The Pelagian Heresy: Are People Basically Good Or Is Mankind Sinful?

Pelagianism and the Question of Human Goodness

Hello, and thank you for listening to the Testing the Spirits Podcast. Let me start out with a question. Would you say that you're a good person? Oh sure, maybe compared to that guy over there, you seem pretty good.

But that guy over there, he's not the standard. Who's the standard? Who gets to determine what's right and what's wrong? Well, God. God is the standard. So compared to God, are you good? Compared to the righteousness and holiness of God, are you righteous?

Are you holy? Yeah, I think you're getting the idea. So in this episode, we're going to be talking about what is known as the Pelagian heresy. This is a very relevant issue since Pope Francis, in his recent interview on 60 Minutes, I'm recording this May 22nd, 2024, Pope Francis said in this interview, he said that humanity is basically good.

At our core, we are inherently good. The human heart is good. The Pope said, oh yeah, sure. There are a few sinners out there. Really? A few? First of all, the Bible says in Romans 3 .23 that all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God.

Jesus himself said in the Gospel of Mark that there is none good but God, Mark 10 .18. So Francis is contradicting Jesus. Now, that's nothing new. Popes do this kind of thing all the time, but this was just so very clear.

The Pope says the heart is good. The Bible says in Jeremiah 17 .9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it. But it's not just Pope Francis. Here's the thing. It's not just him.

It's not just the Catholic Church, which you say, well, we've known that they've been apostate for a long time or since their origins. Well, it's not just them. It's also liberal Protestants and professing evangelicals and charismatics such as Joel Osteen.

He has said similar things, and I'll play the clips in a moment. But let's first define our terms. What is Pelagianism? This is from the website GotQuestions .org. They say that Pelagianism is the unbiblical teaching that Adam's sin did not affect future generations of humanity.

So it's a denial of original sin, basically. According to Pelagianism, Adam's sin was solely his own, and Adam's descendants did not inherit a sin nature passed down to them. The Pelagian claims that God creates every human soul directly, and therefore every human soul starts out in innocence, free from sin.

Therefore we are not basically bad, we are basically or inherently good. And then they mention how Pelagianism is named after the monk named Pelagius. That was his name, Pelagius. He lived in the late 300s and early 400s.

The man that we know today as Saint Augustine, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, he opposed Pelagius in his writings, and of course Pelagius was condemned by the church as a heretic. Now I already quoted some of the relevant Bible verses, so let's play the clips of Joel Osteen and Pope Francis.

And I chose these two men because, well, it's in the news now because Francis made these statements, and he's the leader of the Catholic Church. But Joel Osteen, really, Osteen is probably the most famous evangelical in the United States.

Osteen, I remember, is 15 -20 years ago, he met with Billy Graham, Billy Graham endorsed Joel Osteen, and then they were calling Joel Osteen, for a while I remember this, he was called the face of American evangelicalism.

He was seen as the guy who, you know, Billy Graham was getting old and was retired, and Joel Osteen was going to, you know, the torch was passed to Joel Osteen and he was going to carry on the legacy.

So I think it's a good representation to put Osteen here as representing whatever, Protestants, evangelicals, Charismatics, all of them together. So let's watch what the Pope said and what Osteen said, and then we'll get into the Pelagian heresy deeper in a moment.

Watch or listen.

Pope Francis and Joel Osteen on Human Nature

When you look at the world, what gives you hope? Todo.

Everything. You see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things. You see heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me a lot of hope. People want to live, people forge ahead, and people are fundamentally good.

We are all fundamentally good. Yes, there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good.

In dealing with people for several years, thousands of people, one thing I can tell you is 99 .9 of people are not bad people. They may make poor choices, but deep down, they've got a good heart.

Okay, so you saw it, or if you're listening on Spotify, you heard it, Joel Osteen and Pope Francis seemingly denying the Bible when scripture says there is none good, no, not one. In Romans 3, they say, no, mankind is, we're all good.

We're all good. Okay. So let's get in deeper to the Pelagian heresy. Where did it come from? What are the origins? What happened? Basically, towards the end of the fourth century and into the fifth century, there was a debate in the church known as the Pelagian controversy.

A British monk named Pelagius took exception to a written prayer by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Augustine prayed this prayer. He said, Oh God, command what thou wouldst and grant what thou dost command.

Now Pelagius believed that God gave commandments, so he did not object to the first part of the prayer, but he did object to the second part. He rejected the implication that man was unable to obey the commandment of God without God's help or without what we would say is God's grace.

Pelagius reasoned that if God commanded men to obey, they must have the ability within themselves to obey without requiring assistance from the almighty. If God says, for example, if God says, be holy for I am holy, mankind must have the ability within himself to be holy without God having to intervene.

What this really comes down to is the doctrine of original sin, and it's important to remember that original sin does not refer to the first or the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Rather, it refers to the effects of that sin.

So the doctrine of original sin says that all men are born sinners and are hopelessly lost without the grace of God. We are born DOA, dead on arrival, that is spiritually dead, and we are without hope unless God intervenes.

So those who deny original sin, they believe that man is born morally neutral or some would say good, but at least morally neutral. So the two viewpoints are called Pelagianism and Augustinianism. So Augustinianism would be the biblical view, and just to be clear, I do not agree with everything Augustine wrote or believed, so I want to be clear on that.

But Augustine was right here, and certainly Pelagius was wrong. Pelagius, as I said, was condemned by the church as a heretic. However, a modified view developed over time called Semi-Pelagianism, where they did acknowledge that God's grace was necessary for salvation.

However, they said man within himself still had some ability to do good before God. So I was doing some reading, and this same controversy developed. Things change, viewpoints change slightly, they're modified, and basically this same debate resurfaced, and today it's known as the Arminian versus Calvinist debate.

So it is believed that Calvinism or Calvinists carry on the legacy of Augustine, while Arminians hold to that modified view known as Semi-Pelagianism. Although I want to be fair, I think they would reject that view or that label of Semi-Pelagian since it's a pejorative.

Pelagius was condemned as a heretic, so no one wants to adopt a viewpoint with his name on it. But you ask, which is correct? Okay, Pelagianism is a heresy, without question. Semi-Pelagianism says that man is a sinner, but he has the ability within himself to obey God.

He just needs to cooperate with God. And then the Augustinian view says it's a supernatural work of God. If someone is saved, it's because God saved them. It really comes down to a cooperative effort.

Did God save you 100 Or was it man and God working together? Does original sin affect us completely 100 Or does original sin only affect us to a degree and we still have some inherent goodness of our own?

So the Semi-Pelagian view would say we do have some inherent goodness. So that Semi-Pelagianism, Augustinianism define that. And again, just flat out Pelagianism where mankind is good and he's not sinful.

I mean, that's what the Pope said. There's a few sinners out there implying that man is not sinful, man is good. Well, I mean, that's what the Pope said. So how do we answer this? Well, I think the passage in the Bible that best speaks to this issue, and knowing that people watching this video are going to have differing viewpoints, and that's fine.

I mean, I think people can agree to disagree on Augustinianism or Semi-Pelagianism. Some of you are hearing these terms, and you're like, I don't even know what these terms mean, and I just believe the Bible.

Okay, God bless you. But I think the passage that if you want to look, okay, what does the Bible say about this? I think Ephesians 2 clears it up. In my mind, this clears everything up. So let's read Ephesians 2 starting in verse 1.

The Apostle Paul says,. And you, he that is God, made alive, and you, he made alive, who are dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

So that statement that we were all by nature children of wrath, I mean, that totally refutes the Pelagian viewpoint. But God, okay, so verses 1 through 3, that's the bad news. The good news starts in verse 4.

But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, and what can a dead person do? A dead person can't do anything. We're dead. Verse 5 says that God made us alive.

Depending on the translation, I could show you in the Bible where it says God caused us to be born again. God made us alive. To me, that settles it. Let me just start over. But God, who is rich in mercy, verse 4, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. See, it's not us. It's nothing within us. God did it all. That's why God gets all the glory. And verse 6, he raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. God had to give us the grace, and he gave us the faith. Romans says that God gives to each one a measure of faith. So for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. I think that's pretty clear. So in conclusion, mankind, despite what the Pope says, despite what Joel Osteen says, mankind is not basically good.

Mankind is sinful to the core. Any goodness within us is because of God. What does the book of Hebrews say? You say, well, unbelievers, even though they don't know God and they don't have the Holy Spirit, they can still do good.

The book of Hebrews chapter 11 says otherwise. 11 .6, without faith, no one is able to please God. Without God, no one can do good. That's what the Bible says. I realize people disagree with that, but that's what the Bible says.

So here's the thing. Bottom line, if Pope Francis is correct, if Joel Osteen is correct, and that most people are good, good people don't need to be saved. Only sinners need to be saved. So this really undercuts, if not flat out, denies the gospel.

Good people don't need salvation. Jesus said, I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And that's me. And that's you. Now, is that a popular message? Of course not. They crucified Jesus.

After all, they tried killing his apostles just as they persecuted the prophets of old. So people who speak this truth are not going to be loved by the world. I mean, sure, someone like Joel Osteen will get a contract, you know, from Sirius XM radio, you know, they'll be put on television.

They'll get invited to the White House or, you know, Pope Francis is beloved. The interviewer on 60 minutes was a Nora O'Donnell. I forget who it was. You know, she's just, yeah, she's just shaking her shoes.

She was loving what Pope Francis said. Pope Francis is loved by the world. Many of these preachers are loved by the world. Well, Jesus said in Luke 626, woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets, false prophets, and false teachers tell people what they want to hear.

That's why the world loves them. But true prophets and true teachers and preachers of the gospel, they tell people what they need to hear. So that's the bad news that everyone is born into this world in trespasses and sins.

Everybody is a sinner. But the good news is that in Christ, there is forgiveness. Thanks for listening. And until next time, may the Lord be with you. Have a great day.