Augustine powerfully defended Christian doctrines against the heresies of his day, including Pelagianism. He also expressed his love for God in his Confessions.
These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.
[Note: much of this presentation comes directly from John Piper’s analysis in The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, p. 40-74]
IV. Augustine the Controversialist
A. Against Manichaeism
B. Against Donatism
C. Against Pelagianism
· Three central issues:
1) Doctrine of Original Sin
Augustine asserted that Adam’s sin resulted in the corruption of human nature, a condition inherited by all of Adam’s descendants. In his view, original sin is not merely a matter of imitation but an inherent corruption passed down through generations. Augustine cited Romans 5:12, which states, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”
2) Human Depravity:
Contrary to Pelagianism, Augustine believed that human beings are inherently sinful and incapable of choosing good without the aid of divine grace. He argued that the human will is bound by sin and that true freedom can only be restored through God’s grace. This perspective is rooted in passages like Ephesians 2:1-3, where Paul describes humanity as “dead in trespasses and sins.”
3) Necessity of Divine Grace for Salvation
Augustine emphasized that salvation is entirely dependent on God’s grace. He argued that grace is necessary not only for forgiveness but also for the transformation of the human will. Without divine intervention, humans remain enslaved to sin. Augustine’s view is encapsulated in his famous statement, “Give what You command, and command what You will,” highlighting the belief that God must first grant the ability to obey his commandments
Pelagius Was Opposing Christ’s Essential Healing Work:
Pelagius argues for, Augustine against man’s ability unaided to live righteously:
“Inasmuch,” says he [Pelagius], “as not to sin is ours, we are able to sin and to avoid sin.” What, then, if another should say: “Inasmuch as not to wish for unhappiness is ours, we are able both to wish for it and not to wish for it?” And yet we are positively unable to wish for it. For who could possibly wish to be unhappy, even though he wishes for something else from which unhappiness will ensue to him against his will? Then again, inasmuch as, in an infinitely greater degree, it is God’s not to sin, shall we therefore venture to say that He is able both to sin and to avoid sin? God forbid that we should ever say that He is able to sin! For He cannot, as foolish persons suppose, therefore fail to be almighty, because He is unable to die, or because He cannot deny Himself. What, therefore, does he mean? by what method of speech does he try to persuade us on a point which he is himself loth to consider? For he advances a step further, and says: “Inasmuch as, however, it is not of us to be able to avoid sin; even if we were to wish not to be able to avoid sin, it is not in our power to be unable to avoid sin.” It is an involved sentence, and therefore a very obscure one. It might, however, be more plainly expressed in some such way as this: “Inasmuch as to be able to avoid sin is not of us, then, whether we wish it or do not wish it, we are able to avoid sin!” He does not say, “Whether we wish it or do not wish it, we do not sin,” — for we undoubtedly do sin, if we wish; — but yet he asserts that, whether we will or not, we have the capacity of not sinning, — a capacity which he declares to be inherent in our nature. Of a man, indeed, who has his legs strong and sound, it may be said admissibly enough, “whether he will or not he has the capacity of walking;” but if his legs be broken, however much he may wish, he has not the capacity. The nature of which our author speaks is corrupted. “Why is dust and ashes proud?” It is corrupted. It implores the Physician’s help. “Save me, O Lord,” is its cry; “Heal my soul,” it exclaims. Why does he check such cries so as to hinder future health, by insisting, as it were, on its present capacity?
Unpacking this:
Pelagius asserts that it is in our nature, our normal power, either to sin or to avoid sin.
Augustine counters: can a man truly desire to be either happy or unhappy? But we actually have no such power, to truly wish to be unhappy. [Though we make foolish decisions that end up in our unhappiness, no one sets out on a given day to truly try to be unhappy.]
In a similar way, look at God’s essential character. Is it theoretically possible for God to sin, or does scripture actually teach that it is impossible for God to sin, to deny himself. Can God stop being almighty? God cannot do anything contrary to his own nature. Neither can we.
Augustine says Pelagius writes in a very obscure way that’s hard to follow, in which it seems like he is teaching rightly about human sin and God’s grace. But he’s not. Actually, Augustine says the sentence is obscure and self-contradictory: “Since we are not able of ourselves to avoid sin, then depending on whether we wish to sin or not, we are able to avoid sin.” Huh?? He says it is inherent in our nature to choose not to sin. We have that ability.
To refute that, Augustine speaks of the normal ability a man has to walk… if he has legs, he has the ability to walk. But what if his legs are broken? Then, whether he wills it or not, he cannot walk. THIS IS THE KEY! Our nature (heart, mind, will) is BROKEN and NEEDS HEALING! If we don’t get that healing, we can’t stop sinning. What makes Pelagius’s doctrine so deadly is he hinders or opposes sin-sick sinners from going to the Great Physician (Christ) for the healing we so desperately need. By saying our nature is fine as it is he is opposing the healing.
Luke 5:31-32 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
To me this is an absolutely vital concept. Original sin (a corrupt nature inherited from Adam) is proven not only by scripture but by the universal experience of the human race. And the picture Jesus continually gave by his healings he means to be a picture of the real healing we all need in our hearts. Without that healing, we will never choose Christ or walk in holiness before God.
Pelagius Was Making the Cross Null and Void:
Pelagius taught that God’s grace to humans was in two things: 1) the way he made him originally; 2) the laws/moral instructions he gives him. Nature + Law = Pelagian “grace”, enabling (if used properly) moral perfection.
Augustine (critiquing Pelagius) asked: “Could he [a man], or could he not, have become just by his own nature and free will? If they say he could have, then see what amounts to rendering the cross of Christ void: to contend that without it anyone can be justified by the law of nature and the choice of his will. Let us also say here: ‘Then Christ died in vain.’”
[Here Augustine is citing Galatians 2:21
Galatians 2:21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died in vain!”
Insight from John Piper:
· Key concept: “Sovereign joy”
“During all those years of rebellion, where was my free will? What was the hidden, secret place from which it was summoned in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to your easy yoke?…. How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! … You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light, and yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves… O Lord, my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.” (Confessions, 9.1)
o The basic idea of grace in Augustine is God’s giving us sovereign joy that triumphs powerfully over sin
o God sovereignly works in us that we delight in Him above all other sources of pleasure… this drive sin away from us
o Augustine knew that all people strive constantly for their own happiness; what guides and governs the will is the natural yearning for happiness, what we consider to be our delight
o Piper: “But here’s the catch that made Pelagius so angry. Augustine believed that it’s not in our power to determine what this delight will be:
“Who has it in his power to have such a motive present to his mind that his will shall be influenced to believe? Who can welcome in his mind something which does not give him delight? But who has it in his power to ensure that something that will delight him will turn up? Or that he will delight in what turns up?
“A man’s free-will, indeed, avails for nothing except to sin, if he knows not the way of truth; and even after his duty and his proper aim shall begin to become known to him, unless he also takes delight in and feel a love for it, he neither does his duty, nor sets about it, nor lives rightly. Now, in order that such a course may engage our affections, God’s ‘love is shed abroad in our hearts,’ not through the free-will which arises from ourselves, but ‘through the Holy Spirit, which is given to us.’(Romans 5:5)” (Spirit and Letter, 5)
· When asked why he spent so much time, even as an old man, battling Pelagius, he answered:
“First and foremost, because no subject but grace gives me greater pleasure. For what ought to be more attractive to us sick men, than grace, grace by which we are healed; for us lazy men than grace, grace by which we are stirred up; for us men longing to act, than grace, by which we are helped?” (Epistle 186, 12.139)
· What is freedom? For Pelagius, it was a perfect balance between good and evil presented to the sovereign human will, which alone had power to cast the deciding vote.
· Freedom for Augustine: “To be so much in love with God and his ways that the very experience of choice is transcended. The ideal of freedom is not so much the autonomous will poised with sovereign equilibrium between good and evil. The ideal of freedom is to be so spiritually discerning of God’s beauty, and to be so in love with God that one never stands with equilibrium between God and an alternate choice. Rather, one transcends the experience of choice and walks under the continual sway of the sovereign joy of God.” (Piper, p. 62)
· Because sin is such an enemy of sovereign joy and such a powerful influence on the basic nature of all human beings, God must work obedience within us:
And my whole hope is only in your exceeding great mercy. Give what You command, and command whatever You will. You impose sexual purity upon us, “Nevertheless, I when I perceived,” said someone, “that I could not otherwise obtain her, except God gave her me;… that was a point of wisdom also to know whose gift she was. . . . O charity, my God, kindle me! You command sexual purity; give what You command, and command what You will. (Confessions 10.29)
This was the very statement that so outraged Pelagius… if God has commanded something, we are totally free and are responsible to obey it
V. Augustine and the City of God
A masterpiece Augustine wrote from 413-426, covering 22 books. It is a defense of Christianity against paganism, written in light of the fall of Rome to Alaric and the Goths (410). It was claimed by traditional Romans (pagans) that Christianity had weakened Rome militarily and led to its downfall. Augustine argued that God was building a true city that cannot be sacked by any army on earth.
Augustine asserted, to the contrary, that Christianity saved the city from complete destruction and that Rome’s fall was the result of internal moral decay. He further outlined his vision of two societies, that of the elect (“The City of God”) and that of the damned (“The City of Man”). These “cities” are symbolic embodiments of the two spiritual powers—faith and unbelief—that have contended with each other since the fall of the angels. They are inextricably intermingled on this earth and will remain so until time’s end. Augustine also developed his theological interpretation of human history, which he perceives as linear and predestined, beginning with the Creation and ending with the Second Coming of Christ. At this work’s heart is a powerful contrarian vision of human life, one which accepts the place of disaster, death, and disappointment while holding out hope of a better life to come, a hope that in turn eases and gives direction to life in this world.
Quotes from City of God:
“God’s son, assuming humanity without destroying his divinity, established and founded this faith, that there might be a way for man to man’s God through God’s man.”
“Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation – when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.”
To the suggestion that human beings can be saved from their sins by their own efforts, without God’s grace, he answered:
“Without him, what have we accomplished, save to perish in his anger?”
Concerning human suffering as evidence of God’s non-existence or unconcern, he writes:
“Our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. He can be present unperceived, and be absent without moving; when he exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our perfections or correct our imperfections; and in return for our patient endurance of the sufferings of time, he reserves for us an everlasting reward.”
“Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.”
VI. Augustine the Mystic
Sovereign joy takes deepest roots in the man whose constant hunger and desire is after God, and God alone: This desire can only be fostered in one seeking God by prayer and meditation on His word… in short, the life of the mystic
“The soul of men shall hope under the shadow of Your wings; they shall be made drunk with the fullness of your house; and of the torrents of Your pleasures You will give them to drink; for in You is the Fountain of Life, and in Your Light shall we see the light. Give me a man in love: he knows what I mean. Give me one who yearns; give me one who is hungry; give me one far away in this desert, who is thirsty and sighs for the spring of the Eternal country. Give me that sort of man: he knows what I mean. But if I speak to a cold man, he does not know what I am talking about…” (Tractate in John’s Gospel, 26, 4)
“And so, admonished to return to myself, I entered into my inmost parts with you leading me on. I was able to do it because you had become my helper. I entered and saw with my soul’s eye (such as it was) an unchanging Light above that same soul’s eye, above my mind….He who knows truth knows that light, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows it. O Eternal Truth and True Love and Beloved Eternity! You are my God, to you I sigh day and night…. And you beat back the weakness of my gaze, powerfully blazing into me, and I trembled with love and dread. And I found myself to be far from you in the land of unlikeness….” [Confessions, 7.10.16]
Extended Passage in Confessions:
Let me know you, O Lord, you who knows me. Let me know you, as I am known. O power of my soul, enter into it, and fit it for yourself, that you may have and hold it without spot or wrinkle. This is my hope, and that is why I speak; and in this hope I rejoice, when I rejoice in a wholesome way. … You love the truth, and the one who walks by the truth comes to the light. I want to do this very thing right now in my heart before you in confession, and in my writing, before many witnesses.
And from you, O Lord, before whose eyes the abyss of man’s conscience is laid bare, what could be hidden in me even if I did not want to confess it? For I could hide you from myself, but not myself from you. But now, in that my groaning is witness that I am displeased with myself, you are shining radiantly; you please me and I love and long for you. But I am ashamed of myself, and renounce myself, and choose you instead. But I can neither please you nor myself unless you enable me to.
Before you therefore, O Lord, am I exposed, whatever I am. And have already acknowledged the benefits of me confessing this to you. Nor do I it with words and physical sounds, but with the words of my soul, and the cry of my thoughts which your ear knows so well. For when I am evil, then to confess to you is nothing other than to be displeased with myself; but when I am holy, confession is nothing else than not taking credit for it myself. For you, O Lord, bless the godly, but first you justify him when he was still ungodly.
My confession then, O my God, in your sight, is made silently, and not silently. For in physical sound, it is silent; but in affection, it cries out loud. For neither do I speak anything accurately to other people which you did not first hear from me, nor do you hear any true thing from me, which you did not first speak to me.
…..
I am a little child, but my heavenly Father lives forever, and my guardian is enough for me. For he is the same one who gave me birth and keeps me safe; you yourself are all my good. You are all-powerful; you are with me even before I am with you. Therefore I will judge myself for the benefit of those people you are commanding me to serve, showing myself not as I was but as I am now and what I continue to be. But neither will I judge myself… and that is how I want to be heard.
You, O Lord, judge me in this way. For no man knows what is in a man except the man’s spirit within him; but there is something inside a man that not even the spirit within that man knows. You, however, know everything about him, because you made him.
But as for me, though when I stand before your eyes I have complete disgust for myself and place myself in dust and ashes, nevertheless I know something about you that I do not know about myself. It is true, that now I see through a mirror dimly, not yet face to face, and so while I am absent from you and present with myself, I am closer to myself than I am to you, and yet I know it is impossible to disturb your holiness. I, on the other hand, don’t know which temptations I have the strength to resist and which I am too weak to resist. But there is still hope, because you are faithful and will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear.
Therefore, I will confess what I know and don’t know about myself, because you gave me the light by which I can know what I know and what I don’t know, until at last my darkness becomes as bright as the noon-day sun in the light of your face before me.
It isn’t with a wavering but with a sure awareness that I love you, O Lord. You struck my heart to the very core with your Word, and I fell in love with you. But the sky also, and the earth, and everything that is in them, behold, everywhere I look these things tell me to love you, and they never stop telling that to all people, so they are without excuse.
But deeper is the mercy you will grant to those on whom you will have mercy, and the compassion you will show to those on whom you will have compassion. Otherwise, the heavens and the earth could shout your praises constantly, but we would be deaf.
But what exactly is it that I love in loving you, O Lord? It is not the beauty of material things, or any of the allure of this time-bound world, or the varied brightness of the lights, so delightful to our eyes, or the sweet melodies of various sounds, or the fragrant aromas of flowers and perfumes and spices, nor the manna or honey on the tongue, nor the pleasure of a warm embrace from another person’s body. I don’t love these things in loving my God, but rather I love a certain kind of light, and a certain voice, and a certain food, and a certain embrace in loving my God: this is the light, the voice, the fragrance, the food, the embrace of my inner man, where there shines into my soul something that physical space cannot contain, and there sounds within me what time cannot snatch away, and there is a fragrance that the wind cannot disburse, and a flavor that eating cannot diminish, and there is something that clings to me that the full indulgence of desire doesn’t sever. This is what I love in loving my God.
But what is this that I love? I asked the earth, and it said, “It is not in me!” and everything in the earth said the same thing. I asked the sea and the great chasms of the deep, as well as the creeping things that have the breath of life in them, and they answered, “We are not your God! You must search above us!” I asked the currents of the air and everything in the atmosphere, as well as all that live in it, and they said “Anaximenes [a Greek philosopher that said the air is divine] was deceived; I am not God.” I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and they said “None of us are the God you are seeking.”
I told all those creatures which stand outside the gates of my body, my senses, “You have all told me you are not my God; but tell me something about him.” And they all declared with loud shouts, “He made us!” By questioning them I was focusing my mind on them, and their individual beauty was their answer to me.
But then I turned my gaze toward myself and asked myself, “Who are you?” And I answered, “A man.” Here ready to serve me were my body and my soul, one of which is outward, the other inward. Which of those two should I use to seek my God—the God I had already sought through the material objects from the earth all the way up to the heavens, as far as I could send messengers, the beams of my eyesight.
The soul within is certainly the best equipped to inform me about God, for all the messengers of the body presented their packets of information and it presided over and judges the depositions of the heavens, the earth, and everything in them that says “We are not God” and “God made us.” The inner man has found this out through the help of the outer man; my inner self found this out—I did it, it was me, my own mind working through my physical perception. I asked the entire massive universe about my God, and it answered me, “I am not God, but he made me.”
But doesn’t the same beauty appear to everyone whose faculties are not impaired? Then why doesn’t it speak the same words to everyone? Animals both large and small see it too, but they’re not able to question it because they have no powers of reasoning in charge of their physical senses that deliver them news. Human beings, however, can question the beauty so as to gaze at unseen things belonging to God and understand them through the creation. But human beings are enslaved to their love for the creation, and those who are so enslaved are not able to judge. And created things don’t answer the people questioning them unless these people judge. It’s not as if the created things change their messaging—their beauty, I mean—between the person who merely observes them and the other who observes and questions so that the beauty is physically different in one case or the other; it’s the same to both, but to one of these people, it says nothing, but to the other it speaks. [Book 10]
You are here: Home › Works › Introductory Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy
Introductory Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy
by Professor B. B. Warfield, D.D.
I. The Origin and Nature of Pelagianism.
It was inevitable that the energy of the Church in intellectually realizing and defining its doctrines in relation to one another, should first be directed towards the objective side of Christian truth. The chief controversies of the first four centuries and the resulting definitions of doctrine, concerned the nature of God and the person of Christ; and it was not until these theological and Christological questions were well upon their way to final settlement, that the Church could turn its attention to the more subjective side of truth. Meanwhile she bore in her bosom a full recognition, side by side, of the freedom of the will, the evil consequences of the fall, and the necessity of divine grace for salvation. Individual writers, or even the several sections of the Church, might exhibit a tendency to throw emphasis on one or another of the elements that made up this deposit of faith that was the common inheritance of all. The East, for instance, laid especial stress on free will: and the West dwelt more pointedly on the ruin of the human race and the absolute need of God’s grace for salvation. But neither did the Eastern theologians forget the universal sinfulness and need of redemption, or the necessity, for the realization of that redemption, of God’s gracious influences; nor did those of the West deny the self-determination or accountability of men. All the elements of the composite doctrine of man were everywhere confessed; but they were variously emphasized, according to the temper of the writers or the controversial demands of the times. Such a state of affairs, however, was an invitation to heresy, and a prophecy of controversy; just as the simultaneous confession of the unity of God and the Deity of Christ, or of the Deity and the humanity of Christ, inevitably carried in its train a series of heresies and controversies, until the definitions of the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ were complete. In like manner, it was inevitable that sooner or later some one should arise who would so one-sidedly emphasize one element or the other of the Church’s teaching as to salvation, as to throw himself into heresy, and drive the Church, through controversy with him, into a precise definition of the doctrines of free will and grace in their mutual relations.
· A heresy sprang up in the beginning of the 5th century which so emphasized free will that it entirely denigrated man’s ruin in sin and the need for God’s sovereign grace for salvation
· The leader of this heresy was a British monk named Pelagius
· Not only was this an entirely new heresy in Christianity, it was decidedly anti-Christian
· Pelagianism was essentially paganism: “man is virtuous entirely of his own merit, not of the gift of grace.”
· The battle against Pelagianism was thus a struggle for the very foundations of Christianity itself
· The question at issue: was there any need for Christianity at all; as if the only real purpose was to aid man to attain eternal happiness by his own virtuous choices, to make man’s self-salvation a little easier
· Pelagianism was the daughter of legalism and it gave birth to a practical Deism… God creating man and leaving him alone
· No surprise that its originators were a class of pious monks, laymen pursuing an ascetic life
· The divine law was seen as a collection of separate commandments, moral perfection as a simple complex of separate virtues, and each virtuous action made a claim on God to give approval and reward
· Pelagius regarded man’s innate powers for the attainment of holiness; actually, a man could do more than what was required of him!
· But this was essentially a Deistic mode of relating to God; God as our Maker had endowed man with the capacity or ability for action, and it was up to him to use it. Man is like a machine which, because it was so well made, needed no Divine interference for its proper function; the Creator thus from now on can leave the willing and the doing to man
· This is the CORE OF THE WHOLE THEORY… man’s native ability to do all that righteousness requires, not only for his own salvation, but even for his own perfection
· Pelagius came to this theory by growing disgusted and weary as a monk of hearing people complain “It is hard! It is difficult! I can’t do it! We are not able! We are only men!” They thus sheltered themselves in the weakness of human nature… this disgusted him and he retaliated
· Pelagius thought: “We are accusing God of a two-fold ignorance: 1) he does not know what he has made; 2) he does not know what he has commanded”
· As the Creator of Nature and the Author of Law, he has failed by imposing on man laws he can in no way fulfill
· Pelagius in his preaching would exhort men concerning the amazing power and quality of their abilities… to become increasingly aware of what he is capable of doing
· Hope must be our companion, and all longing and effort die when we despair
· THEREFORE, you can well imagine how outraged he was when he heard Augustine’s statement repeated into his ear, “Give what you command, and command what you will.”
· He almost got into a fight over it the moment he heard it
· Pelagius argued the powers of man were themselves gifts of God, and therefore to denigrate them is to reproach God himself as if he had made man evil or weak, believing that man cannot obey the very laws that God has given
· He declared: “Whether we will or we will not, we have the capacity of not sinning.” I say that man is able to be without sin and he is able to keep the commandments of God”… this is the hinge of the whole Pelagian system
· Three important corollaries flowed from this, and Augustine recognized these as the chief elements of Pelagius’s system: 1) if no one in history has ever actually done this and perfectly kept God’s laws, then how could it be true? [Pelagius claimed that many of the saints of old actually HAD been sinless]; 2) each human must enter the world completely free from sin, therefore original sin is false; 3) man has no need of any supernatural divine assistance from grace in the sense of additional ongoing assistance or transformation to overcome man’s innate weakness
· This last point is the hottest point of the controversy… the need for and the reality of divine grace for salvation; the Pelagians DID speak of God’s grace, but they meant that which was given in his original creation in his nature including his completely free will, and the additional grace of the Law of God and later the teaching of the gospel of Christ, by Christ’s forgiveness of sins and Christ’s superior holy example
· Therefore, Adam’s sin did nothing to his posterity at all except give man a bad example we ought not to follow
· Every baby is born into the world completely neutral, neither virtuous nor filled with vice
· And this state continues the rest of that person’s life, so that past decisions do not enslave us at any moment, so that every moment is pure and available for the human being to be perfectly free to make a virtuous choice
· The reason that sin is so pervasive and “well-nigh universal” is how powerful Adam’s example was and the power of habit
· Pelagius wrote: “Nothing makes well-doing so hard as the long custom of sins which begin from childhood and gradually brings us more and more under its power until it seems to have in some degree a force of nature.”
· This unfolding history of bad choices and bad habits are why God did give the Law at a certain point, and then the gospel of Christ at a later point… by these added graces from God man’s nature was returned to its pristine state free from these external influences
· As habits unfolded under the Law, the gospel of Christ became necessary
· But Pelagius taught: “It was only an ever-increasing facility with imitating vice which arose from so long a schooling in evil, and all that was needed to rescue man was a new explanation of what was right (in the law) and then later, the encouragement of forgiveness for past actions and the holy example of Christ for imitation. But at every moment we still possessed a free will which is unimpaired for either sinning or not sinning. AND our free will is just as free after sinning as it was before sinning.”
· Pelagius has a peculiar individualism in his view of the human race… no collective identity at all; and virtue is a series of individual acts not connected to one another
· They denied a progressive growth of character in either direction, either ever-increasingly enslaved to sin or ever-increasingly mature in Christlikeness, because they seek to maintain that perfect equilibrium for every moment and every decision
· And all Christ can do for us is 1) forgive the sins we have committed; 2) teach us the true way; 3) set us a holy example and 4) exhort us to imitate him. But he cannot destroy the equilibrium of perfectly free will or it would destroy our freedom, the crowning achievement of God’s creation
· On the issue of death, even Adam’s death, Pelagians argued that there is no connection between Adam’s sin and the subsequent death of anyone… even of Adam himself, because to see that link is to admit the doctrine of original sin. They argued that Adam would have died anyway whether he sinned or not; death is an essential part of human life
