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Religions/Belief Systems - Pelagianism
Pelagianism refers to the Christian sect that rose in the fifth century, challenging the doctrine of grace and predestination. The doctrine was advanced by the monk and theologian Pelagius from circa 355 to circa425. He was probably born in Britain. He studied Roman law and rhetoric and later theology in England and Rome. He preached in Africa and Palestine and attracted a dynamic group of followers, such as Celestius and Julian of Eclannum.
Pelagius taught that St. Augustine was wrong in his assertion that humanity is sinful by nature and must rely totally upon divine grace for salvation. Pelagius taught that man has the capacity to reject evil and seek God, and thereby attain salvation. Pelagius rejected the doctrine of original sin; he taught that children are born innocent of the sin of Adam.
Pelagius challenged the very function of the church, claiming that the law as well as the gospel can lead one to heaven and that pagans had been able to enter heaven by virtue of their moral actions before the coming of Christ. The church fought Pelagianism from the time that Celestius was denied ordination in 411. In 415, Augustine warned St. Jerome in Palestine that Pelagius was propagating a dangerous heresy there, and Jerome acted to prevent its spread in the East. Pelagianism was condemned by East and West at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
A compromise doctrine, Semi-Pelagianism, became popular in the fifth and sixth centuries in France, Britain, and Ireland. Semi-Pelagians taught that although grace was necessary for salvation, men could, apart from grace, desire the gift of salvation, and that they could, of themselves, freely accept and persevere in grace. Semi-Pelagians also rejected the Augustinian doctrine of predestination and held that God willed the salvation of all men equally.
Semi-Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Orange in 529 and by the end of the sixth century Pelagianism disappeared as an organized heresy. However, the questions of free will, predestination, and grace raised by Pelagianism have remained the subject of theological controversy to this day.