Donatismul, schismă sau erezie?

Abstract

The present research aims precisely to establish whether the rupture that occurred within African Christianity in the first Christian centuries was of a heretical or schismatic nature, which is why it contains three parts, one of a historical nature, in which the factors that led to the rupture of the African Church are presented, and one of a dogmatic nature, of doctrine, in which both the teaching of the Donatists and that of the Catholics is presented, followed by several conclusions imposed by our historical-theological approach. Although Catholics characterized the Donatists as heretics, in reality we are dealing with a schism, not a heresy, for both sides had the same dogmatic teaching, the same Liturgy, and the same Sacraments, even if they differed in the matter of the readmission of heretics into the Church. This schism could have been overcome, but the conquest of Africa by the Vandals and Arabs put an end to the unrest in a completely undesirable way.