Anti-Pelagian Writings (NPNF I/V)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Holmes/Wallis
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 2 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~680,000 words · 3,218 passages
Cite this work
- APAAugustine. (n.d.). Anti-Pelagian Writings (NPNF I/V) (Holmes/Wallis, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/augustine/anti-pelagian-writings-npnf-i-v
- MLAAugustine. Anti-Pelagian Writings (NPNF I/V). Translated by Holmes/Wallis. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/augustine/anti-pelagian-writings-npnf-i-v.
- ChicagoAugustine. Anti-Pelagian Writings (NPNF I/V). Translated by Holmes/Wallis. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/augustine/anti-pelagian-writings-npnf-i-v.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Augustine's writings against Pelagius and his followers: on grace, free will, original sin and the baptism of infants.
Context and history
Pelagius held that a man can fulfil God's command by his own strength, and Augustine saw in that the denial that grace is needed at all. The controversy ran from 412 almost to his death in 430, and it is what settled what the West means by original sin. It is also what drove him to his harshest positions on predestination, and many of them read better once one knows they were written against someone.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
It was inevitable that the energy of the Church in intellectually realizing and defining its doctrines in relation to one another, should first be directed towards the objective side of Christian truth. The chief controversies of the first four centuries and the resulting definitions of doctrine, concerned the nature of God and the person of Christ ; and it was not until these theological and Christological questions were well upon their way to final settlement, that the Church could turn its attention to the more subjective side of truth. Meanwhile she bore in her bosom a full recognition, side by side, of the freedom of the will, the evil consequences of the fall, and the necessity of divine grace for salvation. Individual writers, or even the several sections of the Church, might exhibit a tendency to throw emphasis on one or another of the elements that made up this deposit of faith that was the common inheritance of all. The East, for instance, laid especial stress on free will : and the West dwelt more pointedly on the ruin of the human race and the absolute need of God's grace for salvation. But neither did the Eastern theologians forget the universal sinfulness and need of redemption, or the necessity, for the realization of that redemption, of God's gracious influences ; nor did those of the \\'est deny the self-determination or accountability of men. All the elements of the composite doctrine of man were everywhere confessed ; but they were variously emphasized, according to the temper of the writers or the controversial demands of the times. Such a state of affairs, however, was an invitation to heresy, and a prophecy of controversy ; just as the simultaneous confession of the unity of God and the Deity of Christ, or of the Deity and the humanity of Christ, inevitably carried in its train a series of heresies and controversies, until the definitions of the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ were complete.…