all the world St. Augustine attested that “Such is the Pelagian heresy, not
ancient, but having sprung up a short time ago.”³
Appealing to Pope Zosimus, Pelagius received an opportunity to defend his
teachings before a Council. On May 1st, 418, the Council of Carthage
formally condemned Pelagius and defined these doctrines against his
errors:
(i)
that death, in Adam, is the result of sin.
(ii)
that infants require baptism, by reason of their contracting
original sin as children of Adam.
(iii)
that grace is needed both to know and obey God’s
commandments.
(iv)
that without grace it is impossible to perform good works.
4
The Council of Trent, more than a thousand years later, would answer the
proud assertions of Pelagianism in more precise language:
“If any one shall say that a man once justified … can throughout his
life, avoid all sins, even venial, except by a special privilege of God,
as the Church believes of the Blessed Virgin Mary, let him be
anathema.”
5
While Pelagius denied the supernatural elevation of man, Martin Luther in
the sixteenth century went to the opposite extreme by asserting that grace
was an essential part of human nature, not super-added to it by way of
gratuitous elevation. Hence, the loss of grace caused by the Fall had the
effect of depriving man of an essential, not a gratuitous part, of his nature,
3
Grace and Free Choice 6 (426 AD).
4
M.L. Cozens, A Handbook of Heresies, Sheed and Ward, 1928, p. 58.
5
Canon 23 on Justification.
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