Placuit Deo on Neo-Palagianism and Neo-Gnosticism

[Akita Suggagaki]

4. Both neo-Pelagian individualism and the neo-Gnostic disregard of the body deface the confession of faith in Christ, the one, universal Savior. How would Christ be able to mediate the Covenant of the entire human family, if human persons were isolated individuals, who fulfil themselves by their own efforts, as proposed by neo-Pelagianism? Also, how could it be possible for the salvation mediated by the Incarnation of Jesus, his life, death and Resurrection in his true body, to come to us, if the only thing that mattered were liberating the inner reality of the human person from the limits of the body and the material, as described by the neo-Gnostic vision? In the face of these two trends, the present Letter wants to reaffirm that salvation consists in our union with Christ, who, by his Incarnation, death and Resurrection has brought about a new order of relationships with the Father and among human persons, and has introduced us into this order, thanks to the gift of his Spirit, so that we are able to unite ourselves to the Father as sons in the Son, and become one body in the “firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29).

Letter <i>Placuit Deo</i> to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Certain Aspects of Christian Salvation (22 February 2018)

Letter Placuit Deo to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Certain Aspects of Christian Salvation (22 February 2018)

www.vatican.va

Depending on how one understands salvation, I read "neo-Pelagian" as something like Buddhism, Yoga and all the self-help approaches. "Neo-Gnosticism" seems to me to lack the sense of community and solidarity, the humility and appreciation for the goodness of creation.

This letter identifies these as two common trends in the world today. Of course, there is also the more materialistic view that seeks "salvation" through material means.

 

[RileyG]

This might be going over my head, but is it essentially stating someone can save themselves without the grace of God and the Sacraments?

I think I completely misunderstood.

Blessings

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

This might be going over my head, but is it essentially stating someone can save themselves without the grace of God and the Sacraments?

I think I completely misunderstood.

Blessings

yes.

A new form of Pelagianism is spreading in our days, one in which the individual, understood to be radically autonomous, presumes to save oneself, without recognizing that, at the deepest level of being, he or she derives from God and from others. According to this way of thinking, salvation depends on the strength of the individual or on purely human structures, which are incapable of welcoming the newness of the Spirit of God.

On the other hand, a new form of Gnosticism puts forward a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism. In this model, salvation consists in elevating oneself with the intellect beyond “the flesh of Jesus towards the mysteries of the unknown divinity.” It thus presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe, in which traces of the provident hand of the Creator are no longer found, but only a reality deprived of meaning, foreign to the fundamental identity of the person, and easily manipulated by the interests of man.

Following the publication of Dominus Iesus (2000), various theologians asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to further examine certain aspects already enunciated in that Declaration, suggesting a new Document on Christian salvation. In this respect, after having carefully studied this important issue, in collaboration with the Consulters of the Congregation, the Letter Placuit Deo on certain aspects of Christian salvation was presented. https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/03/01/180301b.pdf

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html

I found this in Dominus Iesus in 20.
For those who are not formally and visibly members of the Church, “salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally part of the Church, but enlightens them in a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation. This grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit”‌;81 it has a relationship with the Church, which “according to the plan of the Father, has her origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit”‌.