PELAGIUS
PELAGIUS
(c.360-c. 420), early British theologian. Of the origin of Pelagius
almost nothing is known. He seems to have been one of the earliest,
if not the very earliest, of that remarkable series of men who
issued from the monasteries of Scotland and Ireland, and carried
back to the Continent in a purified form the religion they had
received from it. Coming to Rome in the beginning of the 5th
century (his earliest known writing is of date 405), he found
a scandalously low tone of morality prevalent. But his remonstrances
were met by the plea of human weakness. To remove this plea
by exhibiting the actual powers of human nature became his first
object. It seemed to him that the Augustinian doctrine of total
depravity and of the consequent bondage of the will both cut
the sinew of all human effort and threw upon God the blame which
really belonged to man. His favourite maxim was, “If I
ought, I can.” Judging from the general style of his writings,
his religious development had been equable and peaceful, not
marked by the prolonged mental conflict, or the abrupt transitions,
which characterized the experience of his great opponent.With
no great penetration he saw very clearly the thing before him,
and many of his practical counsels are marked by succinctness
of a proverb (“corpus non frangendum, sed regendum est’).
The peculiar
tenets of Pelagius, though indicated in the commentaries which
he published at Rome previous to 409, might not so speedily
have attracted attention had they not been adopted by Coelestius;
probably an Italian, had been trained as a lawyer, but abandoned
his profession for an ascetic life. When Rome was sacked by
the Goths (410) the two friends crossed Africa. There Pelagius
once or twice met with Augustine, but very shortly sailed for
Palestine, where he justly expected that his opinions would
be more cordially received. Coelestius remained in Carthage
with the view of receiving ordination. But Aurelius, bishop
of Carthage, being warned against him, summoned a synod, at
which Paulinus, a deacon of Milan, charged Coelestius with holding
the following six errors:
- that
Adam would have died even if he had not sinned;
- that
the sin of Adam injured himself alone, not the human race;
- that
new-born children are in the same condition in which Adam
was before the fall;
- that
the whole human race does not die because of Adam’s death
or sin, nor will the race rise again because of he resurrection
of Christ;
- that
the law gives entrance to heaven as well as the gospel;
- that
even before the coming of Christ there were men who were entirely
without sin.
To these
propositions a seventh is sometimes added, “that infants,
though unbaptized, have eternal life.” A corollary from
the third. Coelestius did not deny that he held these opinions,
but he maintained that they were open questions, on which the
Church had never pronounced. The synod condemned and excommunicated
him. Coelestius, after a futile appeal to Rome, went to Ephesus,
and there received ordination.
In Palestine
Pelagius lived unmolested and revered, until in 415 Orosius,
a Spanish priest, came from Augustine to warn Jerome against
him. The result was that in June of that year Pelagius was cited
by Jerome before John, bishop of Jerusalem, and charged with
holding that man may be without sin, if only he desires it.
This prosecution broke down, and in December of the same year
Pelagius was summoned before a synod of fourteen bishops at
Diospolis (Lydda). The proceedings, being conducted in various
languages and by means of interpreters, lacked certainty, and
justified Jerome’s application to the synod of the epithet
“miserable.” But there is no doubt that Pelagius repudiated
the assertion of Coelestius, that the divine grace and help
consists only in free will, and in the giving of the law and
instruction; at the same time he affirmed that man is able,
if he likes, to live without sin and keep the commandments of
God, inasmuch as God gives him this ability. The synod was satisfied
with these statements and pronounced Pelagius to be in agreement
with Catholic teaching. Pelagius naturally plumed himself on
his acquittal, and provoked Augustine to give a detailed account
of the synod, in which he shows that the language used by Pelagius
was ambiguous, but that, being interpreted by his previous written
statements, it involved a denial of what the Church understood
by grace and by man’s dependence on it.
The North
African Church as a whole resented the decisions of Diospolis,
and in 418 Zosimus, bishop of Rome, was prompted to draw up
a circular inviting the bishops of Christendom to subscribe
to condemnation of Pelagian opinions. Nineteen Italian bishops
refused; among them Julian of Eclanum in Apulia, a man of good
birth, approved sanctity and great capacity, who now became
the recognized leader of the movement. But not even his acuteness
and zeal could redeem a cause which was rendered hopeless when
the Eastern Church (Ephesus, 431) confirmed the decision of
the West. Pelagius himself disappears after 420: Coelestius
was at Constantinople seeking the aid of Nestorius in 428.
The first
principle of Pelagianism is a theory, which affirms the freedom
of the will, in the sense that in each volition and at each
moment of life, no matter what the previous career of the individual
has been, the will is in equipoise, able to choose good or evil.
We are born characterless (non pleni), and with no bias towards
good or evil (ut sine virtute, ita et sine vitio). It follows
that we are uninjured by the sin of Adam, save in so far as
the evil example of our predecessors misleads and influences
us (non propagine sed exemplo). These is, in fact, no such thing
as original sin, sin being a thing of will and not of nature;
for it could be of nature our sin would be chargeable on God
the creator. This will, capable of good as of evil, being the
natural endowment of man, is found in the heathen as well as
in the Christian, and the heathen may therefore perfectly keep
such law as they know. But, if all men have this natural ability
to do and to be all that is required for perfect righteousness,
what becomes of grace, of the aid of the Holy Spirit, and, in
a word, of Christianity? Pelagius appears to have confused the
denial of original sin (in the sense of inherited guilt)
with the denial of inherited nature or disposition of any kind.
Hence he vacillates considerably in his use of the word “grace”.
In his most careful statements he appears to allow to grace
everything but the initial determining movements towards salvation.
He ascribed to the unassisted human will power to accept and
use the proffered salvation of Christ. It was at this point
his departure from the Catholic creed could be made apparent:
Pelagius maintains, expressly and by implication, that it is
the human will which takes the initiative, and is the determining
factor in the salvation of the individual; while the Church
maintains that it is the divine will that takes the initiative
by renewing and enabling the human will to accept and use the
aid or grace offered. This was the position most strongly contested
by Augustine (q.v.). The result was the rise of Semipelagianism,
which was an attempt to hold a middle course between the harshness
of Augustinianism and the obvious errors of Pelagianism. It
appeared simultaneously in North Africa and in southern Gaul.
In the former Church, which naturally desired to adhere to the
views of its own great theologian, the monks of Adrumetum found
themselves either sunk to the verge of despair or provoked to
licentiousness by his predestinarian teaching. When this was
reported to Augustine he wrote two elaborate treatises to show
that when God ordains the end He also ordains the means, and
if any man is ordained to life eternal he is thereby ordained
to holiness and zealous effort. But meanwhile some of the monks
themselves had struck out a via media, which ascribed
to God sovereign grace and yet left intact man’s responsibility.
A similar scheme was adopted by Cassian of Marseilles (hence
Semipelagians are often spoken of as Massilians), and
was afterwards ably advocated by Vincent of Lerins and Faustus
of Rhegium. The differentia of Semipelagianism is the tenet
that in regeneration and all that results from it, the divine
and the human will are co-operating (synergistic) coefficient
factors. Pelagius was familiar with the Greek language and theology,
and frequented Rufinus, upholder of Greek theology.
From Encyclopedia
Britanica
