[Some more from the draft of an article on the psychological effects of the Fall and whether common grace can provide a sufficient response]

Indeed, Pelagius held that the human will is wholly within one’s own power. While the matter under consideration is particularly the question of whether one can lead pleasing to God, do not fall prey to the mistake that the ability to obey God’s law is some sort of bare behavior or “spiritual” decision which does not affect the rest of the person. True obedience to the law of God requires one’s conduct, cognition, affect and will.[1] Accordingly, the ability to obey the law entails a properly functioning psychology.[2]

In his letter to his “Letter to Demetrias”, Pelagius writes:

When I have to discuss the principles of right conduct and the leading of a holy life, I usually begin by showing the strength and characteristics of human nature. But explaining what it can accomplish, I encourage the soul of my hearer to the different virtues.[3]

He explains the strength as an absolute liberatarian freedom of will, “You should not think that humanity was not created truly good because it is capable of evil and the impetuosity of nature is not by necessity to unchangeable good…The glory of the reasonable soul is located precisely in its having to care a parting of the ways, in its freedom to follow either path.”[4]

If the power to do good lies within the human will, why then do any follow a corrupt path. It is not any inherent original sin which has perverted the human psyche: rather, it is the result of sociological and psychological patterns gained from the environment. “Doing good has become difficult for us only because of the long custom of sinning, which begins to infect us even in our childhood.”[5]

Conversely, the manner of becoming “good” is a process of cognitive-behavioral psychology; granted Pelagius was rudimentary in his development, but he was on the “right path” (some might say): “If you therefore you want your way of life to correspond to the magnificence of your resolution …. Apply yourself now so that the glowing faith of your recent conversation is always warmed by a new earnestness, so that pious practices may easily take root during your early years.” (In short be mindful of what you think and what you do, so that through repetition you may become what you resolve to be).

The transformation of the human life is contingent upon God granting a new nature; rather, transformation is a matter of the right therapeutic practice.

[1] Matt. 5:22 & 5:28, 21:28-32, 22:36-40, 23:28; John 3:16, 14:21; Acts 2:38; Rom. 10:8-17; Col. 2:8; et cetera. “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.”Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith and Harry S. Stout, Revised edition., vol. 2, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 95.

[2] Again, I am using the word “psychology” deliberately to push back against the idea that there is some “spiritual” aspect of a human being which independently of one’s psychological state. Pelagius is quite right to put the full power to obey the law of God within the human being’s psychological being, his capacity, volition and action. No honest atheist would hold that a Christian’s belief, affection, conduct and volition toward God are somehow divorced from the Christian’s psychology. The atheist may think the Christian diseased, defective, neurotic or whatnot. But only a Christian trying to preserve some sort of fictitious barrier between religious/spiritual life and psychology would attempt such a thin

[3] J Patout Burns, ed., Theological Anthropology, ed. and trans. J Patout Burns, Sources of Early Christian Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 40.

[4] J Patout Burns, ed., Theological Anthropology, ed. and trans. J Patout Burns, Sources of Early Christian Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 42.

[5] J Patout Burns, ed., Theological Anthropology, ed. and trans. J Patout Burns, Sources of Early Christian Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 50; Benjamin Warfield, “Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy,” in Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 295 (“It was only an ever-increasing facility in imitating vice which arose from so long a schooling in evil; and all that was needed to rescue men from it was a new explanation of what was right (in the law), or, at most, the encouragement of forgiveness for what was already done, and a holy example (in Christ) for imitation.”).

At this point it must be noted that modern psychology would often include a substantial element of physiology: disease of the central nervous system and its effects upon thought, emotion and conduct (whether there such thing as volition in such a regime of pure physiology as a cause, I will leave for others to debate). There is no dispute that the central nervous system can be diseased, and that such disease will have substantial obvious effects. The decay and death of the body are promised results of Adam’s sin. Gen. 2:17 & 3:19. No one disputes that various drugs can and will affect one’s psychology. Drawing a precise line between what is physiological and what is psychological are extremely difficult for everyone involved. There is also the question of responding to one’s physiology (unless with a materialist, there is something more than the brain at issue)

In research the question of the psychological effects of the Fall (essentially, the Fall fundamentally transformed human psychology: our cognition, affections, behavior and will have all been changed as a result of the Fall; therefore, only a remedy which addresses the injury of the Fall will be sufficient to remedy the psychological damage), I came upon this discussion by Augustine of the psychology of Pelagius.  Pelagius held to the position that one’s will and conduct are independent of God’s control (God creates us as independent beings); in essence the psychological functioning of a human remains unaltered as a result of the Fall.

Any psychology which does not take Christian claims seriously will necessarily hold that human psychology operates independently of one’s relationship to God (except perhaps as the subjective concept of “God” operates upon one’s psychology; the “truth” of God would be the subjective effect of the belief, not the objective working of any “God”). This makes any Christian’s use of such psychology fundamentally problematic.  Any Christian who holds to an easy integration of such psychology with a Christian add-on is thus operating on a Pelagian understanding of human psychology.

[For those who do not know, Pelagius is an arch-heretic in the history of Christianity:

A two-pronged attack by Augustine and Jerome (a powerful combination) led to Pelagius’s condemnation by two African councils in 416, a decision upheld by Pope Innocent I, who in 417 excommunicated Pelagius and Celestius.

J.D. Douglas, “Pelagius,” ed. J.D. Douglas and Philip W. Comfort, Who’s Who in Christian History (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 547.]

Here is the language from Augustine:

CHAPTER 4.—PELAGIUS’ SYSTEM OF FACULTIES

In his system, he posits and distinguishes three faculties, by which he says God’s commandments are fulfilled,—capacity, volition, and action:4 meaning by “capacity,” that by which a man is able to be righteous; by “volition,” that by which he wills to be righteous; by “action,” that by which he actually is righteous. The first of these, the capacity, he allows to have been bestowed on us by the Creator of our nature; it is not in our power, and we possess it even against our will. The other two, however, the volition and the action, he asserts to be our own; and he assigns them to us so strictly as to contend that they proceed simply from ourselves. In short, according to his view, God’s grace has nothing to do with assisting those two faculties which he will have to be altogether our own, the volition and the action, but that only which is not in our own power and comes to us from God, namely the capacity; as if the faculties which are our own, that is, the volition and the action, have such avail for declining evil and doing good, that they require no divine help, whereas that faculty which we have of God, that is to say, the capacity, is so weak, that it is always assisted by the aid of grace.

CHAPTER 5 [IV.]—PELAGIUS’ OWN ACCOUNT OF THE FACULTIES, QUOTED

Lest, however, it should chance to be said that we either do not correctly understand what he advances, or malevolently pervert to another meaning what he never meant to bear such a sense, I beg of you to consider his own actual words: “We distinguish,” says he, “three things, arranging them in a certain graduated order. We put in the first place ‘ability;’ in the second, ‘volition;’ and in the third, ‘actuality.’1 The ‘ability’ we place in our nature, the ‘volition’ in our will, and the ‘actuality’ in the effect. The first, that is, the ‘ability,’ properly belongs to God, who has bestowed it on His creature; the other two, that is, the ‘volition’ and the ‘actuality,’ must be referred to man, because they flow forth from the fountain of the will. For his willing, therefore, and doing a good work, the praise belongs to man; or rather both to man, and to God who has bestowed on him the ‘capacity’ for his will and work, and who evermore by the help of His grace assists even this capacity. That a man is able to will and effect any good work, comes from God alone. So that this one faculty can exist, even when the other two have no being; but these latter cannot exist without that former one. I am therefore free not to have either a good volition or action; but I am by no means able not to have the capacity of good. This capacity is inherent in me, whether I will or no; nor does nature at any time receive in this point freedom for itself. Now the meaning of all this will be rendered clearer by an example or two. That we are able to see with our eyes is not of us; but it is our own that we make a good or a bad use of our eyes. So again (that I may, by applying a general case in illustration, embrace all), that we are able to do, say, think, any good thing, comes from Him who has endowed us with this ‘ability,’ and who also assists this ‘ability;’ but that we really do a good thing, or speak a good word, or think a good thought, proceeds from our own selves, because we are also able to turn all these into evil. Accordingly,—and this is a point which needs frequent repetition, because of your calumniation of us,—whenever we say that a man can live without sin, we also give praise to God by our acknowledgment of the capacity which we have received from Him, who has bestowed such ‘ability’ upon us; and there is here no occasion for praising the human agent, since it is God’s matter alone that is for the moment treated of; for the question is not about ‘willing,’ or ‘effecting,’ but simply and solely about that which may possibly be.”

Augustine of Hippo, “A Treatise on the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” in Saint Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Peter Holmes, vol. 5, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 218–219.