Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy

Augustine’s controversy with the Pelagians was one of the decisive moments in Western Church history. Strangely, little is known of Pelagius himself. The dates of his birth and death are unrecorded.

Who was Pelagius?

He was from Roman Britain, and may have been a monk; certainly he flourished in Rome as a Christian teacher in the period 383-409. Dismayed by the low moral standards among Roman Christians, he encouraged them to live up to their Christian profession by emphasizing the lofty power of the human will to obey God’s commands. His belief in the natural freedom and autonomy of the will was robust, because he thought that without this capacity for obedience, God’s commands were pointless. Here is an example of Pelagius’ rhetoric:

Rather than understanding the precepts of our majestic King as a privilege, we protest against God. In the scornful lethargy of our hearts, like unprofitable and presumptuous servants we say, ‘This command is too burdensome, too demanding. We cannot do it. We are only human. We are held back by the feeble nature of our flesh.’ What unreasoning madness! What arrogant blasphemy! We depict the all-knowing God as involved in a double ignorance — He is ignorant of His own creation, and ignorant of His own commands. As if God had forgotten the human frailty of His own handiwork, and imposed upon us precepts we are unable to bear! And at the same time (how shameful!), we credit injustice to the Righteous One, cruelty to the Holy One: injustice, by complaining that He has commanded the impossible; cruelty, by complaining that we will be condemned for what we could not help. The result (what blasphemy!) is that God seems to be seeking our punishment, not our salvation. But no one knows the degree of our strength better that the God who gave it. His justice prevents Him from willing to command anything impossible. His goodness prevents Him from condemning people for what they could not help (Letter to Demetrias 16).

Pelagius’ position led, inevitably, to a belief that sinless perfection was possible, if only the human will exerted its freedom strenuously enough. One can almost imagine Pelagius saying in his worst moments, “God so loved the world that He gave us free will, so that whoever tries hard enough can become virtuous and make his way to heaven.”

Augustine’s response: Grace is liberating

Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo Regius in Roman North Africa, one of the greatest theologians and devotional writers of the Western Church, came in contact with Pelagius and his teachings after the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410. The exodus of refugees brought Pelagius and his foremost disciple Celestius to Carthage, Roman North Africa’s capital city. Here Celestius sought ordination, but his explanation of his Pelagian beliefs resulted instead in his excommunication. With Pelagian theology now “in the air” in Africa, Augustine began writing treatises critiquing the Pelagian conception of free will, and expounding the absolute necessity of God’s grace in Jesus Christ to liberate the will from its bondage to sin and unite it to Christ through the gift of faith.

Among the enduringly brilliant and influential treatises flowing from Augustine’s pen in this context were On Nature and Grace, On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin, On the Spirit and the Letter, On Rebuke and Grace, On the Gift of Perseverance, and On the Predestination of the Saints. These are available in English translation, collected in a single volume (Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian Writings) with a fine introduction by B.B.Warfield. Augustine’s victory in this controversy was sealed at the Council of Ephesus in 431, the third of the Church’s ecumenical councils; better known for condemning Nestorianism (the view that there is a human person in Christ distinct from the divine person of God the Son), it also condemned Pelagianism as a heresy.

At the heart of Augustine’s critique of Pelagianism lay his belief that it diluted, minimised, and virtually nullified the reality of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. It did this by magnifying and exalting the power of the human will as naturally capable of true obedience to God. Since this power of the will was a gift of creation rather than redemption, Pelagianism emptied redemption of its relevance. As Augustine said of the Pelagians, “They praise the work of the Creator so much that they destroy the mercy of the Redeemer” (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1:11). In other words, the necessity of a Redeemer had been effectively replaced by the created sufficiency of human nature. But a Christianity evacuated of the reality of the Redeemer’s mercy was, in Augustine’s view, unworthy of the name. Pelagianism was in danger of turning the redemptive religion of the Gospel into a moralistic system of human self-improvement, in which Christ was no longer a supernatural and divinely powerful Redeemer, but only (at best) a Teacher and Inspiring Example.At the heart of Augustine’s critique of Pelagianism lay his belief that it diluted, minimised, and virtually nullified the reality of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Share on X

Augustine’s perception of God’s grace in Jesus Christ rested on the fundamental Christian truth of the incarnation. God, in the person of the eternal Son, had taken human nature into union with Himself, and thereby filled it with divine, sanctifying energy. Human nature in Christ the God-Man was thus elevated above the corrupting power of sin and the degrading tyranny of Satan. Christ was thereby empowered to conquer sin and Satan (and their instrument, death) through His perfect obedience, His sacrificial and victorious passion, and His resurrection as the Prince and Author of life (Acts 3:15). All of this, in the apostle Paul’s words, constituted Christ as “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). Christ has quickening, animating power; His vitalizing energy flows forth upon human souls, so that we become alive in His life. “We shall be made genuinely free, when God fashions us, that is, re-forms and recreates us, not as humans — for He has already done that — but as good humans. His grace is now accomplishing this, to make us into a new creation in Christ Jesus, as Scripture says: ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God’” (Enchiridion 31).

God’s grace toward humanity, in this Augustinian vision, was of a different and higher order of quality and magnitude than mere teaching or example. It was re-creative, liberating, and sanctifying. This, of course, implied a far deeper estimate of the sinful corruption of human nature outside of Christ than the superficial view of Pelagianism. Pelagius saw sin as little more than poor choices made by a human will which – in itself – was essentially sound. But if grace is the almighty transforming reality the Bible says it is, Augustine argued, humanity’s predicament must be infinitely serious to call for such a radical remedy. Our whole nature must be involved in a desperate bondage to sin, death, and the devil, rendering us incapable of saving ourselves, and in need of the recreative life-giving grace of God in Jesus Christ.

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