{"id":3473,"date":"2023-03-19T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-19T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3473"},"modified":"2023-03-21T11:42:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T15:42:20","slug":"augustine-pelagius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2023\/03\/19\/augustine-pelagius\/","title":{"rendered":"Augustine: Pelagius"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

John 9:1-41<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Due to the length of the worship service, the original text of this sermon was condensed. Therefore, the recorded sermon will differ from the text below.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

John 9 is about dislocation.\u00a0 It is about the expulsion of a small group of Jewish Christians from a traditional synagogue.\u00a0 One word, 9:22, holds the whole gospel of the day, \u2018out of the synagogue\u2019. They were cast out of the synagogue, dislocated, a fearsome hurt now known by many directly, in illness, in separation, in isolation, in loneliness and dislocation.\u00a0 And known better, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, by those of us who may just acquire a little more sympathy, a little more compassion, a little more care, for those in need, as we swirl through this season of need.<\/p>\n

\u2018The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, \u2018Go to Siloam and wash\u2019. \u00a0Then I went and washed and received my sight.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

John 9 describes the healing of a man born blind, and the communal controversy surrounding that healing. \u00a0Like the rest of the Gospel, this passage reports two layers of healing, of blindness, of community, and of controversy. \u00a0\u00a0On one hand, the passage remembers, perhaps by the aid of a source or as part of a source, a moment in the ministry of Jesus (30ce), in which a man is given sight. \u00a0On the other hand, the passage announces the spiritual unshackling of a hero in the community (90ce), who bears witness to what Jesus has done for him, no matter the repercussions from others, from parents, from family, from community.<\/p>\n

The preacher in the Johannine community of the late first century is telling the story of the Son of Man. \u00a0To do so, he celebrates the courageous witness to healing, and the courageous endurance of expulsion, of a man born blind. \u00a0Here, he says, is what I mean by faith. \u00a0The story he uses<\/em> comes, through un-trackable oral and written traditions, from 30ce. \u00a0The story he tells<\/em> comes from 90ce. \u00a0Every character in the story has two roles. \u00a0Jesus is both earthly rabbi and heavenly redeemer. \u00a0The blind man is both historic patient and current hero. \u00a0The family is from both Palestinian memory and diaspora synagogue. \u00a0The opponents are both the contemporaries of Jesus and the nearby inhabitants of the synagogue, the Johannine community\u2019s former home. \u00a0\u00a0When Jesus gives sight, Christ gives freedom. \u00a0When the blind one is cured, the congregation sees truth. \u00a0When the man is cast out of his synagogue, the community of the beloved disciple recognizes their own most recent expulsion. \u00a0When others criticize Jesus, the synagogue is criticizing the church. \u00a0When the healing story ends, the life of faith begins. \u00a0His voice both addresses you and emanates from you. \u00a0Not your voice, his is nonetheless\u2026your voice.<\/p>\n

John 9 illumines the central struggle of the community, their bitter spiritual itinerancy from the familiar confines of Christian Judaism, out into the unknown wilderness of Jewish Christianity. \u00a0History and the history of religions bear manifold witness to this kind of crisis in communal identity, and the long hard trail of travel from primary to secondary identity. \u00a0In retrospect, as a community gathers itself in its new setting (think of the pilgrims in Boston, the Mormons in Utah, the Cherokee in Oklahoma, and every entering class each autumn at Boston University) the story of the tearful trail itself becomes the heart of communal memory and imagination.<\/p>\n

What is here unearthed in John 9 can also and readily be applied to the rest of the Gospel of John as well: \u00a0to the wedding at Cana, to Nicodemus, to the woman at the well, to the healing on the water, to the feeding of the thousands, to the controversies with the Jews, to the raising of Lazarus, to the farewell discourse, to the trial and passion. \u00a0All of these reflect the experience in dramatic interaction between the synagogue and John\u2019s church. This includes, later, the mysterious figure of the Paraclete, the Spirit, who functions as Jesus\u2019 eternal presence in the world, Jesus, God \u2018striding on earth\u2019 (Kasemann). \u00a0In this way, the Paraclete himself creates the two level drama. \u00a0Where the world is mono focal, and can see only the historical level of Jesus in history or only the theological level of Jesus in the witness of the Christian community, the Paraclete binds the two together. \u00a0The Word dwelling among us, and our beholding his glory, are not past events only. \u00a0They transpire in a two-level drama. \u00a0They transpire both on the historical and contemporary levels, OR NOT AT ALL<\/em>. \u00a0Their transpiration on both levels is itself the good news, an overture to the rapturous discoveries of freedom in disappointment, grace in dislocation, and love in departure.\u00a0 Especially, in John 9, through dislocation. Tell me sometime about your worst lived dislocation.<\/em><\/p>\n

    <\/ol>\n

    Into our existential dislocations today strides this year\u2019s Lenten conversation partner, Augustine of Hippo, in and through his own momentous conflict with Pelagius, a conflict let us say between Pelagius and the freedom of the will, and Augustine and freeing of the will, freedom vs. freeing.\u00a0 Our teacher Professor David Lotz, UTS 1976, guided us skillfully through Augustine\u2019s conflict with Pelagius.\u00a0 One readily remembers the thrill of the lectures, the skill of the lecturer, and the chill of a new and challenging claim to truth.\u00a0 With gratitude I rely today on the abiding memory of his classes, and the scrawled penciled notes of his presentations.\u00a0 Take heart, BU teachers, lectures, well honed, live for decades, as do Dr. Lotz\u2019s today<\/p>\n

    Pelagius\u2019s biography is scarce.\u00a0 He was apparently a monk of either British or Irish origin, who appeared in Rome near the year 400ce, lecturing as a moral theologian.\u00a0 Pelagius was shocked by the overly pessimistic views of the human capacity for good, which he found prevalent in Rome at the time.\u00a0 Rather, he judged that human beings could know and do God\u2019s will.\u00a0 His refrain was, Give what you command, Lord, and command what you will.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Pelagius insisted on human responsibility and moral choice.\u00a0 Such responsibility and such moral choice, inevitably entailed unconditional free will.\u00a0 Without freedom of the will, there can be no truly human responsibility, nor any serious moral choice.\u00a0 If sin is inevitable, he reasoned, then the nerve of moral responsibility is severed.\u00a0 Furthermore, both the Old and New Testaments (the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, Moses, Jesus) expect and command\u2026perfection.\u00a0 So far, he sounds like a pretty good Methodist to me.<\/em>\u00a0 And therein lies the problem.<\/p>\n

    Pelagius argued with vehemence that commands, and commandments, would not have been given, if they were not able to be followed, if they were not followable.\u00a0 That would be cruel and unusual.\u00a0 He further argued, here one could say like Immanuel Kant, that an \u2018ought\u2019 entails a \u2018can\u2019.\u00a0 If you ought to do it, then you can do it.\u00a0 Again, anything other would be cruel and unusual.\u00a0 The human being has the freedom to obey or to disobey the divine command(s). Posse peccare, posse non peccare, <\/em>the ability to sin and not to sin (Augustine will later counter that this was true of Adam, but no longer true, not true of you and me).\u00a0 Even further, Pelagius rejects the idea that the human will has \u2018an intrinsic bias toward wrong-doing\u2026after the fall\u2019.\u00a0 He, Pelagius, is thus a \u2018creationist\u2019, believing that the soul is immediately created by God at birth.\u00a0 He does admit that with the human creature there has come along, has come down over time, a \u2018habit of disobedience\u2019.\u00a0 There is no congenital evil, there is no congenital sin, in the child.\u00a0 Hence, for Pelagius, and now we come to the crux of the matter, the heart of the argument, the sacrament of baptism was a sanctification, but not a means of grace, not a means of regeneration.<\/p>\n

    We might jump in here to say that in the Empire wide argument that followed, Pelagius lost the day.\u00a0 He lost to\u2026your friend and mine for Lent 2023, Augustine of Hippo.\u00a0 Why did Pelagius lose and Augustine win?\u00a0 The answer in part is that Augustine took to heart, took seriously, and made heartfelt and serious sense of\u2026baptism.\u00a0 And to some further extent of\u2026the virgin birth. Augustine made sense of the church\u2019s practice, the church\u2019s cultus.<\/p>\n

    Now Pelagius did not assert human autonomy.\u00a0 The argument between Pelagius and Augustine, at least to this human sermonic interpreter, with whom, saints preserve us, you are stuck for the moment, for these 22 minutes, \u00a0their argument was far more nuanced than sometimes it is made out to be.\u00a0 For Pelagius, grace is necessary\u2026to achieve perfection. <\/em>And this is the crux of the disagreement.\u00a0 For Pelagius, the ability not to sin, posse non peccare<\/em>, comes straight from nature, from the \u2018necessity of nature\u2019, which is\u2026get ready for it\u2026implanted by God the Creator as a GIFT. <\/em>Whoever disparages nature disparages God, because God is the Creator, the maker of heaven and earth, of nature itself.\u00a0\u00a0 For Pelagius, in addition, grace is also the revelation through reason of God\u2019s law, which is instructive in holiness.\u00a0 Like a good Renaissance philosopher, like a good modern liberal, like, well, let us admit it, like a good Methodist of any stripe, Pelagius sees God in all creatures great and small, in the words of \u00a0James Herriott.\u00a0 Further, he finds in the human reason, in human rationality, evidence of man as God\u2019s image.\u00a0 <\/em>For Pelagius, grace works in a limited way, as forms of external aids (Moses and Jesus), to the human will.\u00a0 The human being is good and free, free and good, but can always use a little help from friends.\u00a0 Going further, Pelagius\u2019s understands predestination (what will later become for Augustine even double predestination, and an entirely different matter) as (simply, merely) foreknowledge of merit.<\/p>\n

    The bottom line: One can if one will, one can if one will, observe God\u2019s commandments without sinning.\u00a0 You can if you think you can.\u00a0 (Here we notice a hint or echo of that powerful positive thinker Methodist and graduate of BUSTH, Norman Vincent Peale: You can if you think you can\u2026of whom, remember, Adlai Stevenson said, \u2018I find Paul appealing\u2026and Peale appalling\u2019). Sinlessness can gradually and progressively be attained by\u2026strenuous efforts of the will.\u00a0 Sinlessness remains a possibility, especially as it is infused by an intense awareness of God\u2019s majesty.\u00a0 Go and sin no more.\u00a0 Should you need an example, you have before you Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Christ sets the norm of holy living.\u00a0 You will have to admit that on this rendering, Pelagius makes a pretty good case for what many of us, much of the time, mostly believe.\u00a0 We believe in and celebrate the freedom of the will.<\/p>\n

    Pelagius writings were distributed and widely read between 380ce and 410ce.\u00a0 His supporters included Celestius, and, one of Augustine\u2019s most formidable opponents, Julian the Bishop of Eclanum.<\/p>\n

      <\/ol>\n

      Enter Augustine of Hippo, 354-430ce.\u00a0 Augustine\u2019s own thought had been worked out long before the Pelagian controversy.\u00a0 The fight with Pelagius merely allowed him to fill out the implications.\u00a0 That is, Augustine thought that Adam, Adam was created perfect, and Adam\u2019s will, Adam\u2019s will was in conjunction with God. Vita ordinate\u2026<\/em>an orderly life, an ordered life.\u00a0 The body is ordered by the soul and the soul is ordered by God.\u00a0 Adam, Adam possessed the ability not<\/em> to sin.\u00a0 God had granted Adam a grace of perseverance.\u00a0 And grace was already and fully operative in paradise<\/em>.\u00a0 Otherwise, Adam would soon have sinned, early rather than late.\u00a0 Adam\u2019s only weakness, his only malady or imperfection or shortcoming was his creatureliness.\u00a0 This was an ontological<\/em> weakness.\u00a0 So how could Adam fall, sin, fall short? Because he is a creature, his nature is that of a creature, he is imbued with creatureliness: Adam is contingent, mutable, ex nihilo, <\/em>made out of nothing.\u00a0 So, in that fateful moment of weakness, and on the prompting of his own pride, on the prompting of his own pride<\/em> chose to turn away from God.\u00a0 And that curse has now passed to the whole of humanity.\u00a0 The human being, man is massa damnata, \u2018a condemned crowd\u2019.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

      The essence of Adam\u2019s sin, according to Augustine, is that we all participate in sin and guilt, we all participate in sin and guilt.\u00a0 In that we are all actually one with Adam.\u00a0 Augustine does not explain actually how sin is passed on, whether by \u2018the seed\u2019 (\u2018traducianism\u2019) or otherwise, expect to say that the soul is handed down \u2018by parental conception\u2019. As Romans 5: 12 says, \u2018in whom all have sinned\u2019.\u00a0 (Except that the Greek text reads, \u2018because all have sinned\u2019 (here at least Augustine\u2019 argument is based on a mistranslation.)<\/p>\n

      For Augustine, though, creation is not evil.\u00a0 Creation is good.\u00a0 Creation is not evil but good.\u00a0 Yet creation is sullied by Adam\u2019s fall.\u00a0 Adam\u2019s accident, let us say.\u00a0 Sin is lack, sin is non-being.\u00a0 Nature has been scarred but nature is not depraved.\u00a0 Yet as a result of the fall, as a consequence of Adam\u2019s sin, we have lost our freedom<\/em>.\u00a0 We have lost the ability not to sin.\u00a0 We are not able not to sin.\u00a0 We have lost our liberty (libertum)<\/em>, but not our \u2018liberum arbitrium\u2019.\u00a0 <\/em>We continue to choose.\u00a0 We know this from our experience.\u00a0 But\u2026free will always and inevitably on its own chooses the evil, due to its perverse nature.\u00a0 Hence\u2026grace is an utter necessity, an absolute necessity, without grace we are absolutely lost. Grace is the divinely given power to avoid and conquer sin. \u00a0<\/em>Not freedom, but grace.\u00a0 Not creation, but re-creation, then, is what we need, not creation but redemption.\u00a0 Not the freedom of the will, but the freeing of the will. <\/em>And this can come about only through God\u2019s grace.\u00a0 For grace prevents us from doing evil (gratia praevenia),<\/em> prepares us to do good, and helps us in the actual doing of good (gratia cooperans, gratia sonneans (healing grace).<\/em> After all, remember Romans 7: \u2018the good I want I do not, but evil I do not want, that is what I do\u2019.<\/p>\n

      Here Augustine finishes the case.\u00a0 We experience healing grace throughout the course of our lives\u2026in the church\u2019s sacraments<\/em>.\u00a0 It is grace therefore which equips us to do the good.\u00a0 Perfection is never wholly attained (here Wesley goes out the window).\u00a0 The disease of being human, of being alive is never completely cured.\u00a0 Justification is progressive sanctification.\u00a0 Through Scripture!\u00a0 Through Apostolic Tradition! Through Faith!\u00a0 Through Personal Experience!\u00a0 Here Augustine, a most autobiographical theologian, faces God by facing himself, and sees without a shadow of doubt that as he looked back on his life he could not explain the shape it took\u2026without recourse to grace.\u00a0 \u2018Let me be chaste\u2026but not yet\u2019.\u00a0 Augustine, in this sense, is the supreme Methodist, an utterly autobiographical theologian.\u00a0 Not his own freedom, but God\u2019s freeing love, saved him.\u00a0 With Augustine, though we may not entirely see things his way, at a minimum this Lent, let us cherish God\u2019s freeing love, God who is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom. God who is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom.<\/em><\/p>\n

      -The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Click here to hear the full service John 9:1-41 Click here to hear just the sermon   *Due to the length of the worship service, the original text of this sermon was condensed. Therefore, the recorded sermon will differ from the text below.\u00a0 John 9 is about dislocation.\u00a0 It is about the expulsion of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[61,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3473"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3475,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions\/3475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}