Later Classic Heresies: Arianism, Donatism, Pelagianism

In the previous chapter we considered some heresies that emerged at a time when the Christian churches existed on the margins of imperial culture, without robust leadership structures and mechanisms, and with only an emerging sense of what constituted theological and ethical norms. There is, however, clear evidence that a process of crystallization was taking place in the final half of the second century, with agreement beginning to emerge within the Christian world on the group of texts that would be recognized as the New Testament and how these were to be interpreted and applied. If heresy can be regarded as simply the outcome of theological uncertainty or confusion, its causes were steadily diminishing with the emergence of an early form of orthodoxy at this time.

However, as we have emphasized, the roots of heresy lie far deeper than any confusion or ambiguity over theological sources or how they are to be interpreted. The process of emergence of Christian doctrine can be likened to a journey of exploration, in which new pathways were explored—for example, to express the significance of Jesus of Nazareth or the interaction of the divine and human in the process of conversion. Some of these proved to be dead ends and were consequently declared to be out-of-bounds for theological orthodoxy. This process of exploration did not end with the emergence of “proto-orthodoxy” in the second century, but continued well into the fifth century.

Yet a further factor came into play during the fourth century. Christianity ceased to be a movement on the fringe of imperial culture, becoming the official faith of the empire. Orthodoxy and heresy were now more than matters of theological debate; they had significant consequences for social cohesion and unity. Theology found itself caught up in imperial politics, beginning to face pressures for which it was not initially prepared.

Imperial Politics and the Heresies of the Age

To appreciate the importance of this point, we must give thought to the dramatic change in status of the Christian faith in the Roman Empire in the first two decades of the fourth century. Up to this point, Christianity had not enjoyed any favored status. Indeed, it was seen by many as a social problem. Christian refusal to participate in the imperial cult was interpreted as an act of civil disobedience and was thus seen as a threat to the social cohesion of the empire. The Latin term religio, as is often pointed out, derives from a root meaning “to bind together.”¹ Religion was meant to be the glue that held Roman society together.² The Christian refusal to integrate with the official religion was thus seen as subversive. Christians began to be described as “atheists”—in other words, as people who refused to conform to the official religion.³

This distrust of Christianity led to sporadic, though not persistent, harassment, often initiated independently by local Roman governors. The accession of the emperor Decius in 249, however, marked a significant escalation in the official Roman hostility toward Christians.⁴ The emperor’s dislike of Christianity is often held to have arisen from his belief that Rome could recover its former glory only by restoring its ancient pagan religion. This led to repression of movements that were seen to pose a threat to traditional Roman values and beliefs, with Christianity being prominent among them.⁵ Christianity may have been an indirect target of Decius’s actions; it was nevertheless hit hard.

The Edict of Decius, issued in June 250, ordered provincial governors and magistrates to ensure that there was universal observance of the requirement to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods and to the emperor. A certificate (libellus pacis) was issued to those who offered such sacrifices. The edict seems to have been widely ignored, but it was nevertheless enforced in some regions. Thousands of Christians were martyred during this difficult period, which led to many others lapsing or abandoning their faith in the face of persecution. The Decian persecution ended in June 251, when Decius was killed on a military expedition.

A further severe outburst of persecution came about in February 303, under the emperor Diocletian. An edict was issued ordering the destruction of all Christian places of worship, the surrender and destruction of all their books, and the cessation of all acts of Christian worship. Christian civil servants were to lose all privileges of rank or status and be reduced to the status of slaves. Prominent Christians were forced to offer sacrifice according to traditional Roman practices. It is an indication of how influential Christianity had become that Diocletian forced both his wife and daughter, who were known to be Christians, to comply with this order. The persecution continued under successive emperors, including Galerius, who ruled the eastern region of the empire.

In 311, Galerius ordered the cessation of the persecution. It had been a failure and had merely hardened Christians in their resolve to resist the reimposition of classical Roman pagan religion. Galerius issued an edict that permitted Christians to live normally again and “hold their religious assemblies, provided that they do nothing which would disturb public order.”⁶ The edict explicitly identified Christianity as a distinct religion in its own right, and offered it the full protection of the law. The legal status of Christianity, which had been ambiguous up to this point, was now resolved. The church no longer needed to exist under a siege mentality.

Christianity was now a legal religion; it was, however, merely one among many such religions. Yet the death of Galerius precipitated a fierce battle for the imperial succession, eventually won by Constantine (285–337). Following Maxentius’s seizure of power in Italy and North Africa, Constantine led a body of troops from western Europe in an attempt to gain authority in the region. The decisive battle took place on October 28, 312, at the Milvian Bridge, to the north of Rome. Constantine defeated Maxentius and was proclaimed emperor. Constantine attributed his victory to the power of “the God of the Christians” and committed himself to the Christian faith from then onward, although his understanding of the Christian faith at this time appears to have been quite superficial.⁷ The Edict of Milan, issued in 313 by Constantine and Licinius, granted religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire and ordered the restitution of property confiscated from Christians during the recent period of suppression.

It is not entirely clear at what point Constantine converted to Christianity. Although Constantine appears to have appreciated the pragmatic virtues of imperial religious toleration, he showed no particular attraction to Christianity in his early period. The implications, however, of his conversion were considerable. Having only just emerged from the margins of Roman society through being recognized as a legitimate religion, Christianity now found itself propelled to the forefront of Roman civic life. The conversion of the emperor Constantine brought about a complete change in the status of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. It simply did not have time to acclimatize to being a legitimate faith before becoming the religion of the imperial establishment. As a result, it was relatively easy for Constantine to exploit the church as an instrument of imperial policy, impose his imperial ideology upon it, and deprive it of much of the independence that it had previously enjoyed. In 325, Constantine secured control of the eastern domains of the Roman Empire as well as the west and proceeded to establish the imperial capital in Byzantium, which came to be known as Constantinople after his death in 337.

To his obvious dismay, Constantine soon realized that there was a lack of unity within the church, potentially compromising its role as a unifying imperial influence. Events in the province of Africa caused an immediate headache for Constantine. Tensions arose there between two rival groups of Christians, who took very different attitudes toward those who had lapsed in the Diocletian persecution. Diocletian’s demands for the suppression of Christianity had met with a mixed response. In eastern cities of the empire, Christianity was too strong numerically to be intimidated in this way. But in Roman North Africa, a particularly efficient administrative structure, linked with the relative weakness of the church, made suppression of the church relatively easy. Many clergy lapsed under threat of death, handed over their sacred texts, and conformed to the Roman imperial cult.

When Constantine declared that Christianity was legal, the question arose over what to do with lapsed clergy (lapsi). Should they be readmitted to office, perhaps after an appropriate public apology and retraction? Two positions rapidly emerged: those who took a rigorist position toward the lapsi, and those who took a more moderate, forgiving position. (The rigorists eventually became known as the Donatists, named after Donatus, a Berber whom they elected bishop of Carthage in 315.) Following a dispute over the election of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage in 312, the rigorists asked Constantine to intervene on their behalf. In the end, Constantine declined to resolve the matter personally, appointing a synod of bishops to deal with the matter. The ill feeling arising from the Donatist crisis simmered on throughout the fourth century and erupted again at the end of the century. We shall consider the theological issues arising from the Donatist controversy later in the present chapter.

Yet the main point to note here is how Constantine became drawn into ecclesiastical disputes. The new imperial status of Christianity meant that its unity and polity were now matters of significance to the state. Up to this point, heresy and orthodoxy had been concepts of importance within the Christian communities alone. They now became imperial political concerns, with important legal implications.⁸ The significance of this point can be seen from Constantine’s role in the Arian controversy (which we shall consider shortly), which threatened to split the church in the eastern region of the empire. Constantine himself convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 to resolve this controversy. Politically, the move failed in the short term, in that disagreement and division broke out again soon afterward.

Given the importance of Arianism for our theme, we shall consider its ideas in some detail in the next section of the chapter. But once more, the important point to note is how the state was now deeply involved in theological disagreements. Heresy was no longer a matter for the church; it became a matter of significance for the empire. As Christianity became the established religious ideology of the Roman Empire, both orthodoxy and heresy began to assume a new status as political, almost legal, entities. The stakes were now much higher, and the problems in dealing with heresy were much greater than they had been in the past.

In this chapter, we shall examine three heresies—Arianism, Donatism, and Pelagianism—that emerged during this era, each of which had the potential to create disunity and potential division within the empire. We begin by considering what is widely regarded as the most significant heresy of the classical period—Arianism.

Arianism: The Identity of Christ

One of the greatest challenges faced by the early church was the weaving together of the threads of the New Testament witness to the identity of Jesus of Nazareth into a coherent theological tapestry. As we noted in the previous chapter, one early attempt to make sense of Jesus of Nazareth—Ebionitism—involved trying to accommodate him within existing Jewish categories. Because so many early Christians were Jewish, it seemed natural to them to explore conceptual frameworks that were already familiar—such as the category of the prophet. It became clear at a very early stage that the new wine of the Christian faith simply could not be contained by the old conceptual wineskins of Judaism. These, the church decided, failed to capture the exhilarating possibilities Christians knew to have been opened up through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Christological models inherited from Judaism seemed to focus on the idea of Jesus of Nazareth as a means of endorsed communication from God. Docetic Christologies, for example, often appear to regard Jesus of Nazareth as an intermediary between humanity and God who passes on to us some signed, sealed, and authorized communication from God. Yet this revelatory emphasis could accommodate only one aspect of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth. What, for example, about his identity as savior of humanity?

Other frameworks were therefore explored to see if they could be adopted or adapted in the quest for the best way of making sense of Jesus of Nazareth without reducing him to theological stereotypes. One approach that seemed to hold particular promise involved making use of the notion of the Logos—a Greek term, extensively used in contemporary philosophy, that is often translated simply as “word” and yet has far richer associations than this simple translation might suggest. Middle Platonism saw the Logos as a mediating principle between the ideal and real worlds, allowing Christian theologians to explore the role of Jesus of Nazareth as mediator between God and humanity. Justin Martyr is an excellent example of a writer who found this approach helpful in communicating the significance of Jesus to secular Hellenistic culture.⁹

In the end, the church reacted decisively against any notion of Jesus of Nazareth as being God’s deputy. Even the most honorific ways of thinking of Christ in such terms ended up representing him as an authorized representative of a God who was nevertheless conspicuously absent from the world into which Christ came. This way of thinking about Christ simply would not map onto the New Testament’s witness to him, nor would it map onto the church’s experience of him, especially in worship.

The church came to realize that no existing analogy or model was good enough to meet its needs in expressing the significance of Jesus of Nazareth. The situation demanded that the church develop a new way of thinking rather than relying on theological hand-me-downs. So the concept of the Incarnation began to emerge as of central importance to the church’s understanding of Jesus Christ.¹⁰ While the idea was developed in slightly different ways by different writers, the basic theme is that of God entering into history and taking on a human nature in Jesus of Nazareth. This idea caused considerable philosophical difficulties for many of the prevailing schools of Hellenistic philosophy. How, many asked, could an immutable God enter into history? Surely this implied that God underwent change. Contemporary philosophers drew a sharp distinction between the unchanging heavenly realm and the changeable created order. The notion of God entering into and dwelling within this transitory and changing order seemed inconceivable, and proved a significant barrier to some cultured pagans’ embracing of Christianity.

This process of exploration of religious and philosophical categories suitable for expressing the significance of Jesus of Nazareth reached a watershed in the fourth century. The controversy that forced the issue was precipitated by Arius (c. 270–336), a priest in one of the larger churches in the great Egyptian city of Alexandria. Arius set out his views in a work known as the Thalia (“banquet”), which has not survived in its entirety. As a result, we know Arius’s ideas primarily through the writings of his opponents. This means that these extracts from his works are presented out of context, so that we do not fully understand the context in which Arius developed his ideas.

In this section, we shall try to answer four questions. First, what did Arius actually teach? Second, what factors led Arius to develop his ideas? Third, why were these ideas seen as being so dangerous that they were branded as heretical? And fourth, what process was used to make the decision that Arius’s views were indeed heretical?

The fundamental themes of Arius’s teachings are not in dispute, even though they are known primarily through works that cite them in order to critique them.¹¹ They are traditionally summarized as three basic statements, each of which needs a considerable amount of conceptual unpacking.¹²

The Son and the Father do not have the same essence (ousia).

The Son is a created being (ktisma or poiema), even though he is to be recognized as first and foremost among created beings in terms of origination and rank.

Although the Son was the creator of the worlds, and must therefore have existed before them and before all time, there was nevertheless a time when the Son did not exist.

One of the outcomes of the Arian controversy was the recognition of the futility, even theological illegitimacy, of biblical “proof-texting”—the simplistic practice of believing that a theological debate can be settled by quoting a few passages from the Bible. Arius’s theological position was clearly grounded on biblical texts. For example, Proverbs 8:22 speaks of God possessing Wisdom at the beginning of creation. Christ is also described by Paul as the “first born” of the redeemed (Rom. 8:29). The point is that Arius chose to interpret these texts in a different manner from his opponents in orthodoxy. Both sides on the Arian controversy were able to amass texts that seemed to support their cases. The real question concerned the overall picture disclosed by the New Testament. Indeed, the Arian controversy can be argued to be about how an ensemble of biblical texts is to be integrated, in that each side had no difficulty in identifying individual texts that supported their position.¹³ Identifying the overall pattern disclosed by those texts proved to be the decisive issue.

The most fundamental Arian belief was that Jesus Christ was not divine in any meaningful sense of the term. He was “first among the creatures”—that is, preeminent in rank, yet unquestionably a creature rather than divine. Christ, as Logos, was indeed the agent of the creation of the world, as stated in the prologue to John’s Gospel. Yet the Logos was itself created by God for this purpose. The Father is thus to be regarded as existing before the Son: “There was a time when he was not.” This statement places Father and Son on different levels and is consistent with Arius’s rigorous insistence that the Son is a creature. Only the Father is “unbegotten” the Son, like all other creatures, derives from this one source of being. Nevertheless, as we have noted, Arius is careful to emphasize that the Son is not like every other creature. There is a distinction of rank between the Son and other creatures, including human beings. Arius has some difficulty in identifying the precise nature of this distinction. The Son, he argued, is “a perfect creature, yet not as one among other creatures; a begotten being, yet not as one among other begotten beings.”¹⁴ The implication seems to be that the Son outranks other creatures while sharing their essentially created and begotten nature.

Arius thus draws an absolute distinction between God and the created order. There are no intermediate or hybrid species. For Arius, God was totally transcendent and immutable. So how could such a God enter into history and become incarnate? As a creature, the Son was changeable (treptos) and capable of moral development (proteptos), and subject to pain, fear, grief, and weariness. This is simply inconsistent with the notion of an immutable God. The notion of a changeable God seemed heretical to Arius. Furthermore, the notion that God the Son was divine seemed to compromise the fundamental themes of monotheism and the unity of God—themes that, of course, would reemerge as central in early Islam.

Pursuing this line of argument, Arius emphasizes that the utter transcendence and inaccessibility of God means that God cannot be known by any other creature. The Son is to be regarded as a creature, however elevated above all other creatures. Arius therefore argues that the Son cannot know the Father. “The one who has a beginning is in no position to comprehend or lay hold of the one who has no beginning.”¹⁵ The radical distinction between Father and Son is such that the latter cannot know the former unaided. In common with all other creatures, the Son is dependent upon the grace of God to perform whatever function has been ascribed to him.

Arius thus affirmed the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, declaring that he was supreme among the creatures. Like Ebionitism, Arius declined to accept that Jesus could be said to be divine in any meaningful sense of the term. Yet Ebionitism set out to interpret the significance of Jesus within the framework of existing Jewish models of divine presence within humanity, particularly the notion of a prophet or spirit-filled individual. Arius, in contrast, sought to accommodate Jesus of Nazareth within the frameworks made available by the strict Greek philosophical monotheisms of his age, which precluded any notion of the Incarnation as inconsistent with the changelessness and transcendence of God. Ebionitism and Arianism may appear to say similar things; however, they begin from very different starting points and are guided by significantly different assumptions.

It is often suggested that Arius developed his position on the identity of Jesus of Nazareth on the basis of a preconceived philosophical position that declared that, as a matter of principle, God could not become incarnate. There is some truth in this point, but it is not quite the whole truth. Arius’s concerns were partly apologetic, in that he clearly believed that many were being alienated from Christianity on account of its increasing emphasis upon an idea—the Incarnation—that educated Greeks were unable to accept. Arius saw his approach to Christianity, in contrast, as representing a measured and judicious amalgam of philosophical sophistication and responsible biblical exegesis.

So why did this strongly rational approach to the identity of Jesus of Nazareth attract such vigorous criticism? Arius’s most indefatigable critic was Athanasius of Alexandria. For Athanasius, Arius had destroyed the internal coherence of the Christian faith, rupturing the close connection between Christian belief and worship.¹⁶ There are two points of particular importance that underlie Athanasius’s critique of Arius.

First, Athanasius argues that it is only God who can save. God, and God alone, can break the power of sin and bring humanity to eternal life. The fundamental characteristic of human nature is that it needs to be redeemed. No creature can save another creature. Only the creator can redeem the creation. If Christ is not God, he is part of the problem, not its solution.

Having emphasized that it is God alone who can save, Athanasius then makes the logical move that the Arians found difficult to counter. The New Testament and the Christian liturgical tradition alike regard Jesus Christ as Savior. Yet, as Athanasius emphasized, only God can save. So how are we to make sense of this? The only possible solution, Athanasius argues, is to accept that Jesus is God incarnate.

No creature can redeem another creature.

According to Arius, Jesus Christ is a creature.

Therefore, according to Arius, Jesus Christ cannot redeem humanity.

Arius was firmly committed to the idea that Christ was the savior of humanity;¹⁷ Athanasius’s point was not that Arius denied this, but that he rendered the claim incoherent. Salvation, for Athanasius, involves divine intervention. Athanasius thus draws out the meaning of John 1:14 by arguing that the “Word became flesh”: in other words, God entered into our human situation in order to change it.

The second point that Athanasius makes is that Christians worship and pray to Jesus Christ. This pattern can be traced back to the New Testament itself, and is of considerable importance in clarifying early Christian understandings of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth.¹⁸ By the fourth century, prayer to and adoration of Christ were standard features of Christian public worship. Athanasius argues that if Jesus Christ were a creature, then Christians would be guilty of worshipping a creature instead of God; in other words, they had lapsed into idolatry. Did not the Old Testament law explicitly prohibit the worship of anyone or anything other than God? Arius was not in disagreement with the practice of worshipping Jesus; he refused, however, to draw the same conclusions as Athanasius.

The point at issue here concerns the relationship between Christian worship and Christian belief. Orthodoxy maintains a view of the identity of Jesus Christ that is completely consistent with the worship patterns of the church. Christians, Athanasius argued, were right to worship and adore Jesus Christ, because by doing so they were recognizing him for what he was—God incarnate. If Christ were not God, it would be totally improper to worship him. If Arius was right, Christian worship would have to be drastically altered, breaking the link with the earliest patterns of Christian prayer and adoration. Arius seemed to be guilty of making the traditional way in which Christians prayed and worshipped incoherent. Though affirming the tradition of worshipping Jesus, Arius had undermined its integrity. If Arius was correct, Christians ought not to adore or pray to Christ in this way. Christ could be honored as “first among the creatures” he should not, however, be worshipped.

We see here what we have identified as the fundamental characteristic of heresy: the maintenance of the outward appearance of faith coupled with the subversion of its inward identity. To focus only on the two points we have considered, Arius affirmed that Christ was the savior of humanity and that the church should worship him, yet he interpreted his identity in such a manner that neither salvation nor adoration was proper. Such a clear tension between theology and practice could not be sustained for long without causing their rupture.

So how was Arianism declared to be a heresy? At this point, we must return to a point made earlier—the politicization of a theological debate due to the conversion of Constantine, and the new status of Christianity as an imperial religion.¹⁹ Constantine saw this controversy as posing a threat to the unity of the church, and hence to the unity of the empire. The stakes were now vastly greater than with any previous theological dispute. He wanted it resolved—quickly and permanently. It seemed to Constantine that because the church itself possessed multiple centers of authority in rivalry with one another, it would be unable to achieve such a resolution. Constantine therefore determined to resolve the matter in a way that would achieve political expediency and efficiency while at the same time respecting theological integrity. The evidence suggests that Constantine ultimately could have worked with either the position espoused by Athanasius or that espoused by Arius, yet he had a preference for the latter. Constantine was quite clear about his role; it was the church itself that had to decide which was right and bring the dispute to an end. His role was to bring about an unequivocal conclusion.

Constantine’s method of conflict resolution was without precedence in postbiblical Christianity.²⁰ He summoned all the bishops of the church to a council held in Nicaea, in Bithynia (now Iznik, in modern Turkey), in May 325. It is estimated that there were around one thousand bishops in the Eastern church and eight hundred in the Western. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, who was present at the council, only two hundred and fifty bishops attended.²¹ The fact that the emperor had summoned the council made it quite clear where ultimate authority lay within imperial Christianity. This was reinforced by Constantine’s decision to model the proceedings of the council on those of the Roman Senate.²² The structures of the church were subtly being aligned with those of the state.

In the end, the council voted decisively against Arius²³ and authorized an expanded version of existing creeds that would explicitly counter Arian ideas. Some bishops had wanted to retain older, more open-ended creeds; in the end, however, the majority voted for more explicit rejections of Arius’s teaching. Much debate developed over possible descriptions of the relation of the Father to the Son. The term homoiousios, “of like substance” or “of like being,” was seen by many as allowing the proximity and intimacy between Father and Son to be asserted without requiring any further speculation on the precise nature of their relation. However, the rival term homoousios, “of the same substance” or “of the same being,” eventually gained the upper hand at Nicaea. In his final address, bringing the council to a close, Constantine once more emphasized his aversion to divisive theological controversy; he wanted the church to live in harmony and peace, and contribute to the stability of the empire. Sadly, such tranquillity proved elusive, and the discordances of the Arian controversy rumbled on for some time before any degree of resolution can be said to have been achieved.

Although the Council of Nicaea decisively rejected Arianism, the historical evidence clearly suggests that this was Constantine’s preferred option.²⁴ What reasons might lie behind this preference? One celebrated answer to this question was put forward by the German scholar Erik Peterson (1890–1960) in 1935. In a detailed study of the political implications of monotheism within the Roman Empire, Peterson pointed out that monotheism entails a single legitimate political authority.²⁵ There is, Peterson argued, a direct analogy between the idea of the total cosmological authority of a single God (a principle often expressed in the term monarchia) and the total political authority of a single ruler. Arianism endorsed the notion of the divine monarchia, thus lending theological support to the notion of the supreme political and religious authority of Constantine in the Roman Empire.

Yet as Peterson further pointed out, both the orthodox doctrine of the identity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity undermined any such monotheistic political theology. Why? Because both insisted that there was no earthly analogy to the divine authority, thus robbing the notion of absolute imperial authority of its theological legitimation. While the accuracy and validity of Peterson’s historical analysis have come in for serious criticism in recent years,²⁶ a number of leading theologians—most notably Jürgen Moltmann—have championed the notion that absolute monotheisms, such as that proposed by Arius, provide a theological foundation for political authoritarianism.²⁷

So what would Christianity have looked like if Arius had won? It needs to be made clear that what Arius was proposing was not a minor rearrangement of the theological furniture of the Christian faith, to be compared with adjusting the position or changing the color of a favored chair in the living room. Arius’s understanding of the identity of Christ differed so greatly from that proposed by Athanasius and the orthodox that it can only be regarded as constituting a separate religion. Arian Christianity is much closer to Islam than to orthodox Christianity, in relation both to its notion of God and to its understanding of the religious role of its founder. Its concept of absolute divine monarchia has important political associations in that it points to an analogy of absolute authority on earth and in heaven.

Most important, Arianism emphasized the inscrutability of God. There was an absolute ontological gulf between God and the world of the creatures. Christ, himself a creature, did not have direct knowledge of God and was thus unable to mediate a direct, reliable, and authoritative revelation of God. God’s will might be known, albeit circumspectly; God’s face remained averted and unknown. The Arian notion of divine revelation is similar to that found in Islam, raising significant questions about the authority and competency of the revealer to disclose the revealed.

Christian orthodoxy offered a theological framework that authorized Christ to reveal God and provided a secure link between the revealer and the revealed. To put it somewhat abruptly: if Christ is God, then Christ can disclose both what God is like and what God wants. The face and will of God are both made accessible on account of an incarnational vision of God and the Nicene interpretation of the identity of Jesus Christ. For Arius, Christ cannot be held to “be” God in any meaningful sense of the term; furthermore, Christ cannot even be held to “know” God directly. Like all creatures, he knows God indirectly and at second hand, in a manner that may exceed that of other human beings in terms of quantity yet not in quality.

Orthodoxy understood Christ as the mediator between God and humanity, and appreciated that his “dual nature” as truly divine and truly human was a means of ensuring that this bridge was secure. Only God could disclose the face and will of God to humanity; only God could save humanity. The Nicene account of the identity of Jesus Christ safeguarded the actuality of both revelation and salvation. Arianism, however, offered a bridge that failed to extend sufficiently far to reach its divine goal—and by failing to connect with God, it was unable to permit humanity either reliable and authentic knowledge of God or the salvation promised by the gospel. For Arius, Christ had no direct knowledge of God, mediating a secondhand knowledge of God that may have been superior in quality to that of other human beings but was nevertheless equal in kind.

Arius and his supporters made it clear that they believed that Jesus of Nazareth did reveal God, and insisted that it was proper to speak of Christianity as a religion of salvation. Yet the conceptual framework that they proposed for understanding both the nature of God and the identity of Christ ultimately made these ideas incoherent and unstable. Arianism subverted some core themes of the Christian proclamation, offering aspirations where orthodoxy offered actualities, a shadow in place of a reality. The Christian vision of the risen Christ, glimpsed from time to time in all its fullness, radiance, and glory, proves remarkably difficult to express in the right words and with the right ideas. And the words and ideas used by Arius were finally judged to have failed in this respect. Instead, a new vocabulary and a new set of ideas were demanded to do justice to the reality of Christ. Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) made this point with great force, and her words remain relevant to any discussion of this point:

The central dogma of the Incarnation is that by which relevance stands or falls. If Christ was only man, then He is entirely irrelevant to any thought about God; if He is only God, then He is entirely irrelevant to any experience of human life. It is, in the strictest sense, necessary to the salvation of relevance that a man should believe rightly the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.²⁸

Donatism: The Nature of the Church

The second major heresy that we shall consider in this chapter is known as Donatism, and concerns some aspects of the church and sacraments.²⁹ As we noted earlier, under the Roman emperor Diocletian (284–313), the Christian church was subject to various degrees of harassment and persecution. Although the historical evidence is not totally secure, there are reasons for suggesting that a “culture of martyrdom” developed within the African church in response to this wave of persecution, with its members deliberately courting both persecution and execution at the hands of the Roman authorities.³⁰

This caused some controversy within the African church. Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, and his archdeacon Caecilianus took a robust stand against what they regarded as a fanatical craving for martyrdom. Others, however, saw this as tantamount to encouraging collaboration with the Roman authorities who persecuted them. Feelings ran high. An issue of especial importance concerned Christian leaders who had surrendered their sacred texts to the authorities. Under an edict of February 303, Christian leaders were ordered to hand over their books to be burned. Those Christian leaders who handed over their books to be destroyed in this way came to be known as traditores—“those who handed over [their books].”³¹ Tensions ran high between traditores and those who idealized martyrdom.³² Mensurius himself was accused of being a traditor by his critics, although he himself maintained he had merely handed over some heretical works he happened to have at hand and never surrendered any sacred texts.

With the accession of Constantine, the persecution came to an end. But a sensitive issue arose in its aftermath: how were those who had lapsed or otherwise compromised themselves during the persecution to be treated? The problem was especially acute in the case of Christian leaders who had lapsed under pressure. Some took a hard line, demanding their expulsion; Mensurius, however, had taken a generous and lenient line toward those who had lapsed during his lifetime. Because the bishop of Carthage was widely accepted as the senior bishop in Africa, his views on the matter had a significant impact on how the matter was viewed.

Mensurius died in 311. So who would succeed him? Hard-liners, headed by a wealthy and influential widow named Lucilla, and the bishops of Numidia wanted him replaced with one sympathetic to the martyr cult, who would take a hard line toward those who had lapsed. The Numidians represented an ancient Berber kingdom, occupied by the Romans, with nationalistic aspirations. In the eyes of the Numidian bishops, Mensurius had been too sympathetic to the Roman colonists. It was time, in their view, for a Numidian to become bishop of Carthage and give a firm moral lead to the church.

The more moderate faction, aware of the situation, decided to move quickly and elected Caecilianus as bishop before the Numidian delegation could arrive. The consecration of Caecilianus was carried out by three bishops, including Felix, bishop of Aptunga—a traditor. Many local Christians were outraged that such a person should have been allowed to be involved in this consecration and declared that they could not accept the authority of Caecilianus as a result. The Numidian bishops refused to recognize his consecration and demanded a fresh election, arguing that the new bishop’s authority was compromised on account of the fact that the bishop who had consecrated him had lapsed under the pressure of persecution. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church was thus tainted as a result of this development. The church ought to be pure and should not be permitted to include such people. The Numidian bishops demanded that Caecilianus appear before them to defend his election and consecration. When he failed to do so, the rigorists deposed and excommunicated him and appointed Majorinus in his place. Majorinus died in 313 and was replaced by Donatus the Great, who commanded substantial local support. In the end, Constantine found himself dragged into the controversy and declared in favor of Caecilianus. The North African church broke into two parties, the larger of which followed Donatus.

The controversy was fueled by the ambivalences and tensions within the theology of a leading figure of the African church in the third century—the martyred bishop Cyprian of Carthage. In his Unity of the Catholic Church (251), Cyprian had insisted upon two fundamental principles.³³ First, schism is totally and absolutely unjustified. The unity of the church cannot be broken, no matter what the pretext or occasion. To step outside the bounds of the church is to forfeit any possibility of salvation. For Cyprian, “there is no salvation outside the church.”³⁴

Second, it follows from this that lapsed or schismatic bishops should be deprived by the church of any right to administer the sacraments or act as a minister of the Christian church. By choosing to stand outside the sphere of the church, they have lost their spiritual gifts and authority. They should therefore not be permitted to ordain anyone. Furthermore, anyone whom they have baptized, ordained, or consecrated must be regarded as in need of rebaptism, reordination, or reconsecration.

Yet the situation following the easing of the Diocletian persecution raised a serious problem. Just what should happen if a bishop lapses under persecution and subsequently repents? Cyprian’s theory turned out to be somewhat ambiguous on this point, being open to two quite different lines of interpretation. First, that by lapsing, the bishop has committed the sin of apostasy (literally, “falling away”). He has therefore placed himself outside the bounds of the church and can no longer be regarded as administering the sacraments validly. Second, that by his repentance, the bishop has been restored to grace and is able to continue administering the sacraments validly. The Donatists adopted the first position; the Catholics (as their opponents came to be universally known), the second.

The Donatists believed that the entire sacramental system of the Catholic Church had become corrupted on account of the lapse of its leaders. How could the sacraments be validly administered by people who were tainted in this way? It was therefore necessary to replace these people with more acceptable leaders, who had remained firm in their faith under persecution. It was also necessary to rebaptize and reordain all those who had been baptized and ordained by those who had lapsed.

It will be obvious that a legitimate theological debate was rendered much more complex and nuanced by its political associations and overtones in the early fourth century. The Donatists tended to be indigenous Berbers, while the Catholics tended to be Roman colonists. Those who urged generosity and toleration toward traditores were thus generally supportive of Roman imperial rule in the region. Given the ethnic complexities of late antique Roman Africa,³⁵ and the nationalist and anticolonial sentiments that smoldered in the region, it was inevitable that theological agendas found alignment with political tensions. It has often been suggested that heretical movements are linked with suppressed nationalisms.³⁶ While it would clearly be incorrect to suggest that any given heresy is simply a social or national movement transposed into a theological key, there are excellent reasons for arguing that a theological approach could easily become associated with a social or political agenda.

The issues were still alive nearly a century later, when Augustine was consecrated bishop of Hippo in Roman North Africa in 396.³⁷ Augustine responded to the Donatist challenge by putting forward a theory of the church that he believed was more firmly grounded in the New Testament than the Donatist teaching. In particular, Augustine emphasized the sinfulness of Christians. The church is not meant to be a “pure body,” a society of saints, but a “mixed body” (corpus permixtum) of saints and sinners.³⁸ Augustine finds this image in two biblical parables: the parable of the net that catches many fish, and the parable of the wheat and the weeds (or “tares,” to use an older word familiar to readers of the King James Bible). It is this latter parable (Matt. 13:24–31) that is of especial importance, and requires further discussion.

The parable tells of a farmer who sowed seed and discovered that the resulting crop included both wheat and weeds. What could be done about it? To attempt to separate the wheat and the weeds while both are still growing would be to court disaster, probably involving damaging the wheat while trying to get rid of the weeds. But at the harvest, all the plants—whether wheat or weeds—are cut down and sorted out, thus avoiding damaging the wheat. The separation of the good and the evil thus takes place at the end of time, not in history. For Augustine, this parable refers to the church in the world. It must expect to find itself including both saints and sinners. To attempt a separation in this world is premature and improper. That separation will take place in God’s own time, at the end of history. No human can make that judgment or separation in God’s place.

A related biblical passage concerns John the Baptist’s prediction that Jesus of Nazareth will bring a judgment that can be compared to a threshing floor (Matt. 3:11–12). Both the wheat and chaff lie on the threshing floor and are to be separated. So how is this to be interpreted? Two very different approaches emerged.³⁹ For the Donatists, the threshing floor referred to the world at large, containing both wheat and chaff. The process of separation led to the emergence of the church as the community of the pure; the chaff remained in the world. For Augustine, the church itself was the threshing floor, in that its members included both wheat and chaff.

So in what sense can the church meaningfully be designated as “holy”? For Augustine, the holiness in question is not that of its members, but of Christ. The church cannot be a congregation of saints in this world, in that its members are contaminated with original sin. However, the church is sanctified and made holy by Christ—a holiness that will be perfected and finally realized at the Last Judgment. In addition to offering this theological analysis of holiness, Augustine slyly noted that the Donatists failed to live up to their own high standards of morality. They were, he suggested, just as capable as their opponents of moral lapses.

Augustine made a similar point in connection with the theology of the sacraments. For the Donatists, sacraments—such as baptism and the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper—were effective only if they were administered by someone of unquestionable moral and doctrinal purity. This attitude can be seen in a letter written in 402 by Petilian, the Donatist bishop of Cirta, to Augustine, which sets out at some length the Donatist insistence that the validity of the sacraments is totally dependent upon the moral worthiness of those who administer them.

Responding to this, Augustine argued that Donatism laid excessive emphasis upon the qualities of the human agent and gave insufficient weight to the grace of Jesus Christ. It is, he argued, impossible for fallen human beings to make distinctions concerning who is pure and impure, worthy and unworthy: This view, which is totally consistent with his understanding of the church as a “mixed body” of saints and sinners, holds that the efficacy of a sacrament rests not upon the merits of the individual administering it but upon the merits of the one who instituted them in the first place—Jesus Christ. The validity of sacraments is thus independent of the merits of those who administer them. There may be a pastoral advantage to the sacraments being administered by someone of unblemished reputation, but there is no theological necessity for this. Christ is the ultimate guarantor of the efficacy of the sacraments; the minister plays only a secondary and subordinate role.

So why did Donatism come to be regarded as a heresy rather than merely as a mistaken opinion? Why not treat it as a simple misunderstanding or overreaction, whose origins can easily be explained in terms of the complex social and political situation faced by the Christian church in Roman North Africa in the fourth century?⁴⁰ The best way of understanding the threat posed by Donatism is to look closely at its understanding of the nature of the church, and the benefits that its sacraments offer to believers.

Donatus and his followers insisted that the efficacy of the church and its sacramental system was dependent upon the moral or cultic purity of its representatives. The grace and healing power of the Christian gospel was thus understood to be contingent upon the purity of the church and its ministers. For Augustine, this amounted to making salvation indirectly dependent upon human purity rather than the grace of Christ. Ministers and sacraments were merely the channels, not the cause, of the grace of God. Donatism threatened to make the salvation of humanity dependent upon holy human agents rather than upon the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ thus plays a secondary role in either the securing or sustaining of salvation, whereas the human agent plays a primary role of crucial importance.

We see here a major theme of Augustine’s understanding of the Christian faith: that human nature is fallen, wounded, and frail, standing in need of the healing and restoring grace of God. The church, according to Augustine, is more to be compared to a hospital than to a club of healthy people. It is a place of healing for people who know that they stand in need of forgiveness and renewal. The Christian life is a process of being healed from sin rather than a life of sinlessness—the cure completed and the patient restored to full health. The church is an infirmary for the sick and for convalescents. It is only in heaven that we will finally be righteous and healthy.

The Donatist approach represents a principled yet ultimately dogmatic refusal to appreciate that all of humanity—including priests and bishops—is in need of the same healing that the gospel provides. The ministers of the Christian church proclaim the same healing that they themselves require. They are to be considered as spiritual convalescents who are able to administer to others the same salves and medicines that have set them on the road to recovery but have yet to heal them fully.

We could say, then, that while the Donatist heresy appears to concern our understanding of the church and sacraments, it is more deeply rooted in a flawed understanding of human nature, which ultimately makes the ministration of grace dependent on human merit rather than divine grace. A similar issue arose during the Pelagian controversy, to which we now turn.

Pelagianism: Human Nature and Divine Grace

We introduced Augustine of Hippo in the previous section; some more needs to be said about him, in that he features prominently in the Pelagian debate, to be considered in this section. Augustine was born in 354 in the town of Thagaste, now known as Souk-Ahras, in Roman North Africa, to a pagan father and Christian mother. Perhaps wearied through by the attempts of his mother, Monica, to convert him to Christianity, Augustine fled to Rome and pursued a career in the Roman imperial administration.

Augustine recounts his spiritual pilgrimage in his Confessions, a work that mingles autobiography with theological reflection. Augustine relates how, through a series of apparent happenstances, he found himself brought to a point at which he found himself impelled toward the Christian faith.⁴¹ Augustine’s moment of crisis came in August 386, while he was sitting under a fig tree in the garden of his house at Milan, troubled by his apparent inability to master his lower nature. As he ruminated over his weaknesses and failures, he heard some children playing in a neighboring garden, singing “Take up and read! Take up and read!” Augustine rushed indoors, opened his New Testament at random, and read the verses that seemed to leap out at him from the page: “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of your lower nature” (Rom. 13:14). He closed the book and told his friends he had become a Christian.

Yet Augustine was convinced that this conversion was not a matter of his own choosing. As he reflected on the apparent happenstances that led him to faith, he became convinced that he discerned the grace of God preceding him at every point, nudging him toward the critical moment of conversion. Time and time again, Augustine interrupts his account of his career in his Confessions to praise God for the way in which his hand has been at work in his life. Augustine frequently expresses his profound sense of being totally dependent upon the mercy of God: “My whole hope is only in your mercy. Give what you command, and command what you will.”⁴² For Augustine, a sinful and fractured humanity was totally dependent upon a gracious and loving God, just as a wounded and damaged patient was dependent upon the ministrations of a caring and competent physician.

While Augustine mused contentedly upon the graciousness of the God whom he had found so late in life, others were finding his words distinctly uncomfortable, perhaps even unhelpful. One of the less appreciative readers of Augustine’s Confessions was Pelagius (c. 355–c. 435), a British monk who had embarked on a reforming crusade within the Roman church. Pelagius, we must note, is a figure in church history who evokes strong reactions. The noted patristic scholar Robert Evans comments: “Pelagius is one of the most maligned figures in the history of Christianity. It has been the common sport of the theologian and the historian of theology to set him up as the symbolic bad man and to heap upon him accusations which often tell us more about the perspective of the accuser than about Pelagius.”⁴³ While conceding the danger of prejudicial stereotyping, it remains important that we identify Pelagius’s core ideas and understand their origins and motivation as well as the reaction they provoked on the part of others. This is not entirely easy, as Pelagianism is prone to a degree of theological vagueness,⁴⁴ the emphasis falling upon the need for moral renewal rather than theological precision.

A further complication concerns the variegated nature of Pelagianism itself, which is best regarded as an amalgam of the ideas of several writers—primarily Pelagius himself, Caelestius, and Rufinus of Syria,⁴⁵ but also the later writer Julian of Eclanum. Pelagianism certainly included some ideas and emphases deriving from Pelagius; yet, other ideas linked with the movement owe their origins to others. For example, Pelagianism’s views on mortality and the transmission of sin appear to owe more to Caelestius and Rufinus than to Pelagius.⁴⁶

Pelagius set out to reform the church, emphasizing that all people possess a God-given power to improve themselves.⁴⁷ Similar ideas had been advanced around this time by other writers, including Rufinus, who arrived at Rome in 399 as Jerome’s representative at a theological debate concerning the ideas of Origen.⁴⁸ Also present in Rome at this time was Caelestius, who advocated the following ideas:

Adam’s sin harmed only himself, not the human race as a whole.

Children are born in the same state as Adam before his fall.

The Law of Moses is just as good at leading us to heaven as the gospel of Christ.

It was perhaps inevitable that a degree of confluence between the ideas and approaches of these three writers should take place, yielding the composite set of ideas of Pelagianism, which is best regarded as an amalgam of related ideas deriving from different sources. The notion that there was a coherent movement termed Pelagianism, linked specifically with the writer Pelagius, seems largely due to Augustine. Yet there is growing evidence that this may have been a rhetorical construction on Augustine’s part, in which a composite and complex series of beliefs and attitudes, only some of which are due to Pelagius, were represented as if they were a coherent movement focusing on Pelagius himself.

A more cautious interpretation of the historical evidence suggests not only that Pelagius did not hold some of the theological positions that are traditionally attributed to him, but also that Pelagius was rather more concerned with encouraging exemplary Christian moral behavior than indulging in theological speculation. Pelagius is better seen as a reforming activist and pragmatist rather than a theologian. The elaboration of a theological system that arguably encouraged and undergirded such behavior was due more to Caelestius and Rufinus.⁴⁹ The outcome of this is a degree of difficulty in distinguishing Pelagius’s personal theological views from those that emerged from the informal network that is usually termed “Pelagianism.” The assumption that “Pelagianism” refers to the views of Pelagius turns out to be rather less secure than earlier generations had appreciated.

The origins of the Pelagian controversy are traditionally held to date from 405,⁵⁰ when Pelagius read Augustine’s words “Give what you command, and command what you will.” These words, which we considered earlier , caused him considerable offense. They seemed to strike at the heart of his reforming program, denying the human right and obligation to seek perfection. And so the Pelagian controversy began, even though the ideas and attitudes that lay behind Pelagianism had emerged beforehand. This was a complex debate, touching on a number of issues.⁵¹ However, for our purposes, it will be helpful to focus on two of its major themes: the dynamics of the human situation, and the nature of divine grace. In each case, Pelagianism developed an essentially coherent vision of the Christian life that differed significantly from that proposed by Augustine.

We begin by considering the issue of human nature. Pelagianism insisted that human beings are completely free in all their actions, holding that some such belief was the essential prerequisite for moral action and spiritual renewal. The behavior of human beings is not influenced significantly by hidden forces, nor is it restricted by powers that ultimately lie beyond their control.⁵² We are the masters of our own destiny. If we are told to stop sinning, we can stop sinning. Sin is something that we can and must resist. In many ways, Pelagianism developed views similar to those expressed in the last stanza of William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus” (1875), a great favorite in the Victorian age:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul!

For Pelagianism, God has given us the Ten Commandments and the example of Jesus Christ, and believers should live according to them. The significance of Christ is to be located primarily in his teaching and example.

So, can human beings actually live up to these elevated standards? According to Pelagianism, any imperfection in human nature that might stop us from acting morally could reflect badly on God. After all, God made us in the first place. To suggest that something is fundamentally wrong with human nature means that God did not create humanity particularly well. Pelagius himself set out this idea in a letter to Demetrias, a Roman woman of high social standing:

[Instead of regarding God’s commands as a privilege,] we cry out at God and say, “This is too hard! This is too difficult! We cannot do it! We are only human, and hindered by the weakness of the flesh!” What blind madness! What blatant presumption! By doing this, we accuse the God of knowledge of a twofold ignorance—ignorance of his own creation and of his own commands. It would be as if, forgetting the weakness of humanity—God’s own creation—God had laid upon us commands which we were unable to bear…. No one knows the extent of our strength better than the God who gave us that strength…. God has not willed to command anything impossible, for God is righteous; and will not condemn anyone for what they could not help.⁵³

It is clear that Pelagius had many supporters at Rome, such as Demetrias, who saw his reforms as little more than sanctified common sense.⁵⁴ What exactly was the problem with demanding moral improvement from people? The idea was developed further by Julian of Eclanum (c. 386–c. 455), who set out what was virtually a gospel of self-improvement adapted to the norms of Roman culture.⁵⁵ The result was that Pelagianism resonated strongly with many in Rome at this time, offering a sophisticated vision of self-improvement with a strong spiritual core.

The consonance between Pelagianism and Roman cultural norms also emphasized that Augustine was an outsider to Roman society. A perception appears to have developed that Augustine of Hippo represented a rather provincial African approach to theology that was inferior to the more urbane and cosmopolitan theology of Rome itself. The insight that Augustine was one of Christendom’s greatest thinkers may be evident to modern readers; however, this was not a judgment that was shared by his contemporaries at Rome, some of whom appear to have seen his theology as provincial—even parochial—and lacking cultural credibility. Some went further and hinted that Augustine’s theology was tainted with Manichean fatalism; others, that it failed to take into account the sophisticated theological riches of the Eastern church, which were then gaining increasing attention and influence in Rome.⁵⁶

For Augustine, Pelagian views on human nature, far from being culturally sophisticated, were theologically naive and bore little relation to either the New Testament teaching or human experience. Augustine’s fundamental belief is that human nature, although created without any problems, is contaminated by sin as a result of the fall.⁵⁷ There is a fatal, even tragic flaw in human nature, one that is not itself the outcome of divine creation. Augustine develops the image of the “fall” to designate a fundamental defection of humanity from the trajectory mapped out for it by God at creation. The Genesis creation accounts make it abundantly clear that God created us well. Yet as a result of this “fall,” Augustine insists, human nature is characterized by a bias toward sin and away from God. Fallen human beings thus have an inbuilt tendency to sin.

Augustine thus affirms natural human freedom, in that we do not do things out of any necessity but as a matter of freedom. Yet at the same time, he insists that we recognize our freedom’s limitations. Human free will has been weakened and incapacitated—but not eliminated or destroyed—through sin. In order for that free will to be restored and healed, it requires the operation of divine grace. In order to explain this point, Augustine deploys the analogy of a pair of scales with two balance pans. One balance pan represents good, and the other evil. If the pans were properly balanced, Augustine points out, the arguments in favor of doing good or doing evil could be weighed and a proper conclusion drawn. The parallel with human free will is obvious: we weigh up the arguments in favor of doing good and evil, and act accordingly. But what, asks Augustine, if the balance pans are loaded? What happens if someone puts several heavy weights in the balance pan on the side of evil? The scales will still work, but they are seriously biased toward making an evil decision.

Augustine argues that human free will is now biased toward evil. The balance of free will really exists, and really can make decisions—just as the loaded scales still work. But instead of giving a balanced judgment, a serious bias exists toward evil. Using this and related analogies, Augustine argues that human free will really exists in sinners but is compromised by sin. Augustine declares that we have no control over our sinfulness. It is something that contaminates our lives from birth and dominates our lives thereafter. Augustine understands humanity to be born with a sinful disposition as part of human nature, with an inherent bias toward acts of sinning. In other words, sin causes sins: the state of sinfulness causes individual acts of sin.

Augustine develops this point using a series of analogies—original sin as a “disease,” as a “power,” and as “guilt.” Sin is like a hereditary disease that is passed down from one generation to another. It weakens humanity, and it cannot be cured by human agency. Christ is understood as the divine physician, by whose “wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5), and salvation is understood in essentially sanative or medical terms. We are healed by the grace of God so that our minds may recognize God and our wills may respond to the divine offer of grace. Or again, sin is like a power that holds us captive and from whose grip we are unable to break free by ourselves. Human free will is captivated by the power of sin and may be liberated only by grace. Christ is thus seen as the liberator, the source of the grace that breaks the power of sin. Or thirdly, sin is a type of guilt or moral impurity that is passed down from one generation to another. Christ thus comes to bring forgiveness and pardon.

For Pelagianism, however, sin was to be understood in a very different light. The idea of a human disposition toward sin has no place in Pelagianism, which affirmed that it was always possible for humans to discharge their obligations toward God and their neighbors. Failure to do so could not be excused on any grounds. Pelagianism thus seems at times to amount to a rather rigid form of moral authoritarianism—an insistence that humanity is under obligation to be sinless, and an absolute rejection of any excuse for failure. Humanity is born sinless and sins only through deliberate actions. Pelagius insisted that many Old Testament figures actually remained sinless. For Pelagius, only those who were morally upright could be allowed to enter the church—note the important parallels with Donatism here—whereas Augustine, with his concept of fallen human nature, was happy to regard the church as a hospital where fallen humanity could recover and grow gradually in holiness through grace.

Augustine’s view of human nature is that it is frail, weak, and lost, and needs divine assistance and care if it is to be restored and renewed. Grace, according to Augustine, is God’s generous and quite unmerited attention to humanity, by which this process of healing may begin. Human nature requires transformation through the grace of God, so generously given:

Human nature was originally created blameless and without any fault; but the human nature by which each one of us is now born of Adam requires a physician, because it is not healthy. All the good things, which it has by its conception, life, senses, and mind, it has from God, its creator and maker. But the weakness which darkens and disables these good natural qualities, as a result of which that nature needs enlightenment and healing, did not come from the blameless maker but from original sin.⁵⁸

Pelagianism interpreted the term “grace” in a very different way. In the first place, grace is to be understood as referring to the natural human faculties. For Pelagius, these are not corrupted or incapacitated or compromised in any way.⁵⁹ They have been given to humanity by God, and they are meant to be used. When Pelagius asserted that humanity could, through grace, choose to be sinless, what he meant was that the natural human faculties of reason and will should enable humanity to choose to avoid sin. As Augustine was quick to point out, this is not what the New Testament understands by the term. Furthermore, why did Christians pray to God unless it was to acknowledge dependence upon him?⁶⁰

Secondly, we must consider the nature of divine grace. Pelagianism understood grace to be primarily external guidance or enlightenment provided for humanity by God. When God demands that we must be perfect, he does not leave us in the dark about what he wants us to do. Grace refers to God’s guidance concerning what he wants us to do and be. Pelagius gave several examples of such guidance—for example, the Ten Commandments and the moral example of Jesus Christ. Grace informs us as to what our moral duties are (otherwise, we would not know what they were); it does not, however, assist us in performing them. We are enabled to avoid sin through the teaching and example of Christ. God does not just demand that human beings should be perfect; God provides certain specific guidance as to what form of perfection is required—such as keeping the Ten Commandments and becoming like Christ. As one modern scholar has summarized the Pelagian approach:

God “helps” by revealing in Scripture the wisdom pertinent to human nature and its obligations to God. Revelation illumines the mind, stirs the will, thus lifting the veil of ignorance and the moral paralysis inflicted by the prolonged habits of the sinful heart. We can summarize by saying that grace means to Pelagius the following: (1) the original endowment of free will by which one may live sinlessly, (2) the moral Law of Moses, (3) the forgiveness of sins won by Christ’s redemptive death and mediated through baptism, (4) the example of Christ, and (5) the teaching of Christ, as a new law and as wisdom concerning human nature and salvation. Pelagius has no doctrine of grace other than this.⁶¹

Augustine argued that Pelagianism was obliged “to locate the grace of God in the law and in teaching.” The New Testament, according to Augustine, envisaged grace as divine assistance to humanity rather than just moral guidance. For Pelagius, grace was something external and passive, something outside us. Augustine understood grace as the real and redeeming presence of God in Christ within us, transforming us—something that was internal and active.

For Augustine, humanity was created good by God and proceeded to defect from him. God, in an act of grace, then came to rescue fallen humanity from its predicament. God assists us by healing us, enlightening us, strengthening us, and continually working within us in order to restore us. For Pelagius, humanity merely needed to be shown what to do and could then be left to achieve it unaided; for Augustine, humanity needed to be shown what to do and then gently aided at every point if this objective was even to be approached, let alone fulfilled.

The differences between Augustine and Pelagius concern the human situation on the one hand and the nature of divine salvation on the other. For Augustine, humanity is damaged, wounded, and seriously ill. There is no point in demanding that humanity improve itself when the essence of its condition is that it is trapped in its predicament. Augustine took the view that Pelagius was in denial about the human situation. Pelagius’s naive approach, though unquestionably well intentioned, could be compared to ordering a blind man to see things properly. Spiritual healing, not moral direction, is required.

Augustine’s understanding of the situation can be seen, for example, in his commentary on Christ’s command to the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda: “Arise, take up your bed, and walk” (John 5:6–9). Augustine interprets the text as “Arise! Take up your bed, and walk.”⁶² An affirmation of the actuality of healing (“Arise!”) is thus followed by two commands that would have been impossible prior to the curing of the paralytic but that now publicly demonstrate the reality of his healing and transformation. But if the paralytic had not been healed, he could not have picked up his bed and walked. Pelagius commands the paralyzed to take up their beds and walk, yet offers no means by which these commands can enter within the bounds of human possibility. It is comparable to ordering a blind person to see. The Pelagian gospel demands perfection and offers guidance as to what form it should take. Yet, Augustine insists, it fails to address either the reality of the human predicament or the inner transformative potential of divine grace. For that reason, Augustine holds that Pelagianism is really no gospel at all. Pelagianism is essentially a theologically naive moralism.

Yet Pelagianism continues to be a deep influence on Western culture, even if its name means little to most. It articulates one of the most natural of human thoughts—that we are capable of taking control of ourselves and transforming ourselves into what we would have ourselves be.⁶³ There is a clear link, which often passed unnoticed,⁶⁴ between the Pelagian view of humanity and the Donatist view of the church. Both rest on the belief that we can become what we believe we ought to be. There is no place for failure or weakness, and still less for other human traits that point to our frailty. Both set out demands for an idealized humanity—and hence idealized Christian believers—that simply cannot be achieved in practice. Pelagianism held that we can be perfect, Donatism that true believers would never crack under persecution. The New Testament, however, seems to suggest a more realistic view of human nature: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” How does the behavior of Peter in denying Jesus in the courtyard of the High Priest (Mark 14:27–31, 66–72) fit into a Pelagian view of human nature or a Donatist view of the capacity of Christian leaders? It is no accident that Augustine chose to fight both Donatism and Pelagianism, rightly discerning that they were the two sides of the same theological coin.

In this chapter, we have explored some of the themes of three major heresies of the later patristic era. Not one of them can conceivably be considered as the outcome of malice, egotism, or some kind of personal theological depravity. Arianism, Donatism, and Pelagianism all rest on serious attempts to engage major points of religious and spiritual importance. All reflect the noble motives of those concerned to defend the Christian faith as they understood it. Nor can they be dismissed simply as perverse misrepresentations of the Bible or the Christian tradition. All three grounded themselves in the Bible—though admittedly focusing on a “canon within a canon,” a group of texts that suited their needs and agendas better than others.

Each group made points of importance, often in response to weaknesses or inadequacies within prevailing patterns of Christian orthodoxy. Yet these are indications of the need for possible correction of orthodoxy at points, not its rejection. As John Henry Newman pointed out in his Essay on the Development of Doctrine (1846), debate and criticism are catalysts that lead to the crystallization of orthodoxy around its core themes.

The problem lay not with the motivations of an Arius, Donatus, or Pelagius, but rather with the outcomes of their voyages of theological exploration. While undertaken with the best of intentions, those voyages had, the church concluded, turned out to be dead ends, impoverished and distorted versions of the Christian faith that could not be endorsed by the community of faith as a whole.

Yet such theological exploration was not limited to the patristic era; it continues throughout Christian history until today, as theologians and church leaders continue to quest for the most authentic means of expressing the gospel, especially in the light of local and global cultural changes. Some of these new approaches will turn out to be fruitful and persuasive and have long-term value for the churches; others will prove to be dead ends. The issues explored in these two chapters must never be seen as part of the early church’s history that now has no relevance to today. Far from it: the journey continues.

This means that we need to give careful consideration to the intellectual and cultural motivations for heresy. These pressures, evident in the patristic era, remain embedded in the contemporary church. We shall consider these in more detail in the following chapter.

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