Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic

by B.R. Rees

176 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1991

Reviews

[Dominic Muresan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun little book. Not only is a discussion of Pelagius, a reappraisal if you will, but is also a discussion of the controversy in a new context: contemporary theology. Is Pelagius then put into a better light? Kind of. Hardcore moralist and sincere christian, he comes on like someone who just wants to reform a morally failing church, keeping an extreme position only for the sake of safeguarding the principle of free will that was under attack from Augustine's ideas of original sin and predestination. His ideas, stand better against the test of time than those of his African opponent. Why? They don't pose that many problems for the contemporary theologian as do predestination and original sin. The discussion is much larger than I'm going to portray it, thus I'll only concentrate on the second issue. With the advent of modern science, psychiatry and critical biblical studies, the idea of an original sin being transmitted through the sexual act sounds as compelling as any medical conclusion drawn by Hippocrates. Augustine's whole claim is tied to the actual historical existence of Adam and Eve as actual people, which is not only no more taken for granted, it is mostly discarded from the start. Rees is pretty clear on this subject: we can identify an inner predisposition towards "the bad" in people, but making it be the fair punishment for the mythical act of a mythical person is just extremely unfair. Also the fact that it's related to sexual activity is heavily dependent on an ancient mode of thought that has been since properly disposed of.

Yet the book deals with a lot of different themes (there's a whole chapter on archeological discoveries in wales that some have tied to Pelagianism there), but I've only covered those subjects that have indeed surprised me.

8/10