Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
§ 53.3. Pelagius and his Doctrine.—Pelagius (§ 47, 21), a British monk of respectable learning and decided moral earnestness, living far away from the storms and strife of life, without any strong inward temptations, without any inclination to manifest sins and without deep experience of the Christian life, knowing and striving after no higher ideal than that of monkish asceticism, had developed a theory quite antagonistic to that of Augustine. He was strengthened in his opposition to Augustine’s doctrine of the corruption of human nature and its unfitness for all co-operation in conversion and sanctification, by observing that this doctrine was often misused by careless men as an excuse for carnal confidence and moral selfishness. He was thus made more resolute in maintaining that it is more wholesome to preach to men an imperative moral law whose demands they, as he thought, could satisfy by determined will and moral endeavour. Man at first was created mortal by God, and not temporal but spiritual death is the consequence and punishment of sin. Adam’s fall has changed nothing in human nature and has had no influence upon his descendants. Every man now is born just as God created the first man, i.e. without sin and without virtue. By his wholly unweakened freedom he decides for himself on the one side or the other. The universality of sin results from the power of seduction, of mere example and habit. Still there may be completely sinless men; and there have been such. God’s grace facilitates man’s accomplishment of his purpose. It is, therefore, not absolutely, but by the actual universality of sin, relatively necessary. Grace consists in enlightenment by revelation, in forgiveness of sin as the expression of divine forbearance, and in the strengthening of our moral powers by the incentive of the law and the promise of eternal life. God’s grace is destined for all men, but man must make himself worthy of it by honest striving after virtue. Christ became man, in order by His perfect teaching and by the perfect pattern of His life to give us the most powerful incentive to reformation and the redeeming of ourselves thereby. As in sin we are Adam’s offspring, so in virtue shall we be Christ’s offspring. He regarded baptism as necessary (infant baptism in remissionem futurorum peccatorum). Children dying unbaptized he placed in a lower stage of blessedness. The same inconsistent submission to the fathers of ecclesiastical tradition shows itself in the acceptance of ecclesiastical views of revelation, miracles, prophecy, the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, whereas a more consistent and systematic thinker would have felt compelled from his anthropological principles to set aside or at least modify these supernaturalistic elements.
§ 53.4. The Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 411–431.—From A.D. 409 Pelagius resided in Rome. Here he gained over to his views Cœlestius, a man of greater acuteness and scientific attainments than himself. Both won high respect in Rome for their zeal for morality and asceticism and promulgated their doctrine without opposition. In A.D. 411 both went to Carthage, whence Pelagius went and settled in Palestine. Cœlestius remained behind and obtained the office of presbyter. Now for the first time his errors were opposed. Paulinus deacon of Milan (§ 47, 20) happening to be there formally complained against him, and a provincial Synod at Carthage A.D. 412 excommunicated him, on his refusal to retract. In the same year too Augustine published his first controversial treatise: De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum, Lb. III. In Palestine Pelagius had attached himself to the Origenists. Jerome, besides passing a depreciatory judgment upon his literary productions, contested his doctrine as an expounder of the Origenist heresy (Ep. ad Ctesiphontem and Dialog. c. Pelagium, Lb. III.), and a young Spanish presbyter Paulus [Paul] Orosius (§ 47, 20) complained of him to the Synod of Jerusalem A.D. 415, under the presidency of bishop John of that city. The synergistic orientals, however, could not be convinced of the dangerous character of his carefully guarded doctrine. Such too was the result of the Synod of Diospolis or Lydda in A.D. 415 under bishop Eulogius of Cæsarea, where two Gallic bishops appeared as accusers. Augustine proved to the Palestinians in De gestis Pelagii that they had allowed themselves to be kept in the dark by Pelagius. Orosius too published a controversial tract, Apologeticus c. Pelag., in reply to which, or more probably to Jerome, Theodore of Mopsuestia wrote the book now lost, Περὶ τοὺς λέγοντας, φύσει καὶ οὐ γνώμη πταίειν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. Then the Africans again took up the controversy. Two Synods at Mileve and Carthage, in A.D. 416, reiterated their condemnation and sent their decree to Innocent I. at Rome. The Pope acquiesced in the proceedings of the Africans. Pelagius sent a veiled confession of faith and Cœlestius appeared personally in Rome. Innocent died, however, in A.D. 417, before his arrival. His successor Zozimus [Zosimus], perhaps a Greek and certainly weak as a dogmatist, allowed himself to be won over by Cœlestius and brought severe charges against the Africans, against which again these entered a vigorous protest. In A.D. 418 the emperor Honorius issued his Sacrum rescriptum against the Pelagians and a general Synod at Carthage in the same year emphatically condemned them. Now Zozimus [Zosimus] was prevailed on also to condemn them in his Epistola tractatoria. Eighteen Italian bishops, among them Julian of Eclanum in Apulia, the most acute and able apologist of Pelagianism, refused to subscribe and were banished. They sought and obtained protection from the Constantinopolitan bishop Nestorius. But this connection did harm to both. The Roman bishop Cœlestine took part with those who opposed the Christological views of Nestorius (§ 52, 3), and at the Œcumenical Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431, the orientals condemned along with Nestorius also Pelagius and Cœlestius, without, however, determining anything positive in regard to the doctrine under discussion. To this end with unwearied zeal laboured Marius Mercator, a learned layman of Constantinople, who published two Commonitoria against Pelagius and Cœlestius, and a controversial treatise against Julian of Eclanum. Meanwhile too Augustine rested not from his energetic polemic. In A.D. 413 he wrote De spiritu et littera ad Marcellinum; in A.D. 415 against Pelagius, De natura et gratia; against Cœlestius, De perfectione justitiæ hominis. In A.D. 416, De gestis Pelagii. In A.D. 418, De gratia Dei et de peccato originali Lb. II. c. Pelag. et Cœl. In A.D. 419, De nuptiis et concupiscentia Lb. II., against the charge that his doctrine was a reviling of God-appointed marriage. In A.D. 420, C. duas epistolas Pelagianorum et Bonifatium I., against the vindicatory writings of Julian and his friends. In A.D. 421, Lb. VI. c. Julianum. And later still, Opus imperfectum c. secundam Juliani responsionem. Engl. Transl.; Ante-Nicene Lib.: Anti-Pelag. Wr., 3 vols., Edin., 1867 ff.
§ 53.5. The Semi-Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 427–529.—Bald Pelagianism was overthrown, but the excessive crudeness of the predestination theory, as set forth by Augustine, called forth new forms of opposition. The monks of the monastery of Adrumetum in North Africa, by severely carrying out the predestination theory to its last consequences, had fallen, some into sore distress of soul and despair, others into security and carelessness, while others again thought that to avoid such consequences, one must ascribe to human activity in the work of salvation a certain degree of meritoriousness. The abbot of the monastery in this dilemma applied to Augustine, who in two treatises, written in A.D. 427, De gratia et libero arbitrio and De correptione et gratia, sought to overcome the scruples and misconceptions of the monks. But about this time in Southern Gaul there was a whole theological school which rejected the doctrine of predestination, and maintained the necessity of according to human freedom a certain measure of co-operation with divine grace, in consequence of which sometimes the one, sometimes the other, is fundamental in conversion. At the head of this school was Johannes Cassianus († A.D. 432), a disciple and friend of Chrysostom, founder and president of the monastery at Massilia. His followers are thence called Massilians or Semi-Pelagians. He had himself contested Augustine’s doctrine, without naming it, in the 13th of his Collationes Patrum (§ 47, 21). Of his disciples the most famous was Vincentius [Vincent] Lerinensis (of the monastery of Lerinum), who in his Commonitorium pro Catholicæ fidei antiquitate et universitate (Engl. Transl., Oxford, 1836) laid down the principle that the catholic faith is, quod semper, ubique et ab omnibus creditum est. Judged by this standard Augustine’s doctrine was by no means catholic. The second book of this work, now lost, probably contested Augustinianism expressly and was, therefore, suppressed. But Augustine had talented supporters even in Gaul, such as the two laymen Hilarius and Prosper Aquitanicus (§ 47, 20). What took place around them they reported to Augustine, who wrote against the Massilians De predestinatione Sanctorum and De dono perseverantiæ. He was