Lee heard J. Philip Newell talk on Celtic Christianity the other night and was less than impressed.
Since I'm not above quoting myself, I blogged about the current marketing of Celtic Christianity a couple of months ago.
I find the idea that Pelagius is some sort of standard bearer for the goodness of human nature laughable in the extreme. All you have to do is read his "On the Christian Life" in Oliver Davies Celtic Spirituality to see how hard he is on sin and sinners.
The difference between Augustine and Pelagius is that the former's understanding of sin was more comprehensive. For Augustine, more so than Pelagius, sin is not just an act of wrongdoing; it is a sickness of the human will. Which, ironically, leads Augustine to be much easier on sinners than Pelagius. He thought it was cruel to exhort people to do right when their wills were broken.
Augustine's doctrines of original sin and predestination were formed on the ground, as a result of dealing with seemingly unreformable sinners. He concluded that we ought to let in as many people as possible in the Church, and let grace work on as many as it could. Who knows? Maybe the worst sinner is in fact elected to salvation. This is what historian Robert Markus calls "a theology of mediocrity." Whether it was the cause or the effect of the Church's turn from persecuted sect to imperial religion is a matter of great debate, but the two did go hand in hand.
Pelagius, on the other hand, was a purist. "Every Christian a monk," as Peter Brown puts it. It's ironic that peace and justice types who want a more inclusive Church, flock to Pelagius when, on grounds of their adjusted gross income alone, he wouldn't want to be in the same room with any of them.
The problem with Augustine, of course, is that, since we inherit a defective will, and since the medicine of grace that heals the defective will is available only in the Church, and since Baptism makes one a member of the Church, then unbaptized babies are going to hell, and all that Augustine could say about this unhappy logical conclusion is that he hoped that their hell would be not as bad as the hell for adults.
And I suppose that, if all you know about Augustine is that he thought babies were burning, and that he didn't like Pelagianism, then that's enough for J. Philip Newell and more than a few others to go to the phone book looking for the First Church of Pelagius.
