This means that we can see the gulf between the tenets attributed to Pelagius and what he actually wrote. Unlike the case of many Christian writers labelled heretics, a number of Pelagius’s works survive, travelling under false attributions, usually to St Jerome or St Augustine of Hippo. In reality, he was labelled a heretic for his defence of free will and the goodness of human nature against three intertwined doctrines that were being promulgated as orthodox doctrine at the time: original sin, an absolutist account of prevenient grace, and predestination interpreted as preordainment. He was condemned as a heretic in 418 for teaching a collection of ideas almost all of which he did not, in fact, teach. Pelagius wrote about how to be a Christian in the early fifth century as the Western Roman Empire started to disintegrate, and is the first known British author. I think sometimes it might, if the new view of the formation of Christian doctrine is significantly different from the old, and if it sets up a dissonance between what is taught in faculties of history and sociology in universities and the general understanding of Christians outside academia.Ī new account of Pelagius and his teaching, and what took place when Pelagius was condemned for heresy, challenges conventional wisdom about him, but it also raises questions about religion and its functions within society. DOES it matter to Christians now if our understanding of the history of Christian doctrine is changed radically? Does it matter if, in academic circles, doctrine is coming to be seen as the product of individual and group self-interest?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |