Ever heard of Pelagius? I hadn’t until this past week. An article in Christianity Today caught my eye with the title, “The Age of Pelagius.” Not knowing who this guy was or why this was being called “the age of Pelagius,” I clicked the link and read an adaptation of the commencement address given at The King’s College this past May. The address was written and given by Joshua Hawley, a senator from Missouri. Here’s what he had to say about Pelagius:
Pelagius was born sometime between A.D. 350 and 360 in Britain, possibly Wales. Highly educated, unusually gifted, a scholar of both Latin and Greek, he made his way to Italy and then to Rome. There he became famous for his teaching on Paul’s letters.
Pelagius held that the individual possessed a powerful capacity for achievement. In fact, Pelagius believed individuals could achieve their own salvation. It was just a matter of them living up to the perfection of which they were inherently capable. As Pelagius himself put it, “Since perfection is possible for man, it is obligatory.” The key was will and effort. If individuals worked hard enough and deployed their talents wisely enough, they could indeed be perfect.
This idea famously drew the ire of … Saint Augustine, who responded that we humans are not achievement machines. We are fragile. We are fallible. We suffer weakness and need. And we all stand in need of God’s grace.
But Pelagius was not satisfied…. He responded that God gave individuals free choice. And he insisted that this free choice was more powerful than any limitation Augustine identified…. Pelagius said that individuals could use their free choice to adopt their own purposes, to fix their own destinies—to create themselves, if you like. Now as you might expect ...Pelagius was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Ephesus in 431.
But his philosophy lived on in late-20th-century America. And if you listen closely today, you can hear it almost everywhere—in our fiction and our film, in our school curricula and self-help books. It even features prominently in our law.
Perhaps the most eloquent contemporary statement of Pelagian freedom appears in an opinion from the United States Supreme Court, in a passage written by former Justice Anthony Kennedy. In 1992, in a case called Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, he wrote this: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
It’s the Pelagian vision. Liberty is the right to choose your own meaning, define your own values, emancipate yourself from God by creating your own self…. The Pelagian view says the individual is most free when he is most alone, able to choose his own way without interference. Family and tradition, neighborhood and church—these things get in the way of uninhibited free choice.
As I considered all of this in light of the scripture for this week, it got me to thinking. Not long before the events recorded in today’s Scripture passage, these same people were huddled in a room out of fear. Jesus was dead, they were well-known as followers of His, and they were living in an occupied country whose overlords had little love for the Jewish people. They understandably thought their days were numbered. Even after Jesus appeared to them, their fear didn’t immediately subside. When it came time for Jesus to leave them, He gave them one final command: stay in Jerusalem until the promised Helper comes, because when He comes, you will have the power to go throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth proclaiming Jesus as the only means of salvation.
If you had been one of the disciples, I’m not sure proclaiming Jesus “in Jerusalem” where Jesus was just crucified by your own people, or proclaiming Jesus “in Samaria” where there was mutual hatred between the two people groups, or proclaiming Jesus “to the ends of the earth” (that sounds like a long way from home, Jesus….) would have been the plan you expected. Jesus said, “The Truth will set you free,” but the disciples were likely thinking, “Proclaiming the Truth is going to get me thrown in jail, Jesus! Did you forget where we are and who we are dealing with…. already?”
No, He hadn’t forgotten. We see that in today’s passage - these same men left that hiding place bold and ready to proclaim the saving grace of Jesus because they had been given the Holy Spirit, and that power had truly set them free - free from worry, free from fear, free to do the job Jesus had laid before them.
You and I have been given the same command - to “go proclaim.” The world gives us the Plagian philosophy: “I don’t need God, I don’t need church, I don’t need anything that I don’t want, and I sure don’t want Jesus.” And they think that they are free because they have chosen to turn away from the only Truth that really matters. It is our job to remember that we are not who we are because of anything we have done, but because of who we are in and because of Jesus. We have this treasure of the Gospel, this light of Truth, and we have been given the power to proclaim the fallacy of the Plagian philosophy because we know that it is only through the power of Jesus that we are truly set free.
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