Introductory
Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy.
by
professor benjamin 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.
This new heresiarch
came, at the opening of the fifth century, in the person of the British monk,
Pelagius. The novelty of the doctrine which he taught is repeatedly
asserted by Augustin1,
and is evident to the historian; but it consisted not in the emphasis that he
laid on free will, but rather in the fact that, in emphasizing free will, he
denied the ruin of the race and the necessity of grace. This was not only
new in Christianity; it was even anti-Christian. Jerome,
as
well as Augustin, saw this at the time, and speaks of Pelagianism as the
"heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno;"2
and modern writers of the various schools have more or less fully recognized it.
Thus Dean Milman thinks that "the greater part" of Pelagius' letter to
Demetrias "might have been written by an ancient academic;"3
Dr. De Pressens identifies the Pelagian idea of liberty with that of Paganism;4
and Bishop Hefele openly declares that their fundamental doctrine, "that
man is virtuous entirely of his own merit, not of the gift of grace," seems
to him "to be a rehabilitation of the general heathen view of the
world," and compares with it Cicero's words:5
"For gold, lands, and all the blessings of life, we have to return thanks
to the Gods; but no one ever returned thanks to the Gods for virtues."6
The struggle with Pelagianism was thus in reality a struggle for the very
foundations of Christianity; and even more dangerously than in the previous
theological and Christological controversies, here the practical substance of
Christianity was in jeopardy. The real question at issue was whether there
was any need for Christianity at all; whether by his own power man might not
attain eternal felicity; whether the function of Christianity was to save, or
only to render an eternity of happiness more easily attainable by man.7
Genetically speaking,
Pelagianism was the daughter of legalism; but when it itself conceived, it
brought forth an essential deism. It is not without significance that its
originators were "a certain sort of monks;" that is, laymen of ascetic
life. From this point of view the Divine law is looked upon as a
collection of separate commandments, moral perfection as a simple complex of
separate virtues, and a distinct value as a meritorious demand on Divine
approbation is ascribed to each good work or attainment in the exercises of
piety. It was because this was essentially his point of view that Pelagius
could regard man's powers as sufficient to the attainment of sanctity,--nay,
that he could even assert it to be possible for a man to do more than was
required of him. But this involved an essentially deistic conception of
man's relations to his Maker. God had endowed His creature with a capacity
(possibilitas) or ability (posse) for action, and it was for him
to use it. Man was thus a machine, which, just because it was well made,
needed no Divine interference for its right working; and the Creator, having
once framed him, and endowed him with the posse, henceforth leaves the velle
and the esse to him.
At this point we have
touched the central and formative principle of Pelagianism. It lies in the
assumption of the plenary ability of man; his ability to do all that
righteousness can demand,--to work out not only his own salvation, but also his
own perfection. This is the core of the whole theory; and all the other
postulates not only depend upon it, but arise out of it. Both
chronologically and logically this is the root of the system.
When we first hear of
Pelagius, he is already advanced in years, living in Rome in the odour of
sanctity,8
and enjoying a well-deserved reputation for zeal in exhorting others to a good
life, which grew especially warm against those who endeavoured to shelter
themselves, when charged with their sins, behind the weakness of nature.9
He was outraged by the universal excuses on such occasions,--"It is
hard!" "it is difficult!" "we are not able!" "we
are men!"--"Oh, blind madness!" he cried: "we accuse
God of a twofold ignorance,--that He does not seem to know what He has made, nor
what He has commanded,--as if forgetting the human weakness of which He is
Himself the Author, He has imposed laws on man which He cannot endure."10
He himself tells us11
that it was his custom, therefore, whenever he had to speak on moral improvement
and the conduct of a holy life, to begin by pointing out the power and quality
of human nature, and by showing what it was capable of doing. For (he
says) he esteemed it of small use to exhort men to what they deemed impossible:
hope must rather be our companion, and all longing and effort die when we
despair of attaining. So exceedingly ardent an advocate was he
of
man's unaided ability to do all that God commanded, that when Augustin's noble
and entirely scriptural prayer--"Give what Thou commandest, and command
what Thou wilt"--was repeated in his hearing, he was unable to endure it;
and somewhat inconsistently contradicted it with such violence as almost to
become involved in a strife.12
The powers of man, he held, were gifts of God; and it was, therefore, a reproach
against Him as if He had made man ill or evil, to believe that they were
insufficient for the keeping of His law. Nay, do what we will, we cannot
rid ourselves of their sufficiency: "whether we will, or whether we
will not, we have the capacity of not sinning."13
"I say," he says, "that man is able to be without sin, and that
he is able to keep the commandments of God;" and this sufficiently direct
statement of human ability is in reality the hinge of his whole system.
There were three
specially important corollaries which flowed from this assertion of human
ability, and Augustin himself recognized these as the chief elements of the
system.14
It would be inexplicable on such an assumption, if no man had ever used his
ability in keeping God's law; and Pelagius consistently asserted not only that
all might be sinless if they chose, but also that many saints, even before
Christ, had actually lived free from sin. Again, it follows from man's
inalienable ability to be free from sin, that each man comes into the world
without entailment of sin or moral weakness from the past acts of men; and
Pelagius consistently denied the whole doctrine of original sin. And still
again, it follows from the same assumption of ability that man has no need of
supernatural assistance in his striving to obey righteousness; and Pelagius
consistently denied both the need and reality of divine grace in the sense of an
inward help (and especially of a prevenient help) to man's weakness.
It was upon this last
point that the greatest stress was laid in the controversy, and Augustin was
most of all disturbed that thus God's grace was denied and opposed. No
doubt the Pelagians spoke constantly of "grace," but they meant by
this the primal endowment of man with free will, and the subsequent aid given
him in order to its proper use by the revelation of the law and the teaching of
the gospel, and, above all, by the forgiveness of past sins in Christ and by
Christ's holy example.15
Anything further than this external help they utterly denied; and they denied
that this external help itself was absolutely necessary, affirming that it only
rendered it easier for man to do what otherwise he had plenary ability for
doing. Chronologically, this contention seems to have preceded the
assertion which must logically lie at its base, of the freedom of man from any
taint, corruption, or weakness due to sin. It was in order that they might
deny that man needed help, that they denied that Adam's sin had any further
effect on his posterity than might arise from his bad example.
"Before the action of his own proper will," said Pelagius plainly,
"that only is in man which God made."16
"As we are procreated without virtue," he said, "so also without
vice."17
In a word, "Nothing that is good and evil, on account of which we are
either praiseworthy or blameworthy, is born with us,--it is rather done by us;
for we are born with capacity for either, but provided with neither."18
So his later follower, Julian, plainly asserts his "faith that God creates
men obnoxious to no sin, but full of natural innocence, and with capacity for
voluntary virtues."19
So intrenched is free will in nature, that, according to Julian, it is
"just as complete after sins as it was before sins;"20
and what this means may be gathered from Pelagius' definition in the
"Confession of Faith," that he sent to Innocent: "We say
that man is always able both to sin and not to sin, so as that we may confess
that we have free will." That sin in such circumstances was so common
as to be well-nigh universal, was accounted for by the bad example of Adam and
the power of habit, the latter being simply the
result
of imitation of the former. "Nothing makes well-doing so hard,"
writes Pelagius to Demetrias, "as the long custom of sins which begins from
childhood and gradually brings us more and more under its power until it seems
to have in some degree the force of nature (vim natur)." He
is even ready to allow for the force of habit in a broad way, on the world at
large; and so divides all history into progressive periods, marked by God's
(external) grace. At first the light of nature was so strong that men by
it alone could live in holiness. And it was only when men's manners became
corrupt and tarnished nature began to be insufficient for holy living, that by
God's grace the Law was given as an addition to mere nature; and by it "the
original lustre was restored to nature after its blush had been impaired."
And so again, after the habit of sinning once more prevailed among men, and
"the law became unequal to the task of curing it,"21
Christ was given, furnishing men with forgiveness of sins, exhortations to
imitation of the example and the holy example itself.22
But though thus a progressive deterioration was confessed, and such a
deterioration as rendered desirable at least two supernatural interpositions (in
the giving of the law and the coming of Christ), yet no corruption of nature,
even by growing habit, is really allowed. It was only an ever-increasing
facility in imitating vice which arose from so long a schooling in evil; and all
that was needed to rescue men from it was a new explanation of what was right
(in the law), or, at the most, the encouragement of forgiveness for what was
already done, and a holy example (in Christ) for imitation. Pelagius still
asserted our continuous possession of "a free will which is unimpaired for
sinning and for not sinning;" and Julian, that "our free will is just
as full after sins as it was before sins;" although Augustin does not fail
to twit him with a charge of inconsistency.23
The peculiar
individualism of the Pelagian view of the world comes out strongly in their
failure to perceive the effect of habit on nature itself. Just as they
conceived of virtue as a complex of virtuous acts, so they conceived of sin
exclusively as an act, or series of disconnected acts. They appear not to
have risen above the essentially heathen view which had no notion of holiness
apart from a series of acts of holiness, or of sin apart from a like series of
sinful acts.24
Thus the will was isolated from its acts, and the acts from each other, and all
organic connection or continuity of life was not only overlooked but denied.25
After each act of the will, man stood exactly where he did before: indeed,
this conception scarcely allows for the existence of a "man"--only a
willing machine is left, at each click of the action of which the spring regains
its original position, and is equally ready as before to reperform its function.
In such a conception there was no place for character: freedom of will was
all. Thus it was not an unnatural mistake which they made, when they
forgot the man altogether, and attributed to the faculty of free will, under the
name of "possibilitas" or "posse," the ability
that belonged rather to the man whose faculty it is, and who is properly
responsible for the use he makes of it. Here lies the essential error of
their doctrine of free will: they looked upon freedom in its form
only, and not in its matter; and, keeping man in perpetual and hopeless
equilibrium between good and evil, they permitted no growth of character and no
advantage to himself to be gained by man in his successive choices of good.
It need not surprise us that the type of thought which thus dissolved the
organism of the man into a congeries of disconnected voluntary acts, failed to
comprehend the solidarity of the race. To the Pelagian, Adam was a man,
nothing more; and it was simply unthinkable that any act of his that left his
own subsequent acts uncommitted, could entail sin and guilt upon other men.
The same alembic that dissolved the individual into a succession of voluntary
acts, could not fail to separate the race into a heap of unconnected units.
If sin, as Julian declared, is nothing but will, and the will itself remained
intact after each act, how could the individual act of an individual will
condition the acts of men as yet unborn? By "imitation" of his
act alone could
(under
such a conception) other men be affected. And this carried with it the
corresponding view of man's relation to Christ. He could forgive us the
sins we had committed; He could teach us the true way; He could set us a holy
example; and He could exhort us to its imitation. But He could not touch
us to enable us to will the good, without destroying the absolute equilibrium of
the will between good and evil; and to destroy this was to destroy its freedom,
which was the crowning good of our divinely created nature. Surely the
Pelagians forgot that man was not made for will, but will for man.
In defending their
theory, as we are told by Augustin, there were five claims that they especially
made for it.26
It allowed them to praise as was their due, the creature that God had made, the
marriage that He had instituted, the law that He had given, the free will which
was His greatest endowment to man, and the saints who had followed His counsels.
By this they meant that they proclaimed the sinless perfection of human nature
in every man as he was brought into the world, and opposed this to the doctrine
of original sin; the purity and holiness of marriage and the sexual appetites,
and opposed this to the doctrine of the transmission of sin; the ability of the
law, as well as and apart from the gospel, to bring men into eternal life, and
opposed this to the necessity of inner grace; the integrity of free will to
choose the good, and opposed this to the necessity of divine aid; and the
perfection of the lives of the saints, and opposed this to the doctrine of
universal sinfulness. Other questions, concerning the origin of souls, the
necessity of baptism for infants, the original immortality of Adam, lay more on
the skirts of the controversy, and were rather consequences of their teaching
than parts of it. As it was an obvious fact that all men died, they could
not admit that Adam's death was a consequence of sin lest they should be forced
to confess that his sin had injured all men; they therefore asserted that
physical death belonged to the very nature of man, and that Adam would have died
even had he not sinned.27
So, as it was impossible to deny that the Church everywhere baptized infants,
they could not refuse them baptism without confessing themselves innovators in
doctrine; and therefore they contended that infants were not baptized for
forgiveness of sins, but in order to attain a higher state of salvation.
Finally, they conceived that if it was admitted that souls were directly created
by God for each birth, it could not be asserted that they came into the world
soiled by sin and under condemnation; and therefore they loudly championed this
theory of the origin of souls.
The teachings of the
Pelagians, it will be readily seen, easily welded themselves into a system, the
essential and formative elements of which were entirely new in the Christian
Church; and this startlingly new reading of man's condition, powers, and
dependence for salvation, it was, that broke like a thunderbolt upon the Western
Church at the opening of the fifth century, and forced her to reconsider, from
the foundations, her whole teaching as to man and his salvation.
1 On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 6, 11, 12; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 32; Against Julian, i. 4; On Heresies, 88; and often elsewhere. Jerome found roots for the theory in Origen and Rufinus (Letter 133, 3), but this is a different matter. Compare On Original Sin, 25.
2 Preface to Book iv. of his work on Jeremiah.
3 Latin Christianity, i. 166, note 2.
4 Trois Prem. Sicles, ii. 375.
5 De Natura Deorum, iii. 36.
6 History of the Councils of the Church (E.T.), ii. 446, note 3.
7 Compare the excellent statement in Thomasius' Dogmengeschichte, i. 483.
8 On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 46; On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 1; Epistle 186, etc.
9 On Nature and Grace, 1.
10 Epistle to Demetrias, 16.
11 Do. 2 and 19.
12 On the Gift of Perseverance, 53.
13 On Nature and Grace, 49.
14 On the Gift of Perseverance, 4; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iii. 24; iv. 2 sq.
15 On the Spirit and the Letter, 4; On Nature and Grace, 53; On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 20, 22, 38; On the Grace of Christ, 2, 3, 8, 31, 42, 45; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 11; On Grace and Free Will, 23-26, and often.
16 On Original Sin, 14.
17 On Original Sin, 14.
18 On Original Sin, 14.
19 The Unfinished Work, iii. 82.
20 Do. i. 91; compare do. i. 48, 60; ii. 20. "There is nothing of sin in man, if there is nothing of his own will." "There is no original sin in infants at all."
21 On Original Sin, 30.
22 On the Grace of Christ, 43.
23 The Unfinished Work, i. 91; compare 69.
24 Dr. Matheson finely says (Expositor, i. ix. 21), "There is the same difference between the Chrstian and Pagan idea of prayer as there is between the Christian and Pagan idea of sin. Paganism knows nothing of sin, it knows only sins: it has no conception of the principle of evil, it comprehends only a succession of sinful acts." This is Pelagianism too.
25 Compare Schaff, Church History, iii. 804; and Thomasius' Dogmengeschichte, i. 487-8.
26 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iii. 25, and iv. at the beginning.
27 This belongs to the earlier Pelagianism; Julian was ready to admit that death came from Adam, but not sin.