Now that the pandemic has passed, it might be helpful to look back at one of the arguments we had to contend with during the time of the lockdowns. A good number of people even in the Missouri Synod held that it was only proper for us to obey the government’s orders to close our doors and not hold services because of the Fourth Commandment, and that since we were not being directly commanded to sin, therefore, the argument goes, we should dutifully obey.

The Donatist controversy that raged throughout the 4th century is informative. The catalyst for that controversy had been a fierce debate over how people had reacted during the time of persecution a few years before Christianity gained a protected status in the year 313. For about two years prior to the ascendency of Constantine, during the years a.d. 303-305, the “Great Persecution” began under Diocletian, during which many Christians were imprisoned and martyred. The immediate cause of this persecution was that leading Christian churchmen had been ordered to hand over their Scriptures and Sacred Books under the threat of this persecution. Some complied with the order and some refused. Those who complied became known as the traditores (i.e. traitors, from traditor, to hand over), because they had handed over the books the government demanded. When the persecution ended with the ascendency of Constantine to the throne, this controversy emerged. What was to be done with these traditores now? One Bishop in particular, Mensurius of Carthage, had been accused of being a traditor, but his defense was that he had actually handed over no sacred books at all, merely some heretical ones he didn’t want in his library anyway, and the ruse had worked; so no harm, no foul. But this failed to placate the strict party who insisted that anything short of utter refusal to comply was an offense against Christ. When Mensurius died, his supportive archdeacon Caecilian was to become his successor, which further enraged the strict party. In the first place, one of them was the wealthy and influential Lady Lucilla who already disapproved of him because he had rebuked her excessive devotion to a relic. Secondly, the chief officiant at the ceremony of his consecration was one Felix of Aptunga, himself an alleged traditor. And third and most egregiously, the ceremony was held in haste, to the chagrin of the bishops of Numidia who found that it was over before they even arrived. In response, at the behest of Lady Lucilla, these 70 bishops themselves consecrated her chaplain Majorinus as a rival Bishop of Carthage, thus creating a schism. The matter was reported to Constantine, who accepted Caecilian and rejected the strict party’s argument that now included an insistence that none of the sacramental actions of one deemed a traditor had ever been valid, and those who had been thus baptized needed to be baptized again, legitimately. But at the Edict of Milan of 313 which gave protection to the Christian Church, Constantine notably excluded the followers of Majorinus. The rebels naturally complained, and the matter was finally adjudicated at the Council of Arles in 314 which confirmed the consecration of Caecilian and condemned the rebels, who became known as the Donatists, after Donatus, successor to Majorinus who had supported their cause. Against them the council affirmed that heretical baptisms were nonetheless to be considered valid, even those conducted by a traditor, because the worthiness of the officiant does not alter the character of the sacrament.

The Donatists continued to protest to Constantine, but to no avail. In 316 he rejected them again and began to use force against them, ordering their churches to be confiscated and sentencing their leaders to exile. In 320 he allowed them back, but in the same year they were dealt another blow when another investigation showed conclusively that even some of their own leaders had themselves been traditores.

But the Donatists nevertheless continued on their course, which by this time had taken on the flavor of a culture war, as it attracted lower classes of citizens against landowners and natives against Roman intruders. Soon they began to engage in forceful measures of their own, as bands of circumcelliones took to rioting in the streets with clubs and the war-cry Laus Deo (praise be to God). Campaigns of Constans, the son and successor of Constantine, both threated and cajoled them, but without success, and there even arose the slogan quid imperatori cum ecclesia? (what has the emperor to do with Church?). Constans finally managed to repel them from the country and silence the rest, and peace was declared at Carthage in 348.

But under the reign of Julian, which began in 361, the exiled Donatists were again allowed to return, and became the majority party for the next 30 years, until the time Augustine famously entered the scene. Under his capable rhetorical and theological leadership the Catholic party finally succeeded in bringing about another council at Carthage in which the Donatists were stripped of all civil and ecclesiastical rights. Reduced to severe separatism, they began to disappear from public view, although managing to survive into the 7th century.

For our purposes here, as we consider the past two years of our various ways of contending with lockdowns, we note first of all that In spite of the acrimony and notoriously violent character of the Donatist controversy, there were some matters both sides consistently agreed on. No one ever believed that the true traditores had been in the right. The question was not whether they had a legitimate excuse for their actions, but rather what was to be done with them after the persecution had passed.  And yet the government’s edict had not been, strictly speaking, a direct command that they sin or renounce Christ, but merely that they hand over their sacred books. One could argue that the governor, being the “minister of God” (Romans 13:4), and therefore the powers ordained by God (Romans 13:1). You may not agree with his orders or like them, and they may indeed be terrible orders, but still you are to obey them, provided they are not directly commanding sin, so the argument goes. But now one argued this way. No one involved in the heated and extended controversy of the 4th century took that view. The question was what was to be done with those who, possibly even acting according to such reasoning, took what was universally considered the coward’s way out. Certainly the Donatists were more extreme in rejecting the government’s involvement in the churches at all, but even the Catholic party did not once argue in favor of the traditiores, merely that though they had erred, their sacramental acts were valid, notwithstanding their personal unworthiness.

So let us consider the government’s orders we may have been under during COVID, depending on the state we lived in. You may not hold services, some of them declared. You must wear masks. You must not sing aloud. And many complied. After all, there was a pandemic on, which was another important consideration. But I recall reading that during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 the churches, at least those in our town, were not ordered but asked, if memory serves, if they would shut their doors for about six weeks. They chose to do so freely, by and large. These COVID orders have been of a different sort, both in terms of the laying down of requirements laid upon the churches, and in terms of their longevity. As time went on it became increasingly clear, at least to some of us, that these measures were not only illegitimate (even according to our own Constitution, for that matter) but essentially useless.

This excursus into 4th century comparisons is not meant to deal directly with those questions, however. Rather, merely with this. How are we to assess, looking back, the particular argument that it was righteous and proper to obey the government in this case. I’d say that the universal 4th century response to such an argument would have been universally to say that it is spurious and itself illegitimate.