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The sacrament is not the minister’s

Doctrine · On the Church · from c. 400

The validity of a sacrament does not depend on the worthiness of the one who administers it.

The answer that ended the Donatist question in the West, though not the schism. Its consequence is uncomfortable and was accepted anyway: an unworthy bishop's ordinations stand.

Held it

  • 400 — Augustine of Hippo (Formulates). Argues that the sacrament belongs to Christ and not to the minister, so that the unworthiness of the one who gives it does not void it. The Christian Tradition 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) · Pelikan, vol. 1, ch. 5

In the disputes

  • The Donatist schism Whether a church whose bishops had handed over the scriptures under persecution was still the church, and whether the sacraments of an unworthy minister are anything at all.

First stated in this form after The Christian Tradition 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) · Pelikan, vol. 1, ch. 5.