The fact of the matter is that he used the power of the state to do evil to the Donatists. What he did was objectively evil. He justified the evil in his own mind, appealing to whatever extrinsic circumstances he wanted to use to justify it. Purity of the Church is no excuse. Jesus did not admonish us to persecute and kill our enemies but to love and to pray for them.
My charge of Augustine's Moral Relativism was in response to T.L. Sinks post in which he chided the Medieval Church for claiming that they did not burn any heretics, but turned the heretics over to the state for disposal.
Times were different then, huh AJ? Well if you can claim that something evil by objective standards can be excused because of extrinsic factors (everybody's doing it), then your morality is relative to your times and seasons. Hence Augustine was a moral relativist. And those who defend his actions because of the times and seasons are likewise moral relativists.
BTW, AJ, is it possible for you to make a point on these threads without tossing out an insult or two?
I don't think you understand the implications of what you're saying (more anon), but I'm not advocating civil penalties for heretics, so this is all mostly unnecessary.
Times were different then, huh AJ? Well if you can claim that something evil by objective standards can be excused because of extrinsic factors (everybody's doing it), then your morality is relative to your times and seasons. Hence Augustine was a moral relativist. And those who defend his actions because of the times and seasons are likewise moral relativists.
1) I'm not sure exactly how I'm expected to reply to comments like this without calling them stupid. After a certain point, it seems a waste to make any deeper reply.
In #44, I said, "He'd be wrong [in his defense], but not a relativist."
What part of "wrong" strikes you as an appeal to everyone else doing it? Or any kind of defense? Did you read #44 at all?
2) But even as stupid as your attack on ME was, you then actually said, "Hence Augustine..." Augustine was born in 354 and died in 430. I'm writing in 2005. So what can *my life* possibly prove about Augustine? He was already long dead a thousand years ago!
3) I repeat: Augustine defended his position as right on general principles. This can be wrong, but not relativist. Let it be noted that the Circumcellions, at least, really did need to be suppressed.
4) If an act which would be evil apart from other considerations cannot be defended by "extrinsic factors", such as what the victim had been up to, we need to abolish the legal system. Or will you try to explain why heresy isn't an extrinsic factor but crime is? But that assumes heresy isn't illegal. The whole dispute between Augustine and us is over whether that ought to be the case.
Or more accurately, crime is a factor extrinsic to the acts themselves which make locking a person up, taking his money, or killing him lawful for the magistrate to do. Why one set of factors, but not another? That's the dispute, and it calls for political philosophy, not glib stuff about relativism. (And for the record, the answer should be something that applies everywhere and always, and should not include heresy as a civil crime.)