Friday, July 17, 2015

"whoever despises the discipline of the church, so as to abstain from warning, correcting, censuring, and yes also separating from participation in the sacraments the evil persons in whose sins he does not participate and whom he does not applaud, sins not with the evil of another, but with his own."

"For this reason, too, whoever despises the discipline of the church, so as to abstain from warning, correcting, censuring, and yes also [(etiam)] separating from participation in the sacraments the evil persons in whose sins he does not participate and whom he does not applaud (although [(etsi)] he tolerates them and the peace of the Church allows for this), sins not with the evil of another, but with his own."

"Quapropter quisquis etiam contempserit ecclesiae disciplinam, ut malos cum quibus non peccat et quibus non fauet desistat monere corripere arguer, etsi talem personam gerit et pax ecclesiae patitur etiam a sacramentorum participation separare, non alieno malo peccat sed suo."

     St. Augustine, Contra epistulam Parmeniani libri tres III.i.2, translation mine.  The Latin as reproduced in Œuvres de Saint Augustine 28 =4th ser. (Traités anti-Donatistes), vol. 1, translated into French by G. Finaert, introduction & notes by Yves M.-J. Congar (Paris:  Desclée de Brouwer, 1963), pp. 386-389 =CSEL 51, ed. M. Petschenig (1908), p. 100, ll. 2 ff.
     What is fascinating about this is that it occurs in a specifically anti-Donatist context in which a concern for "the peace of the Church" (pax ecclesiae) predominates and 1 Cor 5:13 is interpreted in an anti-Donatist fashion as "Drive the evil out of yourselves"!  That this is the case is rendered even more obvious by the paragraph that follows (translated from the French rather than the Latin for the most part, that final sentence only excepted):
Negligence in such a matter is a grave fault in and of itself.  And this is why, if he follows the counsel of the Apostle and removes the evil from his own heart, he will drive out not only the audacity of evil-doing and the weakness of complicity, but also the slowness to correct and the reluctance to punish, while also observing prudence and th[at] obedience to the Master that prevents one from rooting up the good wheat.  If it is with this thought [in mind] that one tolerates the tare in the midst of the wheat, and if he removes from himself the evil of which the tare is guilty [(en ôte de soi-même le mal)], he is not rendered an accomplice of the tare.  [Rather,] he is cognizant of it and judges it by waiting for a while, for he does not know what will happen on the morrow. In this way is punished also whatever a necessary severity is obliged to punish, but by a love severe[, albeit] not hopeless of correction [(et ideo dilectione seruata non sine spe correctionis uindicandum est quidquid etiam cogit necessaria seueritas uindicari)].     
     Congar on p. 741:  "A part of the argumentation [here] bears on the sense given to malum:  with Parmenianus [himself], probably, Augustine understands, then, by this word, not the perverse man [(le mauvais)], but the perversity [(le mal)]. . . . In reality, St. Paul wrote 'le mauvais', τὸν πονηρὸν.  This is true for Deuteronomy as well, which [Augustine] cites:  13:6, 17:7, 22:21.  In Retract[ationes] II.17, . . . Augustine reestablished the true sense according to the Greek, which speaks of the evil man, and not of the evil.  He adds that even in taking the first sense the response to Parmenianus retains its value.  He was in fact dependent on the discipline of the Church, and it is th[e discipline of the Church] that aims to realize the warning of St. Paul."


No comments: