Pelagius and Augustine
Introduction
Pelagius
has been called "one of the most maligned figures in the history of
Christianity."1 Yet, the nature of Pelagius's differences with
Augustine, Jerome and the 5th century Catholic Church, which
ultimately earned him the title heresiarch,
have often been misunderstood or mischaracterized.2 It is not unusual for "Pelagianism"
to be reductively described as a teaching that salvation can be achieved by
works rather than by grace3 and for Pelagius to be characterized as
little more than a repackager of Stoicism into the Christian milieu.4 In actuality, Pelagius was, for his time, a
very orthodox Christian theologian.5
“Augustine was not troubled by
Pelagius’ Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy,” states William E. Phipps,
Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Davis and Elkins College, “Pelagius’
statement of faith (Libellus Fidei)
defends the Nicene dogma.”6 Celtic Orthodox priest Geoffrey O’Riada
points out that “on most of his points of disagreement with Augustine, Pelagius
upholds the Patristic Tradition of the Church, and since in his practical
spiritual advice he is entirely harmonious with Church teaching, this
much-maligned British monk would appear to be no more heretical than many
venerable Fathers.”7
Pelagius
was, first and foremost, a reformer.8 O’Riada
and other scholars of Celtic Christianity have identified interesting
connections between Pelagius’ Romanized Celtic background “with its emphasis on
faith and good works, on the holiness of all life and the oneness of all”9
and his preaching against the “moral laxity that surrounded him” upon his
arrival at Rome, where “the Christianization of the Empire was not making true
Christians of people…”10 Harold O.J. Brown, Professor of Biblical and
Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, points out that
“one reaction on the part of serious Christians to the lowering of standards as
persecution ended and new converts flocked to the church”11 was to
join the monastic movement, and Pelagius is often referred to as a monk due to
his ascetic lifestyle. Yet according to Everett Ferguson, of Abilene Christian
University, “Although an ascetic in reaction against the looseness of Christian
life in Rome, [Pelagius] did not advocate a withdrawal from society.”12 Instead he sought to “reform the church from
within.”13
My
thesis, then, is that Pelagius was a practical reformer14 and
orthodox Christian who was wrestling with the
same questions as Augustine pertaining to the relationship between divine
sovereignty, grace and human free will.15 The key difference, according to B.R. Rees, Professor
of Greek at the University of Manchester, was that “[T]hey started from
opposite extremes: Augustine began with God, Pelagius with man.”16 Yet, O’Riada asserts, “Pelagius’
reflections on the human person are not unlike those of the Eastern
Fathers. They share the same starting
point of moral reflection, that is, the innate goodness of man because God has
created him in His image and likeness.”17 O’Riada cites Pelagius’ Letter to Demetrias (2:2) in which he
advised, “You ought to measure the good of human nature by reference to its
Creator.” “For Pelagius as well as the
Fathers,” O’Riada explains, “creation in the image of God means creation with
free will, as free, self-determining persons.”
Augustine, based in part on his own struggles
as described in his Confessions, emphasized the inability
of humans to avoid sin by their own free will and, therefore, the absolute
necessity of divine grace for living a holy life. He believed that "both the act of
willing and the power to do what is willed"18 came from God,
and so insisted “on the sole power of grace to act upon man.”19 Pelagius, based in part on his personal
ascetic discipline and passion for moral reform in the church, emphasized the
human ability to choose to do the right thing, albeit "always assisted by
divine help."20
The
different positions that Pelagius and Augustine arrived at regarding the
relation between free will and grace can best be seen in their interpretations
of three areas of theology: Original Sin, Predestination and Baptism.
Original Sin
John
Ferguson concluded his authoritative 1952 Cambridge study of Pelagius with the
statement, “the real issue was original sin.”21 The doctrine of Original Sin developed
gradually over the course of four centuries, as ambiguous Pauline statements
were refined by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrosiaster, Jerome, Augustine
and others. It is worth noting that
Original Sin is not mentioned in the creed produced by the first ecumenical
council at Nicea. The seeds of the
Augustinian formulation appear, according to University of Padua professor Pier
Franco Beatrice22 and to Anglican theologian N.P. Williams23,
to have been sown in Egypt in the late second century by Encratite Christians24. Augustine took these ideas that had been
circulating in North Africa and formed them into a cohesive theological
blueprint of Original Sin.25 Craig St. Clair, in his graduate thesis for
the College of St. Benedict and Saint John’s University, asserts that “It is …
a misnomer to speak of original sin prior to the Pelagian controversy. It was Augustine who coined the phrase in his
letter to Simplicius and before this we can only speak of the fragmentary
elements of which the doctrine would be comprised.”26 Martha Ellen Stortz, Professor of Historical
Theology and Ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, concurs: “Adam’s
Fall was new with Augustine. Neither his
contemporaries nor his predecessors had used such language to describe the
effects of the Fall.”27 Throughout
his life, Augustine revised and clarified this doctrine, particularly in
response to critics such as Pelagius.
The roots of the doctrine of Original Sin lie in theological
debates, which date back to Origen, regarding the origination of the soul. St. Clair explains: “The traducian view in this controversy asserted that the soul was
passed on to the child from the parents, while the creationist view taught that in one way or another, whether
immediately or from the beginning of time, God created each individual soul.”28 The traducian view, in which the soul is inherited, gradually led to
the tradux peccati doctrine, in which
sin is inherited. This formed the basis
of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin and his resulting views on baptism and
predestination. St. Clair points out
that Pelagius rejected the traducian
view and embraced the creationist
idea that each soul is created afresh by God (rather than passed down through
inheritance).29
Augustine's
view was that the guilt for the sin of Adam, as well as the concupiscence that
resulted from the Fall, passed seminally from generation to generation.30
Pelagius, on the other hand, considered
humans to be born as morally neutral beings who, due to influence and
ignorance, quickly picked up the "habit" of sin.31 For Augustine sin was an intrinsic internal
flaw which could not be fully removed but only ameliorated by grace. For Pelagius sin was an external corruption—like
rust—which could potentially be eradicated through grace-empowered free will
choices.32
A key
text, for both Augustine and Pelagius, in relation to the doctrine of Original
Sin was Romans 5:12:
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world
through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because
all have sinned…”
It has been well established that Augustine argued from a
pre-Vulgate Latin translation of this text, which mistakenly rendered the Greek
eph ho pantes hemarton (“because all
have sinned”) into Latin as in quo omnes
peccaverunt (“in whom all have sinned”).33 It is unclear if Pelagius used the same
Latin translation or read from the Greek.
The interpretation Pelagius arrived at, however, was consistent with the
Greek rendering of the text and with how the text was understood in the Eastern
church.34
Pelagius,
like Augustine, believed in the historicity of Adam and Eve. He believed that Adam's sin introduced
physical death into the world—upon Adam, Eve and their progeny—and that it introduced a
pernicious habit of sin in all humankind.
Pelagius did not believe that sin or the guilt of Original Sin was an
inheritance passed seminally from Adam.
In On Nature Pelagius cites
John Chrysostom: “[Remember] … that sin is not a substance, but a wicked
act. And because it is not natural,
therefore the law was given against it, and because it proceeds from the
liberty of our will.”35
B.R. Rees, towards the end of his treatise on Pelagius, ponders, “What is left of the Augustinian synthesis? The plain truth is that modern evolutionary theory, warts and all, has just about completed the work of demolishing it…”36 Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin, being inextricably based upon a belief in the historicity of the Genesis account of Adam, Eve and “the Fall” is endangered by alternative explanations of the origins of humankind, such as the widely accepted scientific theory of evolution. Rees concludes, “When … he proceeded to base his doctrine of original sin upon it [the historicity of Genesis 1-3], he was building on sand, and his elegant structure now lies shattered.” Although Pelagius also believed in the historicity of the Genesis account, his doctrine of sin can survive apart from it.
Predestination
Augustine’s
doctrine of Original Sin naturally leads to the question, “Who then can be
saved, and how?” His answer was that
only those who have been given by God—as an act of charity—the will to repent,
believe and be baptized can be saved.
The effects of Original Sin upon humankind lead to a tragic situation
where no person is able to respond to God unless God has prepared (elected)
them to be able to do so. Thus, as Rees
describes it, "The elect have adiutorium
quo, 'the aid by which they are enabled to be saved', in addition to adiutorium sine quo non, 'the aid
without which it would be theoretically impossible to be saved'.”37 Augustine's
view that "the act of willing" comes from God, naturally led into
predestination: Only those who have been
selected to be given by God the will to repent, believe and be baptized can be
saved. Yet this election must be based
entirely on God’s grace and not on any merit that a person possesses. The implication is that God’s criterion for
election is inscrutable, perhaps even random.
Thus Augustine fell into what Toynbee called "The ancient conundrum
of a God who is both all-powerful and all-loving."38 Paula
Frederickson, Professor of Scripture at Boston University, explains Augustine’s
position on election thusly: “God does
not call all men the same way. Those
whom he elects he calls congruenter
(effectively or appropriately), so that they will follow. Those whom he rejects he does not so call, so
that they do not follow. The proof is
tautological: if God had chosen these people, he would have called them
effectively, so that they would have followed; since they did not follow,
although they must have been called, God must have called them, but not congruenter.”39
Pelagius viewed Augustine's belief that God
must provide "both the act of willing and the power to do what is
willed" as an undermining of God’s gift of free will to humans. To Pelagius, it smacked of Manichaean
fatalism. It is interesting to note that
it was Pelagius’ concern that Augustine was preaching Manichaean-tainted heresy
that initially led him into the theological fray that ultimately resulted in
his own condemnation as a heretic. Contra
predestination, Pelagius believed that "God has endowed man with the power
of being what he will, so that he might be naturally capable both of good and
evil, and turn his will to either of them.
He has imparted to us the capacity of doing evil, merely that we may
perform his will by our own will. The
very ability to do evil, is therefore a good.
It makes good be performed, not by constraint, but voluntarily."40 Ever the practical reformer rather than the
abstract theologian, Pelagius believed that the denial of free will inherent in
the doctrine of predestination would cause the possibility of living a moral
life to be perceived as an exercise in futility and thus perpetuate in
Christians the moral laxity that he so vigorously preached against.
Baptism
Augustine
believed that baptism was necessary in order to become a member of the Body of
Christ and that the purpose of baptism was to counteract the penalty and effect
of Original Sin. Since he considered
baptism a necessity for salvation, he believed that infants ought to be
baptized as soon as possible after birth.41 “God does not remit sins but to the baptized.”42
The practice of baptizing infants,
however, pre-dates the doctrine of Original Sin. According to Harold Brown, “In Augustine’s
day, baptism was increasingly being administered to infants. In order for it to be able to do for infants
what it was supposed to do for adults, i.e. forgive their sins, it was
necessary to postulate that infants have sin.”43 Everett
Ferguson concurs, “Augustine used the practice of infant baptism to argue for
original sin. Baptism was ‘for the
forgiveness of sins’; since the infant had not committed any sin, though, the
forgiveness must be for the sin associated with the fallen human nature. Thus Augustine found his doctrine implicit in
the practice of the church, even if he could find few predecessors who taught
his view of original sin and lack of free will in regard to salvation.”44 Ferguson continues that “The relationship of
infant baptism and original sin illustrates a frequent occurrence in religious
history, namely that a practice precedes the doctrinal justification for it.”
Whereas, according to Ferguson, “Augustine argued that
baptism imparts an indelible character: there is no more possibility of being
held guilty of Adam’s sin,”45 “Pelagius felt no necessity for infant
baptism, but was willing to conform to the custom of the church.”46 St. Clair clarifies: “This issue [of infant
baptism] is of little concern to Pelagius as his focus is largely upon
educating and forming adult Christians.”47
Thus, although Pelagius
accepted that baptism of infants and children could provide a measure of
sanctification, he did not believe it brought about the remission of Original
Sin (a doctrine he rejected). Instead,
Pelagius believed that baptism ought to be sought by those who consciously and
intentionally possessed faith in God.
Pelagius believed that baptism cancelled the sins one had committed in one’s
own life. He viewed it as an act of
sanctification by which a believer became a new creation.48
The
topic of infant baptism was perhaps the most dangerous for Pelagius, which may
explain his circumspection in discussing the question (as opposed to his
outspoken disciple Caelestius who stridently argued against the practice and
was summarily excommunicated). Predestination
and Original Sin were abstract theological concepts, but baptism was an
established practice of the church and, at the time of Pelagius, infant baptism
was the norm. To openly dispute infant
baptism was to state that the church was "doing it wrong." According to Rees, “[H]e was fully aware that
to deny the efficacy of baptism for infants would be to forfeit any residual
claim to orthodoxy on his part. The
picture that others had built up of one whose orthodoxy was already undermined
by his heretical views on grace would be completed if he could also be shown by
his own confession to be casting doubt on a practice which was essential to the
Christian Church.”49 This is the likely reason why Pelagius did not
denounce infant baptism, despite the clear implications of his theology in
regards to it.
Conclusion
Both Pelagius and
Augustine were attempting to define the parameters of God's grace and
sovereignty over against humankind's free will.
Each was motivated by earnest religious devotion and by practical
considerations: in the case of Augustine the many salvation-endangering heresies
he sought to counter and in the case of Pelagius the lax Christian lifestyles
he observed and sought to correct. Each
was concerned that the other was propagating unorthodox views which could
damage the Church. Though both were well
known and respected, Augustine had the edge, not only in terms of possessing a more
complete theological system that furthered—rather than challenged—the existing
ecclesial power structure, but also in terms of his bishopric, his connections
with powerful associates such as Jerome, his political savvy, his prodigious
writing output and his familiarity with taking the rhetorical offensive. “For them it was a fight to a finish, and at
the end of the day it was Augustine’s high standing as an acknowledged leader
of the Church and his proven skill as a controversialist that won that battle,”
states Rees.50 Pelagius was,
despite his influence and popularity, a layman who could be cast as a
provocateur and an outsider.51 Pelagius
sought to bring a renewal of holiness to the post-Constantine church52
but soon found himself on the defensive against powerful foes. “Pelagius was not condemned simply on
theological grounds. Rather, Pelagius’s
teaching was seen as a threat… His
central message that there is only one authentic Christian life, the path to
perfection, left no room for nominal Christians. If he had gone off into the Syrian or
Egyptian desert, he would probably have been a revered ‘abba.’ Instead, he
clashed with the comfortable Christianity which had become the basis of unity
in the Imperial Church…”53 Peter
Brown, Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University, considers the
defeat of Pelagius to have been “yet one more stage in the end of the ancient
world and the beginning of the Middle Ages.”
By this he means “the ‘Ancient World’ of the early Christian Church—of a
group that had spread across the Mediterranean precisely because it had been
small, separate, ferociously self-sufficient:
‘Sancti estote, quoniam ego
sanctus sum, Dominus Deus vester. Be
ye holy, for I, the Lord your God am Holy.’”54
Augustine
prevailed and Pelagius was utterly marginalized. No one knows what ultimately became of him
and perhaps he did retire to the desert or return to Britain. Many of his writings were destroyed, only to
survive and be reconstructed—ironically—from quotations within the writings of
his opponents. Despite his crushing
victory over Pelagius, Augustine’s doctrinal fortress has not survived
intact. Within a short period of time
“Augustine was reinterpreted, so that theologians came to call themselves
‘Augustinian’ while rejecting his views on irresistible grace and predestination.”55 According to William Placher, Professor of
Humanities at Wabash College, “Almost no one wanted to be identified as a
‘Pelagian,’ but many have sought to avoid the full force of Augustine’s radical
conclusions.”56 Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian views continued to
arise, most notably in the formulations of John Cassian (c. 360–435). The theological questions, and their
attendant challenges, which the two men wrestled over have continued to circle
throughout Christian history. They remain
relevant to this day. The result,
according to Harold Brown, is that “Much of Western Christendom is
Augustinian-predestinarian in theory, but Semi-Pelagian, free-will in
practice.”57
Notes
1. Evans,
Robert F., Pelagius: Inquiries
and Reappraisals, pg. 66. Evans continues, “It has been the
common sport of the theologian and the historian of theology to set him up as a
symbolic bad man and heap upon him accusations which often tell us more about
the theological perspective of the accuser than Pelagius."
2. O’Riada,
Geoffrey, Pelagius: To Demetrias.
“Few churchmen have been so maligned as Pelagius in the Christian West. For nearly 1,500 years, all that anyone has
known of the British monk’s theology has come from what his opponents said
about him—and when one’s opponents are as eminent as Augustine and Jerome, the
chance of getting a fair hearing is not great.
Consequently, it has been easy to lay all manner of pernicious heresies
at Pelagius’s doorstep. Only in the last
couple of decades have scholars been able to recover and examine Pelagius’s
works directly. What they have found is
that very little of what has historically passed for ‘Pelagian’ heresy was
actually taught by him. … Most of what Pelagius argues against Augustine and
Jerome can be found in the teaching of the Eastern Fathers. Certainly, the assertion that it is possible
to live a holy life after the Fall, as evidenced by the saints of the Old
Testament, is a familiar Patristic theme.
Moreover, the Eastern Fathers nowhere teach the necessity of sin,
emphasizing, as Pelagius does, the role of human free will. Nor do any of the Fathers proposed a doctrine
of the original sin like that of Augustine which disturbed Pelagius so
much. Nevertheless, in his polemics
against those who denied human moral freedom, Pelagius develops perhaps too
high a view of human free will. … Still,
contrary to caricatures drawn of him, Pelagius does not have a naïve and overly
optimistic vision of human perfection.”
3. Rees, Bryn R., Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic, Introduction, xi. Rees gives the example of a reviewer of a book
entitled The Benn Heresy, who
commented that “Benn himself refers approvingly to Pelagius, that ancient Briton
who thought that good works were sufficient for entry to heaven without
necessarily believing in God.”
4. Shelley, Bruce, Church History in Plain Language, pg. 129. “His idea of the Christian life was
practically the Stoic conception of ascetic self-control…”
5. Stortz, Martha Ellen, Pelagius Revisited, pg. 137.
“Throughout the commentaries, Pelagius speaks of Christ, deflecting all
the proper heresies. He rails against
the subordinationism of the Arians, the Docetism of the Manichaeans, and
Apollinaris’s truncation of Christ’s human nature. Pelagius stresses the unity of operation (una operatio) both between the Father
and the Son and between Christ’s human nature and his divine nature. What distinguishes Pelagius’s thinking about
Christ is not his Christological formulations, but their soteriological
implications.”
6. Phipps, William, The Heresiarch: Pelagius or Augustine?, pg. 125
7. O’Riada, Geoffrey, Pelagius: To Demetrias.
“[O]n the couple of occasions during his lifetime that Pelagius was
actually tried at local councils in the East [as opposed to the West], the
evaluation was positive.”
8. Brown, Peter, Pelagius and his Supporters: Aims and Environment, pg. 101. “There is only one definition of a Pelagian
by Pelagius: he was a Christianus;
his followers strove to be integri
Christiani—‘authentic Christians’.
The behavior of the integri
Christiani was always thought of as being a reaction, an act of
self-definition, the establishment of a discontinuity between the ‘authentic’
Christian and the rank-and-file of Christians in name only. The problem of what was Christian behavior, indeed, had reached a crisis in late
fourth-century Rome. Too many leading
families had lapsed into Christianity—by mixed marriages, by political
conformity. Among such people, no
discontinuity existed between the pagan past and the Christian present. The conventional good man of pagan Rome had
imperceptibly become the conventional good Christian ‘believer’.”
9. Nicholson, M. Forthomme, Celtic Theology: Pelagius in An
Introduction to Celtic Christianity, ed. James P. Mackey, pg. 388.
10. O’Riada, Pelagius:
To Demetrius. “Consequently, once in
Rome, he became impatient with the moral laxity that surrounded him. The Christianization of the Empire was not
making true Christians of people, he believed, only ‘conforming pagans.’ He began preaching with the fervent desire to
lead everyone to live an authentic Christian life according to the Gospel.”
11. Brown, Harold, Heresies, pg. 201. “Pelagius appears to have been motivated by
practical piety, i.e. by the zeal to lead a perfect Christian life and to
encourage others to do so. …the fourth century not only brought the
Christianization of the Roman Empire but also the secularization of the
Christian church. The monastic movement,
which spread rapidly after its beginnings in Egypt early in the fourth century,
was one reaction on the part of serious Christians to the lowering of standards
as persecution ended and new converts flocked to the church. Pelagius was concerned to show that it was
possible to lead a life of moral responsibility, pleasing to God; at the same
time, he denounced the pessimistic, otherworldly dualism of the Manichaean
movement to which Augustine was once attached and which he never seems entirely
to have outgrown. ”
12. Ferguson, Everett, Church History, Volume 1, pg. 280.
13. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 131. “He [Pelagius] wanted above all else to be a
good Christian, working for the reform of the Christian Church from within, he
sincerely believed that his teaching was orthodox and consistent with that
Church’s tradition, and it was in order to prove this to his critics that he
allowed himself to become involved in an arduous and prolonged controversy for
which he was by ethos and training quite unsuited.”
14. Ferguson, Everett, Church History, Volume 1, pg. 280. “Pelagius was not a theologian,
much less a mystic; rather, he was a moralist.”
15. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 28. "[T]he problem of reconciling divine
sovereignty with human freedom lay at the heart of their controversy, each
maintaining that he, and not the other, was correctly interpreting key
statements and ideas found in the scriptures and especially the Pauline
Epistles, as well as in the writings of the early fathers. This was to be their bone of contention, at
which they were to tug relentlessly from either end."
16. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 35.
"[T]hey started out from opposite extremes: Augustine began with
God, Pelagius with man. His view of man
was not of one created perfect only to be corrupted by the sin of Adam passed
on from generation to generation, but of one who began to sin from that moment
when he became consciously able as a child to imitate the sins of others, not
because his own flawed nature forced him to do so but because he was ignorant
of its true essence and potential. His
will had been corrupted not by the sin of Adam but by bad example and habit,
and it was this 'long habit of doing wrong' which had been incorrectly
identified with, and located in, human nature by those who adhered to the
doctrine of original sin."
17. O’Riada, Pelagius:
To Demetrias.
18. Augustine, On
the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin, 42, 146.
19. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 16. “Here we reach the main battleground on which
Augustine and Pelagius were to fight.
The very arguments for man’s responsibility, exercise by use of his free
will, which Augustine had deployed against the Manichees, were now being
adapted by Pelagius to suit his own case that man had the power to save
himself, always provided that he had accepted the saving grace of baptism of his own choice. Augustine’s reply was to insist upon the sole
power of grace to act upon man… So the controversy came to centre around two
different interpretations of free will and grace, with each party to it
accusing the other of over-emphasising one of these at the expense of the
other. ‘The two men disagreed radically
on an issue that is still relevant, and where the basic lines of division have
remained the same: on the nature and sources of a fully good, creative action.’
And so a debate which began almost coincidentally between a dedicated defender
of Christian orthodoxy and an equally single-minded reformer of Christian
morals would lead to a public examination of some of the most profound issues
affecting the faith which both sincerely professed.”
20. Pelagius, Letter
to Pope Innocent I.
21. Ferguson, John, Pelagius, pg. 184 via Craig St. Clair, A Heretic Reconsidered: Pelagius, Augustine and “Original Sin”, pg.
1.
22. Beatrice, Pier Franco, The Transmission of Sin, via Rees, pg. 24.
23. Williams, N.P., The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin, via Rees, pg. 24.
24. Rees, B.R., Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 58. “In his book Tradux Peccati the Italian theologian
Beatrice traces the source of the doctrine to territories unexplored by
Augustine… ‘Encratite circles, which were widespread in Egypt in the second
half of the second century, and of which Julius Cassianus was an authoritative
exponent’. He claims that the doctrine
then spread to African and Latin Christianity and that Tertullian, Cyprian,
Hilarius, Ambrosiaster and Ambrose all tried to reconcile it with the need to
safeguard traditional teachings on creation, marriage and free will. Their successors were left with ‘an
unresolved antinomy’, which Augustine and Pelagius set about trying to resolve
in the different ways with the result that both sides in the controversy were
forced to adopt extreme positions and it was only by dint of extremely refined
conceptual acrobatics, with very fine distinctions, did Augustine succeed in
proclaiming his allegiance to orthodoxy’. … [I]f he were right, then the seeds
of the doctrine of original sin would have been sown in the East as early as
the end of the second century and transplanted from there to Africa and the
West by the early third.”
25. Rees, B.R., Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 60.
26. St. Clair, Craig, A Heretic Reconsidered: Pelagius, Augustine and “Original Sin”, pg.
2.
27. Stortz, Martha Ellen, Pelagius Revisited, pg.140.
28. St. Clair, A
Heretic Reconsidered: Pelagius, Augustine and “Original Sin”, pg. 6.
29. St. Clair, A
Heretic Reconsidered: Pelagius, Augustine and “Original Sin”, pg. 7.
30.
Phipps, William, The Heresiarch: Pelagius
or Augustine? Phipps provides two examples from Augustine to illustrate
this point: ‘All men were seminally in
the loins of Adam when he was condemned.’
‘By the evil will of that one man all sinned in him, since all were that
one man, from whom, therefore they individually derived original sin.’ (UJ 5,
12 & MC 2, 15)
31.
Rees, Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic,
pg. 35. (See footnote 16 above).
32.
St. Clair, A Heretic Reconsidered:
Pelagius, Augustine and “Original Sin”, pg. 13-15.
33.
Lawrence, John Michael, Pelagius and
Pelagianism, pg. 96
34.
St. Clair, A Heretic Reconsidered:
Pelagius, Augustine and “Original Sin”, pg. 21. St. Clair also quotes Meyendorff on page 23:
“there is indeed a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine traditions in
identifying the inheritance of the Fall as an inheritance of essentially
mortality rather than sinfulness, sinfulness being merely a consequence of
mortality.”
35. Pelagius, On Nature (Reconstructed by Rev.
Daniel R. Jennings). http://www.libraryoftheology.com/writings/pelagianism/PelagiusOnNature.pdf
36. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 74.
37. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 40.
38. Toynbee, J.M.C, Christianity and Roman Britain, pg.79.
39. Fredriksen, Paula, Beyond the Body/Soul Dichotomy: Augustine on Paul against the Manichees
and the Pelagians, pg. 95.
40. Pelagius, Letter
to Demetrias, Ch. 3.
41. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 13.
42. Augustine, A
Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed.
43. Brown, Harold, Heresies, pg. 205. Brown continues, “Inasmuch as infants cannot
make meaningful, deliberate choices and thus cannot commit actual sins,
Augustine held that the stain of Adams’s sin produces in them disordered and
misdirected appetites. These are both
the penalty for Adam’s sin and sin in themselves. It is out of this mass of sinful humanity
that God freely elects some to receive a totally unmerited salvation.”
44. Ferguson, Everett, Church History, Volume One, pg. 279.
45. Ferguson, Everett, Church History, Volume One, pg. 276.
46. Ferguson, Everett, Church History, Volume One, pg. 279.
47.
St. Clair, A Heretic Reconsidered:
Pelagius, Augustine and “Original Sin”, pg. 17.
48. Stortz, Martha Ellen, Pelagius Revisited, pg.138-139.
“One is incorporated into the church through baptism, the ritual by
which believers literally become members of the body. The church is pure and holy, as was the body
of Christ. Entering it through baptism
is an act of sanctification. Pelagius
read sanctification as beatification: ‘we are made saints through
baptism.’ Baptism makes of the believer
a new creation. It is faith that leads
the believer to baptism and into the church. … Building on the indicative that
through baptism one was given a new life in Christ, Pelagius proceeded to
exhort Christians to live authentically.
His actual rhetoric was less in the form of discrete imperatives than it
was in the form of exhortations grounded in a Christological indicate: the
saints are visible,; they are those seeking this authentic Christian life in
Pelagius’s conventicles at Rome.
Dismissing Pelagius’s thinking as ‘works-righteousness’ diminishes the
significance Pelagius placed on baptism.
Baptism in his thinking effects an actual conversion in the believer;
baptism makes the believer a new creation.
Pelagius merely exhorted the believer to live up to what had already
happened. Pelagius reinterpreted the
spirituality of martyrdom and its notions of holiness for a church in which
martyrdom was no longer an option. He
was creating a conventicle form of Christianity in a church fast becoming the
imperial religion of the Roman Empire.”
49. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 79.
50. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 130. Rees
continues, “After the Synod of Diospolis had announced its verdict in favour of
Pelagius, Augustine’s determination to destroy his opponent and all that he
stood for hardened into an obsession. It
was he who revived the subject of Pelagius’ orthodoxy as soon as the records of
Diospolis were made available for examination; it was he who masterminded the
all-out campaign of the African Church to enlist the support of the Emperor and
the Pope of Rome and to overcome the latter’s reluctance to endorse an
unambiguous condemnation of Pelagius and Celestius; it was he who,
indefatigable as ever, picked off Pelagius’ main supporters one by one and
reduced them to silence; and it was he who continued the witch-hunt into the
far corners of the Empire by ensuring that there would be no area of the Church
in which Pelagius and his friends might be able to find asylum.”
51. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 7. Rees
quotes Jerome’s Commentary on Jeremiah III
(PL. 24, 758) (CSEL 59, 151) in which Jerome mocks Pelagius as “a huge,
bloated, Alpine dog, weighed down with Scottish oats…able to rage more
effectively with his heels than with his teeth.”
52. Rees, Pelagius:
A Reluctant Heretic, pg. 19.
“Pelagius’ central message, though at first addressed to a comparatively
limited audience, had profound implications for the Church as a whole: it was
‘firmly based on a distinctive ideal of the Church’ as a perfect religious
institution consisting of perfect Christians wholly dedicated to the observance
of the strict code of behavior enjoined by its found and followed by his
apostles. In a treatise On the Christian Life, now generally
accepted to have been written by Pelagius himself, he insists that ‘God wanted
his people to be holy’, an injunction spelt out by one of his followers in
terms whose meaning is unmistakable: ‘surely it is not true that the Law of
Christian behavior has not been given to everyone who is called a Christian” …
There can be no double-standard in one and the same people.’ The members of Pelagius’ Church were to be integri, ‘perfect, authentic, without
moral blemish’; there was no place in it for nominal Christians, camp followers
who had crept into its shelter under pressure from the need for political or
social conformity.”
53. O’Riada, Pelagius:
To Demetrias.
54. Brown, Peter, Pelagius and his Supporters: Aims and Environment, pg. 114.
55. Gonzalez, Justo, The Story of Christianity, Volume I, pg. 215.
56. Placher, William, Essentials of Christian Theology, pg. 259.
57. Brown, Harold, Heresies, pg. 207.
“Augustine’s positions were approved at a large synod in Carthage in
418, and frequently have been reaffirmed by the Western church. He is the most influential Latin theologian
prior to Thomas Aquinas, and both the Lutheran and Calvinist reformations are
strongly Augustinian in spirit.
Nevertheless, the church and many Christians have found it so hard to
live with Augustinianism that over the centuries Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian
views continue to reappear. Much of
Western Christendom is Augustinian-predestinarian in theory, but Semi-Pelagian,
free-will in practice. Eastern
Christendom, which did not emphasize the fundamental importance of the will,
has been spared much of this controversy.”
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