“When an ungodly person converts, God justifies him by faith alone, not for the good works he did not have.” – Pelagius, Commentary on Romans (on Rom. 3:5)
The Pelagian controversy is often described as a dispute over grace, in which St. Augustine of Hippo defended orthodoxy against the rigoristic beliefs of Pelagius, a British monk, and his supporters. Protestants sometimes further interpret the Pelagian controversy as a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation and its alleged emphasis on salvation by grace alone (in Latin, sola gratia). But is either interpretation historically accurate?
The early 1990s saw the publication of significant scholarship on Pelagius. First was a two-volume study by B.R. Rees, now published as a single volume, Pelagius: Life and Letters. More manageable is the much shorter, but still highly informative Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, expertly translated by Theodore De Bruyn and published by Clarendon Press in 1993. If Pelagius’ Commentary on Romans is anything to go on, everything I’ve heard and read about Pelagianism is wrong. For example, I’ve been told that Pelagius denied the need for divine grace because he held Jesus was merely a moral example (although I’ve often wondered if this was a covert dig at the purported beliefs of liberal Protestants, not least because its source was an evangelical). But Pelagius’ Commentary on Romans tells a very different story.
De Bruyn’s edition consists of a 53-page introduction, the commentary (97 pages), and a lengthy appendix (38 pages) that first analyzes the Latin Bible translations available at the time and then reproduces the Latin text of Romans that Pelagius likely used. Identifying nearly 150 variants across Latin translations in the ancient world, de Bruyn concludes in line with earlier scholarship that “the weight of evidence in favour of the Vulgate is far greater than the weight of evidence in favour of the uetus latina [Old Latin translation]” (p. 156). The point matters, at least in part, because some of Augustine’s arguments on Romans 5 drew upon the Old Latin translation, which mistranslated the second half of Romans 5:12 by excising its reference to death.[1] Different Bible translations enabled different theological conclusions and, in part, drove the controversy. De Bruyn expertly annotates and explains all of this throughout his edition.
The commentary itself takes an exegetical, verse-by-verse approach, in which verses are often broken down further, such that individual phrases receive extended comment. I cannot claim to find it an especially engaging literary genre, although it is easy to read.
Pelagius begins with a brief prologue that offers a clear summary of St. Paul’s letter. The church in Rome had divided into two factions, one Jewish and the other Gentile. Each appealed to their cultural background to show that they were especially favored by God. In the words of Pelagius, “Thrusting himself between those who were disputing in this way, the apostle interrupts the questions of the two parties so as to establish that neither of them deserved salvation by their own righteousness” (p. 58). Rather than appealing to cultural background or achievement, the apostle instead shows how each group had, in the course of its history, sinned. Humbling both Jewish and Gentile factions in the Roman church, Paul emphasizes grace as the means of reconciliation, both from God toward humanity and then between the baptized factions at Rome.
Two bright thematic threads are found throughout the commentary. First, despite stereotypes to the contrary, there is a constant emphasis on grace. As Pelagius writes in his first comment on Romans 1:3 (on the phrase “Concerning his son”), “Many are sons by grace, but Christ is a son by nature” (pp. 59-60). Similarly, expanding on a portion of Romans 6:23 (“the grace of God is life eternal”), Pelagius notes that “there was no righteousness in us before hand for him to repay: for it is not procured by our effort, but is presented as a gift of God” (p. 100). The same emphasis on unmerited divine favor appears throughout. Pelagius understands St. Paul’s emphasis on righteousness/justification by faith to mean faith alone (e.g., p. 85 on 4:5; p. 89 on 5:1; p. 122 on 10:3), and at no point does he believe that justification equates to salvation. In both of these positions, he and Augustine are in full agreement.
Second, Pelagius is especially concerned to maintain the church’s heresiological condemnations. Beginning with his opening comments on Romans 1, he attacks Arian and Manichean views. The latter, however, struck me as perhaps more salient, given that Augustine had converted from Manicheanism to Catholic Christianity. Consider Pelagius’ comments on Romans 6. Paul writes, “do not present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness” (v. 13). Pelagius explains, “it is through freedom of choice that a person offers his members for whatever side he wishes” (p. 98).
But this is no merely abstract consideration of free will. On the very next page, when he comments on Romans 6:19, Pelagius elaborates that he is especially concerned to ward off Manichean views: “we presented our members to serve sin; it is not the case, as the Manicheans say, that it was the nature of the body to have sin mixed in” (p. 99). And yet the Manichean view that Pelagius attacks is not so far from the view of Augustine, who by the early fifth century had come to believe that original sin is both an existential condition and one transmitted biologically through reproduction.[2]
Reading Pelagius demonstrates why historians emphasize the need to read primary sources, rather than depend on later interpretive traditions. The Commentary on Romans falsifies the popular view that an early Christian heresy called Pelagianism denied the need for grace. To the contrary, we have here a clear and concise commentary, one mercifully unencumbered by the weight—including the clutter and detritus—accumulated after many centuries of further Christian commentary on the same letter.
Of course, we also have here the most unremarkable beginning of a defining controversy in the early history of Western Christianity.
Recommended Reading
de Bruyn, Theodore (ed. and trans.). Pelagius’ Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
Fitzgerald, Allan D., O.S.A. (ed.). Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company).
[1] As noted in St. Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians I, trans. Roland J. Teske, S.J. (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997), pp. 14, 23.
[2] “Original Sin,” in Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (ed.), Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), pp. 607-14.
Benjamin M. Guyer, PhD is a Guest Writer. He is a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Tennessee Martin. The author or editor of five books, Guyer is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, serves on the Advisory Board of Anglican & Episcopal History, and is Associate Book Review Editor for the Sixteenth Century Journal.
