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PELAGIANISM NB: These notes were originally written for
a course in theological anthropology given at Wheaton College,
Spring Semester, 1997. © R. S. Clark, 2001. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
Early in the course I made the claim, which I did not intend
to be controversial, that Pelagius is a heretic. After
some e-mail discussions, it seems this claim requires
explanation and justification. I hope that this discussion
stimulates you (as it has me) to a more thoughtful theological
anthropology.
Traditionally Pelagius has been considered an arch-heretic in
the Western Church. Modern scholarship, however, has revised the
picture by arguing that he did not take the more extreme
positions later associated with Pelagianism.(1) There is,
however, an overwhelming consensus in the Western Church that
the positions traditionally ascribed to Pelagius and certainly
taught by his key followers are heretical and outside the pale
of Christian orthodoxy. (2)
I. Background
Pelagius was a British monk who appears on the historical
radar ca.380 in Rome. (3) He disappeared more mysteriously from
the radar ca. 410. His interest seems to have been to promote
asceticism, i.e., withdrawal from the world as a means to
holiness and that as a means to justification or righteousness
before God. (4)
It is likely that Pelagius and his associates were drawn to
Rome by Jerome's strongly moralist (c.342-420) preaching. (5)
Pelagius himself apparently attracted a following by teaching
that humans are not Adam's children, but, like Adam, have the
ability to sin or not to sin (6). He was, ironically, like much
of Reformed theology, a creationist regarding the soul,
i.e., he taught each soul is created immediately by God so that
it does not participate in original sin. (7)
On the sacking of Rome (ca.409-10) by Alaric the Goth,
Pelagius went to North Africa, settling in Carthage. His
colleague, Celestius (or Coelestius) moved to Jerusalem where he
was charged by Paulinus of Milan of denying the transmission of
Adam's sin to all humanity but was cleared by a diocesan synod.
The Pelagians also presupposed that ought equals can, i.e.,
justice requires that God may only require of us what we are
freely able to do. Thus they interpreted passages such as Deut
30.19 to imply that humans must have the ability to will the
contrary relative to the divine will. (8)
Augustine (354-430)
On the other side, Augustine from at least 396, was teaching
that humanity was a massa peccati (lump of sin). (9) In
his Confessions (397) he was teaching that all humans are
born sinful because we were in Adam. (10) His famous formula
was, posse peccare, posse non peccare, before the fall (ante
lapsum) but non posse, non peccare after the fall (post
lapsum). As the Puritans (i.e., 16th through early 18th
century English, Dutch and North American Calvinists) put it in
their rhyme: "In Adam's fall, sinned we all."
It was not Pelagius himself but a follower, namely Julian
of Eclanum (c.386-c.455), who initiated the famous literary
battle with Augustine over the doctrines of sin, grace,
predestination and free will. Augustine taught the view later
described as 'total depravity' or 'total inability', i.e.,
humans apart from prevenient grace [grace which works first] are
unable to will to choose to believe. Remember, the Pelagians
(particularly Julian) had affirmed the total freedom of the
human will as the necessary postulate of moral responsibility.
Not so for Augustine. In Augustine's view, one is guilty because
one was in Adam. When we sin actually, we're only doing what
comes naturally.
For Augustine our will is so sin impaired by Adam's fall that
it only chooses evil apart from Grace. Pelagius, Celestius and
Julian, naturally denied predestination while Augustine affirmed
it. For Augustine, one believes because he is elect. It was
unthinkable that humans should exercise the initiative in
salvation.
Augustine began responding to the Pelagians in 411-2. He
first defended infant baptism as the means by which God washes
away original sin in response to Coelestius and Julian who had
argued that children were eligible for eternal life without
baptism.
This was a shocking affront. For most of the ancient Church
infant baptism was a given, since it was widely understood that
it washed away original sin. This one of the reasons Augustine
taught it and the Pelagian denial of the grace of baptism to the
children of believers was one of the most heinous aspects of
their theology. (11)
He also criticized the Pelagian hermeneutic, their view of
grace, their denial of original sin. He defended predestination
(426/7 and again in 428/9) and the perseverance of the saints.
(12)
Augustinian Realism
Where Paul worked clearly and consistently with "forensic"
(legal) categories, Augustine did not, at least not exclusively.
He responded (in 412 AD) to the Pelagians by arguing the
following:
- Human nature was created blameless, without vitium.
All sin and weakness is ex originali peccato. (13)
- The threat of punishment upon the first disobedience
entailed bodily & spiritual death. (14)
- Adam’s sin is transmitted from him to all humans through
natural descent. (15)
- The reason infants are baptized, is to wash away
original sin. (16.
- Just as sin is propagated (traducere) by natural
descent, grace is infused .(17)
- Romans 5.12 teaches that in quo all sinned. (A
misreading of the Greek here as as a locative rather than a
causal phrase?) In this he may have followed "Ambrosiaster."
(18)
- Original sin is to be distinguished from actual sin.
Original sin is not just the first actual sin. It is
corporate in nature. Therefore we are born to condemnation.
We sin in actu because we are sinners, in Adam. (19)
- After baptism, the guilt of original sin is removed, but
concupiscentia (spark of sin, yearning of lower
appetites) remains. (20)
- The result of Adam’s sin is that humanity is now
massa damnitionis or massa peccatorum et impiorum
corporately and individually. (21.
- The result of original sin is spiritual and physical
death. (22)
- Therefore grace is, in the nature of the case, "free"
and unmerited.
- God justly condemns those who have not heard the gospel
because all have sinned in Adam.
I I. The Ecclesiastical Response
Augustine's views, formally at least, carried the day in the
West. (23) Pelagius was excommunicated by Pope Innocent I
(410-17) and Pelagianism condemned by four regional councils,
one ecumenical council and at least one Roman Catholic council
not to mention numerous Protestant synods, assemblies and
confessions.
Councils of Carthage (412, 416
and 418)
Coelestius was condemned at Carthage in 412. Pelagianism was
condemned also in 416 and 418.
Council of Ephesus (431)
Pelagianism was anathematized at the Third Ecumenical
(universal) council, on 22 July in Ephesus. (24)
The Council of Orange (529)
The 2nd Council of Orange (Aurausio, France) in 529 upheld
Augustine's view of grace and condemned Pelagianism
unequivocally.
Council of Trent (Sessio
Quinta)
On 17 June, 1546, the Roman Council of Trent condemned
Pelagius in five chapters. (25)
Protestant Synods and
Confessions
Pelagianism was condemned universally by the Protestants.
Some notable examples.
- •2nd Helvetic (1561/66) 8-9. (Swiss-German Reformed)
- •Augsburg Confession (1530) Art. 9, 18 (Lutheran)
- •Gallican Confession (1559) Art. 10 (French Reformed)
- •Belgic Confession (1561) Art. 15 (Lowlands,
French/Dutch/German Reformed)
- •The Anglican Articles (1571), 9. (English)
- •Canons of Dort (1618-9), 3/4.2 (Dutch/German/French
Reformed)
To say that Pelagianism is heresy, is to stand in the
broadest stream of the Western Church. It is not a narrow,
bigoted position, at least not as seen from the perspective of
the historic Western Christian tradition.
III. Theological Analysis
Moralism
Its important to realize that he was a moralist, i.e.,
he was very much concerned about Christian behavior and was
concerned that the pessimistic Augustinian anthropology and
soteriology (doctrine of salvation) would discourage good
behavior. Augustine's prayer, 'Give what you command, and
command what you will', seemed to Pelagius, to strip humans of
their freedom and hence moral responsibility. (26)
Most soteriological moralism is rooted in an attempt to get
folk to behave properly. The question is not whether to behave,
but why? For justification or as a result of it? Historically
and theologically attempts to get folk to be good apart from
divine grace must be judged a failure. This would seem to be the
lesson of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and the Reformation
generally. (27)
Historically it has been the case that those who have sided
with Pelagius; i.e., those who have broken the link between Adam
and us; have also broken the link between the redeemed and
Christ. They have argued that just as one is not sinful 'in
Adam', is one not righteous "in Christ." Grace, in this system,
only helps one to do what one could do naturally. It is not,
therefore of the essence of salvation.
The Pelagian a Priori
The key unstated presupposition, in Pelagius' argument, was
the there is a universal standard of justice to which all, even
God are bound. Flowing from this belief is the further belief
that justice requires absolute freedom of the will. Why? Because
if God is absolutely sovereign, then humans must be only
puppets, thus depriving God of his justice by stripping humans
of their freedom and their moral responsibility. God is just.
Therefore humans must have a free will. (28)
Anthropology
Pelagius' notion of justice required him to deny any link
between Adam and us. God, he argued, cannot blame us for
another's sin (29). Since Pelagius broke entirely the link
(whether biological or legal) between Adam and us, he concluded
that the only way in which sin can be transmitted is through
imitation of Adam's example (30). "[B]efore he begins exercising
his will, there is only in him what God has created." (31)
Soteriology
Pelagius began with a notion of justice which he inherited
from his culture. He brought this notion to Scripture and it
blinded him to several important biblical notions. Flowing from
this error was another.
Adam and We
In order to maintain his notion of justice he had to break
not only the link between Adam and us, but also between Christ
and us. As a result he denied the doctrine of original sin.
In the face of rather overwhelming amount of biblical data
indicating a link between Christ and his people, few people have
been willing to be as ruthlessly consistent. (32)
Grace and Free Will
In Augustinian theology, grace (L. gratia) is the
unearned and undeserved favor of God. It is the sine qua non
of the Christian doctrine of salvation. This has been the
Western consensus since the 4th century. On this point, Rome and
the Protestants agreed, if only formally. The conflict between
Rome and the Protestants was never, whether grace and faith, but
what sort of grace and what sort of faith?
Grace, in the Pelagian theology, however, became superfluous.
Since we are not sinners in Adam, we have no need of grace from
the beginning. At best, grace can be said to bring out our
natural abilities.
Perfectionism
Pelagius went boldly where few have dared to go. He went on
to argue that not only do we not need grace, we can if we will,
observe God's commandments without sinning. (33) This must be
since Jesus said, 'Be holy as your heavenly Father is holy'. He
would not have said so if we could not do it. He did not expect
that many would do from childhood to death, but that through
struggle one could attain a state of perfection by the exercise
of the will. (34)
Two Adams
The Pelagians retained, however, the analogy between Adam and
Christ (Romans 5:12-21). This forced them to argue that what was
true for us relative to Adam; i.e., one falls by imitating Adam;
is also true for us relative to Christ; i.e., one becomes
righteous by exercising the will to sinlessness in imitation of
Jesus.
Vicarious Atonement
Since Anselm (1033-1109) most of the Church has understood
Christ's death in forensic, i.e., legal categories. In Cur
Deus Homo, Anselm argued that God having willed to redeem
us, he could so in no other way than by the incarnation. The
penal, substitutionary doctrine of the atonement was also at the
heart of the Protestant Christologies and soteriologies, whether
Calvinist or Lutheran. Since the 18th century this has been the
evangelical doctrine of the atonement as well.
Not so, however, for the Pelagians. In their scheme, it has
been considered unjust for Christ to have suffered vicariously
for sinners. How can one righteous person suffer for
others, especially the unrighteous? This was Pelagius' argument
and has been followed in more Modern times by Hugo Grotius
(1583-1645) and Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875). (35) The
Pelagian move here is perhaps the classic example of the power
of an a priori notion which comes to control one's
theology.
Conclusion: The Protestant Answer
The Protestants, beginning with Martin Luther (1483-1546) and
continuing in John Calvin (1509-64) realized that part of the
problem was the realistic theory of sin. That is,
Augustine had been assumed certain ontological categories, that
is, evil is the absence of being, and grace is a sort of stuff
which the Church dispenses.
The Protestants realized that our problem is not a matter of
being or lack thereof. Sin is not a thing (res) which can
be transmitted sexually any more than divine justice (iustitia
Dei) is a thing which can be dispensed.
Rather sin and righteousness belong to a moral category.
Justice is one of God's communicable moral attributes - that is,
one of the attributes which he gives to or shares with humans.
This realization moved them to strengthen the federal
notion of union with Adam and Christ by moving to a forensic
doctrine of justification.
True, we are all biologically connected to our first parents
(we are all one blood Scripture says), but more importantly, we
are legally identified with them so that we are reckoned as we
ourselves had disobeyed. The forensic category is absolutely
necessary, in the case of Christ, for obvious reasons. Working
consistently from the Two-Adam notion they reasoned that our
relations to Adam can also be considered forensic (legal)
instead of realistic.
Thus just as sin was imputed to all in Adam, in the
same way, by virtue of gracious divine election to union with
Christ (unio Christo) believers are all 'in Christ'. Thus
Paul says that we died and were raised with Christ and are
presently seated with him. This is forensic, not realistic
language.
Sinners benefit from the the righteousness Christ
accomplished both actively and passively (from L. passio,
suffering) through faith (per fidem) i.e., the instrument
which lays hold of Christ's obedience (iustitia Christi
aliena), i.e., Christ's alien righteousness. Christ's
iustitia is imputed to believers as if they had themselves
accomplished it. (36)
ENDNOTES
1. Pelagius has been partially rehabilitated in Modern
scholarship. See G. Bonner, 'How Pelagian Was Pelagius?'
Studia Patristica (1966): 350-8; J. Ferguson, Pelagius: A
Historical and Theological Study (Cambridge, 1956).
2. Heresy is noun derived from the Greek noun haeresis
(1 Cor 11.19; Gal 5.20; 2 Peter 2.1) meaning a divisive sect.
Modern Christianity considers that than can be no such thing as
'heresy' since Modernity understands religion to primarily
sociological and historical, i.e., the description of religious
sensibilities. Historic Christianity, however, has always
considered that the Christian religion, contains a necessary
body of propositional truths revealed by God which one must
affirm in order to be a Christian. Heresy in this scheme is a
substantial deviation from this body of necessary truths.
3. He was monachus, i.e., an ascetic who belonged to
no particular order (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines,
rev. (New York, 1978), 357.
4. The primary source of Pelagius' writings is found in A.
Souter, ed. Pelagius' Exposition of Thirteen Epistles of St.
Paul 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922-31).
See also, Pelagius, Pelagius' Commentary on St Paul's Epistle
to the Romans, trans. T. de Bruyn (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993).
5. Jerome is one of the greatest of the Latin speaking
Fathers. He was the primary translator of the Biblia Vulgata
(i.e., the common language Bible), the Latin Bible which
dominated Western piety and theology until the middle of the
16th century. He was a hermit to taught himself Hebrew in the
desert as a way of overcoming the lusts of the flesh. As a
preacher in Rome (382-5) he stressed withdrawal from the world
as the road to holiness. From 386 he settled in Jerusalem to
work on the Vulgate.
6. The formula as its found in Augustine is posse peccare,
posse non peccare.
7. peccatum originalis.
8. "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you
that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Now choose life, so that you and your children may live" (Deut
30.19). Pelagius argued for three features in action: 1)power (posse);
2)will (velle); 3)the ability to make it so (esse).
Kelly, 358.
9. Augustine, Ad Simplicianum.
10. Confessions, ch.7.
11. Please not that though Luther retained infant baptism, he
did so on different grounds. For Luther, baptism is the gospel
made visible. For Calvin, it was the sign and seal of the
covenant.
12. Augustine's anti-Pelagian tracts are widely available in
English on the web in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
series.
13. De natura et gratia, iii.3-iv.4, Corpus
Scriptorum ecclesiaticorum latinorum, vol.60, ed. C.F. Urba
& J. Zycha (Vienna, 1913), 238.-236.6; McGrath, 219.
14. De peccatorum meritis et remissione, ex.
Retractiones, 2.23. Nicene & Post Nicene Fathers vol.
V.
15. De pecc. 1, 9.
16. De pecc. 1, 10.
17. De pecc, 1.17; 1.18, p.22.
18. McGrath, 216.
19. De pecc, 1,11-2.
20. De pecc. 2,46.
21. McGrath, 218. De diversibus quaestionibus ad
Simplicianum I.ii.12, Corpus Christianorum: Series
Latina, vol.44, ed. A. Mutzenbecher (Turnhold: Brepols, 1970),
48.620-7.
22. De natura, McGrath, 219.
23. Among the doctrines which the Council anathematized were
the 'natural' rather than penal mortality of Adam; denial of
infant baptism; restricting the work of grace to past sins only.
24. Kelly, 361. Council of Ephesus, canon IV. 'If any of the
clergy should fall away, and publicly or privately presume to
maintain the doctrines of Nestorius or Celestius, it is declared
just by the holy Synod that these should be deposed'. The
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 14.229-30.
25. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2.83-8.
26. da quod iubes et iube quod vis (De dono
perseverantia, 53). See Kelly, 387.
27. See Galatians 2.15-3.19; 5.16-6.10.
28. Like most free-will arguments, theodicy, i.e., the need
to justify God, is at the core as well. Throughout Scripture,
however, one finds precious little such theodicy. See Exodus 9;
Job [passim] and Romans 9, for examples of fairly shocking
disregard for what we might consider 'fairness'.
29. In Romanos 5.15 'Ne in forma aequalitas
putaretur....Plus praeualuit iustitia in vivifando quam peccatum
in occidendo, quia Adam tantum se et suos posteros interfecit,
Christus autem et qui erant tunc in corpore et posteros
liberavit' (Souter, 46). See also his comments on vv.12-4.
30. In Romanos 5.12,16. Kelly, 359.
31. Augustine, de gratia Christi et peccato originali
(418), 2.14
32. Paul used the locative expression en Christo
approx. 87 times, just to cite one example. This expression
grammatically, is stronger than Pelagius' theory admits. For
Paul, believers are legally united with Christ in his death and
resurrection. They are seated with him in the heavenlies. See
Rom 6.11, 8.1-2, 39; 1 Cor 1.1-4, 30; 15.18-22, 31; 2 Cor 5.17;
Gal 2.17; 3.28; Eph 1.1-15; 2.6-10; Col 3.1.
33. Augustine, de gest. Pelag. 16. Kelly, 360.
34. Ad Demet., 27. Aug. de gest. Pelag. 20.
Kelly, 360.
35. See Charles Finney, Finney's Systematic Theology,
ed. J. H. Fairchild (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1976).
36. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) Q.60 states this
nicely. |
