Theological Term of the Week: Semi-Pelagianism
Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 3:30AM 
The belief that although sinners cannot be saved without the powerful help of God’s grace, they can (and must) first cry out to God for saving grace.1 God gives his grace to sinners contingent on their taking the first step.2 Conversion, then, is a joint product of the divine and human will working together.
- From History of the Christian Church by Philip Schaff, Chapter 159, Semi-Pelaginianism:
At the head of the Semi-Pelagian party stood John Cassian, the founder and abbot of the monastery at Massilia, a man of thorough cultivation, rich experience, and unquestioned orthodoxy… . [Cassian’s most important works] are his fourteen Collationes Patrum, conversations which Cassian and his friend Germanus had had with the most experienced ascetics in Egypt, during a seven years’ sojourn there.
In this work, especially in the thirteenth Colloquy, he rejects decidedly the errors of Pelagius, and affirms the universal sinfulness of men, the introduction of it by the fall of Adam, and the necessity, of divine grace to every individual act. But, with evident reference to Augustine, though without naming him, he combats the doctrines of election and of the irresistible and particular operation of grace, which were in conflict with the church tradition, especially, with the Oriental theology, and with his own earnest ascetic legalism.
In opposition to both [Pelagianism and Augustinianism] he taught that the divine image and human freedom were not annihilated, but only weakened, by the fall; in other words, that man is sick, but not dead, that he cannot indeed help himself, but that he can desire the help of a physician, and either accept or refuse it when offered, and that he must cooperate with the grace of God in his salvation. The question, which of the two factors has the initiative, he answers, altogether empirically, to this effect: that sometimes, and indeed usually, the human will, as in the cases of the Prodigal Son, Zacchaeus, the Penitent Thief, and Cornelius, determines itself to conversion; sometimes grace anticipates it, and, as with Matthew and Paul, draws the resisting will—yet, even in this case, without constraint—to God.
- From The Canons of the Council of Orange:
CANON 7. If anyone affirms that we can form any right opinion or make any right choice which relates to the salvation of eternal life, as is expedient for us, or that we can be saved, that is, assent to the preaching of the gospel through our natural powers without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who makes all men gladly assent to and believe in the truth, he is led astray by a heretical spirit, and does not understand the voice of God who says in the Gospel, “For apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), and the word of the Apostle, “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God” (2 Cor. 3:5).
Learn more:
- Got Questions: What is semi-Pelagianism?
- John Hendryx: Differences Between Semi-Pelagianism and Arminian Beliefs
- R. C. Sproul: The Pelagian Controversy
- Nathan Finn: Is Synergism Necessarily Semi-Pelagianism
Related terms:
1 2000 Years of Christ’s Power, Volume 1 by Nick Needham, page 258.
2 Systematic Theology by Robert Letham, page 947.
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