Movement considered heretical. It originates with Pelagius, a British monk and theologian (4th and 5th centuries). They denied original sin. They believed that humans can produce, on their own and without the help of grace, the good works mentioned in the Scriptures. Children without baptism could be saved, which was contradicted at the Council of Carthage in 418. His main enemy was Augustine of Hippo, who emphasized the need for grace for salvation.
The Council of Orange in 529 condemned Pelagianism, which practically disappeared in the sixth century.
Source: Dictionary of Religions Denominations and Sects
Pelagian error, in the fourth century that denies the necessity of grace, original sin and the value of the Blood of Christ. He was condemned at the council of Carthage: (416).
Christian Bible Dictionary
Dr. J. Dominguez
http://bible.com/dictionary/
Source: Christian Bible Dictionary
It is the doctrine initiated by the monk Pelagius, born in 354 in Britannia and died in Alexandria around 427.
1. Pelagius
Pelagius was a lay monk, but with prestige as an ascetic, intelligent and zealous for the good of the Church. It was his privileged intelligence that played a bad game on him, persuading himself that he could explain by the force of reason what is actually the fruit of grace.
He emphasized the freedom of the will as the only path to human perfection and underestimated the need for divine grace and redemption.
Around 390 he moved to Rome, where he verified the relaxed morality of the Christians of this city. He preached asceticism and gathered around him many followers of his. From Rome, his moral teaching spread throughout southern Italy and Sicily. At the same time it seems that he wrote various treatises such as “On Faith”, “Bible Testimony”, “Explanation of the Epistles of St. Paul.”
Fleeing from Rome before the invasion of Alaric, he settled in 410 in Sicily and there he wrote “Of nature”. In 411 he wrote “To Demetries”.
2. Doctrine
From then on his doctrine became more extreme: he denied the existence of original sin and the need to baptize children. He argued that human nature has no innate corruption, but rather its evil inclinations are due to the examples of others.
The natural faculties of humanity would have nothing to do with the fall of Adam. Men by themselves tend to the good and, for this reason, they deserve heaven on their own merits.
In 411 he went to Africa to have a meeting with St. Augustine. Failing to do so, he headed for Palestine where he settled around 412 and enjoyed the support of John, Bishop of Jerusalem.
His doctrine became popular in the East, especially among the followers of Origen. His disciples Celestius and Julian were welcomed in Constantinople by the Patriarch Nestorius, who sympathized with his doctrine of the integrity and independence of the will.
Already in 412, Augustine of Hippo wrote a series of works in which he attacked the Pelagian doctrine. In a special way he condemned the autonomy of morality and the forgetfulness of divine action.
3. Pelagian rejection
Contrary to Pelagius, this is how the Saint of Hippo elaborated his own formulation, very subtle, on the relationship between human freedom and divine grace. Faced with persistent criticism from Saint Augustine, Pelagius was accused of heresy. The synods of Jerusalem and Diospolis declared him innocent. But at a Council of Carthage in 418 Pelagius and his followers were condemned.
Pope Zosimus (pope between 417-418) also condemned it. Pelagius then sent to the Pope a defense of his faith and uprightness of life in “Libellus fidei”. But the Pope maintained the condemnation and the Emperor Honorius himself published a decree against him on April 30, 418.
Expelled then from Jerusalem, it seems that he went to Antioch, where he was condemned again. He then must have gone to Alexandria of Egypt, around 425, where he may have died in that same year.
Pelagius’ mistake was not to differentiate between the two levels of man: the natural and the supernatural. He downplayed God’s action and thus denied the importance of faith for salvation. Basically, he removed the value of dogma from religion and turned it into morality. His desire was to identify Christianity with Stoicism. But he fell into the error of the most radical naturalism.
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
(v. grace)
(ESQUERDA BIFET, Juan, Dictionary of Evangelization, BAC, Madrid, 1998)
Source: Dictionary of Evangelization
This term derives from Pelagius, a native of Great Britain (about 354), baptized in Rome (about 380/384), where he lived for many years as one of the most appreciated teachers of the time. Pelagianism has been read almost entirely within the perspective of Saint Augustine (t 430), who presented it as “the new heresy”. Recent studies, based on those made by G. Plinval (1943), allow us to redefine the reality of the movement that shook Western Christianity for about twenty years (410-430), also freeing the thought of Saint Augustine from some strange anthropological approaches to him, but which were improperly attributed to him, instead of isolating them from the controversial context in which they were situated. The twenty years of Pelagian controversy are usually distributed in three moments, for reasons of content analysis:
a) Until 41l: this is the most suggestive period, but also the most difficult to analyze given the scarcity of specific elements. The De induratione cordis Pharaonis is attributed to this period, which constitutes Pelagius’s manifesto for the hermeneutics of Christianity, still strongly discussed among intellectual circles, and where Pelagius, above all predestinationism, captures in the freedom of man the foundation of your destiny.
b) 411-418: in this period the Pelagian controversy breaks out and ends with positions taken by the various councils and synods of the local Churches, which sometimes condemn Pelagius and others absolve him.
c) 418-430, that is, until the death of Augustine, who argues with Julián de Eclana about traducianism, namely, about how to reconcile the goodness of marriage with the transmission of original sin. This confrontation allows Augustine to produce his well-known works on human freedom, while Pelagianism turns from heresy into a vision of the world and of man (anthropology); the fertility of the discussion is seen in the influence it had on the monasteries of Africa and Provence. When Augustine died, the name of Pelagianism served to indicate all those who, emphasizing human freedom, were suspected of not fully understanding the role of grace.
G. Bove
Bibl.: H. Rondet. Pelagianism, in SM, Y 379-383. Ch, Baumgartner, The Grace of Christ, Herder, Barcelona 1969; G, Plinval, pelage. Ses écrits of him, sa vie et sa réferme, Lausanne 1943: Y. Grossi, Pelagius-Pelagians-Pelagianism. in DPAC, 11, 1741-1745: L. Ladaria, Theology of original sin – and of grace, BAC, Madrid 1993, 79-93.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary
With the name of p. theology designates a heretical position within the circle of problems of grace and freedom. The p. It goes back to the British monk Pelagius, who around 400 inculcated in Rome a rigorous biblical spirituality with a strong voluntarist trait. His doctrine was spread by his disciples Celestio and Julián de Eclano. In the dispute with Fr., whose historical details we cannot present here, the decisive role fell to Agustín. Pelagius thought, with the Stoics, that one can ask God for all kinds of goods, except virtue. Having received the gift of free will, it is up to man to use it righteously. Since he is responsible for his whole situation, there is no holiness he cannot attain, if he has the courage to want it. Having read in the Confessions of Augustine these words: Da quod iubes et quod vis iube (give me what you command and command what you want: x29 40, x31 45; x37 60; cf. also De dono perseverantiae, 20, 53 ) Pelagius, who then enjoyed great prestige in Rome, was scandalized. Later, one of his disciples, Julian of Eclano, will give a stronger formulation to his doctrine: “By free will man is “autonomous”” (libertas arbitrii qua homo emancipatus est a Deo).
As far as the judging of the historical situation is concerned, we must note that the doctrine of Fr. it has been transmitted to us mainly through the writings of his opponents.
The fundamental affirmation of the freedom of man, as his own power, undoubtedly created, but fully autonomous, which by itself is capable of fulfilling the law of God, provoked the intervention of Augustine, since that thesis denies the need for grace for a natural and salvific fulfillment of the moral law, and thus does not take into account the doctrine of original sin and its consequences (-> concupiscence). Certainly the -> nature, the -> law, divine providence and -> freedom itself are God’s grace in the broad sense of the word. But -> grace in the authentic sense is something else, namely: a supernatural gift, an interior help, by which God himself works in the depths of our freedom so that we make good use of it. “God – said Pelagius – has given me existence; and it is my business to do right.” Augustine quotes against him the words of John 15, 5: “Without me you can do nothing”; and he comments: “Christ did not say:” Without me you can hardly do “, but:” Without me you can do nothing “.”
To support his thesis, Augustine resorts to multiple texts of Scripture: God holds the king’s heart in his hand (Prov 21, 5); he gives us the will and the action (Phil 2, 3); every good thought, every pious desire (2 Cor 3, 5) and, with more reason, a long perseverance in good, are gifts of grace. He remembers with predilection (Sermo 290) the parable of the Pharisee and the publican (Lk 16). In his polemic, Augustine several times compared the Pelagians with the Jews of whom Paul speaks, who did not know the true justice of God and tried to establish their own justice (Rom 10, 3). He underlines the contrast between the OT, oriented towards the realization of temporal promises, and the grace of the NT, interior grace that leads us towards an eternal inheritance (Letter 140, to Honorato). The old law, he says he also following Paul, could only give the knowledge of sin, but not the strength to fulfill it. According to the Pelagians, some men can live without sin. Augustine, on the other hand, leaning on Paul, confesses his misery and entrusts himself to the mercy of God (Sermo 154).
The p. it started from a very limited conception of revelation, but it was also a philosophical error. Stoicism, to which I was more or less consciously…