In an article entitled “Pelagianism: Self-Righteousness” Dr. R. C. Sproul, Jr writes:

Pelagianism is an ancient error built on man’s self-righteousness. Though roundly condemned when it began, it’s still with us.

Transcript:

I suspect that when we are finally ready to wrap up all the “-ism Fridays,” all the –isms that we end up doing, that this for many of us may very well be the most obscure -ism that we will cover because I’d like to talk today about Pelagianism.

Unless you’re some sort of theology wonk, you probably have never heard of Pelagius. Pelagius was a British monk who lived in the fourth century who came onto the radar of the church when he determined to publicly grumble about the prayer of another believer. That other believer was none other than St. Augustine.

Now, St. Augustine is, in my judgment and I would suspect in the judgment of anybody with any sense of sanity, the greatest theologian of the first millennium of the church era. Augustine was perhaps the greatest theologian ever. And so Pelagius was rather bold in striking up his beef with Augustine. What was the prayer that Augustine pray? He prayed this way, “oh Lord, command what thou wilt and grant what thou doest command.” In this prayer, Augustine was acknowledging God’s sovereign authority. That God has the ability, the liberty, the authority to impose obligation on us. Command what thou will – “God, you are our God, I am at your service, I am your servant, I am your creature, whatever you want to command, I know that is what I have an obligation to do.” And that part of the prayer did not upset Pelagius. Rather, what upset him with the second part, “…grant what thou doest command.”

Augustine is praying to his Maker, “you do whatever you want, you command whatever you want but please give me the ability to do what it is you command me to do.” That is what got in Pelagius’ craw. Pelagius argued that it would be immoral, wrong of God to command that which we do not innately, inherently, have the ability to do on our own.

In making that objection, Pelagius fired a shot across the bow of the doctrine of original sin. And, to his credit, he recognized that that was what he was doing. In defense of his own position Pelagius reached the necessary conclusions that flowed out of it. One conclusion being that there is no such thing as original sin. Now, please understand that “original sin” is not the story of what happened to Adam and Eve, rather it is the doctrine of the fruit of Adam and Eve’s sin.

Original sin holds that because Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they became fallen creatures and that the fallen nature, that inclination towards evil was passed on to all of humanity that would flow from them ever afterwards. That all of us (of course with the exception of Jesus who was conceived of the Holy Spirit) that all of us are born in sin, we were conceived in unrighteousness, that the imaginations of our heart and minds are wicked from our youths, that we are sinners from the beginning. We are in fact slaves to sin.

Pelagius said, “nope, we are born like a blank slate, a tabula rasa. There is no impact of Adam and Eve’s sin upon us. This means of course that we not only innately have the ability to embrace the work of Christ for us, but we have the innate ability to not need the work of Christ for us. Pelagius not only affirmed that we would come to faith in Christ out of an island of righteousness in ourselves, but he also affirmed that we don’t even need faith in Christ because faith in for Christ is for sinners and we can of our own goodness obey the will God.

Happily, Pelagius’ error was roundly condemned by the Early Church in an ecumenical council. The perspective of Augustine was affirmed and defended by the Church and became the doctrine of the Church at least until hundreds and hundreds of years later. In fact “Augustinianism,” even though it is a part of the history of the Roman Catholic Church, is rightly understood as another nickname for what we might call Calvinism or Reformed Theology. Indeed, if you read through the corpus of Calvin you find that Calvin quotes Augustine not only more than any other scholar, but he quotes Augustine more than all other authorities combined.

Augustine is truly the father of the Reformation. On the shoulders of Augustine stood such giants as Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, Knox, and Farel. It is on Augustine’s shoulders that these giants stood. And it was Augustine who wisely, faithfully, truthfully first slew that ancient version of theological liberalism that we call Pelagianism.

Pelagianism is not completely gone, it is still with us here in different forms, but it began with Augustine and Pelagius. It was condemned then and it must be condemned now. We need to reject Pelagianism and give thanks for the biblical doctrine of Augustinianism.