Pelagius

[relspace]

In a nutshell, from what I understand of Pelagius, Pelagius believed man could get to heaven by himself without the grace of God.

All Christians would declare this as a heresy.

What Pelagious taught was that man's nature can not, as the Manacheans taught be utterly corrupt and have a sinful nature, incapable of good. (and Augustine who was once Manahean, and seems to have clung to some of their ideas).

Pelegious postulated that since one of the principal attributes of God is that God is just, that God would not condemn man for acting according to his nature. Thus, he reasoned, man must be capable of choosing virtue, otherwise how could he be held cupable for failing to be virtious?

Lets turn it around - for those who hold that man is totally depraved, how is it just that God sondemns man for sining if it is, in fact, man's nature to sin and he is incapable of choosing holiness?

Put the two extreme postions into balance.

Adam represents mankind without sin. He is capable of goodness but he is meant to live in a relationship with God. Only with God's guidance can even the sinless man live without falling into sin. But once sin begins it creates life destroying habits that eventually makes free will ineffectual. Sin eventually makes man utterly depraved.

So because of sin man becomes incapable of pulling himself out of the muck, incapable of wanting to be with God. In this Augustine and the Calvinists are correct but what they fail to understand is that this is only the inevitable fate of fallen man not his universal condition. Every child is born innocent and only severed from God by the sin of Adam. Sin and the utter depravity it brings is inevitable without the grace of a saving relationship with Christ. But the progress of this is different in everyone. Just like Adam, the child, and others are capable of goodness. In this Pelagius was correct.

But as Augustine experienced himself, even a man who has been consumed by sin to become utter depraved, can find himself liberated by the intervention of God so that he can accept the free gift of salvation. A man in such a situation can overlook the fact that receiving the gift is a choice and that God's grace did not force this choice but only liberated his free will to the point where he could make that choice.