Pelagianism is the system of doctrine respecting sin promulgated by Pelagius (q. v.) in the early Chris- tian Church,
I. Orir/in of these Views. — From a very early period the Church discussed the question of the origin of the human soul, and the speculations indulged in on this subject tended very directly to give form and complex- ion to the views held on the doctrines of sin and of grace. "Whence sprang the soul of cacli individual luiman be- ing?" "What is its precise relation to the body as re- gards the time when they both began to exist?" Sucli questions as these presented matter of deepest interest to many of the most thoughtfid minds among the writers in the early ages of Christianity. The influence of Gre- cian philosophy still lingered among tliem, and blended itself with their speculations. This influence is very apparent in the manner in which these questions are discussed bj' them. The Greek philosophy, however, specially prevailed in the East, while other and liealth- ier influences controlled the practical mind of the West; thus there arose in process of time a divergence between tlie anthropology of tlie Eastern or Greek Church and that of the Church of the West. In the Eastern Church, particularly in that of Alexandria, the doctrinal system of Origen, and his peculiar manner of inteipreting Scrip- ture, prevailed. They further maintained the doctrine that all human souls, in the aggregate, were created by God in the beginning before the creation of man ; that these souls were at their first creation angelic beings, but that, having sinned in their angelic state, they were, as a punishment, doomed to dwell in human bodies, and to sojourn for a certain time on this earth, where, by the discipline through which they must pass, they would all in due time be prepared for resuming again their original angelic life. This strange thcor3' has its roots in the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsj'chosis, and in the speculations of Plato, though Origen attempts to find support for it in the teachings of Scripture, by his favorite mode of allegorizing, according to his own par- ticular fancy, the narrative of tlie earlier chapters of the book of Genesis, and certain other portions of Scrip- ture, which he regarded as furnishing illustrations of the same principle. This "stulta jiersiiasio" of Origen's, as Jerome styles it. found but few to embrace it; nay, it met with very strenuous opposition from many quarters, and by the end of the 4th century was almost wholly forgotten.
PELAGIANISM
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PELAGIANISM
There were, however, two other opinions propounded recjarding the origin of the human soul which gained more currency. 1. The theory advanced by Jerome, that God " quotidie fabricatur animas." This view was mainly advocated in the East, although it also found a few advocates in the West. According to this theory, each human soul is a distinct and separate creation out of nothing. This position, it is obvious, leaves no room for such a doctrine as that of original sin ; for every sep- arately created soul, coming directly from the Creator's hands, must be absolutely pure and holy. If so, how comes it to be polluted by sin ? If polluted by sin at all, this must be by the direct act of (iod ; and, therefore, the restoration and recovery of such a soul must be an act of justice on the part of God, and not of grace. 2. The theory that is specially associated with the name of Tertullian, because it was first maintained and defended by him, viz. that human souls are propagated per ira- dnciam. This, which is generally styled the theory of traducianism — as Jerome's is called the theory of crea- tionism — affirms that the souls as well as the bodies of men are propagated; that God's work of creating de nihilo was finished absolutely on the sixth day, and that cince that time there has, properly speaking, been ex- erted by God no creative energy ; that the soul has the power of reproducing itself in individual souls, just in the same manner as the first created seed of any given kind in the vegetable world possesses the power of re- producing others of the same kind. Mainly through the influence of Augustine, who adopted it, the tradu- cian theory was almost universally embraced in the North African and the Western churches. True, that father nowhere in his writings formally exhibits and advocates it, yet all his discussions on the doctrine of sin, and on the relation of men individually to Adam, are evidently based upon it, and take it for granted.
These speculations regarding the origin of individual human souls imparted, to a very large extent, a partic- ular complexion to the opinions promulgated regarding sin. Both in the East and the West the great doc- trinal conflict of the early Christians was against the assaults of Gnosticism. The Gnostic idea that man, by his very creation, is sinful, and that he has no freedom of will, was keenly opposed by them. They strenuously affirmed, on the contrary, that man at his creation was holy, that he was absolutely free from all taint of moral evil, and that he became a sinner only by his voluntarj- rebellion against God. The prevalence of Gnosticism led them to give much prominence to the doctrine that man is a free moral agent, and that he is the author of his own sin. But while strongly and rightly maintain- ing against the Gnostics that man was a free responsi- ble moral agent, they did not at all entertain the question of the influence of depravity and apostasy from God on the actings of the human will. This question did not arise till the time of the Pelagian controversy, and then it was found that there existed a diversity of opinion concerning it. The Alexandrian school, e. g. Origen and Clement, strongly aflirmed man's entire freedom of will, his full power to believe or not to believe, to obey God or not to obey him. The fathers of that school asserted that the first movement of man towards holiness was wholly the spontaneous self-caused action of his own will ; although they acknowledged that he afterwards needed the help of the Divine Spirit to bring his own effort to a satisfactory issue. Tlioy taught that the soul has an inherent power to begin the work of re- newal; that God concurs with and helps this willin"-- ness on the part of man ; that the begimiing of all right action was wholly of man, although its completion de- pended on divine help; that original sin did not dwell in the irvivfia, the soul, the prc-existent spiritual nat- ure which came down from the angelic sphere to in- habit the body assigned to it, Ijut that it liad its seat only in the mZfia and the ^I'X'h t'"-' body and the sen- suous nature; and that the Tvvtvfia, though living, so to speak, in contact with sin, was not necessarily defiled