“Give What You Command, and Then Command Whatever You Will”: Augustine, Pelagius, and the Question of Original Sin

Original sin, in particular the relationship between Adam and the rest of humanity, is perhaps one of the most vexing doctrines in the history of Christian thought. Henri Blocher captures it well when he refers to the doctrine as a “riddle.”^[1] Often the best way to come to terms with a difficult theological issue is to come at it through a close study of a key historical controversy that surrounds the doctrine. With the doctrine of original sin, this would entail a study of the pitched theological struggle between Augustine and Pelagius (and the Pelagians). This was a literary battle, as Augustine never met Pelagius, although they both were in Rome at the same time.

1. Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle, NSBT 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997). Note: the enumeration of these footnotes differs from those used in the full chapter, since this is an abridged version and does not include the same number of notes.

In this chapter I will aim to get at the heart of the theological issue which separated Augustine and Pelagius (and the Pelagians), especially on the question of original sin. Attempting to understand Augustine—in particular, to grasp how, in some ways, his thought developed over time; and how in other ways, it remained constant over time—requires a deep immersion in several of his writings, including more than a couple dozen works spanning from near the beginning of his ministry up until the time of his death. In this chapter we will look at a number of Augustine’s works,^[2] as well as the key works of Pelagius and the Pelagians. I will proceed along the following lines: First, I will offer some preliminary thoughts to orient our study and draw attention to the text in Confessions that appears to have triggered Pelagius’s concerns. Second, I will explore the thought of Pelagius in relation to Adam, sin, and Adam’s relationship to the rest of humanity. Third, I will proceed to explore the heart of Augustine’s concerns with, and responses to, Pelagius and the Pelagians. Fourth, I will offer some theological reflections on the significance of Pelagianism and why it is necessary to deal forthrightly with these lines of thought today. This survey of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin has covered a dozen or so works by the Bishop of Hippo, written over some 35 years from around 396 to his death in 430. Before offering a few theological reflections and conclusions, it may be helpful to briefly summarize what we have learned thus far.

2. Unless otherwise noted I will be utilizing the New City Press translation of Augustine’s works. When I have chosen to offer my own translation of Augustine, I will make this clear. Additionally, I will be using English titles for Augustine’s works, and will generally use the titles found in the opening pages of Allan Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerd mans, 1999), xxxv–il.

Origins of the Pelagian Controversy

Pelagius’s opposition to Augustine’s teaching was triggered by a snippet he heard from the African doctor’s book of personal confessions. In his Confessions Augustine had written,

On your exceedingly great mercy rests all my hope. Give what you command, and then command whatever you will. You order us to practice continence… O Love, ever burning, never extinguished, O Charity, my God, set me on fire! You command continence: give what you command, and then command whatever you will.^[3]

3. Augustine, Confessions X.29.40, emphasis added.

It was Augustine’s maxim, “Give what you command, and then command whatever you will,” that gravely concerned Pelagius. For him, Augustine seemed to be saying that the ability to obey God must somehow come from God. That is, what animated (and agitated) Pelagius, was that Augustine appeared to be saying that if a sinner were to be able to obey God’s commands, God himself must be somehow intricately related to human obedience. This is, of course, exactly what Augustine would proceed to argue throughout a lifetime of writing. Indeed, in his anti-Pelagian writings (including his writings against the so-called “semi-Pelagians”) Augustine speaks clearly, and at length, about the priority of God’s grace, the efficacy of God’s grace, and the life-transforming nature of God’s grace.

Given Pelagius’s commitment to the freedom of the will, in which a person could choose or not choose how to act, Augustine’s position was unacceptable. Behind Pelagius’s opposition lay commendable motives. As B. R. Rees comments,

He was at heart a moral reformer who, as he became familiar with Christian society in Rome at the turn of the fourth century, became also more and more critical of its moral standards and responded to the general laxity and extravagance he saw around him by preaching the need for simple and virtuous living based on man’s freedom to choose for himself what he would, and would not, do.^[4]

4. Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters, 1:3.

For Pelagius, to wrest the responsibility from man and place it in God’s hands would lead only to more licentious living. That is, Pelagius thought Augustine’s notion that God must “grant” the ability to obey the Lord in effect was a denial of the importance of human agency in human obedience. Throughout his literary corpus Augustine circles back to this issue repeatedly (especially in his anti-Pelagian writings). In particular, Augustine often turns to key texts like Philippians 2:12–13 and Ezekiel 36:26–27 to show that God “granting” the ability to obey the Lord does not diminish human agency in obedience, but rather grounds human obedience.

Pelagius (and fellow Pelagians) would criticize Augustine’s position in print, leading to an astonishing literary output on Augustine’s part. Interestingly, given the nature of literary exchange at the time, literary combatants would often “write past” one another, as their writings traveled from one interlocutor to the other. Augustine’s writing and thinking were honed as he responded to Pelagius and the Pelagian position, although it is probably correct to say that the essential seeds of his own position were present in 396.^[5]

5. Editor’s note: 396 is the date of Augustine’s writing to Simplicanus. Green provides extended treatment this source in the original chapter, which is not included in Christ Over All’s abridgement.

The Thought of Pelagius

We turn now to the writings of Pelagius himself, starting with his commentary on Romans, to understand the main contours of his thought on original sin.

Editor’s note: In the full version of this chapter, Dr. Green analyzes four of Pelagius’ books. Here, we will look at two of those, along with the summary of Pelagius’ views from the Council of Carthage (411/412).

Pelagius’s Commentary on Romans

On the crucial text of Romans 5:12, Pelagius argues that when Paul wrote, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,” he meant that sin entered the world “by example or by pattern.”^[6] That is, Adam was an “example” or a “pattern,” but this does not mean that we are truly and really bound up with Adam’s transgression. Pelagius makes this clear when he comments on the latter part of the verse: “and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Pelagius writes, “As long as they sin the same way, they likewise die.” Strikingly, Pelagius even says, “For death did not pass on to Abraham and Isaac.”^[7]

Pelagius makes an interesting move at Romans 5:15: “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” Pelagius interprets the verse to mean, “Righteousness had more power in bringing to life than sin in putting to death, because Adam killed only himself and his own descendants, but Christ freed both those who at that time were in the body and the following generations.”^[8] In other words, rather than speak in asymmetrical terms in order to highlight and magnify the superabundant and glorious and majestic nature of God’s grace, Pelagius does the opposite. He highlights the asymmetrical nature of the passage by downplaying the destructive and universal nature of Adam’s trespass. That is to say, Pelagius (rightly) picks up on Paul’s emphasis on the asymmetrical relationship of (1) Christ’s act of obedience—and accompanying life/righteousness to (2) Adam’s act of disobedience—and its consequence of death, corruption, and condemnation. But Pelagius uses the asymmetry to draw attention to the “lesser” nature of Adam’s transgression: Adam “killed only himself and his own [immediate] descendants,” but not the rest of the human race. Adam “became only the model for transgression” for the human race.^[9] Hence, Pelagius argues, “Just as by example of Adam’s disobedience many sinned, so also many are justified by Christ’s obedience.”^[10]

Pelagius’s commentary on Romans reveals a clear articulation of the tenets of classical Pelagianism, especially that of Pelagius’s denial that Adam’s progeny is in any meaningful way bound up with Adam’s transgression. In short, for Pelagius, Adam’s sin serves simply as an example for those persons who follow Adam.

Pelagius’s Little Book of Faith

Around 417, Pelagius wrote a letter to Pope Innocent I, and included a statement of faith with it, which he called Little Book of Faith. On the whole, the statement is orthodox: Pelagius affirms the Trinity, condemns Arius and Apollinaris, and adheres to the full humanity and deity of Christ. However, he is critical of Augustine at points, the first of which occurs in section.^[11] Pelagius pushes back against the notion in Augustine’s Confessions that God is required to enable man toward obedience; he engages again the maxim that triggered the controversy in the first place: “Give what you command, and then command whatever you will.” In response, Pelagius writes,

11. Augustine, Confessions X.29.40. As previously noted, the larger context in Augustine is, “You command continence: give what you command, and then command whatever you will.”

We do also abhor the blasphemy of those who say that any impossible thing is commanded to man by God; or that the commandments of God cannot be performed by any one man, but that by all men taken together they may.^[12]

12. Pelagius, Confession of Faith, 2.

In section 25, Pelagius has Augustine in view again when he writes,

Free will we do so own, as to say that we always stand in need of God’s help; and that as well they are in an error who say with Manichaeus that a man cannot avoid sin, as they who affirm with Jovinian that a man cannot sin; for both of these take away the freedom of the will. But we say that a man always is in a state that he may sin, or may not sin, so as to own ourselves always to be of a free will.^[13]

13. Pelagius, Confession of Faith, 25.

The term “free will” is of course contested in Christian history. Some, like Augustine himself, can use the term, but define it in his own way—such that indeed man has “free will,” but that man (especially in his unregenerate state) is “free” to obey a will which is inextricably bound up with sinful desires. Pelagius can sound almost “Augustinian” when he says that “we always stand in need of God’s help.” But this statement must be interpreted in light of the context. Especially important is the end of this quotation, where Pelagius affirms, it seems, what is generally called a “libertarian” view of free will: “a man always is in a state that he may sin, or may not sin, so as to own ourselves always to be of a free will.” In short, “free will” really seems to mean for Pelagius that our act of the will (again, especially in an unregenerate state) is in no meaningful way connected to, hampered by, or bound up with a deep and intractable sin problem.

On the Deeds of Pelagius

Having surveyed a number of works from Pelagius, we turn now to the results of the Council of Carthage (411/412). The council offered a helpful seven-point summary of the views of one of the key Pelagians—Caelestius, a fourth-century, contemporary follower of Pelagius and one of the key proponents of his views. A certain Paulinus saw seven key errors in Caelestius, which were debated at the Council of Carthage. Augustine lists them in his On the Deeds of Pelagius:^[14]

14. Augustine, On the Deeds of Pelagius 11.23; see also Augustine, On the Grace of Christ, and Original Sin I.3and 4. Augustine was not at this council, and so is relying on testimony.

1. “Adam was created mortal so that he would die whether he sinned or did not sin.”
2. “The sin of Adam harmed him alone and not the human race.”
3. “The law leads to the kingdom just as the gospel does.”
4. “Before the coming of Christ there were human beings without sin.”
5. “Newly born infants are in the same state in which Adam was before his transgression.”
6. “The whole human race does not die through the death or transgression of Adam.”
7. “. . . nor does the whole human race rise through the resurrection of Christ.”

These seven axioms or principles reveal the inner logic and nature of Pelagianism.

Summary

It is perhaps worth summarizing some of the key tenets of Pelagius and the Pelagians before moving to Augustine’s response. First, Pelagius is quite clear that persons subsequent to Adam (i.e., Adam’s descendants) follow Adam by imitation rather than by propagation. This is central to understanding Pelagius: there is no real connection to Adam, in the sense that Adam’s act of disobedience fundamentally shapes or marks those who follow him.

Second, Pelagius tends to emphasize that there is a fundamental continuity between pre-fall man (Adam before the fall) and post-fall man (all of Adam’s descendants). To grasp this is to begin truly to understand Pelagius’s theology and mindset. Pelagius can look at pre-fall man and post-fall man and see a real and fundamental continuity. There is no fundamental rupture as one moves from the pre-fall era of history to the post-fall era of history.

Third, Pelagius has a lower view of what man was before the fall. This is tied to the previous point. Pelagius sees all man’s current failures and sins as not fundamentally a rupture in man. That is, since there is not a pre-fall realm from which Adam tragically fell—and with Adam, his progeny—there is in a sense a “lower” view of man in his very nature. Not to get too far ahead of things, but one might say that with Augustine there is a grandeur and a magnificence of man that is simply absent in Pelagius. When man—in the present—sins, it is as if Pelagius believes, “Well, this is simply what man does. Sometimes he obeys, sometimes he disobeys.”

Fourth, Pelagius, in his attempt to secure man’s freedom or liberty, perhaps constructs his anthropology so as actually to render incomprehensible a meaningful understanding of human freedom and nature. On this point, B. B. Warfield makes a penetrating observation, suggesting that one of Pelagius’ chief errors was his emphasis on

1. each individual act of man over against, or at the expense of,
2. man’s character.

As Warfield writes, “[Pelagius] looked upon freedom in its form only, and not in its matter.”^[15] Likewise, with Pelagius, “the will was isolated from its acts, and the acts from each other, and all organic connection or continuity of life was not only overlooked but denied.”^[16]

Fifth, Pelagius’s way of reading the old covenant and new covenant (only briefly touched on here) reveals a fundamental hermeneutical weakness. It appears that there was virtually no sense of a historical-redemptive reading of Scripture in Pelagius. The great biblical tensions of the already–not yet, and of the law’s holiness, righteousness, and goodness, combined with its pedagogical role which culminates in Christ, the end of the law, are strangely missing in Pelagius. The idea that the old covenant was good, but had a fading glory, while the new covenant is truly better, with an unfading glory, seems to have no purchase in Pelagius’s theologizing.

Augustine’s Response to Pelagius and Pelagianism

Editor’s note: In the full version of this chapter, Dr. Green analyzes around a dozen of Augustine’s works in which he responds to Pelagius. Here, we will look at three of those.

The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones

Augustine wrote this volume in 412. It consists of an Introduction plus three “books” (essentially modern-day chapters). The work was a response to a certain Marcellinus, who had written to Augustine with questions about Pelagianism. One of the ways in which Augustine attempts to critique Pelagius and the Pelagians is by a discussion of infant baptism, and the Pelagian position on original sin in relationship to infant baptism. Augustine returns to this theme of infant baptism at a number of points in his writings. There are three key lines of (Pelagian) argument to which Augustine responds.^[17]

17. These three are found at the beginning of Book III of The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones, the first and second in 1.1 and the third in 2.2.

First Line of (Pelagian) Argument: Adam’s Death Was by Necessity of Nature.

The Pelagians essentially argued that death is a natural reality, and that Adam would have died whether he sinned or not.^[18] In contrast, for Augustine, death enters the world through the sin of Adam, and is not ultimately a “natural” reality. Augustine argues that if Adam had not sinned but had continued to obey the Lord, then he would have been eventually translated into an elevated existence, where temptation to sin would no longer exist and where death would not exist. Augustine does clarify that Adam could have been mortal by nature, but that does not mean that death is by nature. As he writes, “the body could be mortal without being destined to die, before being changed into that state of incorruption which is promised to the saints at the resurrection.”^[19]

Second Line of (Pelagian) Argument: There Are in This Life Those Who Have No Sin

In Book II Augustine addresses the second of the three Pelagian arguments. He states the key question as follows: “Is there anyone now living, or has anyone ever lived, or will anyone ever live in this world without any sin whatever?”^[20] In response, Augustine points to the Lord’s Prayer and the line “lead us not into temptation,” which, he argues, would make little sense if combating sin was not a significantly challenging and difficult issue.^[21]

Third Line of (Pelagian) Argument: Another Way to Deny the Transmission of Sin

In Book III of The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones Augustine summarizes and responds to a third significant argument of Pelagius, summarized in his Romans commentary.^[22] “They say ‘If the sin of Adam did harm even to those who are not sinners, then the righteousness of Christ also benefits those who are not believers, because he says that human beings are saved through the one man in a similar way and in fact to a greater extent than they perished through the other.’”^[23] The Pelagian argument—against original sin being in any way passed on to Adam’s descendants—appears to be as follows: Since we know that Christ’s act of obedience does not (at least ultimately) benefit all persons (i.e., those who are not believers), we have to say that Adam’s sin does not affect all persons.^[24] In response, Augustine turns to both Scripture and two key early Christian leaders—Cyprian and Jerome—to try and show that Scripture and the historical Christian church have consistently taught the truth of original sin. There is, of course, Romans 5: sin entered the world through one man. But interestingly, Augustine is quite happy to say that even if one might contest the exact meaning of Romans 5, Scripture as a whole consistently teaches the universal sinfulness of man.^[25]

Augustine on Nature and Grace

Augustine’s Nature and Grace (415) was written to answer certain questions posed by some persons perplexed by the thought of Pelagius. In it, Augustine seems to respond to Pelagius’s work Nature, which had been given to him by two former followers of Pelagius, men by the names of Timasius and James.^[26] It appears that, upon reading Pelagius’s Nature, Augustine shifts his stance significantly regarding Pelagius: from (1) criticizing a mistaken brother in the Lord, to (2) criticizing someone who was opposing the very gospel of Christ.^[27] Looking back at this work, Augustine wrote in his Retractations,

There also came into my hands at that time a book of Pelagius in which he defended human nature, with as much argumentation as he could, in opposition to the grace of God by which the sinner is justified and by which we are Christians. I, therefore, called the book by which I answered him, Nature and Grace. In it I did not defend grace in opposition to nature, but the grace by which nature is set free and ruled.^[28]

28. Augustine, Retractations II.68.42 (on Nature and Grace). I use here the common English translation “Retractations” for the Latin “Retractationes.” The Latin title “Retractationes” can be something of a “false friend” when translated. In English, it does not really mean “retractions.” It probably means something like “revisions” or “reconsiderations”—and some English translations use one of those latter terms. I use the older translation “retractations” simply because of its historic, common usage.

It would be hard to find a better summary of at least a strand of Augustine’s understanding of grace, than this last line: “In it I did not defend grace in opposition to nature, but the grace by which nature is set free and ruled.” Pelagius had written an intriguing (if nefariously clever) work entitled Nature, in which he wrote along the following lines: (1) God by grace creates nature; (2) hence, nature is inherently “graced”; (3) thus, when one—out of one’s own “nature”—comes to saving faith, or obeys the Lord, one does so by “grace.” Augustine notes more than once that it took a while for him to grasp exactly what Pelagius was doing. But Augustine eventually came to see that what Pelagius was doing, in terms of grace, was thoroughly different from what he read in Scripture. One of the literary results of coming to terms with Pelagius’s thought was Nature and Grace. This final line by Augustine encapsulates a precious Augustinian insight: while grace need not be viewed in “opposition” to nature, yet it is the case that grace is needed to “set free” nature and to “rule” nature.

As noted above, a key question in the debate is whether there are any who have never sinned.^[29] Augustine summarizes Pelagius (not mentioned by name) as follows: the Pelagian notion is that human nature is “capable by itself of fulfilling the law and attaining perfect righteousness.”^[30] But, if this is really possible, Augustine replies, Christ died in vain.^[31] He goes on to argue, “But if Christ has not died in vain, then the whole of human nature can be justified and redeemed from the perfectly just anger of God, that is, from punishment, in no other way than by faith and the mystery of Christ’s blood.”^[32]

Pelagius’s argument was based on the following:

1. It is God by his grace who has created all things, including human nature.
2. Man, by nature, can obey the Lord and fulfill God’s commands.
3. Since man’s nature is provided by God’s grace, man can come to saving faith, or obey God with the “help” of God’s grace.

Augustine finds (at least) two things questionable in Pelagius’s argument:

1. First, Pelagius ignores the distinction between pre-fall man and post-fall man (and a big part of Augustine’s subsequent response is to highlight that after the fall we all start with wounded natures in need of healing). That is, for Pelagius, post-fall man has all the powers and abilities that pre-fall man had. Indeed, the fall did not bring about any change in man’s fundamental situation.^[33]
2. Second, Pelagius seems to argue that man at present needs no additional help or grace from God if he is going to obey God, which sounds essentially like saying that man really does not need help or grace if he is going to obey God.

33. The importance of the distinction between pre-fall man and post-fall man is hard to overestimate. For Augustine, something radical happened with Adam’s transgression, and Adam’s act truly or really affected both Adam and his progeny. For Pelagius, since Adam’s transgression has no real effect on Adam’s progeny, there is no real distinction between pre-fall man and post-fall man. This distinction is largely in terms of moral or ethical state and ability, rather than in terms of metaphysics or ontology. That is, both pre-fall man and post-fall man are human, and both bear the image of God (i.e., at the metaphysical or ontological level). However, there is a chasm between pre-fall man and post-fall man in terms of moral or ethical state and ability.

Augustine’s response is to say that,

1. There is a significant difference between pre-fall and post-fall man in regard to his “nature.” Pre-fall man is innocent; post-fall man is corrupt and guilty.
2. Even apart from this pre-fall/post-fall distinction, it is inadequate to say that since our created nature comes from God, somehow this “counts” as God “helping” us to live a sinless life:^[34] “He has attributed the ability not to sin to God’s grace, precisely because God is the author of the nature in which he claims that the ability not to sin is inseparably implanted.”^[35]

Augustine’s assessment is that Pelagius needs to admit that we need a savior. That is, we need a savior from outside of us to rescue us. We need something more than simply the “grace” given in nature to deliver us from the problem of sin.

The City of God

In his classic work The City of God (426) Augustine treats the question of sin, and especially original sin, in some detail. All the key elements of Augustine’s mature thought appear in two key books (books 13 and 14) of The City of God.^[36]

36. The City of God selections in this section are from the Marcus Dods translation of 1950 (Modern Library Classics [New York: Random House]).

Augustine affirms that all of humanity was “in” Adam:

But as man the parent is, such is man the offspring. In the first man, therefore, there existed the whole human nature, which was to be transmitted by the woman to posterity, when that conjugal union received the divine sentence of its own condemnation; and what man was made, not when created, but when he sinned and was punished, this he propagated, so far as the origin of sin and death are concerned.^[37]

37. Augustine, City of God XIII.3.

A few lines later, Augustine continues to describe the way in which Adam’s posterity came into the world corrupted and changed by Adam’s transgression:

[T]he first man did not fall by his lawless presumption and just sentence; but human nature was in his person vitiated and altered to such an extent, that he suffered in his members the warring of disobedient lust, and became subject to the necessity of dying. And what he himself had become by sin and punishment, such he generated those whom he begot; that is to say, subject to sin and death.^[38]

38. Augustine, City of God XIII.3.

At points, Augustine says not only that all persons were in Adam in some sense, but that all persons are Adam: “For we were all in that one man, since we all were that one man who fell into sin through the woman who was made from him prior to sin.”^[39] Indeed, all persons after Adam come into the world with a vitiated nature: “And, once this nature was vitiated on account of sin, and bound by the chain of death, and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other condition.”^[40]

39. Augustine, City of God XIII.14, emphasis added.

It should be noted that for Augustine, Adam and Eve, in a sense, sinned before they sinned. That is, there was a kind of “secret” turning of the will in on itself before the actual eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As Augustine writes, “Thus, the evil act—that is, the transgression of eating the forbidden food—was committed by people who were already evil, and it would not have been committed if they had not already been evil.”^[41] He goes on: “The first evil, then, is this: when man is pleased with himself, as if he were himself light, he turns away from the light which, if it pleased him, would have made him light himself.”^[42]

For Augustine, human nature itself was changed due to Adam’s sin: “human nature was changed for the worse and was also transmitted to their posterity under the bondage of sin and the necessity of death.”^[43] He expands:

43. Augustine, City of God XIV.1.

For God, the author of natures, not vices, created man upright; but man, being of his own will corrupted, and justly condemned, begot corrupted and condemned children. For we all were in that one man, since we all were that one man who fell into sin by the woman who was made from him before the sin.^[44]

44. Augustine, City of God XIII.14, emphasis added.

Thus, after Adam’s sin, Augustine describes Adam’s progeny as “the whole mass . . . condemned, so to speak, in its vitiated root.

[Editor’s Note]: Green surveys a number of Augustine’s other works, most importantly his writings against Julian of Eclanum, a prominent Pelagian apologist, before providing the following summary.

Summary of Augustine on Original Sin

This survey of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin has covered a dozen^[45] or so works by the Bishop of Hippo, written over some 35 years from around 396 to his death in 430. Before offering a few theological reflections and conclusions, it may be helpful to briefly summarize what we have learned thus far.

45. As noted above, Christ Over All’s abridgment of this chapter covers only three of these sources.

First, Augustine affirms the goodness of creation, including—even after the fall—the goodness of man, rightly considered. That is, man as creature (i.e., as one who continues to possess “createdness” even after the fall), can be said—again, in a sense—to be “good.” Augustine thinks this way because, especially after his departure from Manichaeism, Augustine has a robust doctrine of the goodness of creation. This is not to deny radical sinfulness. Rather, if man lost all trace of goodness as a creature, he would—on Augustine’s view—cease to exist (given Augustine’s understanding of evil as a “privatio boni”—a privation of good).

Second, and following from above, there has been a radical and real rupture in the universe—especially in terms of mankind—with Adam’s sin. Something has radically shifted or changed with Adam’s sin. Man (both Adam and his descendants) is still human, but there is a deep deformity in post-fall Adam and his descendants. 

Third, Augustine—contra Pelagius and the Pelagians—sees a strong relationship or continuity between Adam and his descendants or progeny. Augustine may not have worked this out in detail in ways we would prefer, but there is no doubt that Augustine saw all of mankind subsequent to the fall of humanity as wrapped up in, or bound up in, Adam’s transgression. Indeed, Adam’s sin is transmitted, somehow, to all of his progeny. Later Christian theology, especially among the covenantal emphases of the Reformed tradition, will speak more explicitly about Adam’s covenantal or federal headship. Augustine is not as explicit with this kind of terminology, but he certainly lays the groundwork in such a way that later Protestants might be seen as developing strands of thought found in the Bishop of Hippo. 

Fourth, Augustine takes seriously that death enters the world through sin, and that therefore death does not preexist the fall. Pelagius indeed has to deny this, and Augustine’s awareness of Pelagius’s thought at this point heightens Augustine’s concerns about the theology of Pelagius and the Pelagians.

Fifth, for Augustine fallen sinners (especially before salvation) act out of who they are, and who they are is radically fallen beings. Augustine speaks of the fallen person, in a sense, as “free,” but it is a fallen freedom, a limited freedom, and indeed a “freedom” in need of redemption. The unconverted person is indeed free to do what he wants, but he is not free, really, to choose his wants. Thus, Augustine talks of the unconverted person as “free,” but it is a freedom to act in accord with who he is, and the unconverted person is thus also “bound” to act in accord with his will—which is a will bound up with Adam’s sin. Augustine employs the language of being sinful originaliter and being sinful actualiter. All persons after Adam come into the world sinful originally, and add to this predicament by their actual sin—in the course of their lifespan.

Theological Reflections

In summarizing the key tenets of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, I present the following theological reflections.

First, Augustine and Pelagius fundamentally disagree on whether there is a true difference between pre-fall man and post-fall man. This almost seems too basic to state, but it is important to note that this fundamental difference runs through much of the Augustine-Pelagius debate. Is creation good? Of course, says Pelagius, and hence man does have the ability to obey God by his nature (a good nature given by grace). Of course, says Augustine, creation (and man’s nature, ultimately) is good, but one must remember that there is a radical and fundamental fracture which runs through the heart of creation because of the fall, and this radical and fundamental fracture runs especially through the heart of man. Man is different after the fall from what he was before the fall. That is, post-fall Adam and his heirs are all guilty, corrupted, and have a proclivity to sin. Pre-fall man possesses neither guilt, nor corruption, nor a proclivity to sin. It is here that we face squarely the importance of a historical Adam and a pre-fall era in which man was originally righteous. If an affirmation of a historical Adam is lost, it seems that the rejection of a pre-fall era is certain to follow, and thus too the original innocence of the first man. 

Second, Pelagius has a lower view than Augustine of what man was before the fall. Pelagius sees all man’s current failures and sins as not fundamentally due to a rupture in man. That is, since there is no pre-fall realm or era from which Adam tragically fell—and with Adam his progeny—there is in a sense a “lower” view of man in his very nature. That is, when man, in the present, sins, it is as if Pelagius believes, “Well, this is simply what man does. Sometimes he obeys, sometimes he disobeys.” Because Pelagius has a lower view of who or what man is before the fall, it makes sense that Pelagius would see man’s plight after the fall to be less desperate and less significant. Man does not fall from any great height, so to speak. Indeed, since there is no serious link (in terms of sin, etc.) between Adam and the rest of mankind, the Pelagian theological substructure seems to sit nicely with both (1) a lower view of man before the fall—persons after Adam are in essentially the same situation as Adam himself; and (2) a higher view of man after the fall—man is in a less desperate situation than envisaged in the traditional Augustinian framework.

Third, if one posits that one follows Adam only by imitation rather than by generation or propagation, then one could easily begin to posit that we “follow” Christ only by imitation, and not by a more profound and intimate and significant connection. Augustine repeatedly drew attention to this: to the extent that one denies that someone can be caught in the transgression of Adam, one denies, at least in principle, that someone can also benefit from the obedience of Christ. 

Fourth, Pelagius, in his attempt to secure man’s “freedom” or “liberty,” has perhaps constructed his anthropology so as to render incomprehensible a meaningful understanding of human freedom and nature. B. B. Warfield offers a perceptive insight on Pelagius in this regard. Warfield suggests that one of Pelagius’s chief errors is his emphasis on each individual act of man over against, or at the expense of, man’s character. As Warfield writes, “[Pelagius] looked upon freedom in its form only, and not in its matter… the will was isolated from its acts, and the acts from each other, and all organic connection or continuity of life was not only overlooked but denied.”^[46] If Warfield is correct, in Pelagius’s attempt to safeguard or defend the free individual— by emphasizing the free individual acts of the person’s will, he is actually engaged in a kind of deracination of what it means to be human. That is, in emphasizing the freedom of each individual act of the will, Pelagius does not give attention to how our various acts as persons can shape us over time, whether in a more- or a less-moral direction. As Warfield notes, “After each act of the will, man stood exactly where he did before: indeed, this conception scarcely allows for the existence of a ‘man’—only a willing machine is left, at each click of the action of which the spring regains its original position, and is equally ready as before to reperform its function.”^[47] In short, while trying to secure the freedom of man, Pelagius may have been helping, conceptually, at least, to destroy the freedom of man.^[48]

Warfield notes that lurking in the background of Pelagius’s error is a failure to grasp the fundamental unity of the human race in Adam. He writes, “the type of [Pelagian] thought which thus dissolved the organism of the man into a congeries of disconnected voluntary acts, failed to comprehend the solidarity of the race.”^[49] Thus, while traditional Christianity has affirmed that man is a fundamental unity—we are all in Adam—Pelagius severed the link between mankind and Adam. Warfield notes, “The same alembic [here, “chemical”] that dissolved the individual into a succession of voluntary acts, could not fail to separate the race into a heap of unconnected units.”^[50] War- field continues: “If sin, as Julian declared, is nothing but will, and the will itself remained intact after each act, how could the individual act of an individual will condition the acts of men as yet unborn?”^[51] Or, we might ask, If the act of one’s own will—that is, a particular act of the will—does not affect oneself, ultimately, how could one man’s (Adam’s) act affect the rest of the human race? Thus, a certain kind of philosophical commitment by Pelagius to the notion of the radical disjunction of a person’s individual acts makes it conceptually impossible for Pelagius to consider that an actual person (and his acts) could be somehow meaningfully tied to the rest of the race.^[52]

Fifth, a comment on Romans 5:12 is necessary. It is important to recognize that rarely is a theological construct so built on one or two words, such that a difference of interpretation on that word or words will render the whole theological construct suspect. As we have noted, Augustine was at least happy to surrender this passage, and to argue for his position on the basis of other Scriptures and biblical and theological reasoning. As John Rist has asserted, “if Augustine were deprived of the use of it [Romans 5:12], his theology would not be affected.”^[53] Especially as one reads through Against Julian and An Unfinished Work, it becomes clear that Augustine’s position on original sin is not tied only or simply to a certain way of reading Romans 5:12, and it certainly does not necessarily hinge on the Latin in quo or the Greek ἐφ᾿ ᾧ. Rather, Augustine’s position is a biblical-theological construct built on a more general reading of Scripture. 

53. John Rist, Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin, and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 20.

Sixth, Pelagius’s way of reading the old covenant and new covenant (only briefly touched on here) reveals a fundamental hermeneutical weakness. There is virtually no sense of a redemptive-historical reading of Scripture in Pelagius, as far as I can tell. The great biblical tensions of the already–not yet, of the law’s goodness and righteousness, combined with its pedagogical role which culminates in Christ, the end of the law, is strangely missing in Pelagius. The idea that the old covenant was good, but had a fading glory, while the new covenant is truly better, with an unfading glory, gets no purchase in Pelagius’s theologizing. In Pelagius, the Bible is essentially a very flat book. Pelagius has no problem saying that surely at least some OT saints would have lived perfectly holy and righteous lives. Whereas the Christian church has wrestled with the realities of old and new covenant, the ways in which we have moved from shadow to reality, from type to antitype, these fundamental biblical categories and hermeneutical queries are strangely lacking in Pelagius’s theologizing. Did his hermeneutic lead him astray? Or did fundamental theological commitments keep him from attending to Scripture as he ought?

Conclusion

The debate between Augustine and Pelagius (and the Pelagians) on the question of original sin is one of the most important and intriguing in all of church history. To be an “Augustinian” on this issue is—almost—shorthand simply for being a traditional Christian. Reflection and study of this debate is also a reminder of how much hinges on key theological decisions. With this central debate, we see the importance of grasping the distinction between a pre-fall era and a post-fall era. When this distinction is lost it is impossible to and propagate the remainder of the traditional Christian theological structure: death coming into the world through sin; the last Adam (Christ)—of whom the first Adam was a type —overcoming death in his own death, burial, and resurrection; the fundamental distinction between a pre-fall world (including mankind) and a post-fall world; the fundamental unity of the race as contained in, and derived from, the first couple; and the necessity of radical grace if sinners are going to be rescued and brought to saving faith. I suspect that the extent to which the Christian church remains faithful over time will depend in large part on how faithfully the church understands and perpetuates key truths found in the works of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.