Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”
Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.
In Pelagius' Com. on Rom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin. “Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance. [pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace of creation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature as dead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it as sick, Pelagianism proper declares it to be well.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.” Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.” See Ib., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.
Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:
A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.
As slavery was “the sum of all villainy,” so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency. “Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer: ‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’ From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.” The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”; John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”; 1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” H. Auber: “And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”
Augustine had said that “Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus” (De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.” Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian: ‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”
B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without [pg 599] exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.
The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only of sins, not of sin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account for character at all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression. John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty” (Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.