John Passmore

The Perfectibility of Man

Not all Christians were satisfied with Augustine's conclusion that, in this life, perfection lies beyond men's reach. The most direct, the most far-reaching, attack on Augustine was initiated in the fifth century by that sturdy British lay-monk Pelagius and his younger, more outspoken disciple—also a layman—Coclesrius. Like many another religiously-minded Englishman after him, Pelagius made his way to Rome; like many other religiously-minded Englishmen after him, he was appalled by the moral laxity, to his northern eyes, he there encountered. And a large part of the blame, so Pelagius thought, attached to Augustine. If men were told that they could not conform their lives to the teaching of the Gospels, try as they might, this was bound to weaken their moral fibre.

The Christian's duty, according to Pelagius, is clear and unambiguous. God has commanded men to be perfect; God would not have commanded them to do what lies beyond their powers. It is, he wrote in his Letter to Demetrias, 'blind folly and presumptuous blasphemy' for men to tell God that they cannot do what he has commanded them to do, 'as if, forgetting the weakness of men, his own creation, he had laid upon men commands which they were unable to bear'. To suppose that God would punish men for not doing what they cannot do, furthermore, is to ascribe to him 'unrighteousness and cruelty'. Pelagius sums up thus: 'He has not willed to command anything impossible, for he is righteous; and he will not condemn a man for what he could not help, for he is holy.'

In developing his anti-Augustinian thesis, Pelagius was led entirely to reject the concept of original sin. 'Everything good, and everything evil,' he argued, 'on account of which we are either laudable or blameworthy, is not born with us but done by us: for we are born not fully developed, but with a capacity for either conduct; and we are procreated as without virtue, so also without vice.' At birth, that is, men are neither perfect nor corrupt. They are born, however, with a capacity for perfecting themselves or corrupting themselves, by the exercise of their free-will. It is up to them to employ that capacity aright—although once God sees that they are intent upon perfecting themselves he will no doubt lend them a hand. Sin is not inherent in man's nature; it is nothing more, Pelagius assures us, than a bad habit. 'There is no other cause of the difficulty we find in doing well, but the long-continued customs of sin, which begin to grow upon us in childhood, and little by little corrupt us.' And bad habits can always be broken by a deliberate act of will, although a long-standing habit, Pelagius is prepared to admit, can be difficult to eradicate.

Not a few modern readers will sympathize with Pelagius in this debate, seeing in him the blunt Englishman cutting through the tortuosities of North African sensuality and sensibility. It is worth noting, however, that Pelagianism carried with it a Stoic-like severity of judgement. Since sin can always be avoided by the exercise of will, a man deserves eternal damnation, Pelagius concluded, should he fall into the slightest sin. On his view, the Church was, and only ought to be, a community of saints, of men intent on perfecting themselves. It was not a school for sinners; it ought to cast sinners from out of its body, as God would most assuredly cast them into Hell. Such severity is only too characteristic of 'universal' perfectibilists. If all men can be perfect, given only that they seriously try, it is a short step to the conclusion that they deserve damnation—or execution—for not being perfect.

The immediate effect of Pelagianism was to provoke Augustine to write a long series of anti-Pelagian tracts, in which he developed the typical Augustinian themes of human corruption and the free bounty of divine grace. The problem which faced Augustine, as it has faced so many Christian thinkers after him, is neatly expressed in a letter he wrote, about 426, to Valentinus, the abbot of a Tunisian monastery. The monks, disturbed by Augustine's anti-Pelagian teachings, had divided into two factions, one faction 'extolling grace to such an extent that they deny the freedom of the human will', the other faction maintaining that our free will 'is aided by the grace of God so that we may think and do what is right'. The second faction, Augustine tells Valentinus, is correct: God co-operates with man's free will. He goes on to formulate the Christian dilemma thus: 'If then there is no grace of God, how does He save the world? And if there is no free will, how does He judge the world?' Free will must be granted, to justify God's condemnation of man; man is condemned by God because he has wrongly used his freedom. But without grace, Augustine is emphatic, the world could not be saved.