Introductory Essay on the Pelagian Controversy
PETER
HOLMES, D.D., F.R.A.S.,
DOMESTIC
CHAPLAIN TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE COUNTESS OF ROTHES,
AND
CURATE OF PENNYCROSS, PLYMOUTH;
------------------------
2. The
Pelagian heresy is so designated after Pelagius, a British monk. (Augustin
calls him Brito, so do Prosper and Gennadius; by Orosius he is called Britannicus
noster, and by Mercator described as gente Britannus. This wide
epithet is somewhat restricted by Jerome, who says of him, Habet progeniem
Scoti gentis de Britannorum vicinia; leaving it uncertain, however,
whether he deemed Scotland his native country, or Ireland. His monastic
character is often referred to both by Augustin and other writers, and Pope
Zosimus describes him as Laicum virum ad bonam frugem longa erga Deum
servitute nitentem. It is, after all, quite uncertain what part of
"Britain" gave him birth; among other conjectures, he has been made a
native of Wales, attached to a monastery at Bangor, and gifted with the Welsh
name of Morgan, of which his usual designation of Pelagius is
supposed to be simply the Greek version, Pelagio.)
It was at the beginning of the fifth century that he became conspicuous.
He then resided at Rome, known by many as an honourable and earnest man, seeking
in a
corrupt
age to reform the morals of society. (In the present volume the reader
will not fail to observe the eulogistic language which Augustin often uses of
Pelagius; see On the Merits of Sin, iii. 1, 5, 6.) Sundry
theological treatises are even attributed to him; among them one On the
Trinity, of unquestionable orthodoxy, and showing great ability.
Unfavourable reports, however, afterwards began to be circulated, charging him
with opening, in fact, entirely new ground in the fields of heresy. During
the previous centuries of Christian opinion the speculations of active thinkers
had been occupied on Theology properly so called, or the doctrine of God
as to His nature and personal attributes, including Christology, which
treated of Christ's divine and human natures. This was objective divinity.
With Pelagius, however, a fresh class of subjects was forced on men's attention:
in his peculiar system of doctrine he deals with what is subjective in man, and
reviews the whole of his relation to God. His heresy turns mainly upon two
points--the assumed incorruptness of human nature, and the denial of all
supernatural influence upon the human will.
3. He had an
early associate in Clestius, a native of Campania, according to some, or as
others say, of Ireland or of Scotland. This man, who is said to have been
highly connected, began life as an advocate, but, influenced by the advice and
example of Pelagius, soon became a monk. He excelled his master in
boldness and energy; and thus early precipitated the new doctrine into a formal
dogmatism, from which the caution and subtler management of Pelagius might have
saved it. In the year A.D.
412 (Pelagius having just left him at Carthage to go to Palestine), Clestius
was accused before the bishop Aurelius of holding and teaching the following
opinions:
1. Adam was created
mortal, and must have died, even if he had not sinned; 2. Adam's sin injured
himself only, and not mankind; 3. Infants are born in the state of Adam before
he fell; 4. Mankind neither died in Adam, nor rose again in Christ; 5. The Law,
no less than the Gospel, brings men to the kingdom of heaven; 6. There were
sinless men before the coming of Christ.2
What Clestius thus boldly propounded, he had the courage to maintain. On
his refusal to retract, he was excommunicated. He threatened, or perhaps
actually though ineffectually made, an appeal to Rome, and afterwards quitted
Carthage for Ephesus.
4. Augustin,
who had for some time been occupied in the Donatist controversy, had as yet
taken no personal part in the proceedings against Clestius. Soon,
however, was his attention directed to the new opinions, and he wrote the first
two treatises contained in this volume, in the year when Clestius was
excommunicated. At first he treated Pelagius, as has been said, with
deference and forbearance, hoping by courtesy to recall him from danger.
But as the heresy developed, Augustin's opposition was more directly and
vigorously exhibited. The gospel was being fatally tampered with, in its
essential facts of human sin and divine grace; so, in the fulness of his own
absolute loyalty to the entire volume of evangelical truth, he concentrated his
best efforts in opposition to the now formidable heresy. It is perhaps not
too much to say, that St. Augustin, the greatest doctor of the Catholic Church,
effected his greatness mainly by his labours against Pelagianism. Other
Christian writers besides Augustin have achieved results of decisive influence
on the Church and its deposit of the Christian faith. St. Athanasius,
"alone against the world," has often been referred to as a splendid
instance of what constancy, aided by God's grace and a profound knowledge of
theology, could accomplish; St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Leo of Rome, might
be also quoted as signal proofs of the efficacy of catholic truth in opposition
to popular heresy: these men, under God, saved the Creed from the ravages
of Arianism, and the subtler injuries of Nestorius and Eutyches. Then,
again, in the curious learning of the primitive Irenus; in the critical skill,
and wide knowledge, and indomitable labours of Origen; in the catechetical
teaching of the elder Cyril; in the chaste descriptive power of Basil; in the
simplicity and self-denial of Ambrose; in the fervid eloquence of the
"golden-mouthed" Chrysostom; in the great learning of Jerome; in the
scholastic accuracy of Damascene; and in the varied sacred gifts of other
Christian worthies, from the impetuous Tertullian and the gentle Cyprian, with
all the Gregories of manifold endowments, down to the latest period of patristic
wisdom, graced by our own Anselm and the unrivalled preacher Bernard,--in all
these converging lines of diverse yet compatible accomplishments, the Church of
Christ has found, from age to age, ample reinforcements against the attacks of
heretical hostility. And in our great Bishop of Hippo one may trace,
operating on various occasions in his various works, the manifold
characteristics which we have just enumerated of his brother saints,--with this
difference, that in no one of them are found combined the many traits which
constitute his greatness. We have here to do only with his anti-Pelagian
writings. Upon the whole, perhaps, these exhibit most of his wonderful
resources of Christian character. In many respects, one is reminded by him
of the great apostle, whom he reverenced, and whose profound doctrines he
republished and vindicated. He has himself, in several of his works,
especially in his Confessions, admitted us to a view of the sharp
convulsions and bitter conflicts through which he passed, before his
regeneration, into the Christian life, animated by the free and sovereign grace
of God, and adorned with his unflagging energies in works of faith and love.
From the depths of his own consciousness he instinctively felt the dangers of
Pelagianism, and he put forth his strength, as God enabled him, to meet the
evil; and the reader has in this volume samples in great variety of the
earnestness of his conflict with
the
new heresy and its leaders. These leaders he has himself characterized:
"Ille [nempe Clestius] apertior, iste [scilicet Pelagius] occultior
fuit; ille pertinacior, iste mendacior; vel certe ille liberior, hic astutior;"3
and illustrations of the general correctness of this estimate will be
forthcoming, especially in the fourth treatise of this volume, where Clestius
is dealt with, and in the fifth, which relates to the subterfuges and pretexts
practised by Pelagius in his proceedings in Palestine.
5. The
difference in the characters of the two leaders in this heresy contributed to
different results in their earlier proceedings. We have seen the
disastrous issue to Clestius at Carthage, from his outspoken and unyielding
conduct. The more reserved Pelagius, resorting to a dexterous management
of sundry favourable circumstances, obtained a friendly hearing on two public
occasions--at Jerusalem, in the summer of A.D.
415, and again at the end of that year, in a council of fourteen bishops, at
Diospolis, the ancient Lydda. In the last treatise of this volume,4
the reader has a characteristic narrative of these events from St. Augustin's
own pen. The holy man's disappointment at the untoward results of these
two inquiries is apparent; but he struggles to maintain his respect for the
bishops concerned in the affair, and comforts himself and all Catholics with the
assurance, which he thinks is warranted by the proceedings, that the acquittal
obtained by Pelagius, through the concealment of his real opinions, amounted in
fact to a condemnation of them. This volume terminates with these
transactions in Palestine; so that any remarks on the decline and fall of
Pelagianism proper must be postponed to a subsequent volume.
6. St. Jerome
as well as St. Augustin engaged in this controversy, and experienced in the East
some loss and much danger from the rougher followers of Pelagius.5
It is not without interest that one observes the difference of view entertained
by these eminent men on the general question of the Pelagian heresy.
Augustin had but an imperfect acquaintance with either the language or the
writings of the Greek Fathers, and had treated the Pelagian opinions as
unheard-of novelties. Jerome, however, who had acquired a competent
knowledge of the Christian literature of Greece during his long residence in the
East, traced these heretical opinions to the school of Origen, for whose memory
he entertained but scant respect. There is, no doubt, extravagance in
Jerome's censure, but withal a foundation of truth. For from the beginning
there was a tendency at least to divergent views between the Eastern and the
Western sections of Christendom, on the relation of the human will to the grace
of God in the matter of man's conversion and salvation. On the general
question, indeed, there was always substantial agreement in the Catholic
Church;--man, as he is born into the world, is not in his originally perfect
state; in order to be able to live according to his original nature and to do
good, he requires an inward change by the almighty power of God. But this
general agreement did not hinder specific differences of opinion, which having
been developed with considerable regularity, in East and West respectively,
admit of some classification. The chief writers of the West, especially
Tertullian and Cyprian in the third century, and Hilary of Poitiers and
(notably) Ambrose in the fourth century, prominently state the doctrine of man's
corruption, and the consequent necessity of a change of his nature by divine
grace; whilst the Alexandrian Fathers (especially Clement), and other Orientals
(for instance, Chrysostom), laid great stress upon human freedom, and on the
indispensable co-operation of this freedom with the grace of God. By the
fifth century these tendencies were ready to culminate; they were at length
precipitated to a decisive controversy. In the Pelagian system, the
liberty which had been claimed for man was pushed to the heretical extreme of
independence of God's help; while Augustin, in resisting this heresy, found it
hard to keep clear of the other extreme, of the absorption of human
responsibility into the divine sovereignty. Our author, no doubt, moves
about on the confines of a deep insoluble mystery here; but, upon the whole, it
must be apparent to the careful reader how earnestly he tries to maintain and
vindicate man's responsibility even amidst the endowments of God's grace.
7. Much has
been written on the conduct of the two leading opponents in this controversy.
Sides (as usual) have been taken, and extreme opinions of praise and of blame
have been freely bestowed on both Augustin and Pelagius. It is impossible,
even were it desirable, in this limited space to enter upon a question which,
after all, hardly rises above the dignity of mere personalities.
The orthodox bishop and the heretical monk have had their share of censure as to
their mode of conducting the controversy. Augustin has been taxed with
intolerance, Pelagius with duplicity. We are perhaps not in a position to
form an impartial judgment on the case. To begin with, the evidence comes
all from one side; and then the critics pass their sentence according to the
suggestions of modern prejudice, rather than by the test of ancient contemporary
facts, motives, and principles of action. A good deal of obloquy has been
cast on Augustin, as if he were responsible for the Rescript of Honorius and its
penalties; but this is (to say the least) a conclusion which outruns the
premises. We need say nothing of the peril which seriously threatened true
religion when the half-informed bishops of Palestine, and the vacillating Pope,
all gave their hasty and ill-grounded approval to Pelagius, as a justification
of Augustin. He deeply felt the seriousness of the crisis, and he
unsheathed "the sword of the Spirit," and dealt with it trenchant
blows, every one of which struck home with admirable precision; but it is not
proved that he ever wielded the civil sword of pains and penalties. Of all
theological writers in ancient, medieval, or earlier modern times,
it
may be fairly maintained that St. Augustin has shown himself the most
considerate, courteous, and charitable towards opponents. The reader will
trace with some interest the progress of his criticism on Pelagius. From
the forbearance and love which he gave him at first,6
he passes slowly and painfully on to censure and condemnation, but only as he
detects stronger and stronger proofs of insincerity and bad faith.
8. But
whatever estimate we may form on the score of their personal conduct, there can
be no doubt of the bishop's superiority over the monk, when we come to gauge the
value of their principles and doctrines, whether tested by Scripture or by the
great facts of human nature. Concerning the test of Scripture, our
assertion will be denied by no one. No ancient Christian writer approaches
near St. Augustin in his general influence on the opinions and belief of the
Catholic Church, in its custody and interpretation of Holy Scripture; and there
can be no mistake either as to the Church's uniform guardianship of the
Augustinian doctrine, taken as a whole, or as to its invariable resistance to
the Pelagian system, whenever and however it has been reproduced in the
revolutions of human thought. There cannot be found in all ecclesiastical
history a more remarkable fact than the deference shown to the great Bishop of
Hippo throughout Christendom, on all points of salient interest connected with
his name. Whatever basis of doctrine exists in common between the great
sections of Catholicism and Protestantism, was laid at first by the genius and
piety of St. Augustin. In the conflicts of the early centuries he was
usually the champion of Scripture truth against dangerous errors. In the
Middle Ages his influence was paramount with the eminent men who built up the
scholastic system. In the modern Latin Church he enjoys greater
consideration than either Ambrose, or Hilary, or Jerome, or even Gregory the
Great; and lastly, and perhaps most strangely, he stands nearest to evangelical
Protestantism, and led the van of the great movement in the sixteenth century,
which culminated in the Reformation. How unique the influence which
directed the minds of Anselm, and Bernard, and Aquinas, and Bonaventure, with no
less power than it swayed the thoughts of Luther, and Melanchthon, and Zuingle,
and Calvin!
9. The key to
this wonderful influence is Augustin's knowledge of Holy Scripture, and its
profound suitableness to the facts and experience of our entire nature.
Perhaps to no one, not excepting St. Paul himself, has it been ever given so
wholly and so deeply to suffer the manifold experiences of the human heart,
whether of sorrow and anguish from the tyranny of sin, or of spiritual joy from
the precious consolations of the grace of God. Augustin speaks with
authority here; he has traversed all the ground of inspired writ, and shown us
how true is its portraiture of man's life. And, to pass on to our last
point, he has threaded the mazes of human consciousness; and in building up his
doctrinal system, has been, in the main, as true to the philosophy of fact as he
is to the statements of revelation. He appears in as favourable a contrast
to his opponent in his philosophy as in his Scripture exegesis. We cannot,
however, in the limits of this Preface, illustrate this criticism with all the
adducible proofs; but we may quote one or two weak points which radically
compromise Pelagius as to the scientific bearings of his doctrine. By
science we mean accurate knowledge, which stands the test of the widest
induction of facts. Now, it has been frequently remarked that Pelagius is
scientifically defective in the very centre of his doctrine,--on the freedom of
the will. His theory, especially in the hands of his vigorous followers, Clestius
and Julianus,7
ignored the influence of habit on human volition, and the development of habits
from action, isolating human acts, making man's power of choice (his liberum
arbitrium) a mere natural faculty, of physical, not moral operation.
How defective this view is,--how it impoverishes the moral nature of man, strips
it of the very elements of its composition, and drops out of consideration the
many facts of human life, which interlace themselves in our experience as the
very web and woof of moral virtue,--is manifest to the students of Aristotle and
Butler.8
Acts are not mere insulated atoms, merely done, and then done with; but they
have a relation to the will, and an influence upon subsequent acts: and so
acts generate habits, and habits produce character, the formal cause of man's
moral condition. The same defect runs through the Pelagian system.
Passing from the subject of human freedom, and the effect of action upon conduct
and habit, we come to Pelagius' view of sin. According to him, Adam's
transgression consisted in an isolated act of disobedience to God's command; and
our sin now consists in the mere repetition and imitation of his offence.
There was no "original sin," and consequently no hereditary guilt.
Adam stood alone in his transgression, and transmitted no evil taint to his
posterity, much less any tendency or predisposition to wrong-doing: there
was no doubt a bad example, but against this Pelagius complacently set the
happier examples of good and prudent men. Isolation, then, is the
principle of Pelagius and his school; organization is the principle of
true philosophy, as tested by the experience and observation of mankind.
10. We have said enough, and we hope not unfairly said it, to show that
Pelagius was radically at fault in his deductions, whether tested by divine
revelation or human experience. How superior to him in all essential
points his great opponent was, will be manifest to the reader of this volume.
Not a statement of Scripture, nor a fact of nature, does Augustin find it
necessary to soften, or repudiate, or ignore. Hence his writings are
valuable in illustrating the harmony between revelation and true philosophy; we
have seen how much of his far-seeing and eminent knowledge was owing to his own
deep convictions and discoveries of sin and grace; perhaps we shall not be wrong
in saying, that even to his opponents is due something of his excellence.
There can be no doubt that in Pelagius and Clestius, and his still more able
follower Julianus, of whom we shall hear in a future volume, he had very able
opponents--men of earnest character, acute in observation and reasoning,
impressed with the truth of their convictions, and deeming it a fit occupation
to rationalize the meaning of Scripture in its bearings on human experience.
There is a remarkable peculiarity in this respect in the opinions of Pelagius.
He accepted the mysteries of theology, properly so called, with the most
exemplary orthodoxy. Nothing could be better than his exposition of the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity. But again we find him hemmed in with a
perverse isolation. The doctrine of the Trinity, according to him, stands
alone; it sheds no influence on man and his eternal interests; but in the
blessed Scripture, as read by Augustin, there is revealed to man a most intimate
relation between himself and God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as
his Creator, his Redeemer, and his Sanctifier. In Pelagianism, then, we
see a disjointed and unconnected theory,--a creed which stands apart from
practical life, and is not allowed to shape man's conduct,--a system, in short,
which falls to pieces for want of the coherence of the true "analogy of the
faith" which worketh by love. By exposing, therefore, this
incompatibility in the doctrine of his opponents, Augustin shows how
irreconcilable are the deductions of their Rationalism with the statements of
Revelation. But Rationalism is not confined to any one period. We
live to see a bolder Rationalism, which, unlike Pelagius', is absolutely
uncompromising in its aims, and (as must be admitted) more consistent in its
method. To institute the supremacy of Reason, it destroys more or less the
mysteries of Religion. All the miraculous element of the gospel is
discarded; God's personal relation to man in the procedures of grace, and man's
to God in the discipline of repentance, faith, and love, are abolished:
nay, the Divine Personality itself merges into an impalpable, uninfluential
Pantheism; while man's individual responsibility is absorbed into a mythical
personification of the race. The only sure escape from such a desolation
as this, is to recur to the good old paths of gospel faith--"stare super
antiquas vias." Our directory for life's journey through these is
furnished to us in Holy Scripture; and if an interpreter is wanted who shall be
able by competent knowledge and ample experience to explain to us any
difficulties of direction, we know none more suited for the purpose than our St.
Augustin.
11. But
Rationalism is not always so exaggerated as this: in its ordinary
development, indeed, it stops short of open warfare with Revelation, and (at
whatever cost of logical consistency) it will accommodate its discussions to the
form of Scripture. This adaptation gives it double force: there is
its own intrinsic principle of uncontrolled liberty in will and action, and
there is "the form of godliness," which has weight with unreflective
Christians. Hence Pelagianism was undoubtedly popular: it offered
dignity to human nature, and flattered its capacity; and this it did without
virulence and with sincerity, under the form of religion. This
acquiescence of matter and manner gave it strength in men's sympathies, and has
secured for it durability, seeing that there is plenty of it still amongst us;
as indeed there always has been, and ever will be, so long as the fatal ambition
of Eden (Gen.
iii. 5, 6) shall seduce men into a temper of rivalry with God. Writers
like Paley (in his Evidences) have treated of the triumph of Christianity
over difficulties of every kind. Of all the stumbling-blocks to the holy
religion of our blessed Saviour, not one has proved so influential as its
doctrine of Grace; the prejudice
against it, by what St. Paul calls "the natural man" (1
Cor. ii. 14), is ineradicable--and, it may be added, inevitable: for
in his independence and self-sufficiency he cannot admit that in himself he is
nothing, but requires external help to rescue him from sin, and through imparted
holiness to elevate him to the perfection of the blessed. How great, then,
is the benefit which Augustin has accomplished for the gospel, in probing the
grounds of this natural prejudice against it, and showing its ultimate
untenableness--the moment it is tested on the deeper principles of the divine
appreciation! No, the ultimate effect of the doctrine and operation of
grace is not to depreciate the true dignity of man. If there be the
humbling process first, it is only that out of the humility should emerge the
exaltation at last (1
Pet. v. 6). I know nothing in the whole range of practical or
theoretical divinity more beautiful than Augustin's analysis of the procedures
of grace, in raising man from the depths of his sinful prostration to the
heights of his last and eternal elevation in the presence and fellowship of God.
The most ambitious, who thinks "man was not made for meanness," might
be well content with the noble prospect. But his ambition must submit to
the conditions; and his capacity both for the attainment and the fruition of
such a destiny is given to him and trained by God Himself. "It is so
contrived," says Augustin, "in the discipline of the present life,
that the holy Church shall arrive at last at that condition of unspotted purity
which all holy men desire; and that it may in the world to come, and in a state
unmixed with all soil of evil men, and undisturbed by any law of sin resisting
the law of the mind, lead the purest life in a divine eternity.But in
whatever place and at what time soever the love which animates the good shall
reach that state of absolute perfection which shall admit of no increase, it is
certainly not 'shed abroad in our hearts'
by
any energies either of the nature or the volition that are within us, but 'by
the Holy Ghost which is given unto us' (Rom. v. 5), and which both helps our
infirmity and co-operates with our strength" (On Nature and Grace,
chs. 74 and 84).
12. This
translation has been made from the (Antwerp) Benedictine edition of the works of
St. Augustin, tenth volume, compared with the beautiful reprint by Gaume.
(Although left to his own resources in making his version, the Translator has
gladly availed himself of the learned aid within his reach. He may mention
the Kirchengeschichte
both of Gieseler and Neander [Clark's transl. vol. iv.]; Wiggers' Versuch
einer pragmatischen Darstellung des Augustinismus und Pelagianismus
[1st part]; Shedd's Christian Doctrine; Cunningham's Historical
Theology; Short's Bampton Lectures for 1846 [Lect. vii.]; Professor
Bright's History of the Church from A.D.
313 to A.D. 451; Bishop
Forbes' Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles [vol. i.]; Canon
Robertson's History of the Christian Church, vol. i. pp. 376-392; and
especially Professor Mozley's Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of
Predestination, ch. iii. iv. vi.; and Dr. Philip Schaff's excellent History
of the Christian Church [Clark, Edinburgh 18699],
vol. iii. pp.783-1028; of which work Dr. Dorner's is by no means exaggerated
commendation: "It is," says he, "on account of the beauty
of its descriptions, the lucid arrangement of its materials, and the moderation
of its decisions, a very praiseworthy work" (Dorner's History of
Protestant Theology [Clark's translation], vol. ii. p. 449, note 2).
This portion of Dr. Schaff's work is an expansion of his able and interesting
article on the Pelagian Controversy in the American Bibliotheca Sacra
of May 1848.
Peter Holmes.
1 It is satisfactory to observe how brief and scanty are his "retractations" on the topics treated in the present volume.
2 Marius Mercator mentions a seventh opinion broached by Clestius, to the effect that "infants, though they be unbaptized, have everlasting life."
3 De Peccato originali, [xii.] 13. See below.
4 [i.e. On the Proceedings of Pelagius.]
5 See the Proceedings of Pelagius, c. 66.
6 For some time Augustin abstained from mentioning the name of Pelagius, to save him as much as he could from exposure, and to avoid the irritation which might urge him to heresy from obstinacy. Augustin recognised early enough the motive which influenced Pelagius at first. The latter dreaded the Antinomianism of the day, and concentrated his teaching in a doctrine which was meant as a protest against it. "We would rather not do injustice to our friends," says Augustin, as he praises their "strong and active minds;" and he goes on to commend Pelagius anonymously for "the zeal which he entertains against those who find a defence for their sins in the infirmity of human nature." See the third treatise of this volume, On Nature and Grace, ch. 6, 7.
7 We make this qualification, because Pelagius himself seems to have recognised to some extent the power of habit and its effect upon the will, in his Letter to Demetrias, 8. See Dr. Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, vol. iii. p. 804.
8 Aristotle, Ethic. Nicom. ii. 2, 3, 6; Butler, Analogy, i. 5.
9 [Revised edition. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, and T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1884.]