In the fourth and final chapter of Ployd's book, the fundamental difference between Donatist and Catholic views on baptism is presented as history versus theology. For the Donatists, the gift of the Spirit occurred at a precise moment in human history when Christ breathed upon the disciples (John 20:22–23). The Catholics instead argued that the power of the Spirit was retained by Christ and, as promised in the dove's message to John the Baptist (John 1:33), it is Christ's ongoing and eternal gift to give. This was not the only issue over which the Catholics and Donatists sparred, and after more than a century, they failed to find mutually satisfactory solutions to this, or any, of their disagreements. A significant contributor to the impasse—aside from the fact that decades of antagonisms made reconciliation a prospect for some too unpalatable—was a studied refusal by either side to listen, truly, to what the other was saying. Disagreement over the Spirit's possessor may have gone on indefinitely regardless of tone, but Ployd's discussion of the Spirit's location is nonetheless arresting because the methodological divide between theology and history has an eerily similar counterpart in scholarly discussions about North African Christianity itself. Some conceive of Donatist-Catholic relations as a fundamentally social phenomenon requiring historical and legal contextualization to explain their genesis and longevity. Others insist that the conflict was quintessentially exegetical: “who,” “what,” and “where” the Church was, as defined by scripture, constituted the real matters at hand. The parties themselves said as much.

A scholarly debate such as this should provide for much fruitful discovery, except on those occasions when, like the Catholics and Donatists themselves, one side does not want to heed the other. While Ployd legitimately believes that studies eschewing theological questions in favor of interpretations based exclusively on human institutions remain partial at best, the over-correction attempted in Ployd's book poses its own significant problems. There is much theology in Ployd's study, but the lack of historical depth (despite Ployd's declaration that his project is largely historical [vii]) allows Augustine's theological arguments to remain immune from necessary scrutiny.

Ployd analyzes a series of forty-one sermons of Augustine preached from the end of 406 c.e. until mid-407 (Ennarationes in Psalmos 119–133, In Ioannis evangelium tractatus 1–16, and In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos tractatus 1–10), a time when the emperor had just declared Donatism heretical. Ployd explores how Augustine envisioned the church and its people experiencing love, consequent unity, and ascent with Christ because of connection to and through the Trinity. Ployd's operative words for these sermons are “trinitarian” and “pro-Nicene,” which he employs interchangeably, the difference being that the former privileges theological ideas, while the latter recognizes the historical origins of those ideas. Ployd argues that Augustine's repeating and interwoven arguments, substantiated by scriptural citation, interpretation, and analogy, make the point that the church—the true church, that is—depends on the existence and actions of the Trinity. Through communion between Trinity and church, the latter experiences love and unity. In each of the four chapters, Ployd elucidates Augustine's interpretive strategies deftly, and while there is deliberation in ascribing Augustine's criticisms of the Donatists to Augustine himself (as opposed to presenting Augustine's opinions as objective truth), there are occasions when Ployd assigns Donatist “unorthodoxy” to an inappropriate relationship with the Trinity, which is not a position to which Augustine himself publicly subscribed. In the In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos tractatus 3.8, for example, Augustine blames Donatists not for differing theologically from the Catholics but for being hypocrites in that they say one thing and do another.

The degree of silence Ployd imposes on the Donatists is also striking. And here we return to the historical side of this methodological divide. Not only does Augustine ascribe to the Donatists beliefs and actions they would hotly deny, but Ployd's largely uncritical and ahistorical handling of these accusations lends tacit assent to old beliefs which I thought had been dismissed or at least mitigated by any number of historical studies which sometimes come in for criticism by Ployd. Here, the Donatists are blithely assumed to have initiated the split from a united church, but that verdict came from a historical ruling made by Constantine and then reaffirmed at Arles by bishops appointed by that same emperor. The fact that Ployd calls Augustine “pro-Nicene” is one thing, but complications enter when the Donatists are represented as resisting Augustine's Catholicism and consequently labeled unorthodox because they failed to “participate in the unity of the Church” (15). Whose voice that is—Augustine's or Ployd's—is not clear to this reader, and I was left with the impression (although Ployd never actually says this) that the Donatists are not “pro-Nicene,” that is, not subscribers to historically orthodox beliefs about the Trinity, which, were they to hear that, they would be aghast.

Finally, Ployd treats Augustine's sixth tractate on John (169–185) as a key text explicating Augustine's conviction that unity of the church permits the presence and growth of love, that being another word for the Holy Spirit. A web of reciprocating relationships between Spirit and church serve as the cause as well as result of effective baptism. It is an interesting and persuasive discussion Ployd makes, but ignored in all this are Augustine's remarks in this very sermon detailing recent confiscations of Donatist property by the imperial administration, confiscations that the Catholics themselves requested. Both Augustine's justifications for coercion and dismissal of the Donatist complaint that they were suffering persecution are presented by Ployd as Augustine's own, but the fact that Ployd never challenges the accusation that it was the Donatists who defected from the true church, along with Ployd's personal endorsement of Augustine's vision of church unity, invite us to arrive at the conclusion never explicitly made: Augustine is right, the Donatists are wrong. Since we are speaking of real people who, as a matter of historical fact, felt the effects of imperial laws issued against them and their property, this pass Ployd gives to the Catholic side left me with the ardent hope that future studies, whether historical or theological, listen better.