Pelagianism

Zeal for a holy life

Around 400 a monk named Pelagius, said to have come from Britain, was a respected teacher in Rome. He was grieved by baptized Christians who lived careless lives, and he believed that since Jesus commanded, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48), people are able to live so. In his letter to Demetrias in 413 he urged that God has given us a good nature, so that we can keep his commandments; to plead that we cannot is to accuse God of commanding the impossible Pelagius, Letter to Demetrias.

For Pelagius, grace meant the nature and free will God gave us, the law, the teaching and example of Christ, and the forgiveness of past sins. Adam's sin harmed his descendants only by its bad example; it did not pass on a damaged nature. His follower Celestius taught that infants are born without Adam's sin. Their zeal for holiness was sincere, but the church judged that they made far too little of the sickness of sin.

Grace comes first

In On Nature and Grace (415) Augustine argued that since Adam everyone is born with a nature sick with sin, and that the will is not destroyed but bound, so that it cannot love God until grace heals and frees it Augustine, On Nature and Grace. Grace is not an example but God's power going before us and renewing the will. Jesus said:

I am the vine and you are the branches. The one who remains in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.

John 15:5

Scripture calls us "dead in your trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1) and says that "it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose" (Philippians 2:13). Augustine also found an answer in the church's prayers: when the church prays for unbelievers to come to faith, "the beginning of faith is God's gift" Augustine.

In 418 the Council of Carthage confessed that Adam's sin reaches his descendants and that grace not only forgives past sins but truly helps us not to sin, and condemned Pelagius' teaching Council of Carthage (418). The Council of Ephesus in 431 condemned his followers as well. When some later held that the first step of faith could come from human will, the Council of Orange (529) confessed that even the beginning of faith comes from grace Council of Orange (see Semi-Pelagianism).

The churches today

The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches all reject Pelagianism. The Orthodox do not accept Augustine's account of guilt inherited from Adam, but neither do they hold that anyone can be saved without grace. Lutherans and Reformed stress that the fallen will cannot turn to God by itself; the Wesleyan tradition teaches that God's prevenient grace, given first to all, enables the will to respond. As Wesley put it, "Grace is both the beginning and end" Wesley.

The name has also served as a weapon in debate. Reformers charged Rome with Pelagian leanings, and Calvinists charged Arminians, yet those accused have all rejected Pelagius too. The story is told in Augustine, doctor of grace and Original sin and its effects; see also original sin and grace.