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Because many self-professed christians believe the error of free will in salvation.
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Pelagianism is that teaching, originating in the late fourth century, which stresses man’s ability to take the initial steps toward salvation by his own efforts, apart from special grace. It is sharply opposed by Augustinianism, which emphasizes the absolute necessity of God’s interior grace for man’s salvation.
Pelagius was an eminently moral person, who became a fashionable teacher at Rome late in the fourth century. British by birth, he was a zealous ascetic. Whether he was a monk or not we cannot say, but he clearly supported monastic ideals. In his early writings he argued against the Arians but fired his big guns against the Manichaeans. Their dualistic fatalism infuriated the moralist in him.
While in Rome, Pelagius studied Augustine’s anti-Manichaean writings, particularly On Free Will. He came to oppose passionately Augustine’s quietism, reflected in his prayer in the Confessions: “Give what thou commandest—and command what thou wilt” (X, 31, 45).
When the Visigoths surged upon Rome in 410/411, Pelagius sought refuge in Africa. After avoiding an encounter with Augustine, he moved on to Jerusalem, where he gained a good reputation. No one took offense at his teaching.
Meanwhile in Africa, Pelagius’s pupil Coelestius, a less cautious and more superficial man, had pointedly drawn out the consequences of Pelagius’s teaching on freedom. Churchmen in the area of Carthage solemnly charged him with heresy. According to Augustine, Coelestius did not accept the “remission of sins” in infant baptism. Such an assertion of “innocence” of newborn babies denied the basic relationship in which all men stand “since Adam.” It was claiming that unredeemed man is sound and free to do all good. It was rendering salvation by Christ superfluous.
Augustine sent his own disciple Orosius to the East in an attempt to gain the condemnation of Pelagius. But in the East churchmen were unable to see anything more than an obstinate quarrel about trivialities. They acquitted Pelagius, a decision that infuriated the Africans, who turned toward Rome and compelled Pope Innocent I to expressly condemn the new heresy.
The keystone of Pelagianism is the idea of man’s unconditional free will and his moral responsibility. In creating man God did not subject him, like other creatures, to the law of nature but gave him the unique privilege of accomplishing the divine will by his own choice. This possibility of freely choosing the good entails the possibility of choosing evil.
According to Pelagius there are three features in human action: power (posse), will (velle), and the realization (esse). The first comes exclusively from God; the other two belong to man. Thus, as man acts, he merits praise or blame. Whatever his follower may have said, Pelagius himself held the conception of a divine law proclaiming to men what they ought to do and setting before them the prospect of supernatural rewards and punishments. If man enjoys freedom of choice, it is by the express bounty of his Creator; he ought to use it for those ends that God prescribes.
The rest of Pelagianism flows from this central thought of freedom. First, it rejects the idea that man’s will has any intrinsic bias in favor of wrongdoing as a result of the fall. Since each soul is created immediately by God, as Pelagius believed, then it cannot come into the world soiled by original sin transmitted from Adam. Before a person begins exercising his will, “there is only in him what God has created.” The effect of infant baptism, then, is not eternal life but “spiritual illumination, adoption as children of God, citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem.”
Second, Pelagius considers grace purely an external aid provided by God. He leaves no room for any special interior action of God upon the soul. By “grace” Pelagius really means free will itself or the revelation of God’s law through reason, instructing us in what we should do and holding out to us eternal sanctions. Since this revelation has become obscured through evil customs, grace now includes the law of Moses and the teaching and example of Christ.
This grace is offered equally to all. God is no respecter of persons. By merit alone men advance in holiness. God’s predestination operates according to the quality of the lives God forsees men will lead.
Theologians often describe Pelagianism as a form of naturalism. But this label scarcely does justice to its religious spirit. Defective though the system is in its recognition of man’s weakness, it does reflect an awareness of man’s high calling and the claims of the moral law. Yet Pelagianism’s one-sidedness remains an inadequate interpretation of Christianity. This was especially so after Coelestius pushed into the foreground the denial of original sin, the teaching that Adam was created mortal, and the idea that children are eligible for eternal life even without baptism. This rosy view of human nature and inadequate understanding of divine grace was finally condemned in 431 at the Council of Ephesus.
Fig 7.1
Councils Dealing with Pelagianism
| Synod of Carthage | 418 | Condemned Pelagianism |
| Council of Ephesus | 431 | Condemned Pelagianism |
| Council of Orange | 592 | Condemned Semi-Pelagianism |
| Synod of Valence | 855 | |
| Concil of Trent | 1545–63 |
[1]
[1]Elwell, W. A., & Elwell, W. A. (1997, c1984). Vol. 1: Biographical entries from Evangelical dictionary of theology. Biographical entries from Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. (electronic ed.). Baker reference library; Logos Library System. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
