In his latest Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis cautions the faithful to avoid what he sees as two re-emerging Christian heresies, Gnosticism and Pelagianism. I will speak on the former another time, but today I would like to address the latter—Pelagianism. Thanks to the hammer of over-correction, this whack-a-mole heresy is perpetually popping up within the history of the Church. Now that Pope Francis fixed the crosshairs upon this heresy, we need to also guard against its over-correcting counterpart, Quietism. In order to do this we must find the spiritual middle ground.
To begin, a few definitions are in order. Pelagianism has a number of principal tenets but its essence consists in a denial of the supernatural order and the necessity of grace for salvation. Despite condemnations from numerous Popes and Councils, it still persists to this day. Likewise with the heresy of Quietism which puts forth the position that to become perfect one must be totally passive in the spiritual life waiting for God to act. Quietism rejects not only prayers with any specific content (like acts of love, petition or adoration) but also sees mortification and the sacraments as useless. Despite coming from a different starting point, notice how this heresy comes to the same practical conclusions of Pelagianism. Left unchecked, these heresies leave us dangling on a pendulum mostly due to a failure to make a crucial distinction. It is a failure to make what we might call the “Natural-Supernatural Distinction” that lay at the heart of the re-emergence of Pelagianism along with the seemingly endless “Faith vs Works” debate that has plagued Catholic and Protestant discussion for centuries.
The Important Distinction
This distinction comes into focus once we examine the following proposition—“Free will, without the help of God’s grace, acts only in order to sin.” How should we respond to this? In order to condemn Pelagianism, we want to accept the proposition. The problem however is that the Church condemns this one as well. Pope St. Pius V in his 1567 Papal Bull Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus anathematized this proposition as contrary to the Faith. How can both Pelagianism and this proposition be false? It hinges on what we mean by good when we ask the question, “can we be good without God’s grace?”.
A morally good act is one that is in accord with right reason and fulfills our nature. Thus a man, without being under the influence of grace can act prudently by doing what is just, temperate, and courageous in specific situations. He may even do so habitually so that he grows in virtue and becomes a “good” man. History is replete with examples of good pagans and other non-Christians so it seems undeniable to think one cannot be good without grace. But no matter how many good things he does, a man cannot do a single thing that will merit him everlasting life. In the face of that end, he is like a cow reading Shakespeare, utterly incapable. But unlike the cow, man can have a super-nature grafted onto him that enables him to perform God-like actions. Once he receives this nature, that is, once he becomes a “partaker of the divine nature” (c.f. 2 Peter 1:4) and is given sanctifying grace can he now do things that will fulfill his gifted supernatural end.
The Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and brings with Him a new set of human powers. First He brings infused virtues that enable the man to direct his actions to God. No longer does he act for some particular good, His actions can be habitually directed towards the ultimate Good, God Himself. And he is rewarded accordingly. He is given the power to be moved directly by that same Spirit with His seven-fold gifts. And he is rewarded accordingly. He is, day by day, made not just good but holy. No longer are his actions merely good in the natural sense but now they are supernaturally good. St. Thomas sums it up well when he says “without grace man cannot merit everlasting life; yet he can perform works conducing to a good which is natural to man” (ST I-II q.109 a.5).
Becoming More Human
As the Supernature becomes more and more operative in the man, he becomes more human and not less. “Christ came to fully reveal man to himself and make his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). Grace most certainly perfects nature, but only to the extent that we cooperate with it. How do we nurture this super-nature? By becoming naturally good. Cooperation really means that remove the obstacles that we place in the way. Growth in the infused virtue of prudence, for example, is directly related to growth in the acquired virtue of prudence. This is not because the infused virtues are somehow grafted on top of the natural virtues, but because the natural virtues facilitates the removal of any obstacles to the infused virtue being completely operative. This is why we must never forget the truth that we are capable on our own of growing in natural virtue.
This is important because we often remain rather passive in our attempts to grow in holiness. Avoiding any traces of Pelagianism, we have a tendency to be rather passive in our attempts to grow in holiness and move towards an equally spiritually impotent habit of Quietism. We wait for God to provide the growth but forget that we have the power to till and fertilize the soil in the meantime. We should be at all times working diligently to grow in the natural virtues so that when the grace of growth comes, there is nothing stopping it. And this is why the “Natural-Supernatural Distinction” is so important for us to grasp. Naturally we cannot achieve any merit, but we can (naturally) remove the impediments by actively cultivating the acquired virtues. We must constantly be at work fertilizing our soil. No saint ever reached the heights of holiness without going through a stage of active purgation. We are still fallen creatures so that our efforts at natural perfection will always fall short. This is why each of the saints also went through a stage of passive purgation in which God, through the workings of Providence and actual graces, completes the growth in perfection.
The problem with most heresies is not so much that they are false, but that they tend to overemphasize one aspect of the truth at the expense of other aspects. In this regard, Pelagianism is no different with its over-emphasis on human effort. But the response is not then to become a Quietist, passively waiting on God to act. Instead, we must live the “both/and” doctrine of the Faith in which we follow the rule of St. Ignatius, “pray as if everything depended upon God and work as if everything depended on you.”