What is Pelagianism? That is ok I didn’t know either until I started reading a book about saints. In the early 400’s saints of God were having to battle teachings and teachers who were trying to put great sounding ideas into the church of God. The only problem they were not biblical ideas.
Pelagianism basically says all mankind is good and unaffected by Adam’s fall and that “original sin” has no affect on us. It goes further to say that we can obey God without His “help” and earn our own salvation. St. Augustine of Hippo and others battled to stop that heresy and several councils of the Church agreed. But just to show that the devil likes to recycle ideas. Rousseau, the author of Emilie, incorporated the idea of the basic goodness of mankind (children) into his book and teachings. His liberalism has been a foundational stone for many educational philosophies since then and has made it way into modernism and post-modern thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagianism {{PD-1923}} – published before 1923 and public domain in the US. For picture
Thanks Mark for touching on Palagianism that is rampant in so-called evangelical or even fundamental circles today, whether ignorantly or otherwise! My understanding of Palagius was that while man was tainted by the Fall, his will was not affected, and thus he was able on his own will to accept or reject Christ;s “universal” atonement! I’ll refresh myself on this again in case I am mis-representing this issue.
Sincerely, in Him.
Denis Gibson.
That sounds right. There was a lot in the articles I read. My amazement was with the educational aspect as that was part of a course I had just finished.
There is nothing new under the sun.