In part one of this discussion we
looked at several texts that speak of the problem of sin within the human
community. While the opening lines of Genesis declare that all of God’s
creation is good, when we get to Genesis 3 the dynamics seem to change. The question
is why? One way to look at the question
is to compare the differing perspectives of two theologians who lived at the
turn of the fifth century CE, and who engaged in debate on the question of sin
and free will. As Disciples, we might ask, which of these perspectives seem to
be the most compelling? Do we lean in one direction or the other, and what does
that mean for us when it comes to how we live in the world?
Pelagius or Augustine?
Pelagius (ca. 350-ca. 424) was a
British ascetic and monk who came to Rome around 390. He was a strong advocate
for moral reform and the value of asceticism. In espousing these two themes, he
argued that humans have the freedom and the ability to choose the good. Not
only that, but if humans are expected to change for the better, then they must
have the ability to fulfill their moral obligations. That is, doing what is
right is a matter of the will. Starting from the premise that the goodness of
humanity is rooted in the premise that humanity has been created in the image
of God, he believed that God gave humanity the ability to choose between good
and evil. For Pelagius, sin consists of freely choosing to do evil. Since sin
is a matter of the will, a person should be able to progress toward a sinless
life; that is, if one chose to do so. Putting things in more modern terms, the
universality of sin is explained environmentally, rather than genetically. We
tend to sin, because we live in a sinful context. [S.v. "Pelagius, Pelagianism," by
Joanne McWilliam, in Encyclopedia of
Early Christianity, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990). Pelagius,
"Letter to Demetrius," in Theological
Anthropology, J. Patout Burns, ed. and trans., (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1981), pp. 41, 48-49].
Pelagius’ most significant opponent was
Augustine. His response to Pelagius was rooted in his reading of Paul, but also
his own struggle to live a holy life. Based on life experience, he came to
believe that that holiness was a gift of God, and not a matter of human will.
While Pelagius insisted on the perfectibility of humanity, Augustine could only
think about his own inability to overcome temptation. Although he longed to love and serve God, this
always seemed out of reach. So, he writes:
Instead,
the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh,
and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart
that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled
confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of
unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy. Thy anger had come upon
me, and I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my
mortality, the punishment for my soul's pride, and I wandered farther from
thee, and thou didst permit me to do so.
I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over
in my fornications--and yet thou didst hold thy peace, O my tardy Joy! [Augustine, The Confessions, quoted in Hugh T. Kerr, ed., Readings in Christian Thought, 2nd ed., (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1990), p. 54.]
You
might call Augustine something of a realist. He tried but failed to live a holy
life. To give further definition to his struggles, he describes an incident
from late adolescence. He stole fruit
from a tree, not because he was hungry, but for the fun of it. He acted out of a "contempt for
well-doing and a strong impulse to iniquity."
There
was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was
not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night—having
prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was—a group of
young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to
eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them
ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my
heart--which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now lit my
heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously
wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I
loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error--not that for which I erred
but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to
destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but the shame
itself. [Augustine in Kerr, Readings,
pp. 56-57.]
With
a background such as this, having struggled long and hard against sin and
temptation, yet failing to overcome sin, it’s not surprising that he found
Pelagius' positive view of humanity unthinkable.
Pelagius and Augustine agreed on one
thing—in the beginning, before the Fall, humans were endowed with free will. Adam
could choose both good and evil. Augustine, however, did not believe that this
freedom was a natural endowment; it was a gift of God, a gift compromised by
the Fall.
For it was by the evil use of his free
will that man destroyed both it and himself.
For, as a man who kills himself must, of course, be alive when he kills
himself, but after he has killed himself ceases to live, and cannot restore
himself to life; so when man by his own free-will sinned, then sin being
victorious over him, the freedom of his will was lost.
Once Adam exercised
his free will and chose to sin, that choice affected his descendants’ ability
to choose. [Augustine, The Enchiridion of
Faith, Hope, and Love, Henry Paolucci, ed., (Chicago: Regnery Gateway,
1961), pp. 36-37].
This first act of sin removed the
assistance of divine grace that enabled free will. Now humanity was unable to
control the will and was driven toward the fulfillment of desire. Instead of
desiring the good, humanity was compelled to sin. While Pelagius offered a rather
positive picture of humanity, Augustine insisted on total human depravity. This
inability not to sin was then passed on to the posterity of those who were
“driven into exile.” Therefore, from then on, the whole human race experienced
corruption and suffered a sentence of death.
And so, it happens that all descended
from him, and from the woman who had led him into sin--being the offspring of
carnal lust on which the same punishment of disobedience was visited--were
tainted with original sin, and were by it drawn through divers errors and
sufferings into that last and endless punishment which they suffer in common
with the fallen angels, their corrupters and masters, and the partakers of
their doom. [Augustine, Enchiridion, p.
32].
Reading
Romans 5:12, in light of his own life experience, he believed that Paul taught
that that sin entered the world through one man’s disobedience, and then spread
from there to all, therefore all sin.
While Augustine painted a dark
picture for humanity, he also affirmed the reality of God's grace, which was
revealed to humanity in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice on the Cross.
Jesus is the Second Adam, whose mediatorial work restores humanity's broken
fellowship with God. While God's grace does not remove sin from human
experience, by God's grace the rupture between God and humanity can be healed. While
Pelagius believed that human merit might pave the way for salvation, Augustine
believed that only God's grace could bring salvation to a depraved humanity. Though
humanity can do nothing good without the assistance of grace, the regenerative
work of the Spirit will enable a person to do what is good.
Because humans are unable to save
themselves, God must act, and in Augustine’s mind – and that of many of his
theological descendants – God chose to rescue some from the penalty of their
sin, though not all. Therefore, God has
predestined some to experience God’s grace and receive salvation. Those who are so chosen will not fall away –
those who are not chosen, even if they convert, they will eventually fall
away. Augustine defended God's
righteousness in choosing some and not choosing others by pointing out that
everyone stands under judgment. Therefore, God has chosen to have mercy on some
of those under condemnation. God needn’t
do this, but out of mercy, God has chosen so to act.
Disciples and the Pelagius/Augustine
Spectrum
If we pursue this question of sin
and free will as Disciples, it might be worth exploring how Alexander Campbell
dealt with this question. He lived long after Augustine and Pelagius, but the
debate continued to rage well into his day. As he approached this question,
Campbell took into consideration the writings of John Locke on human nature. For
Locke, humans are born with a blank slate, upon which experience and the senses
write. To Campbell, God created humanity
as a "free and a responsible agent, capable of maintaining his estate and
paying his rent; and consequently, was susceptible of virtue and of vice, of
happiness and misery." Campbell went on to write that God placed a law on
humanity to test its character—that is, humanity is to refrain from eating one
particular fruit. [Alexander Campbell, Christian
System, (New Salem, NH: Ayer, 1988),
pp. 26-27.]
Campbell agreed with Augustine and
with John Calvin that the Fall changed human destiny by allowing the animal within
to triumph over the human. As the glory of God left Adam, he "felt his
guilt, and trembled; he saw his nakedness and blushed." Campbell might not
have gone as far as Augustine in affirming the principle of total depravity, but
he did believe that Adam’s descendants are stained by sin and cannot attain to
"primitive purity and excellence."
We all inherit a frail constitution
physically, intellectually, but especially morally frail and imbecile. We have
all inherited our father's constitution and fortune; for Adam, we are told,
after he fell "begat a son in his
own image”; and that son was just as bad as any other son ever born into
the World; for he murdered his own dear brother because he was a better man
than himself. [Campbell, Christian System, p. 27].
Campbell,
however, broke with Augustine and Calvin, rejecting their definition of
original sin. To Campbell, the universality of sin can be explained by the
children of Adam choosing, of their own free will, to disobey God. He
recognized that humans seem universally to sin, but he didn’t believe it was
necessary. At this point he almost
embraces Pelagius:
Still, man with all his hereditary
imbecility, is not under an invincible necessity to sin. Greatly prone to evil,
easily seduced into transgression, he may or may not yield to passion and
seduction. Hence the differences we so
often discover in the corruption and depravity of man. All inherit a fallen, consequently a sinful nature, though all are not
equally depraved. [Campbell, Christian
System, 28-29].
All
are fallen, but we don’t have to sin—we have a choice. Only those who with
their own volition sin against "a dispensation of mercy" provided for
them are condemned. The emphasis is on freedom of the will and the freedom of
the individual to choose to follow or deny God.
The perceived danger in Pelagianism
is that it downplays the seriousness of sin and that it gives a false hope to people.
It can be overly optimistic and naive. Augustinianism, on the other hand, may
be more realistic, but it can be seen as overly deterministic. In many ways
Campbell tried to find a happy medium between the two. But, living as he did in
the early years of the American republic with a vision of God’s realm being
laid out in the American context, he might have been too optimistic. So, we
might heed theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr who remind us that human nature
has serious issues to deal with. Ronald Osborn picks this up clearly when he
writes that “despite our sentimental self-esteem, human nature is seriously
flawed by its innate tendency to self-love. We pursue our own interests at the
expense of others.” [Osborn, The Faith We
Affirm, p. 49]. As we move on to the question of salvation, it may be worth
contemplating who had the better argument as to the extent of sin in our world
– Augustine or Pelagius?
