Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/100

Arbitrio and de Correptione et Gratia (426‒427) relate to the moral issues of the question, while the de Praedest. Sanctorum and de Dono Perseverantiae (428, 9) are in direct controversy with the "brethren" of Southern Gaul.

(d) The Doctrinal Issues.—Pelagianism split upon the rock of infant baptism. Had this practice not become general by the time when Pelagius arose, Augustine would have had to combat him by arguments which churchmen at large would have found difficulty in following. As it was, to the question, "Why"—if Adam's sin directly affected himself only, and extended to his descendants non propagine sed exemplo—"why, then, are infants baptized? " Pelagius had no satisfactory reply. His answer, that the unbaptized infant is excluded, not from eternal life, but only from the kingdom of heaven, was a relic of Milleniarism with which the Eastern church had even less sympathy than the West. Pelagius allowed that man can do no good thing without the grace of God. But his conception of grace was loose and shallow; practically it went back to the general providence of God, which supplies our temporal and spiritual wants alike. His assertion that a sinless life was not only possible, but was actually lived by many of the holy men of the Bible, was in direct conflict with the promptings of a deep religious sense (de Nat. et Grat. xxxvi. 42). His conception of the beneficium Christi (supra, b, c) was shallow and unsatisfying. Pelagius was an ardent churchman, a strict ascetic, and a believer in sacramental grace. The earlier church had reflected but little on the questions raised by him. "Unde factum est ut de gratia Dei quid sentirent breviter ac transeuntes attingerent." Free will equipped with sacraments, the Christian religion a "New Law," predestination founded upon prescience, fairly represent the implicit pre-Augustinian view of the Christian life and its relation to the mystery of Divine election. Augustine pressed Pelagius with the implications of sacramental grace. If free will is as complete as Pelagius believed, sacraments are in reality superfluous as means of grace. If sacramental grace is as real as Pelagius admitted it to be, then man depends for his salvation not upon his own free will, but upon the gift of God. Augustine, assuming the church doctrine of sacramental grace, gave it a deeper meaning and a wider context, and brought it into close relation with the almost forgotten Pauline categories of sin, faith, justification, and the gratia Christi (see Reuter, pp. 40‒45). It was formerly thought (by Baur and others) that Augustine's antagonism to Pelagius was dictated by his conception of the church and the sacraments, especially of baptism. This we have seen to be incorrect. As a matter of fact, Pelagius was, as the proceedings at Diospolis shew, hard to convict of heresy on merely ecclesiastical grounds. The theological principles which Augustine brought to the analysis of ecclesiastical practice, and to the refutation of Pelagianism, he had learned from St. Paul at first hand. Pelagius appealed to the naïve language of churchmen before him, who as Augustine says, "Pelagianis nondum litigantibus securius loquebantur." Augustine shewed that the accord

was superficial, and that if Pelagius were right, the church and the positive religion of Christ had only a relative value. Moreover, it was impossible for the Pelagians to argue out their case without exposing themselves to an array of damaging quotations from recognized Fathers of the church (c. Julian. I. II.). And it is impossible to deny that Augustine, in the points at issue with the semi-Pelagians, was following out the strict logical consequences of the elementary truths which Pelagius and Julian denied. He admits frankly, in this as in some other questions, that he had changed his mind, plenius sapere coepi, but he again and again protests that he is merely defending the doctrine which nunquam Ecclesia Christi non habuit (i.e. predestination, de Don. Persev. xiv. 36, etc.).

This is certainly sincere, but also certainly incorrect, so far as concerns the formal assertion of absolute predestination, irresistible grace, and total depravity. And it must further be noted that the doctrine of predestination is, logically at least, as subversive of the worth of church and sacraments as is the Pelagian doctrine of human nature (see below, § 16, c). Probably neither Augustine nor the Pelagians were conscious of the full consequences of their position—the naturalism of the one and the transcendentalism of the other were alike tempered by common church teaching. But the ecclesiastical instinct has generally been (in spite of the rapier-thrusts of a Pascal) to seek some illogical via media between the Augustinian and the semi-Pelagian (itself an illogical) position. Instinct in such a matter is perhaps a safer guide than logic. But it is important to bear in mind that in rejecting Pelagianism the whole church, Augustinian and semi-Pelagian alike, were as one. [ Pelagianism.]

§ 11. Augustine and Greek Christendom.—The last sentence may seem questionable so far as the Greek-speaking churches were concerned. But we must remember that Coelestius found no welcome at Constantinople, that Augustine not only wrote (Ep. 179) to bp. John of Jerusalem to warn him of Pelagius's errors, but also quotes John's arguments as decisive against Pelagianism (Ep. 186³⁶, de Gest. Pel. 37 seq., "sanctus Johannes" ), and that Pelagianism was formally condemned at the council of Ephesus. But Augustine is somewhat biased in his review of the proceedings in Palestine by the assumption, which it never occurred to him to question, of the absolute doctrinal homogeneity of the East and West. Accordingly he explains the acquittal of Pelagius by the difficulty of language, and by the evasive answers of Pelagius, without allowing for the strangeness to Greek theology of the very categories of the question at issue. The catholicity of the church, he argues against the Donatists, is to be tested by communion, not only with the apostolic see of Rome, but with the other apostolic churches, and with Jerusalem, the common source of all (ad Don. Post Collat. xxix. 50; de Unit. x. xi.; Ep. 52³). In Augustine's time the first symptoms of the coming rift between the Greek and Latin churches had indeed appeared, but few realized their meaning. Augustine certainly did not. He meets