by W. G. T. Shedd
1. Pelagianism
PELAGIUS, a British monk, directly by his own teachings, and indirectly by the controversy to which he gave occasion, and the adherents who developed his views, constructed an anthropology totally antagonistic to the Augustinian.
The fundamental points in his theory are the following. The soul of man by creation is neither holy nor sinful. His body by creation is mortal. The fall of Adam introduced no change of any kind into either the souls or the bodies of his posterity. Every man, therefore, when born into the world is what Adam was when created. At birth, each man's physical nature is liable to disease and death, as was Adam's at creation;2 and, at birth, each man's voluntary faculty, like Adam's at creation, is undetermined either to sin or holiness. Being thus characterless, with a will undecided either for good or evil, and not in the least affected by Adam's apostasy, each individual man, after birth, commences his own voluntariness, originates his own character, and decides his own destiny, by the choice of either right or wrong. Temporal death is no part of the punishment of sin, because it befalls man by creation. His body is mortal per se, and irrespective of sin. Eternal death is therefore the whole of the punishment of man's sin.
The general, but not strictly universal prevalence of sin in the world is accounted for, by the power of temptation, and the influence of example and of habit. It is possible for any man to be entirely sinless, and there have been some such, even among the heathen. The grace of the Holy Spirit is not absolutely, but only relatively necessary, in order to holiness; it renders its attainment easier to man. Regeneration does not consist in the renewal of the will by an internal operation of Divine efficiency, but in the illumination of the intellect by the truth, the stimulation of the will by the threatenings of the law and the promise of future rewards, and by the remission of sin through the Divine indulgence. God's grace2 is designed for all, but man must make himself worthy of it by an honest striving after virtue. The Son of God became man, in order, by his perfect teaching and example, to afford the strongest motives for self-improvement, and thereby redeems us. As we are imitators of Adam in sin, so we are to become imitators of Christ in virtue.
Pelagius held that infant baptism is necessary in order to the remission of future sins; but children who died without baptism he thought would be saved, although they would experience a less degree of felicity than the redeemed enjoy.2 Respecting the doctrines of the trinity and the deity of Christ, of revelation, of prophecy, and of miracles, Pelagius adopted the supernaturalism of the Church, although his anthropology logically developed would have brought him to the rationalistic view upon these subjects.
Pelagius advanced his views first at Rome, from 409 to 411, principally through a commentary upon the Pauline Epistles. His system was brought to the notice of the North-African Church, in 411, by his pupil Coelestius, who was judged heretical by a council at Carthage in 412, and was excommunicated upon his refusal to retract his opinions. Pelagius in 411 went to Palestine. The Eastern Church were suspicious of his views, and he was accused of heresy before the synods of Jerusalem and Diospolis. But he succeeded in satisfying his judges, by qualifying his assertions respecting the possibility and the actual fact of human sinlessness. The North-African Church, however, under the leadership of Augustine, were not satisfied with Pelagius's explanations, and followed up the discussion. Pelagianism was condemned as a heresy by the synods of Mileve and Carthage, in 416, and this decision was ultimately endorsed by the vacillating Roman bishop Zosimus, in 418, and thus by the Latin Church. The Eastern Church, as represented at the Council of Ephesus, in 431, also condemned Pelagianism.
But though the Eastern Church came into this decision, its opposition to Pelagianism was not so earnest and intelligent as that of the Western, and particularly as that of the North-African Church. There were two reasons for this. In the first place, the Greek anthropology was adopted by the Oriental bishops. This, we have seen, maintained the position that original sin is not voluntariness but physical corruption, together with the synergistic view of regeneration. The Greek anthropology would therefore come in conflict with the theory of Augustine upon these points. In the second place, the doctrine of unconditional election and predestination, which flowed so naturally from the Augustinian view of the entire helplessness of human nature, was extremely offensive to the Eastern mind. Hence we find that when the controversy between Augustinianism and Pelagianism was transferred from the West to the East, and the examination was conducted in the Eastern synods, there were bishops who either asserted that the matters in dispute were unessential, or else sided with Pelagius, if the choice must be made between Pelagius and Augustine. The Antiochian School, as represented by Theodore of Mopsuestia and Isidore of Pelusium, stood midway between the parties, and the condemnation of Pelagianism which was finally passed by the Council of Ephesus seems to have been owing more to a supposed connection of the views of Pelagius with those of Nestorius, than to a clear and conscientious conviction that his system was contrary to Scripture, and the Christian experience.
Such a settlement, consequently, of the strife could not be permanent. Moreover, the views of Augustine respecting predestination were misstated by some of his followers, and misrepresented by some of his opponents, in such a manner as to imply the tenet of necessitated sin,—evil being represented as the product of an efficient decree, instead, as Augustine taught, of a permissive one. The doctrine of election was construed into a motive for indifference, instead of fear and supplication for mercy. The same abuse was made of the doctrine of sovereign grace in the salvation of the human soul that was anticipated and warned against by the Apostle Paul. These causes, and this condition of things, led to the revival, by a party in the West, of the synergistic theory of regeneration, as the only thing which, it was supposed, could relieve the honest-minded of their difficulties respecting predestination and election, and make conversion an intelligible and practical matter. This party were the so-called Semi-Pelagians.
2. Semi-Pelagianism
The Semi-Pelagian controversy arose in the following manner. The monks of the cloister of Adrumetum, in North-Africa, were most of them advocates of the Augustinian theory, but had fallen into dispute respecting its meaning. Some of them, by the doctrine of absolute predestination, had been thrown into great mental doubt and despair. Others were making this doctrine the occasion of entire indifference, and even of licentiousness. A third class were supposing that some virtuous efficiency, even though it be very slight, must be ascribed to the human will, in regeneration. The abbot of the cloister referred the case to Augustine, in 427, who endeavored in his two treatises, De gratia et libero arbitrio, and De correptione et gratia, to relieve the difficulties of the monks, and appears to have been successful.
But, contemporaneously with this occurrence, a far more extensive opposition to Augustine's theory arose in Southern Gaul. A theological school was formed among these enterprising and active French churches which, in fact, reproduced with modifications the Greek anthropology of the preceding centuries. A Scythian monk, John Cassian, a pupil and friend of Chrysostom, and the founder and president of the cloister at Marseilles, stood at the head of it. It became a vigorous party, of which the most distinguished members and leaders were Vincent of Lerins, Faustus of Rhegium, Gennadius, and Arnobius the Younger.
Augustine, also, had his disciples and adherents in these same churches of Southern Gaul. Among them were two influential theologians, viz.: Hilary and Prosper. These informed Augustine of the controversy that was going on in the French churches, and he endeavored, as in the instance of the monks of Adrumetum, to settle the dispute by explanatory treatises. He addressed to the Massiliensians the two tracts: De praedestinatione sanctorum, and De dono perseverantiae. He meets the objection that the doctrine of predestination ministers to moral indifference and licentiousness, by teaching that the decree of election is not a decree to bestow eternal happiness upon men full of sin, but that only he can be sure of his election who runs the Christian race, and endures to the end. The divine decree includes the means as well as the end, and therefore produces holiness in order to secure happiness. Handled in this manner, the doctrine, Augustine claims, is not a dangerous one for the common mind; but on the contrary affords the only strong ground of confidence to a helpless and despairing spirit. Augustine, however, did not succeed in convincing his opponents, and the controversy was afterwards carried on with some bitterness between Prosper and Vincent of Lerins.
The ablest advocate of the Semi-Pelagian theory was Faustus of Rhegium. His treatise De gratia et libero arbitrio greatly influenced the decisions of the council of Arles, in 475, and of Lyons, in the same year,—both of which councils sanctioned Semi-Pelagianism. The fortunes of this system, however, declined in Southern Gaul, from two causes. In the first place, the later defenders of Augustinianism, particularly Fulgentius, while holding the doctrine of predestination with entire strictness in its relation to holiness, were more reserved respecting its relations to sin,—thus affording less opportunity for the charge of necessitated evil. Secondly, the personal influence of some highly respected and excellent bishops, such as Avitus of Vienne, and Caesarius of Arles, was thrown in favor of the views of the North-African Father. By these means, a change was effected in the churches of Southern Gaul, to such an extent, that in the year 529, a little more than fifty years after the councils of Arles and Lyons, they declared for the Augustinian anthropology, in the two councils of Orange and Valence. The following are some of the decisions of the council of Orange, and indicate in their condemnatory clauses the Semi-Pelagian positions, particularly respecting grace and free-will. "If any one assert that by reason of man's prayer the grace of God is conferred, but that it is not grace itself which causes that God is prayed to, he contradicts the prophet Isaiah (61:1), and the apostle Paul (Rom. 10:20) saying the same thing: 'I was found of them that sought me not, and have been made manifest to them that asked not after me.' If any one maintains that God waits for a willingness in us to be purged from sin, and does not allow that the very willingness to be cleansed from sin is wrought in us by the infusion and operation of the Holy Spirit, he resists the Holy Ghost saying by Solomon (Prov. 8:35, Septuagint ver.), 'The will is prepared by the Lord;' and by the apostle (Philip. 2:13), 'It is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do, of his good pleasure.' If any man say, that we believe, will, desire, endeavor, labor, watch, study, ask, seek, and knock, without and previous to grace, and that grace is conferred by God upon this ground, and does not confess that it is wrought in us by the infusion and operation of the Holy Ghost, that we believe, will, desire, endeavor, and do all the above-mentioned things as we ought, and thus makes the aid of grace to follow after man's humility or obedience, and does not allow that it is the gift of grace itself, that we are obedient and humble: he resists the apostle (1 Cor. 4:7; 15:10) saying: 'What hast thou, that thou hast not received,' and: 'By the grace of God I am what I am.' It is God's gift both when we think aright, and when we hold our feet from falsehood and unrighteousness. For as often as we do good things, God worketh in us, and with us, that we may work. There are many good things done in man which are not done by man (multa in homine bona fiunt, quae non facit homo). But man doth no good things which God does not cause man to do (quae non Deus praestet, ut faciat homo). In every good work, we do not begin, and are helped afterwards by the grace of God, but he first of all, no good merits of ours going before, inspires into us both faith and love of himself, that we may both believingly seek the sacrament of baptism, and after baptism, by his help, may fulfil the things that are pleasing to him."
Respecting the Semi-Pelagian theory itself: It was intended by its advocates to be a middle-position between Augustinianism and Pelagianism. The essence of the theory consists in a mixture of grace and free-will. There are two efficient agencies concerned in the renovation of the human will: viz., the will itself and the Holy Spirit. Hence, the product can not be referred either to one or the other, as the sole originating cause. Upon this co-existence of two co-efficients and their co-operation, Cassian lays great stress, as the distinguishing and essential position which would retain the element of truth that, in his judgment, was in Augustinianism and in Pelagianism, and would exclude the errors into which, he believed, both fell. Hence, in answer to the test question: Which agency begins the work of regeneration? Cassian affirms that sometimes it is the divine, and sometimes it is the human. Sometimes he ascribes the commencement of good in man, to man, and its completion to God; and sometimes he derives the first desire after grace itself from God. Sometimes he even ascribes to the human spirit a compulsion to good. "Sometimes," he remarks, "we are drawn to salvation against our will (inviti)." In another place,2 he asks: "What was that which stood in the way of Paul, because he seems to have been attracted to the way of life, as it were unwillingly; though afterwards consummating and perfecting this initial compulsion (necessities), by a voluntary devotedness."
Semi-Pelagianism was the revival in the Western Church of the Greek anthropology, though made somewhat more guarded by the discussions and statements of the Pelagian controversy. The following recapitulation, taken from Wiggers' representation, embraces the principal points in the system. In his primitive state, man was possessed of certain physical, intellectual, and moral advantages which he does not now possess. His body was immortal; he lay under no earthly ills or burdens, such as the curse of labor, and in the instance of woman the pains of child-bearing; he possessed remarkable knowledge of nature and the moral law; and was entirely sinless. The sin of the first pair, to which they were tempted by the devil, resulted, not only for them but also for their posterity, in both physical and moral disadvantages. The body became mortal, and a moral corruption entered which was propagated to the posterity, and gradually becomes greater and greater. Freedom of will, in the sense of power to good, is not wholly lost, but it is very much weakened. Man in his present condition is morally diseased. The imputation of original sin is removed in baptism, and without baptism no one attains salvation. Owing to his morally diseased and weakened condition, man needs the assistance of divine grace, in order to the practice of holiness, and the attainment of salvation. The moral freedom of man, or his power to good, works in connection with divine grace. The two things are not to be separated from each other. There is no unconditional decree of God, but predestination to salvation or to perdition depends upon the use which man makes of the remainder of his freedom to good. The decree of election is therefore a conditional one; God determines to bestow forgiveness and assisting influences upon those who he foresees will make a beginning. And yet the merit of his salvation man must not ascribe to himself, but to the grace of God, because without this grace man's endeavors would be unsuccessful.
Wiggers compares the three systems with each other as follows: Augustinianism asserts that man is morally dead; Semi-Pelagianism maintains that he is morally sick; Pelagianism holds that he is morally well.
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