Pelagius was a well-regarded British monk full of self-improvement platitudes and a \u201cyou can do it\u201d attitude.\u00a0 So he went to Rome in order to spread his good news.<\/p>\n
His news was that he found a principle in which humans could work their way to salvation.\u00a0 He had figured out that the immaterial principle that bound anima<\/em> to caro<\/em> could be moulded by reason and good practice, which he had by the bushel and was ready to sell to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n He was selling \u201cfree will without grace\u201d or maybe, \u201cgood works without grace\u201d.\u00a0 Good works were the way to earn passage to heaven.<\/p>\n This upset the Bishop of Carthage, whose previous career as a scam artist \u2013 er, Manichean philosopher – allowed him to smell a rat.\u00a0 He countered forcefully.\u00a0 There could be no salvation without grace, no good works without grace, nothing without God\u2019s inspiration.<\/p>\n But did Augustine have a model for how the person comes to be?\u00a0 Drawing on the resources of his previous career, he proposed a model very similar to the pagans: The anima<\/em> \u2013 created for each person by God – joined the caro<\/em> \u2013 from the union of man and woman – by way of spiritual descent.<\/p>\n The caveat: Because of Adam\u2019s transgression, the \u201clanding point\u201d was lower than Adam and Eve as they were created by sanctifying grace, lower than humans in their natural state of animalistic freedom, lower than the imaginary humans chained inside of Plato\u2019s cave.\u00a0 Every human was born into Original Sin.<\/p>\n Help.\u00a0 I\u2019ve fallen and I can\u2019t get up.<\/p>\n The only way to get up is to get baptized.\u00a0 Baptism is the first, crucial installment of divine grace, the remission of Original Sin.\u00a0 That remission will allow the solution: an ascent to the Father through his divine grace.\u00a0 Jesus is the minister of that grace.\u00a0 Jesus will lift you up.<\/p>\n With this caveat in mind, Augustine\u2019s apparently stupid proposals begin to make sense.\u00a0 Augustine did everything he could to make the Fall such a huge transition that, when it was coupled to the (formerly pagan) model of descent of the soul, the end point was so deep that emergency steps had to be taken to get out of the hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pelagius was a well-regarded British monk full of self-improvement platitudes and a \u201cyou can do it\u201d attitude.\u00a0 So he went to Rome in order to spread his good news. His news was that he found a principle in which humans could work their way to salvation.\u00a0 He had figured out that the immaterial principle that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-science-of-original-sin"],"yoast_head":"\n