Pelagianism arose because the early church had failed to define the concept of sin with sufficient precision. Everybody agreed that human beings were sinful and in need of God’s grace for salvation, but there was a difference of opinion about what sin was and where it had come from.
The Pelagian controversy takes its name from Pelagius, a British-born monk who was teaching in Rome from about AD 380 to 410. Pelagius wrote a set of biblical commentaries that have been preserved under the names of Jerome and Cassiodorus. It seems that the Pelagian controversy arose not because Augustine had read Pelagius’ writings, but the other way round. Pelagius read what Augustine was teaching about human sinfulness and the need for divine grace, and he objected to what he regarded as an unacceptable novelty. It was only after he expressed his opposition to Augustine that the latter’s attention was drawn to the issues at stake.
At first, it seems that Augustine was reluctant to criticize Pelagius directly, thinking that his reaction may have been the result of a misunderstanding, but on closer investigation, he realized that there were genuine problems with Pelagius’ teaching. At the same time, Pelagius was not alone in holding the views that he did, and he cannot be regarded as the sole author of the heresy that has taken his name. Among his supporters was Julian of Eclanum, who developed Pelagius’ views into a coherent system of thought. So, it is fair to say that what we now call Pelagianism is as much the teaching of Julian as it is of Pelagius himself.
The Origin of Sin
Pelagianism arose because the early church had failed to define the concept of sin with sufficient precision. Everybody agreed that human beings were sinful and in need of God’s grace for salvation, but there was a difference of opinion about what sin was and where it had come from. Many pagans believed that matter is intrinsically evil, and so human beings were inevitably sinners by nature, but Christians could not accept that idea. The Bible says that when God created the world, it was good. The Son of God had become a man and lived a sinless life in a material body, which would not have been possible if matter were inherently sinful. Finally and not least, the promise of salvation included the resurrection of the body, which would have been inconceivable if the body was beyond redemption. Evil was therefore not something that God had created, but what was it?
The Bible portrays evil as the rebellion of Satan, an angel who had originally been created good but whose pride had led him to believe that he could dispense with God. Satan appeared to Adam and Eve and tempted them into following him in his rebellion even though they knew that what they were doing was wrong. Their sin was not an inescapable part of their created nature but was an act of disobedience to the revealed will of God. On this, Augustine and Pelagius were agreed, but it was not clear what the consequences of Adam’s disobedience were for the rest of humanity. Does everyone sin by their own free choice, as Adam and Eve did, or do we inherit an innate sinfulness that cuts us off from God, whether we commit actual sins or not? To put it another way, is a newborn baby a sinner in need of salvation even if he has not done anything wrong? In an era when infant mortality rates were high, this was a pressing question for many Christians, who found it impossible to believe that God would condemn a baby to hell merely because of what Adam and Eve had done.
The Effect of Adam’s Disobedience
The dispute between Augustine and Pelagius was not about the origin of sin but about the effect of Adam’s disobedience on his posterity. Augustine maintained that all human beings have inherited the broken relationship with God caused by the disobedience of our first parents. We are not free to choose our inheritance and must accept what we have been given. Pelagius, on the other hand, believed that sin is an act of the will and that, like Adam and Eve, every human being is free to choose whether he will sin. Pelagius admitted that in practice everyone does choose to sin, and so his position was that human beings are sinners, but there is an important difference of principle that shows us just how incompatible the two views are.
