RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Semipelagian ism
moral inability of the natural man to do good, the dependence of all moral human activity upon grace, or infusio et inspiratio Sancti Spiritus; and the prevenience of grace to all merit and human choice and volition. Irresistibility is nowhere affirmed; the disconnection of baptism and the impartation of grace, which may be shown repeatedly in Augustine, is discarded and baptism is pronounced a vehicle of grace; and an anathema is declared upon those who maintain the predestination to evil, which is the only mention of that doctrine. Boniface II. approved these resolutions of Orange and they became the official disposition of the Semipelagian controversy for all time.
The Massilians held Pelagius to be a heretic and accepted the decision of the Synod of Carthage (418). They concurred in Augustine's doctrine of grace, including the thesis that man requires the inspiration of grace to do good. But The View they declined the Augustinian mon- Defined. ergism; their synergistic view involved the decision on man's part, with reference to eternal life, whether by virtue of his freedom he assented, and therefore submitted to the operation of divine grace, or was indifferent to grace, therefore rejecting it. The Augustinian theses, that faith is purely an effect of grace; that grace is irresistible; that no human act (as meritum) is ever to be considered as a cause of the divine operation of grace; that salvation has its basis only in the divine election — these were unacceptable. This view has been designated as Semipelagian on the presupposition of the difference between Augustine referring the salvation of those who are saved to the grace of God alone, and Pelagius referring the same to the possible well-doing of man without the " grace of inspiration." Accordingly the synergism of the Massilians is correctly presumed to be " half " Pelagian, \and the discovery by Augustine and Prosper direliquice of Pelagianism is from their point of view well founded. But it is improper to make the doctrine of grace of Augustine, as a whole never recognized by the Church, the standard with which to compare a heresy. Semipelagian it was, for, in common with Pelagius, its thought was anti- Augustinian not only on points of Augustine never approved by the Church, but also on theses whose negation was later expressly condemned. But no Pelagian thought condemned by the Church of that time has ever been pointed out in it. Was Semipelagianism something other than the anti-Pelagian popular Catholicism of the time? The departures from Augustinian doctrine not censured at Orange should not be designated Semipelagian. From the point of view of the Church the material concept of Semipelagianism should be defined only by the standard of the later official doctrine, not by Augustinianism as such. As a censured heresy its distinctive marks are: (1) denial of prevenient grace; (2) refusal to recognize that " faith " was a " gift of God"; (3) refusal to regard the natural man as totally incapable of doing good, making the spontaneous cooperation of man a condition to the operation of grace ; (4) presuming grace to be imparted in consequence of " some merit." A broader definition of the content and scope of the concept of Semi-
pelagianism devolves upon a critical consideration of the development of the Roman Catholic Church. The attitude of the Roman Church to Augustine is untrue to fact. He is the doctor ecclesice, yet his doctrine of grace has never been officially sanctioned. The later development, even that which has official sanction, has drifted away in the direction characterized by Semipelagian thought. This untrue attitude arises from the obscure perplexities, which were to be left alone in the adjustment of the Semipelagian controversy. The decision of Orange is equivocal. Thorough Augustinianism may add to the sentence that " all the baptized should be able, if they will, to labor faithfully to become perfect," that of Augustine, " if God have compassion, we also exercise will." On the other hand, the idea of resistance to grace is not prohibited. This position appears already in the Hypomnesticon, antedating Semipelagianism. Here all the unbaptized, even the dying infants of Christians, remain subject to the uncertainty of predestination; merely the fact of their being non-elect is the reason why grace has never sought their rescue. But with reference to the baptized the anti- Augustinian tendency was triumphant. For even if the non-resistance of the elect was not taken as the ground of their election, yet the predestination to death of reprobates was grounded upon the foreseen demerit of their resistance, involving also the conditioning of election on the failure of the foreseen resistance. Augustine^s doctrine was thus uprooted; for all the baptized the decision of eternal life rested upon free will. To such thought the revival of the predestination doctrine by Gottschalk (q.v.) seemed to be heresy. Therefore this view of the Hypomnesticon may be termed crypto-Semipelagianism. The Franciscan theology of the thirteenth century passed beyond this. With the aid of the distinction, coming down even from the fifth century, of gratia generalis grata data and saving grace, and meritum de congruo, and meritum de condigno (see Scholasticism, II., § 1), the Semipelagian representations appeared in new garbs. These views may be termed Neo-Semipelagianism. The two latter may justly be charged against the Roman Church of the present. (F. Loofs.)
Bibliography: T. Eleutherius, Histories controversarium de divince gratim auxiliis, Antwerp, 1705; C. W. F. Walch, Historie der Ketzereien, vol. v., Leipsic, 1770; J . Geffcken, Historia Semipelagianismi antiquissima, Gottingen, 1826; G. F. Wiggers, Versuch einer pragmatischen Darstellung des Augustinismus und Pelagianismus nach ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung, Hamburg, 1833; idem, in ZHT, xxiv (1854), 3-42, xxv (1855), 268-324, xxvii (1857), 163- 263, xxix (1859), 471-591; P. Sublet, Le Semipelagianisme des origines dans ses rapports avec Augustin, le pelagianisme et I'eglise, Namur, 1897; F. Worter, Beitrdge zur Dogmengeschichte des Semipelagianismus, Paderborn, 1898; idem, in Zur Dogmengeschichte des Semipelagianismus, ed. Knopfler et al., v. 2, Minister, 1899; M. Tacquin, in Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques , i (1907) , 506-508 (on the date when "Semipelagianism" arose); Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, ii. 697 sqq., 724 sqq., Eng. transl., iv. 123 sqq., 152 sqq., Fr. transl., ii. 2, pp. 1053 sqq., 1085 sqq. (should be consulted for supplementary bibliography); Schaff, Christian Church, iii. 857-865; KL, xi. 121-126; and the literature under Augustine; C^esaeius; Cassian; Faustus op Riez; Fulgentius; Hilary op Arles; Pelagius, especially NPNF, 1 ser., vol. v., the " Introductory Essay " ; Predestination; and Prosper; and especially the works under Doctrine, History op.
Semitic Langnag-es