The notion of “fraternal correction” was formalized in the medieval west as a means of conceptualizing the duty and authority Christians had to correct one another when in moral or doctrinal error. While only those in official public roles held the right to exercise coercive judgment, in principle, every Christian, regardless of social rank, was authorized to administer non-coercive warning and rebuke. Although theologians disagreed over precisely how that authority was to be exercised across social rank, a prominent line of thought, represented by Thomas Aquinas, held that social inferiors were authorized to admonish superiors (Summa Theologiae II-II.33.5). This has led some modern interpreters, e.g., Eleonore Stump, to see in Thomas a model of “public” or “social dissent” and protest (Stump 2003, 329, 336). This interpretation, however, overlooks the strictures Thomas places around fraternal correction. For Thomas, fraternal correction is paradigmatically a private act, conducted “in secret.” If fraternal correction is to function as a form of democratic dissent and social criticism, it needs to be capable of going public. The question is whether it can do so without losing its distinguishing marks.
A history of fraternal correction is yet to be written, but Takashi Shogimen has demonstrated that 14th century theologians mobilized the concept to legitimate anti-papal campaigns, pointing especially to the theorizing of William of Ockham (Shogimen, 2003). Martin Luther reprises this same tradition when, in his public letter to Pope Leo X, he presents himself as the pontiff’s “honest friend” and corrector, in contrast to the rampant flattery of the papal curia (Bateza, 2017). Later reformation and post-reformation debates over the power of the keys and the nature of church discipline, often noted for their role in early modern political developments, concerned, in part, lay authority to correct (Rittgers, 2004). One can even see the Quaker John Woolman’s anti-slavery tours as belonging to the history of fraternal correction. Taken together, what these episodes suggest is the political potential resident within the notion of fraternal correction. Despite Thomas’s scruples, fraternal correction has at times gone public and provided a means of conceptualizing and disciplining the work of public confrontation, social criticism, and mutual accountability.
Although Augustine predates the standardization of “fraternal correction” as a fixed doctrinal locus, his reflections on authority, judgment, and correction played a major role in the subsequent tradition. Thomas cites him as his chief authority in the Summa’s treatment of the subject. Going behind the later reception, the burden of this paper is to show that Augustine himself provides a powerful and distinctive approach to the theology and ethics of fraternal correction, avant la lettre, that can serve as a resource for conceiving and disciplining Christian participation in democratic forms of accountability. Augustine shows how fraternal correction can go public.
Among the reasons to think Augustine’s account of fraternal correction is worth developing, I mention two. The first is that the Achilles heel of recent efforts at appropriating Augustine’s social thought has been his paternalism. Augustine readily and consistently argues that those in positions of authority have a duty to pursue their subjects’ interests, rather than their expressed wishes, and that coercion is appropriate to lead them to the good, as judged by the lights of the one in power. By contrast, fraternal correction, in its paradigmatic form, occurs among social equals. It does not rely on hierarchical superiority. Fraternal correction enables us then to circumvent Augustine’s paternalism, or at least place alongside it what we can call Augustine’s fraternalism. If one goal of recent political Augustinianism has been a more perfectionist vision of politics that is compatible with the equal standing of democratic citizens, then Augustine’s model of fraternal correction may prove a promising resource.
Second, Augustine’s account of fraternal correction, in part because it is less regimented, is less restrictive and more open-textured than some later iterations of the concept. Thomas’s distinction between fraternal and judicial correction relies on a sharp division between private and public realms that significantly constrains the authority of those without positions of formal authority to perform public criticism. Augustine’s approach is much more permissive, recognizing, in principle, a larger field of action for those who are not formally invested with public authority. One might say, then, in short, that his account is more democratic, or if that is a shibboleth, more participatory.
To summarize, in its paradigmatic case, for Augustine, fraternal correction is a practice of mutual rebuke and admonition among social equals. It is a work of mercy, a form of spiritual almsgiving closely allied with forgiveness and aimed at the healing of the neighbor’s soul. It takes place as an act of friendship, either established or prevenient, with the latter performed in spe even toward enemies and those who are not yet brothers and sisters. Friendly correction belongs with tolerance as mercy’s way of maintaining fellowship with sinners without complicity. It requires of the corrector certain spiritual practices and the observance of counsels of love that limit and constrain the application of rebuke. Although fraternal correction is a central way of responding to wrongdoing, it is not the only way. When it fails or is otherwise inappropriate, love calls on other tactics—among these, the coercive measures of public law. Thus, fraternal correction exists alongside an ascending scale of coercive pedagogies to which it defers when necessary.
My paper proposes fraternal correction as a further plank in the construction of an Augustinian ethics of democratic citizenship. It envisions a mode of moral accountability among social equals governed by charity and sensitive to the abuses of prideful self-assertion, manipulation, and demoralization. Unlike the “rougher magics” of political coercion (Bowlin), fraternal correction frames rebuke and admonition as an act of mercy, ordered toward the wrongdoer’s healing and constrained by that end. It seeks to oppose degrading and idolatrous practices, but in a manner that guards against inadvertently replicating patterns of domination through that very opposition. In this way, at least, fraternal correction conforms to ideals of both democratic and heavenly citizenship.
The health and preservation of democratic institutions relies on pervasive practices, formal and informal, of social criticism and civic accountability. Such practices are necessary but prone to incur “characteristic damages,” often hardening polarization through cycles of confrontation, denunciation, and backlash. This paper proposes a way of conceptualizing and disciplining the work of democratic accountability through the theological notion of fraternal correction. I draw on Augustine’s account of fraternal correction as a work of mercy and an act of spiritual friendship, performed among social equals and ordered toward healing, rather than retribution or self-assertion. Augustine’s acceptance of the “rougher magics” of political coercion is well-known, but alongside this paternalist, hierarchical model of political rule he recognized a place for a distributed, fraternal mode of accountability, independent of formal office-holding, whose medium was the word, not the sword, and which cut across gradients of social status.