The pursuit of truth within the quest for the sovereignty of God and the free will of man as defined within the 5^th century theological battlefront.

1. Pelagius Morgan
   

"If I ought, I can." This is the favorite maxim of Pelagius.

Pelagius was a British monk although he belonged to no monastic order, who lived during the approximate dates of 370-435 AD. He was a teacher in Rome. While in Rome, Pelagius first heard of Augustine through his reading of a prayer from Augustine's Confessions: "Give what Thou commandest and command that Thou wilt." To Pelagius, the philosophy expressed in this prayer sounded like the total abandonment of human responsibility and a denial of the ethical dimensions of the Christian faith. If all moral action, thought Pelagius, depends solely on God - both the commanding as well as the ability to obey- God is either an arbitrary tyrant or else man is a creature deprived of free will. Pelagius conducted his teaching along these lines while he was in Rome, and it was to this teaching that an able lawyer, Caelestius, responded, leaving his profession of advocacy and becoming Pelagius's disciple, companion, and the popularizer of his views.

He denied that God would command something that was not in the ability of man to do. He blamed the lax moral climate of the Roman Christians on teachings of grace such as this.
His teachings were identified as:

1. Denial of original sin (i.e. depravity or corruption) inherited from Adam. Each person is born as a new, free agent with the same powers of choice and responsibilities as Adam.
   
2. Denial of original guilt received from Adam's sin. Among other things, this called into question the necessity of infant baptism, since there was nothing an infant needed to be baptized for. However, Pelagius himself held that infant baptism was good and should continue, though not for the remission of infant sins.
   
3. Affirmation of the ability of men to be free from sin. Consequently, the denial of the necessity of God's working in order to accomplish freedom from sin. The power is in us, even if God helps.
   

In Summary, Pelagius was in pursuit of right living and the subsequent result of his pursuits became the advent of a works based salvation. In his defense, he likely was a very godly man who sought to be pleasing to God. Nonetheless, his teaching on free will and mans moral neutrality kicked off a fire storm of opposition leading to various councils upon which his theology was rightly branded heretical.

…To be continued