Augustine In Defense of Torturing Heretics (more on the traditional Christian view of "heresy")
"The Christian theory of persecution" is the title of the second chapter of the book How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West by world-renowned historian Perez Zagorin (Washington Post obit, Telegraph obit). In that chapter Zagorin tells the story of how "Saint" Augustine came to embrace the idea that coercion, including violence, is a valid method for dealing with heresy. The most fascinating thing about Augustine in this regard is that he was at first openly hostile to the use of violence in resolving disputes over religious doctrine.
Zagorin refers to a letter written by Augustine to Eusebius, sometime before the year 400 AD (letter #35), concerning Christians who had been led astray into heretical sects, and how best to bring them back to the true Church and its teachings. At this time Augustine was still of the opinion that such heretics should not be subjected to violence to compel them to change their minds, rather, they should return to the fold only when they were "willing and desired by free choice what is better."
Reasonably enough, Augustine believed that when people are forced to renounce supposedly "heretical" beliefs, the result is not a sincere change of heart - but only a feigned conversion to escape punishment. Another letter from Augustine addressed to the Donatist heretic Maximinus (letter #23, dated 392 AD), expresses the same rejection of utilizing violence, or the fear of violence, "to compel men to embrace the communion of any party."
But then, as Zagorin describes it, "Augustine eventually reversed his position and decided to endorse coercion." [p.27] In doing so, though, Augustine was simply acquiescing to the established practices of his fellow Christians, who were already using fines, beatings, imprisonment, torture, and execution against various heretical groups. Augustine, in turns, out, had been impressed by the results that had been obtained from these methods - although he personally continued to oppose execution of heretics.
It is important to emphasize that Augustine at first seemed to have taken exactly the position that one would expect any decent human being to hold. It's not as if people just "looked at things differently" back then and saw nothing wrong with torturing people over credal differences. Religious persecution had been rare and exceptional in the Roman Empire prior to Constantine. And in the specific case of the supposed "persecution" of Christians, the targets were often deranged fanatics who committed criminal acts of violence (up to murder) precisely in order to become "voluntary martyrs", as some historians now refer to them (see, for example, the fourth chapter in Christian persecution, martyrdom and orthodoxy, by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix).
The fact is that when Augustine and other Christians embraced the wholesale persecution of every religion other than their own,
and even went so far as to persecute all sects that claimed to be Christian, except the one officially approved by the State - they were doing something completely new - and something that at least Augustine felt some moral qualms about, at least at first. It is a grim testament to the power of Christianity's hold on the modern human psyche that today so many people just assume that this kind of violence against people on the basis of religious belief is the norm, rather than a pathological aberration.
After his "conversion to coercion", Augustine became a leading proponent and even a theoretician of persecution. According to Zagorin "Augustine insisted that the emperors and political authorities had the God-given right to crush the sacriledge and schism of the Donatists, since they were as obligated to repress fals and evil religion as to prevent the crime of pagan idolatry." [p.28]
Augustine made use of the so-called "parable of the tares" from the Gospel of Matthew to provide scriptural justification for the use of force against heretics. The most obvious interpretation of this parable, however, is that it actually encourages tolerance - leaving it up to God at the Last Judgment to separate the "wheat" from the "tares". But Augustine said that the parable instead meant the exact opposite - that the "tares" (heretics) needed to be uprooted - so long as this can be done without damaging the "wheat".
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The quintessential expression of the Augustinian "Christian theory of persecution" is to be found in a letter to Boniface, a Roman governor in Africa, dated 417 AD: "There is the unjust persecution which the wicked inflict on the Church of Christ, and the just persecution which the Church of Christ inflicts on the wicked."
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