Punishment and Reconciliation: Augustine

Punish the sin, not the sinner; easier said than done. Preaching on the second Psalm and purporting to address \u27all who judge the earth,\u27 Augustine wrestled with the problems attending punishment and reconciliation. The results recorded in his sermons and correspondence as well as in a few treatises perplex yet are worth considering before we investigate Augustine\u27s more explicit remarks on the punishment of Donatist dissidents resisting reconciliation with the African church from which, he insisted, their predecessors had seceded in the early fourth century. At stake during Augustine\u27s tenure as bishop, toward the end of that century and three decades into the next, was the influence of Catholic Christianity in provinces that supplied Italy with much of its grain, with many delicacies, and with olive oil, prepared for export in Augustine\u27s see, at the port of Hippo, as well as in Carthage.