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In his polemics against Donatism, Augustine makes a sharp distinction between the validity of the sacrament of baptism and the salvific efficacy of what it signifies. Efficacy is found not in the external sign but in the inner unity and peace of the church, outside of which there is no salvation. The efficacy of baptism, for both infants and adults, derives from the prayers of the one true church. Though the external sacrament itself is not efficacious, it is a necessary outward mark of this inner unity. Hence even infants are damned if they die without it, for all who are not united inwardly with Christ are united with Adam in the mass of damnation generated by original sin.

Although a first reading of Augustine's Commentary suggests that his purpose was simply to expound the meaning of the Letter to the Galatians line by line in a clear and concise manner, closer reading uncovers implicit polemic against Manicheism, Donatism, Arianism, and paganism. Nevertheless, Augustine's Commentary is not essentially polemical, but pastoral. Comparison with his monastic Rule demonstrates that the Commentary was written for Augustine's monastic community as its primary audience and that Augustine's immediate concern was to discover ways in which Paul's directives for Christian living could be implemented within that community. Success within the monastic community would enable Augustine as parish priest to implement Paul's directives within the wider community of his parishioners at Hippo and beyond.

The Donatist schism in North Africa had its origins in protests against compromise with the orders of Diocletian and centred on the validity of the clergy and sacraments of the compromising Church. Donatists were alternately harassed and tolerated by imperial governments, but were convinced that they were the true persecuted body of Christ. Donatist militants engaged in violent actions against pagan shrines. Opposition to Donatism was mobilized by Augustine and the Donatists were weakened by their support for imperial pretenders and by internal divisions. After a meeting at Carthage in 411, many Donatist laity moved towards the Catholic body. Controversy with the Donatists helped Augustine in defining his own concept of the Church.

This chapter returns to North Africa, the scene of violent struggle between the schismatic Donatists and the state-sponsored Catholics. It explores both how the Donatists sought to present themselves as the “Church of the Martyrs,” facing persecution from a Constantinian regime they believed to be Christian in name only, and also how Optatus, Augustine, and other bishops of the Catholic camp attempted to undermine Donatist claims to religious legitimacy by focusing on the violent conduct of the Circumcellions, Donatism's militant wing. The Donatist emphasis on martyrdom was sufficiently strong to produce on occasion behavior that others might regard as suicidal. The collapse of Donatism can be traced to the failure of the “Church of the Martyrs” to co-opt the power of that same state that it saw as “persecutor”.

This chapter provides a definition of Paganism and Christianity as they are used in the book. It discusses the continuity of the Pagan symbols and traditions (including games and celebrations) as they evolved after the Edict of Milan by Constantine until the Byzantine conquest of North Africa. It offers an account of the different facets of Late Antique Christianity in North Africa, with a discussion on the Donatist movements and the Circumcelliones; the data are almost exclusively textual and this makes it impossible to address the issues related to these movements in depth in the book. It concludes with a summary of the contexts of the book.

This chapter illustrates how the history of the early Christian church was not an abstruse subject during the eighteenth century but a topical one. For the primitive church remained the standard for both orthodoxy and orthopraxis well into the eighteenth century. This chapter demonstrates how that was the case by focusing especially on two pieces by Zachary Grey — his Examination of the fourteenth chapter of Sir Isaac Newton’s observations upon the prophecies of Daniel (1736) and his Short history of the Donatists (1741). Grey’s engagement with Netwon’s work on prophecy centred osn Newton’s treatment of saints and of God’s nature. In writing about these subjects, Newton had aimed to show that the post-fourth-century church was infested with theological impurities; Grey’s rejoinder aimed to show that the eighteenth-century Church of England understood both the saints and God’s nature in a primitively pure way. Grey’s treatment of the ancient Donatist heresy similarly related to contemporary concerns. For he tried to show that Methodism was not novel but, instead, a revival of an ancient heretical sect which had almost rent asunder the fourth-century North African church.

Chapter 7 narrates the adventures of Melania, Pinian, and Albina as they left the Italian peninsula, encountering danger in their sea travel, first to Sicily. In Sicily, a favored location for the estates of Roman aristocrats, Melania gathered sixty women, slave and free, to join her in ascetic practices. Whether Melania’s estate was as lush as the Villa del Casale at Piazza Armerina remains unknown. From Sicily also comes the ascetic treatise On Riches (probably by a Pelagian author), the most scathing critique of wealth from late antiquity. Roman Christian aristocrats, including Melania and her circle, expressed considerable interest in the Pelagian branch of Christianity, away from which bishop Augustine of Hippo tried to steer them. From Sicily, the trio left for agriculturally rich Roman North Africa before the end of 410. On one of their North African estates, Melania built monasteries, developed her ascetic practices, and enriched local churches. North African Christians in this era were divided between Donatist and Catholic factions; pagans and Manicheans were also present. To service the area’s agricultural production, vast numbers of slaves and seasonal laborers were needed. The trio lived in North Africa for seven years before departing for Jerusalem.

In internecine Christian struggles, differences and disagreements existing within Christianity were taken as deviance and heresy. Heresy and orthodoxy are relational concepts, which means that they are defined in relation to one another. Orthodoxy and heresy are best seen as a process in which councils and bishops set the boundaries of the norm and the deviant. On the one hand, church leaders reduced the variety of rival Christian groups to a single collective term of ‘heretics’. On the other hand, councils and legislators were almost obsessed in their care in naming, listing, and classifying specific heretical inclinations. This chapter introduces three heresies as examples of the construction of deviance. ‘Arianism’ represents the mechanisms by which doctrinal disagreements were deduced into a fundamental heresy. ‘Donatism’ stands for local disagreements that ecclesiastical leaders at first categorized as a schism but later defined as a heresy. ‘Pelagianism’ exemplifies the competition for resources between Christian groups.

The Introduction offers a brief overview of the rationale behind writing this book and clarifies significant issues which must be addressed before proceeding. In particular, it explains why the apocalyptic predictions of a long-dead ecclesial community are worth investigating, as well as reasons why this topic has not been extensively studied in the past. A brief overview of the following chapters follows, as well as a note on the chronological boundaries of the project. In addition, the Introduction clarifies significant terms which appear throughout the text, including the use of the word “apocalyptic” and attendant vocabulary and neutral terminology for the two opposing North African ecclesial factions.

Chapter 1 focuses on the ways in which Donatist appeals to the apocalyptic have been understood by those outside the dissident communion. Four patterns in particular are discussed. In the militant rhetoric of its early opponents, Donatist eschatological claims were dismissed as evidence of “madness.” By the nineteenth century, Donatists were no longer seen as madmen, but their apparent preoccupation with the end of the world caused many to brand them as anachronistic in an age of Christian emperors. Later reassessments would attempt to link apocalyptic rhetoric with socioeconomic protest against Roman oppression or attempt to downplay apocalyptic motifs altogether.

This chapter contextualizes the central question of this book from three perspectives. The first perspective is the anti-Gnostic Alexandrinian tradition, and its discourse on the pedagogical function of divine judgement. The book addresses the question of how Augustine’s developing thought on grace and judgement relates to this tradition. The second context in which the research is situated is the context of philosophical psychagogy. Augustine learned about this psychagogical tradition via Cicero and the Neoplatonists. How does he relate to this tradition when he speaks about the administration of divine and human discipline? A third context is that of Augustine research itself. First, the chapter briefly describes the discussion concerning the development of Augustine’s doctrine of grace. Second, it sketches the conversation on the historical and theological roots of Augustine’s justification of state-sponsored coercion against the Donatists.