#pelagianism

[apenitentialprayer]

i know that as a catholic you just have to believe with what the church says but i really dont like the belief of the original sin, i feel like its such a horrible thing to believe about yourself and about other human beings too

There are actually ways of legitimately dissenting from less essential Church teachings in a way that leaves you in good standing with the Church; I'm not sure if Original Sin is one of those things, though, to be honest.

But, anon, I'm going to offer another perspective here, starting from a quote (perhaps ironically?) from my favorite heretic. One of the things that James Carroll believes is that Original Sin has been given a bad wrap. In Constantine's Sword, he says:

I referred to Augustine’s assertion of the idea that the human condition implies a perennial state of finitude, weakness, and sin, all of which will be overcome, even for the Church, only with the end of time. [...] Augustine is thus regarded as the father of a severe, flesh-hating, sin-obsessed theology, but that dark characterization misses the point of his insight. His honest admission of the universality of human woundedness is a precondition for both self-acceptance and the forgiveness of the other, which for Augustine always involved the operation of God’s grace, God’s gift. Only humans capable of confronting the moral tragedy of existence, matched to God’s offer of repairing grace, are capable of community, and community is the antidote to human woundedness. Augustine sensed that relationship as being at the heart of God, and he saw it as being at the heart of human hope, too. This is a profoundly humane vision.

I wish I had understood the spirit of this quote when I was in high school. I remember learning in my World History class that Islam teaches that all children are born good, and then the world makes them evil. And I remember my teacher asking how that compares with Christianity, and I raised my hand and said that Christianity teaches that all of us are born evil. Because I believed that at the time. And, really, the whole framing of that question was wrong and gave really simplistic representations of what Islam and Christianity teaches, but I don't think we're alone in having internalized that understanding, anon. And that's a shame.

I thin it's important to remember the worldview that the doctrine of Original Sin is actively defending us against; there was an idea, that gets called "Pelagianism" (the poor guy it got named after may not even have believed it), that said that humans were capable of being saved on their own, by their own power. Someone on this site recently asked what people's thoughts on Pelagianism were, so you can read my thoughts here. But to keep it short and sweet, I think Original Sin is an important doctrine because it saves you from the need to be perfect.

There are ways to treat Original Sin that I think are certainly unhealthy, and I think the doctrine can be a source of anxiety and fear. But I also think, very deeply, that Original Sin should be a reason why we treat ourselves and especially our neighbor with kindness and understanding. I can look at myself and say "What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. […] For I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil I do not want" (Romans 7:15, 19). And I can say that because I know I am ontologically wounded; that all of us have our weaknesses. That while we may still be in the moral wrong for committing a morally wrong action, our wills are compromised in a way that causes us to incline towards the comfortable and the easy rather than the good.

I wish I could go back in time and tell that class that Christianity does not teach that people are born evil. I wish I could go back and tell them that it teaches that we are born in a state of dis-integration, that we are wounded beings yearning for wholeness; alienated beings seeking everlasting belonging; beings lost in darkness, seeking the light. But I can say it now: the doctrine of Original Sin doesn't have to be an occasion to think you're depraved and without value, but it can be an invitation to come to terms with your own woundedness, because doing that (to use the words of Lutheran theologian Nancy Eiesland) "opens a space for the inflowing of grace and acceptance."

[iustuspeccator]

Pelagianism on the dash in 2025...it's been a heresy for 1607 years for a reason. humans cannot free themselves from sin nor perfect themselves, God justifies us and this frees us to turn from sin. We can't do it alone

We are born into original sin in the sense that even if you could somehow be sinless yourself, you are still caught in the web of human sin. you can't even buy clothes at the store without participating in someone's exploitation. Sin is inescapable except through God.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

He is a Christian who shows compassion to all, who is not at all provoked by wrong done to him, who does not allow the poor to be oppressed in his presence, who helps the wretched, who succors the needy, who mourns with the mourners, who feels another's pain as if it were his own, who is moved to tears by the tears of others, whose house is common to all, whose door is closed to no one, whose table no poor man does not know, whose food is offered to all,whose goodness all know and at whose hands no one experiences injury, who serves God all day and night,who ponders and meditates upon his commandments unceasingly, who is made poor in the eyes of the world so that he may become rich before God.

—On the Christian Life, a Pelagian treatise

tolle divitem et pauperem non invenies

An early Pelagian slogan ("abolish the rich and you will find no more poor") credited to The Sicilian Briton, an early 5th-century Christian theologian known for his egalitarianism

[entanglingbriars]

So Pelagianism is the heresy that humans are not tainted with original/ancestral sin and can theoretically not sin if we try really hard. But is there a term for what seems to have been a common belief in the early Church (it's shown up in several books on the history of the NT and/or early Church I've read) that it was possible to never sin again once baptized? I assume that's also a heresy, but it seems distinct from Pelagianism to me.

tagging @apenitentialprayer

[apptowonder]

Absolutely obsessed with the fact that when Pelagius left Western Europe for Jerusalem and pissed off St Jerome there, Jerome and some other Latin clergy asked Bishop John of Jerusalem (who would have been Orthodox, or the pre-schism equivalent) to call a council to condemn Pelagius and John was so unbothered by the whole thing that the outcome of the council was basically, "Meh. He's not perfect but this controversy sounds like a y'all problem," and passed no verdict.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy - The Aquila Report

by Dr. Gerald Bray | Pelagianism arose because the early church had failed to define the concept of sin with sufficient precision. Everybody agreed that human beings were sinful and in need of God’s grace for salvation, but there was a difference of opinion about what sin was and where it had come from...

[wisdomfish]

The belief that we’re all mostly good people isn’t new. It’s actually an old heresy, called Pelagianism, which denies that Adam’s original sin tainted humanity’s basic nature, including our feelings and desires. But nobody ever explained this to me. Christians who know God’s Word should love people too much to keep silent on this issue. If the Bible is true, we must speak up because God commands us to, and because people need to hear the truth about the effects of the fall and the gospel’s promise to restore what’s broken.

Emily Thomes

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

The Good Place is a Pelagian heresy