Semi-Pelagianism
Doctrines,
upheld during the period from 427 to 529, that rejected the extreme views both
of Pelagius and of Augustine in regards to the priority of divine grace and
human will in the initial work of salvation. The label
"Semi-Pelagian," however, is a relatively modern expression.
Church
councils condemned Pelagianism in 418 and again in 431, but this rejection did
not mean the acceptance of everything in the Augustinian system. Augustine's
teaching on grace may be summarized as follows: Humanity shared in Adam's sin
and therefore has become a massa damnationis from which no one can be
extricated save by a special gift of divine grace that cannot be merited; yet
God in his inscrutable wisdom chooses some to be saved and grants graces that
will infallibly but freely lead them to salvation. The number of the elect is
set and can be neither increased nor decreased. Nevertheless, Vitalis of
Carthage and a community of monks at Hadrumetum, Africa (ca. 427), contested
these principles, and rightly so, asserting that they destroyed freedom of the
will and all moral responsibility.
The
issue became heated in the fifth century when some monks in southern Gaul, led
by John Cassian, Hilary of Arles, Vincent of Lerins, and Faustus of Riez,
joined in the controversy. These men objected to a number of points in the
Augustinian doctrine of sin and grace, namely, the assertion of the total
bondage of the will, of the priority and irresistibility of grace, and of rigid
predestination. They agreed with Augustine as to the seriousness of sin, yet
they regarded his doctrine of predestination as new, therefore in conflict with
tradition and dangerous because it makes all human efforts superfluous, thereby
making God the author of sin! In
opposition to Augustinianism, Cassian taught that though a sickness is
inherited through Adam's sin, human free will has not been entirely oblierated.
Divine grace is indispensable for salvation, but it does not necessarily need
to precede a free human choice, because, despite the weakness of human
volition, the will takes the initiative toward God. In other words, divine
grace and human free will must work together in salvation. In opposition to the
stark predestinarianism of Augustine, Cassian held to the doctrine of God's
universal will to save, and that predestination is simply divine foreknowledge.