Augustine in His Own Words
Against the Pelagians 399 accuse the God of knowledge of a twofold ignorance: that He appears not to know what He has made and not to know what He has commanded—as if He has forgotten human frailty (something He Himself is the author of) and imposed commands on humanity that we cannot bear. At the same time (and this is really horrible!) we ascribe iniquity to the Just One and cruelty to the Holy One when we complain that, first, He commands something impossible and that, then, He damns human beings for something they cannot avoid such that God seems to be seeking not so much our salvation as our damnation—something that is even a sacrilege to suspect.
(16.3) The Apostle, therefore, knowing that the Lord of justice and majesty commands nothing impossible, snatches away from us this vice of grumbling—something that tends to come up when what is ordered is either unfair or when the one giving orders is a less respected person. Why do we uselessly turn our back on this challenge? And why do we complain to the Lawgiver about the frailty of our nature? No one knows better the scope of our strength than the One who gave us our strength. Nor does anyone understand what we are capable of better than the One who gave us the capacity for virtue. The Just One would neither command the impossible nor would the Holy One intend to damn a person for something that he could not avoid.56
A Man Inflamed
In 414, Augustine was given a copy of Pelagius's treatise On Nature by two of Pelagius's disciples—or rather, ex-disciples. It proved eye-opening. In the preface of his rebuttal, Augustine speaks of how the treatise revealed Pelagius's fiery temperament as a reformer. From On Nature and Grace:
(1.1) The book which you have sent to me, dearly beloved sons Timasius and James, I have read through somewhat rapidly . . . but with considerable attention. I saw [in it] a man inflamed with a very ardent zeal against those who, although they ought, when they sin, to censure the human will, try instead to accuse the nature of human beings and thus to excuse themselves. He has flared up excessively against this plague, which even writers of secular literature have strongly censured, exclaiming: "The human race wrongly brings a complaint against its own nature."57 With all his strong intellectual talents, your author also has piled up support for precisely this judgment. I fear, nevertheless, that he will instead give support to those "who have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge; for they, not knowing the justice of God and seeking to establish their own, have not submitted themselves to the
56. Pelagius, Ad Demetriadem 16 (PL 30:31–32); my trans. Augustine eventually obtained a copy and commented on it notably in gr. et pecc. or. 1.37.41–40.44; also ep. 188.
57. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum 1.1.