Pelagianism
Derived from the word ‘pelagic,’ from the Greek πέλαγος (pélagos) 'open sea,' Pelagic fish are those who do not live near the bottom or shore but out in the water… Oh, wait… I meant to google Pelagianism, not Pelagic fish. My apologies. We continue our survey of heresies with a look at Pelagianism.
It was Christianity’s most desperate hour. No longer underground and hunted, it faced its most daunting challenge yet, how to function as the official religion of the known world. Of course, only in hindsight can we recognize it as the challenge that it proved to be. At the time it must have seemed a great victory, that the Gospel had conquered the world and the kingdom of heaven was dawning on creation. Little did they realize that the victory was a false one and merely a front in the battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil had been opened, one in which we are still engaged to this day.
Active around AD390 and AD418, Pelagius was originally from somewhere in Celtic Britain, so his name is probably a Graecized version (pélagos meaning "sea") of a Celtic equivalent, like Morgan (“sea-chief”). St Jerome thought he was from Ireland as he referred to him as “scotorum pultibus praegravatus” (stuffed with Irish porridge).
An austere man, Pelagius traveled to Rome where, according to St. Augustine, he reacted strongly against his statement in the Confessions, ‘Give what you command and command what you will,’ because he thought that it undermined Free Will.
For Pelagius, God’s Grace consisted of man’s Free Will, the law of Moses, and the teachings of Jesus. He argued that everything God created was good, including humans, and therefore he argued that infant baptism was unnecessary, opposing Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin. Not that he thought baptism itself was unnecessary for the remission of sins, only that infants had yet to sin. But he went even farther, Pelagius argued that death itself was the natural end for humans even before the Fall. Thus, Adam and Eve were always destined to die.
Instead, wickedness was solely the result of humans misusing the grace of Free Will. And because all things created by God were intrinsically holy, man can discipline his will through the application of the law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus because God would never command something (to be sinless) that was impossible to achieve.
This meant, Pelagius was not saying everything man did was good, he was not calling for a wishy-washy Christianity that condoning the idea that ‘whatever makes you happy is good. He wanted humans to overcome sin, not excuse it. Rather, in application, Pelagius was calling on humans to purge themselves of their disordered wants and desires through spiritual disciplines and asceticism, including the renunciation of wealth.
Yet, despite this call for discipline and asceticism, the adherents of Pelagianism were most often in the upper strata of Roman society, which should come as no surprise. The well-to-do are often drawn to those who eschew wealth and privilege, sustaining them with their largesse, feting them and promoting their teachings, all the while continuing their own lifestyle, the stains of their own affluence washed clean in the sweat and toil of the object of the patronage.
It is also common for the comfortable to decry the indolence that they see in others regarding those comforts, excusing in themselves what they deplore in others.
But what of Pelagius’s doctrine itself? Afterall, people will always be able to misuse doctrine, even if it’s true. While it would be nice to think that it resides within our capacity to achieve righteousness, Pelagius doctrine has a fundamental flaw, apart from the obvious issue that no one seems to have ever done it. No, at its core, Pelagianism commits one of the prime heresies, it denies the need for Christ.
For if man could, even in theory if not in practice, achieve righteousness with God through man’s own efforts, then Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection were not necessary. Look at it this way. Suppose I break down outside of Las Vegas and need a way to get home. It is not necessary for you to come pick me up. I could take a train, a bus, a plane, a taxi, I could walk, etc. Perhaps I lost all my money in the casinos, I won’t make it back in time for work, or whatever. There may be many reasons that make it impractical, perhaps even unlikely, but the fact that they are possibilities means that it is not necessary for you to come pick me up. Sure, you coming to pick me up might make you the greatest friend I ever had, it might display your willingness to sacrifice yourself for me, but it means there are other ways home other than you. But there is only one way to God and that is through Christ. He did not die for us as a moral example but as the means by which death and sin are conquered.
Anyway, in AD410 the Visigoths sacked Rome and Pelagius fled to Carthage where he continued to preach and spread his heresy. He was opposed by Augustine, obviously, but also St Jerome. He would be excommunicated, have it reversed, and then excommunicated again.
In AD 418, Augustine called for the Council of Carthage where they issued eight canons:
Adam was not created subject to death.
Infants are to be baptized for the remission of sins.
Grace not only gives remission of sins but aid that we sin no more.
Grace gives knowledge, inspiration and desire to perform required duty.
Without the grace of God we can do no good thing.
The statement “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves” should not be said out of humility but because it is true.
In the Lord's Prayer, the Saints pray “Forgive us our trespasses” not only for others but also for themselves.
The Saints pray “Forgive us our trespasses” not out of humility but because they have sinned.
After his condemnation, Pelagius was allowed to settle in Egypt and nothing more was heard from him. Would that same could be said of other heretics.