David Lee looks at a classical case of heresy.
Those who regard religion as a human creation are closer to the teaching of Pelagius than to that of St Augustine of Hippo.
St Augustine of Hippo1 had a profoundly pessimistic view of human nature. Human beings are steeped in sin from the moment of conception and no amount of human effort can redeem them. This sinfulness is transmitted to each being through the sexual activity of the parents beginning with the fall of Adam. He taught that some souls are elected to receive God's unmerited mercy and grace, all the rest are condemned to perdition. He was and remains a dominant figure in the history of the Western Church and his attitude to sex and sin has marked and continues to influence Christian theology to the present time. His doctrines were at the heart of Calvinism.
Pelagius2 took a different view. He taught that original sin did not taint human nature and that human beings are capable of choosing good or evil without special divine aid. Thus, Adam's sin was 'to set a bad example' for his progeny, but his actions did not have the other consequences imputed to original sin. Pelagianism views the role of Jesus as 'setting a good example' for the rest of humanity (thus counteracting Adam's bad example) as well as providing an atonement for our sins. In short, humanity has full control, and thus full responsibility, for obeying the Gospel.
Augustine was one of the 'good guys' of the Early Church. Like all the Fathers he was regarded as a saint. By contrast those who were judged to be heretics were thought of as morally corrupt; no calumny was too much to heap upon them because of their false doctrines. The reality was quite different. Many so-called heretics were sincere and godly persons, trying to live in accordance with the Gospel of Jesus Christ; their teaching was often determined in a particular political context, as indeed was the teaching of the orthodox Fathers.3 Orthodox leaders of the Church could be intolerant and cruel. Indeed it is a lasting shame for the Christian Church that through the ages until the eighteenth century tens of thousands of heretics were massacred in the name of truth. We have now come to a time when the Christian scholar has not only the right but the duty to challenge traditional orthodoxy and to examine the heresies for the wisdom and truth they may contain.
The teachings of Pelagius had a certain Biblical basis. So the Prophet Ezekiel says:
Consider the man who is righteous and does what is just and right… he oppresses no one, he returns the debtor's pledge, he never commits robbery; he gives food to the hungry and clothes those that have none… Such a one is righteous: he will live says the Lord God.
Ezekiel 18:5-9
We see in the Gospels and Epistles many passages which reflect such simple ethical values and standards:
Put on, then, garments that suit God's chosen and beloved people: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Be tolerant with one another and forgiving, if any of you has a cause for complaint: you must forgive as the Lord forgave you. Finally, to bind everything together and complete the whole, there must be love.
Colossians 3:12–14
There is a thread running right through the Bible which holds to what we may call a Pelagian view of human nature. A person can decide to be good, to live in a moral and loving way in the community. This teaching has a modern ring and finds resonance in much contemporary liberal thinking, yet it has been and is still rejected by many orthodox theologians.
Pelagius, after some official approval and agreement, was eventually condemned as a heretic in large part because it was considered that his teachings did not conform to some specially selected portions of the Bible. Typical of the charges that were made against Pelagius and his followers was a list drawn up by Paulinus of Milan in 411–412, they were:
- That Adam would have died, even if he had not sinned.
- That the sin of Adam injured himself alone and not the whole human race.
- Those new-born children are in the same condition that Adam was before he fell.
- That the whole human race does not die because of Adam's death or sin, nor will it rise again because of Christ's resurrection.
- That the law as well as the Gospel offers entrance to heaven.
- That even before the Coming of Christ there were men wholly without sin.4
A brief review of these 'heresies' suggests that what was unacceptable to the Orthodox Church in the fifth century can be swallowed whole by most ordinary believers in the 21st century.
In the second half of the twentieth century there was a softening of the traditional Calvinism of many Protestant Churches. A good example of this is the case of Pennar Davies, a brilliant Welsh scholar who became the Principal of the Brecon Memorial College:
Pennar Davies's theological hero was not the St Augustine of Hippo so revered by the Calvinists but rather the 'heretical' Pelagius the Cambro-Briton (and therefore, for Davies, the proto-Welsh) figure who had emphasised the residual, potential, spiritual goodness both of human nature and the created world.5
Maybe we are all Pelagians now. But only two cheers for Pelagius because while his teaching said much that is relevant to the issues of an individual's spiritual condition, he did not take seriously enough the full nature and depth of human wickedness. Then as now huge tragedies have marred human history through the ages. The massacres, tortures, ethnic cleansings, endless suffering and poverty and so on are not simply the result of individual human sinfulness; rather they belong to the religious and ideological narratives which the human race invents for itself in every age and in which it tends to invest absolute truth and power.
Theological non-realism can help with the analysis of this situation, for if we hold that God has no objective existence but is in fact a human creation then, by the same measure, we see all ideologies and political systems as provisional, temporary and fraught with weakness and inevitable failure. From the eighteenth century on as a result of the Enlightenment in Western thought, the new understanding and interpretation of the Bible and the ongoing secularisation of society, we have seen a gradual improvement in human affairs in many parts of the world. The abolition of slavery, the emergence of democratic government, the establishment of the rule of law, the rise in living standards for ordinary people, all bear witness to a real sense of progress and improvement. The Christian narrative has changed; absolutist positions have been abandoned. In practice moral decisions are now being made as a result of pragmatic human judgements without reference to God.6
However, this change has not affected all parts of the Christian Church. For example in July 1995 the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia was taken by Serbian forces and seven thousand Muslim men and boys were massacred. General Ratko Mladić announced that this was his 'great gift to the Serbian people'. Such acts can best be understood as the result of a grand narrative in the minds of such people enabling them to regard those outside their world as less than human.
So long as people cling to absolutist narratives to guide and form our societies, so long will such moral failures occur. Replacing such narratives is not simple but can be achieved. The de-Nazification of Germany after the Second World War is a case in point, and there are signs of change in other parts of the world as well as the West. For example in South America in the 1950s and 1960s the rise of basal ecclesial communities and the advent of liberation theology resulted in a change in the grand narrative of the Catholic Church. Not without resistance and condemnation from the Vatican, the Gospel in South America is now understood as having a political dimension with the purpose of establishing justice and the elimination of poverty in formerly hierarchical societies. While this change is not the result of a belief in theological non-realism, it is the result of a radical challenge to the traditional and absolutist view of the hierarchical structure of society and the power of property and wealth.
Notes
1. St Augustine of Hippo (354–430) converted to Christianity from Manichaeism in 383 mainly through the teaching of St Ambrose of Milan. He returned to Africa and was appointed Bishop of Hippo in 396. He was the author of a number of books including Confessions and City of God of huge importance and influence in the history of the Western Church. He opposed the teachings of Pelagius in his treatise De Natura et Gratia.
2. Pelagius (b. 354) was a British or Irish lay monk who came to prominence at the end of the fourth century as a teacher of learning and devotion. He was eventually condemned as a heretic and excommunicated by a number of Councils and Popes and disappeared from history after 418.
3. At the Council of Nicea in 325 the assembled bishops could not agree on the nature of Christ. The matter was settled by the Emperor Constantine's imposition of a solution in the terms contained in the Nicene Creed in an attempt to pacify the empire.
4. See 'Pelagianism' page 1040 The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F L Cross 1957
5. See In the Shadow of the Pulpit by Professor M Wynn Thomas, page 272, University of Wales Press 2011.
6. This idea has been most effectively argued by Bishop Richard Holloway in Godless Morality.
The Venerable David S. Lee was Archdeacon of Llandaff until his retirement in 1997.