Theopedia

Semi-Pelagianism

Semi-Pelagianism is the view that fallen human beings retain enough freedom to take the first step toward salvation on their own, seeking God before grace assists them. It arose among monks in southern Gaul in the fifth century who accepted Augustine’s teaching that the Fall left humanity morally weakened, but rejected his teaching that the will cannot move toward God at all apart from grace acting first. Its own advocates presented it as a middle position between Pelagius and Augustine, not a denial of grace outright.

Historical Origin

Semi-Pelagianism developed among monastic theologians in and around Massilia (Marseille), in southern Gaul, in the decades after Augustine’s later writings on grace and predestination against the Pelagians.1 John Cassian, an influential monastic writer, held that the Fall left humanity mortal and morally weakened, but not spiritually dead:

“He admitted that men could not save themselves; but held that they were not spiritually dead; they were sick; and constantly needed the aid of the Great Physician. He taught that man sometimes began the work of conversion; sometimes God; and sometimes, in a certain sense, God saves the unwilling.”1

The ablest and most influential leader of the position was Faustus of Riez. He secured the condemnation of Lucidus, an extreme advocate of Augustine’s doctrine, at the Synod of Arles in 475, and the council commissioned him to write De gratia Dei et humanae mentis libero arbitrio (“On the Grace of God and the Free Will of the Human Mind”), which became the position’s most authoritative statement.1

The dispute was settled, against the Semi-Pelagians, at the Council of Orange and the Synod of Valence in 529, both of which reaffirmed Augustine’s doctrine and were ratified by the pope.2

Core Tenets

Charles Hodge summarizes the three points on which the Semi-Pelagians, per the report of Prosper and Hilary, Augustine’s own defenders in southern Gaul, differed from Augustine:

“(1.) That the beginning of salvation is with man. Man begins to seek God, and then God aids him. (2.) That this incipient turning of the soul towards God is something good, and in one sense meritorious. (3.) That the soul, in virtue of its liberty of will or ability for good, coöperates with the grace of God in regeneration as well as in sanctification.”3

Semi-Pelagians agreed with Augustine, against Pelagius, that Adam’s sin affected all his descendants, weakening the soul and rendering the body mortal.3 Where they broke with Augustine was on whether that weakness still left the will able, unaided, to make the first move toward God.

Confessional and Biblical Response

Scripture describes the fallen will not as weakened but as unable to move toward God apart from grace acting first: no one seeks God on their own (Rom. 3:11), the natural man is dead in trespasses and sins before being made alive (Eph. 2:1, 5), and no one can come to Christ “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Paul’s question to the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7), leaves no room for a first movement of the soul toward God that is not itself God’s own gift.

The Second London Baptist Confession states plainly that fallen man cannot even prepare himself for conversion, let alone begin it:

“Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.”4

The Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration state the same doctrine in nearly identical language. Effectual calling itself, on this shared Reformed confessional account, “is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, nor from any power or agency in the creature.”5

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. Sin,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 164-165. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Hodge, “Chapter VIII. Sin,” 166. ↩

  3. Hodge, “Chapter VIII. Sin,” 165. ↩ ↩2

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 9, “Of Free Will,” para. 3. ↩

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 10, “Of Effectual Calling,” para. 2. ↩