Greg Bryan and Jim Reske talk about the fight for the gospel.So what was all the fuss about? Bruce Shelley, in his book “Church History in Plain Language,” provides an excellent summary of the controversy (emphasis added):What did Pelagius teach to arouse Augustine’s vigorous opposition? The monk denied that human sin is inherited from Adam. Man, he said, is free to act righteously or sinfully... Almost all the human race have sinned; but it is possible not to sin, and some people have in fact lived without sin. [God’s] forgiveness comes to all who exercise “faith alone”; but, once forgiven, man has power of himself to live pleasing to God... His idea of the Christian life was practically the Stoic conception of ascetic self-control.Amazing. It’s as though Pelagius had the single-line drawing right there in front of him. Jesus starts you out in the Christian life, but the rest is up to you. Justification is through Christ, but sanctification is through hard work and effort. Pelagius said that God would never give you a command that you couldn’t fulfill; you just need to make better choices. Just like me, he may have added. Pelagius didn’t just think he was a 9 on a scale of 1-10; he thought it was completely possible to be a perfect 10, if you just tried hard enough.Augustine was the polar opposite of Pelagius. Before he became a Christian, he had a very explicit problem with sexual self-control. We know this because Augustine himself wrote all about it in his “Confessions”. He was very much aware of his own totally depraved sinful nature, and the need for complete and total grace to save him from it. Pelagius thought that grace was a “nice to have”, but not a necessity because it was completely possible for a person to make all the right choices and avoid sin entirely if they just tried hard enough. Augustine would have none of it. Shelley explains (emphasis added):Augustine sensed profoundly the depth of his sin and hence the greatness of God’s salvation. He felt that nothing less than irresistible divine power (grace) could have saved him from his sin and only constantly inflowing divine grace could keep him in the Christian life. His Christian ideal was no Stoic self-control, but love for righteousness infused by the Spirit of God.In other words, Augustine was very aware of his sin (the lower line). And though he had been a Christian for some time by the time he met Pelagius, he was growing in that awareness, because as he fought Pelagius, he said that he had no power in himself to do the right thing; all power to do good was completely a gift from God by grace. Christian growth wasn’t a matter of hard work and effort – it was all by grace. Augustine’s focus was squarely on the grace of Jesus (the growing cross), not his own spiritual performance, and as a result, his life changed (the dotted line).But as Dr. John Hannah, the church historian who taught at Dallas Theological Seminary, explains, all good controversies invite a compromiser who will try to synthesize the two positions. That person was Cassian. Hannah explains that:· Pelagius taught that sin does not corrupt a person’s mind, will, and emotions, such that we are spiritually alive; and· Augustine taught that sin completely corrupts a person’s mind, will, and emotions, such that we are spiritually dead (total depravity); but· Cassian taught that sin only hinders a person’s mind, will, and emotions, such that we need help (deprivation, but not depravity).In Cassian’s view, the grace of God and the will of man work together in salvation. In other words, God helps those who help themselves. Which is a lot like the single-line view of the world. (Encore of Episode 213.)
