FOUR DOCTORS AND ONE PELAGIUS

St. Augustine, featured in the previous entry, is one of the four men called the Doctors of the Church. The other three are Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, and Pope St. Gregory I the Great.

St. Ambrose (340-397), Bishop of Milan, occupies a special place in St. Augustine’s Confessions, being the spiritual mentor and baptizer of Augustine. He is known to be a major influence on the further development of Christian thought, particularly, in determining the role of Mary in Christology. (“She is the Temple of God, and Jesus was the God in the Temple.”) However, he was not a great theologian or philosopher. He was what we might call soft on religion, uncharacteristically tolerant of dissent and variations in local practices. (The expression “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” is believed to have originated with him.) He was so amiable in his demeanor and attitudes that his candidacy for the position of Bishop in Milan was instantly acceptable to the powerful Arian community there, and his appointment helped avoid a major confrontation between them and the “true believers.” It is in this sense of being a peacemaker and, consequently, an able administrator that he deserved his sainthood, and even the title of “doctor,” if we are to read it as “physician.”

St. Jerome (345-420) is of course most famous on account of his Bible translation, the Vulgate. Otherwise, he is a hugely prolific writer, but both theologically and philosophically inferior to St. Augustine. Still he is not an infrequent visitor to these pages (see, for instance, the earlier entry in this section about his “dream”) and robbing him of another special mention here would have been a pity.

St. Gregory I the Great (540-604, Pope from 590 until his death in 604) was a remarkable man of action, but an inferior thinker, which, as Bertrand Russell points out, is not unusual, but rather customary. He was called “the last good Pope” by John Calvin: no small accomplishment, to say the least. Gregory is credited as “the father of church music,” although he did not create, but only authorized the “Gregorian chant.” Ironically, a much better candidate for the title would have been St. Ambrose, who had been personally instrumental in the creation of the Ambrosian chant and in the development of Western church music.

…And now, we come to probably the only true ethical philosopher among the characters of this entry, yet, not a “doctor,” and far less known to the Christian community than any of the above. Also, unlike the four men above, he was not a “Saint,” far from it. Pelagius (his real name was Morgan, literally translated into Greek as “man of the sea”) was a Welsh monk and theologian, born around 360, died in 420.

His outstanding philosophical contribution to Christian thought was in the area of free will. Pelagius was an honest and brave denier of the doctrine of original sin. He believed that righteous behavior was the result of a man’s own moral effort, rather than a product of interference by the Holy Ghost. There is actually a very fine line here. Pelagius never denied the role of the Holy Ghost in man’s moral behavior, but he rejected the concept of man’s incorrigibly sinful nature making him utterly incapable of acting morally on his own. The doctrine of original sin was thus incompatible with the insistence on man’s ability to be righteous out of his personal goodness… It goes without saying that this staple of humanistic ethics was vehemently rejected by the Roman Catholic Church, and St. Augustine was Pelagius’ chief detractor. With the power of the Church behind Augustine, it was politically and theologically no contest, although philosophically Pelagius had to be a hands down winner.

St. Augustine formulated the chief nine points contra Pelagianism with extreme prejudice representing Pelagius as an extremist, although, in fact, the latter’s views were much more moderate, and under the gentle amiable judgment of a St. Ambrose, Pelagius would never have been treated as a heretic. So, here are the nine points of Augustine’s Catholic orthodoxy, where Pelagius was alleged to disagree.

1.      Death came from sin, not from man’s physical nature. (A most “unnatural” proposition, if taken literally. I guess, it follows that all animals are hopelessly sinful creatures as well…)

2.      Infants must be baptized, to be cleansed from original sin. (A Christian activist’s demand, which is logically tied together with the doctrine of the original sin, and its validity entirely depends on the latter.)

3.      Justifying grace covers past sins and helps avoid future sins. (Points 3 through 8 are all logical interpretations of the Christian doctrine of Grace, take it or leave it. Pelagius had the right to contest the doctrine itself, obviously fighting for an improved formulation of the dogma. Unfortunately, he lost the fight, and Luther’s Theological Reformation was by no means helpful, going even farther than Catholicism in its anti-Pelagian interpretation of Grace, to the detriment of good works, etc.)

4.      The grace of Christ imparts strength and will to act out God's commandments.

5.      No good works can come without God's grace.

6.      We confess we are sinners because it is true, not from humility.

7.      The saints ask for forgiveness for their own sins.

8.      The saints also confess to be sinners, because they are.

9.      Children dying without baptism are excluded from both the Kingdom of heaven and eternal life. (This certainly goes well beyond the acceptable tenets of the Christian Dogma. It sounds revolting and so it is.)

Reading through this rather ridiculous list, I confess that my sympathies are with Pelagius, and against the Catholic dogma. But that is on the philosophical level, whereas the dogmatic level is a matter of belief and not a matter for a thoughtful discussion. The best that I can do for Pelagius, under such circumstances, is to name him among the Significant Others of Western philosophy, which is precisely what I am doing here.