Pelagianism

Pelagius' Doctrines of Original Sin and Grace

The Pelagian Doctrine of Original Sin

Before the Doctrine of Original Sin could be addressed, the stage had to be set as to where Pelagius came from with his doctrine even though the Doctrine of Original Sin and Free Will are very closely related. Former Princeton Seminary principal, A. A Hodge sums up the doctrine this way: “By his transgression, Adam injured only himself, not his posterity. In respect to his moral nature, every man is born in precisely the same condition in which Adam was created. There is therefore no original sin.”[1]

To Pelagius, Adam could only affect himself if he used his free will to sin. The will of Adam had to be intact before he could have made a choice. Once the choice was made, Adam’s transgression was not transmitted through the generations as the Traducians believed. Instead, Pelagius held to Creationism which stated that each soul was created, sinless, and held separately from the body.[2] For to him, he asked, “how can sin be imputed by God to the man, which he has not known as his own?”[3] He gets this from his denial of the ruination of race in which he believed that death was already present in the world when Adam sinned. Death was a necessary thing of nature, not because of the sin of Adam.[4]