A list

From Jill Woodliff, commenting at Stand Firm, a concise (and depressing) list of actions and events in which ECUSA failed to provide direction or discipline:

• 8/08 S[tand] F[irm] reader points out that Rev. John Beverley Butcher is both an Episcopal priest and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church.


• 6/08 Episcopal Life letter to the editor by Rev. John Beverley Butcher, author of The Tao of Jesus, recommends omitting the Nicene Creed. (Also on 8/08.)


• 6/08 Find webpage of All Saints, Corpus Christi. The purpose statement is “Celebrating the Divine in prayer and action.” Core values include “We are committed to finding innovative ways of experiencing God’s presence in all Sacred Traditions.”


• 1/08 Hindu-Christian interfaith service


• 1/08 Buddhist mandala constructed at Philadelphia cathedral


• 1/08 Native American smudgers at bishop consecration


• 12/07 Sacramento cathedral hostsTibetan Buddhists to construct mandala and hold Medicine Buddha Healing Ceremony


• 12/07 Seattle parish offers astrology workshop


• 10/07 Sufi dance taught in Seattle cathedral


• 9/07 Navajo teachers and medicine men help with a Navajo blessing ceremony during consecration of bishop


• 6/07 Interfaith baptism in Newark (Muslim and Jewish prayers added to Christian liturgy)


• 6/07 Episcopal priest in Seattle announces she is a Muslim.


• 5/07 A liberal Episcopal layman/ordained Sufi leads Sufi healing circle meetings at St. Philip’s Cathedral, Atlanta, GA


• 4/07 A copyrighted Liturgy of Invitation was celebrated by the Episcopal Committee on Science, Techology, and Faith. Readings included antitheistic philosophy.


• 9/06 A Tibetan Buddhist lama leads a guided meditation for EDS seminarians & faculty.


• 5/06 Episcopal Bookstore offers pagan book Love Potions for sale online.


• 4/06 Wiccan priest/Episcopal layman surfaces, having had essays published on the Oasis blog and Father Jake’s blog and Louie Crew’s blog.


• 4/05 Two Druid/Episcopal priests exposed in Pennsylvania.


• 5/04 A transgender shaman/pagan priest and a witch are featured speakers at a conference partly sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan GLBT outreach group


• 1/95 Gaia mass in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

Heretical Friday: Antinomianism

Antinomianism

From the Greek, anti, against, and nomos, law (lawlessness)

Taken in its general sense, Antinomianism is the heretical doctrine that Christians are exempt from the obligations of moral law, the idea that members of a particular religious group are under no obligation to obey the laws of ethics or morality as presented by religious authorities. Antinomianism is the polar opposite of legalism, the notion that obedience to a code of religious law is absolutely necessary for salvation.

The doctrine of Antinomianism in general terms, although not using the specific word, can be traced in the teaching of the earlier heresies. Certain of the Gnostic sect — possibly, for example, Marcion and his followers, in their antithesis of the Old and New Testament — held antinomian or quasi-antinomian views. It is generally understood that Antinomianism was professed by more than one of the Gnostic schools.

Certain heretical sects in the Middle Ages practiced sexual license as an expression of Christian freedom. In the Protestant Reformation, theoretical antinomian views were maintained by the Anabaptists and Johannes Agricola, and in the 17th century, Anne Hutchinson was persecuted for supposed Antinomianism. Romans 6 is the usual refutation for Antinomianism.

The specific sense of Antinomianism comes from its use by Martin Luther during the Protestant Reformation. Luther used it to designate the teachings of Johannes Agricola, who, pushing a mistaken interpretation of the Reformer's doctrine of justification by faith alone to a far-reaching conclusion, asserted that, “as good works do not promote salvation, so neither do evil works hinder it; and, as all Christians are necessarily sanctified by their very vocation and profession, so as justified Christians, they are incapable of losing their spiritual holiness, justification, and final salvation by any act of disobedience to, or even by any direct violation of the law of God.” (New Advent)

The starting-point of the Antinomian dispute began with a disagreement between Agricola and Philipp Melanchthon in 1527 as to the relation between repentance and faith. Melanchthon urged that repentance must precede faith, and that knowledge of the moral law is needed to produce repentance. Agricola gave the initial place to faith, maintaining that repentance is the work, not of law, but of the gospel-given knowledge of the love of God. The resulting Antinomian controversy (the only one within the Lutheran body in Luther's lifetime) continued until Agricola was apparently satisfied in conference with Luther and Melanchthon at Torgau, December 1527, but his eighteen Positiones of 1537 revived the controversy. Agricola was consistent in two objects:

• In the interest of the doctrine of sole fides (faith alone), to place the rejection of the Catholic doctrine of good works on a sure ground;


• In the interest of the New Testament, to find all needful guidance for Christian duty in its principles, if not in its precepts.

From the latter part of the 17th century, charges of Antinomianism were frequently directed against Calvinists, on the ground of their disparagement of "deadly doing" and of "legal preaching." The controversy between Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists produced as its ablest outcome John Fletcher's Checks to Antinomianism (1771–75).

Theological charges of Antinomianism typically imply that the opponent's doctrine leads to various sorts of licentiousness and that the antinomian chooses his theology in order to further a career of dissipation. The conspicuous austerity of life among surviving groups of Anabaptists or Calvinists suggests that these accusations are often, or even mostly, made for rhetorical effect.

Impugned alike by the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church and by the disavowals and declarations of the greater Protestant leaders and confessions or fomularies, since Antinomianism verges on discrediting the teachings of Christ and the apostles and is inimical to common morality, the antinomian heresy is a comparatively rare one in ecclesiastical history, and, as a rule, where taught at all, one that is kept in the background or practically explained away.

Sources:
Bartleby.com
New Advent
Wikipedia

Previous heresy posts:
Albigenses
Donatism
Gnosticism
Manichaeism
Modalism
Nestorianism
Pelagianism

Heretical Friday: Nestorianism

Nestorianism

Named after Nestorius, a monk who became the bishop of Constantinople. He was deposed as bishop by the Council of Ephesus and sent to Antioch, then Arabia, and then Egypt. He died in 451. Nestorianism survived until around 1300.

Nestorianism holds that Mary bore only Christ’s human nature in her womb, but not his divine nature. Nestorius denied Mary the title of Theotokos (Greek: God-bearer” or less literally, “Mother of God”). Nestorius’s theory would divide Christ into two distinct persons (one human, one divine), only one of whom was borne by Mary.

In 431, at the Council of Ephesus, the Church defined that Mary can be properly referred to as the Mother of God, not in the sense that she is older than God or the source of God, but in the sense that the person she carried in her womb was, in fact, God incarnate ("in the flesh").

Nestorianism presented a threat to the atonement. If Jesus was two persons, then which one died on the cross? If it was the "human person" then the atonement is not of divine quality and thereby insufficient to cleanse us of our sins.

As a follow-up, there is some doubt whether Nestorius himself held the heresy his statements imply. In 1895, a handwritten 16th-century book containing a copy of a text written by Nestorius was discovered by American missionaries in the library of the Nestorian patriarch in the mountains at Kotchanes. This book had suffered damage during Moslem raids, but was substantially intact, and copies were taken secretly. The Syriac translation had the title of the Bazaar of Heracleides. The original 16th-century manuscript was destroyed in 1915 during the Turkish massacres of Nestorian Christians.

The Bazaar was written towards the end of Nestorius’s life, and in it he explicitly denies the heresy for which he was condemned. Instead he affirms of Christ "the same one is twofold" — an expression that some consider similar to the formulation of the Council of Chalcedon. In the 20th century, the Assyrian Church of the East, historically regarded as a Nestorian church, has signed a fully orthodox joint declaration on Christology with the Roman Catholic Church and rejects Nestorianism. It is now in the process of coming into full ecclesial communion with the Catholic Church.

Sources:
Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry (CARM)
Catholic Answers
Wikipedia

Previous heresy posts:
Modalism
Albigenses
Donatism
Manichaeism
Gnosticism
Pelagianism

Irony abounds

From Captain Yips Secret Journal:

Back in the 1960s, a core of orthodox bishops variously exasperated by James Pike persisted in efforts to try him for heresy, to the point that Pike eventually demanded a trial. Pike was the prototype of the New Episcopal Bishop - personal life pretty much a mess, lover of publicity, seeker after the sensational, adopter of one cause after another - that is with us yet. In the long run, no trial occurred. Even some of the orthodox bishops felt that the cost of such an old fashioned thing as "heresy" would be bad for the church, so they managed to do the Episcopal thing - they referred the mess to committee, and the committee managed to speak out of both sides of its mouth by saying, "Yes, he says stupid things, but no, we're not going to remove him from office." And to be ever so slightly fair, we need to remember the temper of the time. 1967's summer of love (centered in Pike's San Francisco) was fast approaching, Viet Name protests were gaining massive publicity, and any publicity that the then-PECUSA would have gained from upholding Christian orthodoxy would have been negative - for a while. Yet Bishop Bayne was entirely wrong when he said that Pike's views "nowhere near threatening the church's jugular."

Those orthodox bishops could not have imagined that 40 years later the church that they sought to spare from scandal and notoriety would be engaging in bizarre (and definitely scandalous) manipulations of church law to silence and expel today's orthodox bishops. Whatever else may be said about them, today's revolutionaries have a zeal for ideological purity that accepts no compromise and does not shirk confrontation. . .

Read it all.

Heretical Friday: Modalism

Modalism

Known as Sabellianism, Modalism, and Patripassianism.

• Sabellianism after its founder, Sabellius, a Libyan priest of the third century


• Modalism after the three modes or roles which it claimed the one person of the Trinity occupied


• Patripassianism after its implication that the person of the Father (Pater-) suffered (-passion) on the cross when Jesus died, a term created by Tertullian in his work Adversus Praxeas, Chapter I

Modalism is the heretical belief that God is one person who has revealed himself in three forms or modes. This is in contrast to the Trinitarian doctrine where God is one being eternally existing in three persons.

Thus, according to Modalism, God is a single person who first manifested himself in the mode of the Father in Old Testament times. At the incarnation, Jesus was simply God acting in one mode or role. After Jesus' ascension, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was God acting in a different mode. These modes are consecutive and never simultaneous. In other words, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit never all exist at the same time, only one after another. Modalism denies the distinctiveness and coexistence of the three persons in the Trinity even though it retains the divinity of Christ.

Modalism quickly died out as it was too contrary to the ancient Christian faith to survive for long. It was condemned by Tertullian (c. 213, Tertullian Against Praxeas 1, in Ante Nicene Fathers, vol. 3) and was condemned as heresy by Dionysius, bishop of Rome (c. 262).

Unfortunately, it was reintroduced in the early twentieth century in the new Pentecostal movement. In its new form, Modalism is often referred to as Jesus Only theology since it claims that Jesus is the only person in the Godhead and that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are merely names, modes, or roles of Jesus.

Today the United Pentecostal Church and United Apostolic Churches, as well as numerous smaller groups which call themselves "apostolic churches," teach the Jesus Only doctrine. Through the Word Faith movement, it has begun to infect traditionally Trinitarian Pentecostalism. They deny the Trinity, teach that the name of God is Jesus, and require baptism for salvation.

These modalist churches often accuse Trinitarians of teaching three gods. This is not what the Trinity is. The correct teaching of the Trinity is one God in three eternal coexistent persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Sources:
Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry (CARM)
Catholic Answers
Wikipedia
Theopedia

Previous heresy posts:
Albigenses
Donatism
Manichaeism
Gnosticism
Pelagianism

Heretical Friday: Albigenses

Albigenses

Named for the town of Albi in southern France where this heresy developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; given this name by the Council of Tours (1163)

Albigenses had its foundation in Gnosticism, specifically as a neo-Manichaean sect. Like all Gnostic views of the world, Albigenses held that there were mutually opposed principles or two gods: the good god of light (usually referred to as Jesus in the New Testament) and the god of darkness and evil (usually associated with Satan and the “God of the Old Testament"). Anything material was considered evil including the body which was created by Satan. The soul, created by the good god, was imprisoned in the evil flesh and salvation was possible only through holy living and doing good works. At death, if the person has been spiritual enough, salvation comes to the believer. But, if the person has not been good enough, he is reincarnated as an animal or another human. The Albigenses denied the resurrection of the body since it was considered evil.

The Albigenses taught that Jesus was God but that He only appeared as a man while on earth, because if He had taken on a real human body, He would have come under the control of evil. His body was, then, of celestial essence, and with it He penetrated the ear of Mary. It was only apparently that He was born from her and only apparently that He suffered. His redemption was not an operative action, but solely instructive.

Albigenses also taught that the Catholic church of the time was corrupted by its power and wealth. Their asceticism and humility compared to the great affluence of the clergy helped to bring many converts to this movement.

There were two types of Albigenses:

• Believers (credentes) - Albigenses who had not taken the initiation rite of consolamentum to become a Perfect


• Perfects (perfecti) – Albigenses who had taken the initiation rite of consolamentum and had denounced all material possessions, as well as abstained from meat, milk, cheese, eggs, and sexual relations.

The consolamentum was an initiation rite involving the laying on of hands that was supposed to bring the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The dualism of the Albigenses was also the basis of their moral teaching. Man, they taught, is a living contradiction. Hence, the liberation of the soul from its captivity in the body is the true end of our being. To attain this, suicide is commendable; it was customary among them in the form of the endura (starvation).

In 1208, Peter de Castelnau, an official representative of the Pope, was murdered by an Albigenses. Since they had been growing in number, becoming a threat, and would not convert to Christianity, Pope Innocent III ordered them to be wiped out. The persecution was fierce and the movement was stopped. It had disappeared by the end of the fourteenth century.

Sources:
Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry (CARM)
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia

Previous heresy posts:
Donatism
Manichaeism
Gnosticism
Pelagianism

Heretical Friday: Donatism

Donatism

Named for Donatus Magnus (275?-355?), bishop of Carthage and the leader of the Donatists, a rigorist Early Christian sect in North Africa. The Donatist schism in Africa began in 311 and flourished just one hundred years, until the conference at Carthage in 411, after which its importance waned.

Donatism holds that only those who lead a blameless life can belong in the church or can administer the sacraments.

The primary disagreement between Donatists and the rest of the early Christian church was over the treatment of those who renounced their faith during the persecution of Roman emperor Diocletian (303–305). The Donatists refused to accept the sacraments and spiritual authority of priests and bishops who had fallen away from the faith during the persecution. Many church leaders had gone so far as to renounce Christ to avoid martyrdom, had turned Christians over to Roman authorities, and had handed over sacred religious texts to authorities to be publicly burned. These people were called traditors (“people who had handed over”). These traditors had returned to positions of authority under Constantine I, and the Donatists proclaimed that any sacraments celebrated by these priests and bishops were invalid.

The Donatists, by denying the intrinsic efficacy of the sacraments, claimed the sacraments could be celebrated validly only by those in the state of grace. They required the re-baptism of any Catholic who came over to their sect.

The first question was whether the Sacrament of Penance can effect a reconciliation where the apostate, or in some cases specifically the traditor, may be returned to full communion. The Orthodox Catholic position was that the sacrament was for precisely such cases of reconciliation of the penitent with the Church. The Donatists held that such a crime rendered one unfit for further membership in the Church, a position of extreme rigorism.

The second question was the validity of sacraments confected by priests and bishops who had been apostates under the persecution. The Donatists held that all such sacraments were invalid: by their sinful act, such clerics had rendered themselves incapable of celebrating valid sacraments. This is known as: ex opere operantis — Latin for from the work of the one doing the working, that is, that the validity of the sacrament depends upon the worthiness and holiness of the minister confecting it. The Catholic position was (and is): ex opere operato — from the work having been worked, in other words, that the validity of the sacrament depends upon the holiness of God, the minister being a mere instrument of God's work, so that any priest or bishop, even one in a state of mortal sin, who speaks the formula of the sacrament with valid matter and the intent of causing the sacrament to occur acts validly.

Donatists had the outward forms of Catholicism, including bishops, priests, and deacons, Mass, and the veneration of the relics of martyrs. The heresy of Donatism lay not primarily in the denial of particular Catholic doctrines but in the assertion that only "sinless" men could administer the sacraments validly. The schism was effected by the rejection of the lawful authority of validly-elected Catholic bishops and culminated in illicit but valid ordinations of schismatic bishops, priests, and deacons.

Augustine of Hippo campaigned against Donatism throughout his tenure as bishop of Hippo, and through his efforts the Orthodox Catholic Church gained the upper hand. His view, which was also the majority view within the Church, was that it was the office of priest, not the personal character of the incumbent, that gave validity to the celebration of the sacraments.

Donatism was condemned as a heresy at various councils, most notably the Synod of Arles of 314.

By 411 the Donatists were still quite numerous in Numidia and the rest Northern Africa, but, with their theological errors so completely refuted by Augustine, Optatus, and other Catholic apologists, their vigor waned quickly, though it would take two centuries more before they finally disappeared. Donatism survived the Vandal occupation and the Byzantine reconquest under Justinian I. It is unknown how long this belief persisted into the Muslim period, but some Christian historians believe the Donatist schism and the discord it caused in the Christian community made the military takeover of the region by Islam easier.

Sources:
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
Catholic Answers: Donatism
Wikipedia (I know, I know, but everything from this source was checked against another)

Previous heresy posts:
Manichaeism
Gnosticism
Pelagianism

Heretical Friday: Manichaeism

(Okay, I know it's really Sunday, but what can I say?)

St. Augustine was initially a Manichee, follower of a Gnostic belief, which is how I first heard of this particular heresy.

Manichaeism

Named after a Persian prophet, Manes (or Mani), born near Baghdad, who wandered for several years as a meditative ascetic and came forward (c. 240 A.D.) as the inspired prophet of a new religion. Rejecting all of the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament, Mani claimed Buddha, Zoroaster, Hermes, and Plato as his predecessors and always called himself “Mani, Apostle of Jesus Christ” and held that he was the Paraclete promised by Jesus.

Manichaeism as a type of Gnosticism holds that there is a conflicting dualism between the realm of God, represented by light and by spiritual enlightenment, and the realm of Satan, symbolized by darkness and by the world of material things.

To account for the existence of evil in a world created by God, Mani posited a primal struggle in which the forces of Satan separated from God. Humanity, composed of matter (that which belongs to Satan) but infused with a modicum of godly light, was a product of this struggle, and was a paradigm of the eternal war between the forces of light and those of darkness. Christ, the ideal, light-clad soul, could redeem for each person that portion of light God had allotted.

Light and dark were seen to be commingled in our present age as good and evil, but in the last days each would return to its proper, separate realm, as they were in the beginning. The Christian notions of original sin and of personal sin were repugnant to the Manichees—they felt that the soul suffered not from a weak and corrupt will but from contact with matter. Evil was a physical, not a moral, thing, and a person's bad actions were miseries, not sins.

Manichees saw the flesh as evil. Since the Devil had created the material world, they thought he had made sex to entrap souls in the prison of the flesh. The Manichees abstained from sex, from all animal food, and eggs, believing all flesh was evil if begotten by copulation.

There were two classes of Manichees:

• the elect, or perfect - assured of immediate happiness after death because of the resource of light they had acquired through strict celibacy, austerity, teaching, and preaching


• the auditors, or hearers - the laity who administered to the elect, and who could marry. Believing in metempsychosis (transmigration of souls), the auditors hoped to be reborn as elect.

All other were sinners, doomed to hell.

Several Christian emperors, including Justinian, published edicts against the Manichees. St. Augustine, in his youth a Manichee, describes in his Confessions his conversion to Christianity. Little is heard of the Manichees in the West after the 6th century, but their doctrines reappear in some medieval heresies, although it was the practice in the Middle Ages to call by the name of Manichaeism any dualist Christian heresy. The sect survived in the East, notably in Chinese Turkistan (Xinjiang), until about the 13th century.

Sources:
The Mystica
Columbia Encyclopedia

Previous heresy posts:
Gnosticism
Pelagianism

Heretical Friday: Gnosticism

Continuing on my “heresy list,” I’ve chosen Gnosticism for this week because it seems to be the foundational heresy for some of the others I was interested in learning about. I had heard of Gnosticism before and read a little about it, but I had no idea that it had been around before Christ and had so many permutations. I’ve given a very superficial explanation here, so please, check it out yourself!

Gnosticism

Derived from the Greek gnōsis, ‘knowledge’ or ‘secret knowledge’, it is the name given to a complex religious movement based on a myth of redemption; perhaps pre-Christian in origin, but it became prominent in the second century A.D. and had Christian as well as pagan forms.

In general, gnosticism designates a wide assortment of sects, numerous by the second century. A.D. that all promised salvation through an occult knowledge that they claimed was revealed to them alone. The various sects combined Christian and pagan elements. Central importance is attached to ‘gnosis’, revealed but secret knowledge of God and of his nature, enabling those who possess it to achieve salvation.

Gnosticism takes from pagan thought the concept of a demiurge or subordinate god, who directly rules the world. The material world is associated with evil, but in some men there is a spiritual element that, through knowledge and associated ritual, may be rescued from the material world and allow them to attain a higher spiritual state. Christ was never truly embodied, nor died, but was associated in a distant way with that which appeared to the disciples.

Gnosticism holds that human beings consist of flesh, soul, and spirit (the divine spark), and that humanity is divided into classes representing each of these elements. The purely corporeal (hylic) lacked spirit and could never be saved; the Gnostics proper (pneumatic) bore knowingly the divine spark and their salvation was certain; and those, like the Christians, who stood in between (psychic), might attain a lesser salvation through faith.

The term Gnosticism itself was not coined until the 17th century, when it was applied somewhat indiscriminately to ancient Christian heretical sects, especially those described by their orthodox contemporaries as radically dualistic and world-denying, and those who sought salvation through esoteric revelation and mystical spirituality. In the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, that view of Gnosticism was replaced with several groupings, and the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945 greatly enhanced the understanding of Gnosticism.

The relationship with ancient Christianity remains uncertain, but the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary (which portrays Mary Magdalene as a leading apostle) are generally seen as being grounded in Gnosticism. They emphasized the teachings of Jesus, rather than his death and resurrection, as the key to salvation.

As Christianity grew within and without the Roman Empire, Gnosticism spread and claimed to be the only true form of Christianity, unfit for the ‘vulgar’ crowd, but set apart for the ‘gifted and the elect.’ The earliest church fathers devoted their energies to uprooting it. Though in reality Gnosticism is utterly alien to Christianity, it then seemed to the unwary only a modification or refinement.

The last words of Paul in his First Epistle to Timothy are usually taken as referring to Gnosticism, which is described as "Profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called [antitheseis tes pseudonomou gnoseos -- the antitheses of so-called Gnosis] which some professing have erred concerning the faith."

The first anti-Gnostic writer was Justin Martyr (died. ca. 165). But the most important is the anti-Gnostic work of Irenæus, Elegchos kai anatrope tes psudonymou gnoseos, usually called "Adversus Haereses". It consists of five books, evidently not written at one time; the first three books about A.D. 180; the last two about a dozen years later. Irenæus knew the Gnostics from personal dealings and from their own writings, and gives minute descriptions of their systems.

The greatest anti-Gnostic controversialist of the early Christian church is Tertullian (b. 169), who practically devoted his life to combating this heresy. Gnosticism was in rapid decline from the beginning of the fourth century, although elements can be seen today.

Sources:
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
Answers.com: Gnosticism

Previous heresy posts:
Pelagianism

Heretical Friday: Pelagianism

I’ve been reading The History of Christianity by Paul Johnson, and while it’s very interesting and well-written, the author supposes that his readers are familiar with early church heresies—he writes about them, but doesn’t always explain what a particular heresy is about. So, I’ve started a “heresy” list and will post one a week.

Caveat: obviously I am no theologian, so this is definitely a layman’s superficial understanding. With that in mind, I’ll be tackling them in no particular order, so I’ll start with:

Pelagianism

Named after Pelagius, an ascetic monk (born ca. 354 in the British Isles, died ca. 420/440, possibly in the Middle East)

Pelagiaism is the teaching that the human will, tempered in good deeds and disciplined asceticism, is sufficient to live a sinless life, that man has the capacity to seek God in and of himself apart from any movement of God or the Holy Spirit. Right action on the part of human beings is all that is necessary for salvation and the grace of God is only an added advantage - helpful, but not essential.

Pelagius did not believe in original sin (since human nature was created from God and therefore divine), but said that Adam had condemned mankind through bad example, and that Christ’s good example offered humanity a path to salvation, not through sacrifice, but through instruction of the will. Men were taught by Christ’s works, but not saved. According to Pelagian doctrine, since humanity is no longer in need of any of God's graces beyond the creation of will, Jesus' sacrifice does not redeem men.

The basic tenets of Pelagianism can be seen in these six theses outlined by Celestius (a friend and follower of Pelagius):

• Even if Adam had not sinned, he would have died.


• Adam's sin harmed only himself, not the human race.


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


• The whole human race neither dies through Adam's sin or death, nor rises again through the resurrection of Christ.


• The (Mosaic Law) is as good a guide to heaven as the Gospel.


• Even before the advent of Christ, there were men who were without sin.

Pelagianism was opposed by St. Augustine , who asserted that human beings could not attain righteousness by their own efforts and were totally dependent upon the grace of God.

Condemned by two councils of African bishops in 416, and again at Carthage in 418, Pelagius and Celestius were finally excommunicated in 418 and Pelagianism was branded a heresy in eight (or nine) canons summarized as follows:

• Death did not come to Adam from a physical necessity, but through sin.


• New-born children must be baptized on account of original sin.


• Justifying grace not only avails for the forgiveness of past sins, but also gives assistance for the avoidance of future sins.


• The grace of Christ not only discloses the knowledge of God's commandments, but also imparts strength to will and execute them.


• Without God's grace it is not merely more difficult, but absolutely impossible to perform good works.


• Not out of humility, but in truth must we confess ourselves to be sinners.


• The saints refer the petition of the Our Father, “Forgive us our trespasses,” not only to others, but also to themselves.


• The saints pronounce the same supplication not from mere humility, but from truthfulness.


• Some codices contain a ninth canon: Children dying without baptism do not go to a "middle place" (medius locus), since the non reception of baptism excludes both from the "kingdom of heaven" and from "eternal life."

These canons (except the last) afterwards came to be articles of faith binding on the Church, but the controversy was not immediately over. Julian of Eclanum continued to assert the Pelagian view and engaged Augustine in literary debate until the latter's death in 430. Julian himself was finally condemned, with the rest of the Pelagian party, at the Council of Ephesus in 431.

Another heresy, known as Semi-Pelagianism, flourished in southern Gaul until it was finally condemned at the second Council of Orange in 529. The Semi-Pelagian teaching, derived from the earlier Pelagian teaching about salvation, said that it was necessary for humans to make the first step toward God and then God would complete salvation.

Sources:
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia Britannica Online