two issues. The first deals with the nature or grounds for any justification of schism from the church. This probes the claim that, at some level, the church is called into a communion with God that is unbreakable from a human point of view being given by the grace of God in Christ. To leave the church is to leave grace, putting the sovereignty of God into question and adding a semi-Pelagian understanding of salvation (pp 444-446). The second issue deals with the conception of holiness in the Christian life, meaning what constitutes the grounds for abnegating one's salvation. Of course, there are a litany of sub-issues to be probed in this definition including the nature of election, justification and sanctification and the ecclesiological concern that springs from these concerning the nature of the communion of saints and their reflection or participation in God's perfection. Once more there is a quasi-Pelagian sub-text in that it is assumed at some level that the ecclesia must demonstrate evidences of its unique relationship to God. For the Donatists a key evidence is the willingness to endure persecution and that those who failed to endure demonstrated a lack of membership in the church. These individuals, lapsed Christians, needed to be re-baptized having invalidated their previous baptism by their action of unfaith. Of course, the flashpoint was not the ordinary Christian but those bishops who had been traditores.

The Donatist insistence of purity, seen in their claim that the Catholics had polluted themselves by allowing lapsed bishops to perform the sacraments (including ordination) betrays an understanding of the church as presently a true reflection of God's holiness or purity. Of course, the problem here is the confusion of sanctification with God's own holiness, a collapse of Christology into ecclesiology. There is a sense of the church being a 'heaven' carved out of fallen matter and the saints as perfected. The semi-Pelagian tone is the fact that this understanding can call for a purposed lifestyle of holiness, usurping God's grace. The Catholics, notably Augustine, argued that the church, this side of heaven, is a corpus permixtum of those fallen and hoping for grace in Christ. The parable of the tares, for Augustine, provided an example of just such a community to be sorted out by God. Augustine was arguing that the church, while given to share in God's holiness through Christ, is still a place of sin, which was the reason for Christ in the first instance. For him, Christ makes the church holy, but this is finalized only at the close of human history. Holiness is an attribute of Christ, not of the pilgrim church. Augustine is clear to separate any confusion of divinity, even in the church, with humanity (except that in Christ) in order to protect God's sovereignty in election and grace. The controversy's terms may change but the basic theological parameters concerning the nature of the church as fallen and/or sanctified remains a major issue in ecclesiology with many 'schismatic' groups adopting a Donatist position on holiness over what was perceived as a compromised ecclesiology.

What is important to note, however, is that despite there being very clear doctrinal issues in the original dispute, the controversy was not schismatic in the sense of disparate core doctrine. The Donatist controversy is not a schism due to direct doctrinal contention but an internal schism concerned with the nature of the church's membership and behavior. There are deeply theological issues touching the core of theology such as the nature of God's gracious action but these were played out in a forum of basic agreement as to the shape of the Christian message. The Donatist controversy, while lamentable, is an in-house, recurring theological problem in which a misplaced stress on subsistent doctrines such as ecclesiology threatens to undermine the central core of Christian theology in Trinity and Christology.

Augustine of Hippo wrote of the Christian church being like a hospital. Why?

It is Augustine's conviction, explored above, that the church is a 'mixed body' of sinners on a pilgrimage towards the heavenly city that underlies his comment. Theologically, Augustine refers the ultimate adjudication of salvation to the exclusive purview of a gracious and sovereign God. In this sense, Augustine follows the later Reformation distinction of 'invisible and visible' church, with the later including all manner of sinners in various positions along the road to God (p 483). Like a hospital, some await diagnosis of their condition while others are diagnosed and hopeful of an excellent prognosis towards health. As well, in a hospital there are only the sick and the healing, so in the church there are only the sick and the healing in their relationship to God. Finally, the church is like a hospital in that it too is a place to which people go in hope of an accurate diagnosis of their illness and a treatment that points towards health. Through the sacraments and ministry of the Word people in the church can have their illness diagnosed and through those instruments God begins the process of healing to be completed in the life-to-come.

The doctrine of the church is often described as the 'Achilles' heel of the Reformation.' Why?

The fact that the initial magisterial reformers understood their break from Roman Catholicism as temporary or pending reformation therein meant that early reformers such as Luther never truly articulated a theology of the church apart from in an ad hoc occasional fashion (and some think this more than sufficient). It was only in the second generation of reformers, aware of the reality of a failed ecumenical movement even amongst the magisterial Protestants and aware of the radical wing, which began to formulate a theology of the church in an explicit manner. However, the 'Protestant problematic' (Karl Rahner) remains a major issue, even after such a move to a positive non-reactionary attempt to found a theology of the church. The 'Protestant problematic' is the inherent trajectory towards schism whenever a group thinks the church has corrupted itself or failed in an accurate understanding of Christian community and Christian proclamation. Luther's basis for breaking from the institutional Catholic church was on just such grounds. The corruption of the Christian witness and ministry of grace, he felt, meant that adherence, membership and allegiance shifted from the corrupted external structure of charisms and offices (as sacrament see pp 487-488) towards a loose alliance of like-minded individuals who in turn fulfill those charisms and offices appropriately. Rahner's comment is that this ineluctably leads to a continual splintering or schism as 'cells' break away from a broader ecclesial consensus in favor of particular doctrinal stresses. The proofs of history, and especially the initial radical movements, seem to give credence to his argument.

Calvin tried to breech this problematic by articulating two theological arguments in favour of determining the identity of the Church. The 'marks of the true church' were to be the preaching of the Word of God and the proper administration of the sacraments. Any governmental structure is secondary to these 'marks' and can vary in form but not in function. The function of any governmental system is to promote the freedom of the church to engage in its task of preaching and sacrament. To this he added the notion of the 'visible and invisible' church to explain why the Christian should remain in fellowship with a particular congregation despite apparent weaknesses in praxis and perhaps even secondary doctrine. Calvin is unique in acknowledging that church discipline or holiness is not a mark of the true church. For Calvin, the true church is the place of preaching and sacramental life used mediately by God for the purposes of salvation (p 489). Calvin is able to avoid the direct predication of churchly forms to any notion of authenticity. Even so, Calvin's broad definition can lead to the 'Protestant problematic' as its twin marks in preaching the true gospel and sacrament, in themselves, are multiplex and interpreted across Christian denominational lines in very different ways. In fairness to Roman Catholicism, the institutional form of charisms and offices, given a notion of consensus of the faithful (see Vatican II pp 491-494), can abrogate this intrinsic centrifugal force in Protestantism.

'How can anyone speak of one church, when there are dozens of Christian denominations?' Summarize and assess the answers that could be given to this objection.

The unity of the church has been understood in several ways, in regard to its holiness, commonality in witness and commonality in origin. These correspond to the creedal 'one holy catholic and apostolic church'. To think of the term 'holy' in terms of present state of being is to fall into the trap of the Donatist controversy. Holiness in the above definition follows the Biblical understanding of holiness being lent by God, properly belonging only to God. To be holy was to be 'set aside' by God for God's purposes. The church, then, is the place in which God 'lends' holiness, initiates relationship with humanity, and sets it aside so as to enjoy the communion of God. The church is separated by God for God in order to witness to that originating holiness. That the church is 'catholic' is to refer to that second point of its holiness, namely the church as the place of witness to the originating holiness or call of God in Christ. To be 'catholic' is to join in the trans-temporal, trans-cultural and trans-spatial communion of all those who have engaged in witness to God as found in the apostolic church. The importance of the apostolic church is that it was the communion commissioned by Jesus Christ for the purpose of proclaiming and manifesting the continued ministry of Jesus Christ. Although some interpret apostolicity in terms of forms, it is generally thought to be a manifestation of mission with forms merely aids to that commission.

Unity is the sum total of holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. These three 'marks' of union have little to do, in theory, with forms and institutions that tend to mark denominational differences. Nor is it the case that specific 'doctrines', specifically sacramental ones, need be points of disagreement as sacraments are usually understood by sacramental churches as aids to mission, not as supplanting the mission itself. This has been the backbone of much ecumenical work over the last decades, the commonality of being set apart, in the work of the apostles, for the work of the church in proclaiming the reality of God's love in Christ to all peoples, places and ages.

'How can the church be holy, when it is full of sinners?' What answers could be given to this question?

Much of the patristic-Protestant answer to this question is found in the sections above dealing with the Donatist controversy and the 'Protestant problematic'. The Roman Catholic answer, therefore, seems to be a new way of understanding the question. For scholars such as Edward Schillebeeckx and Karl Rahner the answer is found in the understanding that the church exists 'sacramentally' (meaning as a sign of God's presence or grace). As a sacrament the material bears witness to the spiritual, not in an immediate manner but in a mediate manner. By this Rahner in particular adds an important caveat, which is important for our purposes, being the 'eschatological' dimension of the church. Rahner understands the church as a real manifestation of Christ's presence in the world declaring God's saving will with structures that are important to but not constrictive on or definitive to that initial call to being or spiritual presence. This is the eschatological component of the church; it is only complete or in union (the beatific vision) when history has closed. Until then, the church is 'partial' or mixed and must accommodate itself to new historical structures in order to fulfil its sacramental mission. In a sense, Rahner's eschatological proviso functions to demonstrate the 'fallenness' of the church in that it is not a hindrance to its mission but actually serves to demonstrate (as in Barth (p 489)) that the church is constituted on grounds outside of its intrinsic institutional structures and historical situation (although he does think of it in terms of a 'primordial sacrament (p 488) which many are justifiably nervous). Part of this 'historical situation' is the fallenness of its members, overcome by the 'event' (Barth again) of the Spirit, which prevents the church from lapsing from its vocation and mission. The holiness of the church is nothing more or less than its relation to Christ, and the church's elevation into that holiness.