Pelagius' teaching concerning
baptism may be summarized conveniently by saying that it is the sacrament of
justification by faith alone. Interesting it is that Pelagius can not
infrequently supply the adjective sola to fides in this
connection and thus go even beyond the Apostle in the terms by which he states
the sufficiency of faith. Faith he seems clearly to understand as not simply
intellectual assent but "trust from the whole heart"; faith is also
"faith in the promises of God." In the act of baptism the believing
man is absolved from his past sins without respect to merit, the forgiving
grace of God making him to be in that moment "righteous. "
Righteousness in this context then means the condition of being without the
guilt of past sins; the man who believes in Christ has the status of one who
has fulfilled the whole of the law. (Robert F. Evans, Pelgius: Inquiries and
Reappraisals [New York: The Seabury Press, 1968], 113)
is not infrequently at pains to
argue that faith is only the beginning and that justification in the fullest
sense is not by faith alone but by faith followed by works of righteousness.
Repeatedly he urges his correspondents so to act that they will merit the
heavenly rewards, and he warns of the dire consequences of not doing so. He
obviously writes with the assumption that some, perhaps many, who have believed
will not enter the kingdom of heaven. It would be quite trivial, on Pelagius'
terms, to suppose that the divine initiative in choosing some and rejecting
others should be based upon foreknowledge of their faith, rather than,
say, their performance of works of righteousness. (Ibid., 116)
There is then the problem of the
origin of faith and of the "merit" attaching to faith. Pelagius
frequently gives expression to the idea that justification by faith alone takes
place without respect to human merits, and can also speak of "deserving"
the grace of God by the "merit" of faith. Here is no real problem in
respect of Pelagius' own consistency, although his language is perhaps
misleading. It must be remembered that he conceives the power of sin to be a
power over what man concretely does; sin is particular act, and sins are
particular acts of disobedience to the law of God. That man is justified freely
apart from merit means that he is accounted guiltless before God even though
his actions have brought guilt upon him. The power of sin over concrete actions
is not a complete power over the inner motions of mind, soul, or will. The only
analysis which Pelagius provides of this entire problem is one in which,
commenting on the Apostle Paul, he sees the fundamental problem to man as being
posed by the law of Moses. That law in the time of grace produces within man
the paralyzing schism by which he recognizes sin to be sin and even wills to be
without it but is unable to bring his will to effect. When the fullness of
God's law breaks through to man in the person and teaching of Christ, the same
rational will which even under the old law desired to be free of sin possesses
now freedom sufficient to the positing of faith in Christ. Faith
"merits" grace in the sense that fr is the indispensable and freely
chosen condition of the effectual working of grace. Faith is not
"act" in the decisive sense in which act under the old law either
brought guilt or established "merit." Nor does faith itself work the
forgiveness of sins; it is God who graciously forgives sins when the believer
comes to him in trust. Whether this, within the context either of the fifth or
of the twentieth century, is a theologically acceptable account of faith in its
relation to grace, it is fortunately not our business here to say. (Ibid., 117-18)
We have seen that Pelagius
teaches the justification of the sinner by faith alone in the act of baptism.
He also teaches that men are justified by works. The key to understanding his
language is to notice that the formula "faith alone" applies to the
unique situation of the individual at his conversion and baptism.
"Righteousness" (iustitia) as a term applying to the Christian
after baptism, and pre-eminently at the judgment, is unthinkable without the
performance of "works of righteousness, " i.e., without obedience to
the moral precepts of Christ and of the Apostles. When the Apostle, referring
to justification in this wider sense, writes that "man is justified by
faith apart from works of the law" (Rom. 3: 28), he means to say that man
is justified apart from ceremonial works of the law such as circumcision and
the observance of new moons and Sabbaths, not apart from works of
righteousness. The whole of the Christian life as it is stretched out between
baptism and the judgment is one in which Christians avail themselves of the
grace of teaching and example; always exercising that freedom of choice which
has been made effectual by grace, they obey the precepts of the gospel and so
merit the rewards of the final kingdom of heaven. Pelagius sums up his whole
teaching on faith in its relation to righteousness in the following words:
"Faith in the first instance is reckoned as righteousness for this reason,
that [ a man] is absolved as to the past, justified as to the present, and
prepared for the future works of faith." (Ibid., 119)
Plinval is certainly wrong in
suggeting (" Points de vues recents sur la theologie de Pélage," RSR
46, 1958, p. 229) that Pelagius' words on justification by faith alone cannot
be taken seriously as representing his real view but are to be attributed to
the necessity imposed by Pauline exegesis. If this were the case, the words
sola {ides would not appear so repeatedly as they do in Pelagius, nor would
Pelagius have added the non-Pauline word sola to his formulation. He clearly
distinguishes the righteousness of faith from the righteousness of works, both
of which he wants to uphold; see Exp. 8 1 , 19-82, 1 . (Ibid., 163-64 n. 109)
