The following is a question from a class I am taking at Liberty University. Is man free or God sovereign? Articulate and analyze the positions of Augustine and Pelagius on man’s nature and ability to be holy.

Here is my response.

The above question is often one of those theological loaded questions that from its inception is usually designed to capture a person on one or the other of the two theological divides. The answer to this question and the biblical solution avoids this unhealthy dichotomy.When we ask is man free of God sovereign we may be thinking that we are comparing two similar but opposing ideas. In other words we may think we are saying, “Is apple the better fruit or is orange the better fruit.” Perhaps, we are even thinking we are asking about two very similar things, for example, “Are Macintosh apples better for pie or are Granny Smith apples better for pie?” Both sound reasonable yet the above question is actually impossible to answer because it is asking to compare two non comparable ideas. It is much more like asking is “the fruit apple better than the color orange?” They are so dissimilar that there is no way to answer that question with a either or response. The above question is not a either or question.

So how do we answer such a question. In reality we can not do more than say that yes man is free (though we must ask and qualify but what we mean by free) and yes God is sovereign (again we must ask and qualify but what we mean by sovereign). If man is free, free being the ability to choose between things then of course man is free. If we are asking does this mean man can choose to save himself then no, no one can choose that since that is absurd according to scripture. Save by definition means someone outside of yourself doing something to rescue you. God is sovereign, by sovereign we mean that God is in control of all that can be controlled. This includes the area of salvation in most orthodox thought.

Augustine and Pelagius were asking two very different questions that unfortunately got two well meaning theologians fighting against each other, and often against wrong caricatures of each other. Pelagius was not articulating that “man’s free will was over God’s sovereignty” He presupposed man was free and that God was sovereign. The question of controversy between Pelagius and Augustine was over the idea of original sin. Pelagius argued that man was morally free and thus able volitionally not to sin against God. According to Pelagius, man was born morally neutral. Pelagius argued against cheap grace, and his exact thoughts will never be known this side of heaven. Most of his writings have been destroyed, by proxy he was often condemned unbiblically even though his extant writings and consistent claim consistently deny that man was able to save himself apart from God. In an anathema that Pelagius signed, he anathematized anyone who did not believe that Christ was necessary to save a person from all of their sins in every moment of their lives.

Augustine was worried that if man was able to choose good then this removed the necessity of Jesus sacrifice. Augustine condemned Pelagius view that original sin was not a biblically necessary doctrine. Augustine saw the necessity of original sin as the reason to show man was not morally free from his inception. This was the bases for the sovereign necessity for God to save man from his sins regardless of man’s volition. Hence, the reason Augustine believed in the salvfic nature of infant baptism to wash and cover the results of original sin. Augustine held that man was not holy in any sense before God and could only be holy by God’s sovereign decree and grace.