Free Will and Pelagianism

We see to what extremes Augustine can go in his thinking. He never spares himself any of the problem's difficulty. Of course, there is still no problem where there is only submission. Nevertheless, as is the rule in what concerns evil, this absolute dependence gives rise to great diffi­culties. Here divine grace is absolutely arbitrary: man must only have faith in God. How then can we speak of human freedom? But the diffi­culty is that our only freedom is precisely the freedom to do evil.¹⁸ Saint Augustine's final word on this question, vital for a Christian, is an admis­sion of ignorance. Divine arbitrariness remains intact.¹⁹

It is this theory that Saint Augustine has been led to develop in all its detail in the face of the Pelagian heresy. In this case, he has been able to surpass his own thought for the needs of the cause. But it is also that his pessimism and his renunciation have retained all their bitterness. It is in this way, then, that his doctrine of freedom takes shape.

The fierceness that Saint Augustine puts into his fight against Pelagianism will be explained if we summarize the latter's thought.²⁰ It is from his profound experience, from his acute awareness of the wickedness in man, that Saint Augustine was suffering.

A Breton monk, Pelagius feared at bottom a certain complacency in sin that can be drawn from the doctrine of predestination. A man of con­science rather than of ideas, these especially are his disciples: Celestius and Julian, who propagate his doctrines.

According to Pelagius, man had been created free. He can do good or evil as he pleases. This freedom is an emancipation from God. "Freedom of will, whereby a man was emancipated from God, consists of the abil­ity to commit sin or refrain from sin."²¹

The loss of this freedom was for Saint Augustine a consequence of original sin. On the contrary, the Pelagians thought that Freedom, being governed entirely by the will, implies that man could, if he desired it, avoid sin. "I say that it is possible for a man to be without sin."²²

But then the doctrine of original sin loses all significance. And the Pelagians reject this doctrine absolutely as leading to Manichean con­clusions. If Adam has injured us, it is only through his poor example. We must not even accept the secondary consequences of the fall, like the loss of the soul's immortality. According to Pelagius, Adam was born a mortal. Nothing of his error has been passed on to us. "New-born infants are in the same condition as Adam was before the fall."²³

If we sin easily, it is because sin has become in us a second nature.²⁴ As the Pelagians see it, and strictly speaking, grace is useless. But as always according to Pelagius, creation is already a form of grace. For all that, grace retains its usefulness not "in order to accomplish" but "in order to accomplish more easily [the works of God]."²⁵ It is an aid, a rec­ommendation with which God provides us.

This doctrine is found summarized in the nine points of accusation accepted by the Council of Carthage (April 29,418).²⁶ In a general way, it demonstrates confidence in man and rejects explanations by divine arbitrariness. It is also an act of faith in man's nature and independence. So many things that should make a man indignant fill the cry of Saint Paul: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"²⁷

But graver consequences followed from this. The fall denied, Redemption lost its meaning. Grace was a pardon and not a type of pro­tection. Above all, this was to declare the independence of man in rela­tion to God and to deny that constant need of the creator that is at the heart of the Christian religion.