What Is Divine Grace?… Heresies About Grace That Poisoned Belief

By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM

Part 3

From the early days of Church history, some individuals emerged as self-appointed new “apostles” who allegedly received directly from God the proper understanding of the Sacred Scriptures about this or that subject, especially grace, justification, and salvation.
They disagreed with the Magisterium of the Church — whose teachings came directly from the apostles — and claimed that they knew better, or course. Three of the more famous ones were Pelagius, Luther, and Calvin.
Let us begin with Pelagius. His heresy developed around the year AD 400. Even though his heresy is over 1,600 years old, to this day there are people, both inside and outside the Church, who cling to it in one way or another.
Sometimes I think that the Devil runs out of new ideas and reshapes them to offer to people from time to time — but I digress.
Little or nothing is known about the personal career of Pelagius. It is only after he bade a lasting farewell to Rome in AD 411 that the sources become more abundant; but from 418 on history is again silent about him. Even the country of his birth is disputed. The most trustworthy witnesses are quite explicit in assigning Britain as his native country, as is apparent from his cognomen of Brito or Britannicus.
But St. Jerome, with his usual touch of sarcasm, ridicules him as a “Scot,” who being “stuffed with Scottish porridge” suffered from a poor memory. But some historians argue that the “Scots” of those days were the Irish (an interesting controversy, and one can find more on that in the Catholic Encyclopedia).
Pelagius was highly educated, spoke and wrote Latin as well as Greek with great fluency and was well versed in theology. Though a monk and consequently devoted to practical asceticism, he never was a cleric. Pope Zosimus calls him simply a “layman.”
In any event, Pelagius’ opinions were that:
1) The sin of our first parents was not transmitted to their posterity — that is, it was just their individual personal sin, not the original sin we learn from the Catechism. Consequently, there would be no need for Baptism, to erase original sin;
2) Christ came into the world, not to restore anything we had lost, but to set up an ideal of virtue, and to counteract the evil example of Adam; so, Jesus was just a prophet, a teacher, not the true Redeemer — of course, if there were no original sin, there would be nothing for Him to redeem;
3) We can, by our own natural powers, and without any internal assistance from God, merit the happiness of the Beatific Vision of Heaven.
That is pretty much the sin of Lucifer, who wanted to secure the Beatific Vision without the help of God, as if he had the power to do it by himself. But Pelagius’ doctrines were condemned as heretical by several Popes and councils.
Going from the Pelagian extreme that denies original sin to the other extreme that says that man’s will is enslaved in sin, the heresiarchs Martin Luther and John Calvin asserted that original sin has completely annihilated man’s free will. Man is born a slave of his instincts and will never cease to be a sinner or to live in sin. Man is doomed to be the plaything of God or Satan, of grace or of sinful desire, and is incapable of freely choosing right or wrong.
It is interesting to realize that not many Lutherans and Calvinists agree with their teachings, although they may not realize it. But Luther, by way of self-justification, found a way out of this despairing and miserable state: He believed that it is natural and even necessary for man to sin, and every act of man is sinful. But that he can be saved by “faith” alone. Just believe that Jesus died for you and paid the price of your salvation, and bingo! You are saved!
But do not think that he understood “faith” as the Church teaches. Not at all; he had very a peculiar understanding of his “faith,” which meant for him a trust that God, for the sake of Christ, will not charge us with our sins. It does not matter how much one sins, as long as you trust that God will forgive you, simply because you believe in His forgiveness.
Now, any doctrinal system that rests on a denial of human liberty can be regarded as self-condemned. Because if every act of man were sinful, then every Commandment of God, for example, to honor and love Him, to be just, truthful, etc., would be a commandment to commit sin. And this is utterly abhorrent to reason and common sense, not to say that it is an outright blasphemy.
The Council of Trent upheld human dignity by defining that man’s will is free; that he has not been utterly corrupted by original sin. The Lutheran doctrine that faith alone saves us, is supposed to be based on the words of St. Paul: “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law” (Romans 3:28).
We have already dealt with this matter in previous articles. Suffice to recall that, first of all, Luther ignored completely the fact that St. Paul was speaking of the Mosaic Law, not of the Ten Commandments. Besides, Luther falsified the text by deliberately inserting the word “alone” after “faith.” So in his private Bible, it reads: “For we hold that a man is justified by faith alone apart from works of law.”
By the same process of reading the Bible selectively, he might have proved that it is not faith but grace as the one and only essential for salvation — for the apostle twice says elsewhere that grace saves us: “by grace you have been saved” and “all…are justified by His grace” (Eph. 2:5; 2:8): By grace, not by faith. Or Luther might equally have picked Baptism, for St. Peter says, “Baptism…now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21; cf. Titus 3:5).
Or he could have picked hope, for St. Paul says, “in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24). Or he could have selected the name of Jesus, for, “there is no other name . . . by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Furthermore, Luther completely ignored or misinterpreted St. Paul’s teaching on charity: “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).
St. Paul upheld the indispensable role of good works: “to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life” (Romans 2:7).
St. Paul insisted that the Mosaic Law was over, but he equally insisted on the New Law of Christ: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). He never speaks of faith alone, but of “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6).
Luther called the Epistle of St. James “an epistle of straw” because it so clearly opposes his teaching: St. James says, “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” and “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:17, 24).
In His infinite mercy, God our Lord gives us His grace so that we may perform good works, and He rewards us for those same good works performed by His grace. But we must exercise our free will to say “yes” to His grace, because He will not force us to do good deeds against our will. It is up to us to accept or refuse His help.
Next article: God the Sanctifier of men, part 1.

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(Raymond de Souza, KM, is available to speak at Catholic events anywhere in the free world in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Please email SacredHeartMedia@Outlook.com or visit www.RaymonddeSouza.com or phone 507-450-4196 in the United States.)