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Augustine's Views on Heresies Explained

The document discusses Augustine's critiques of various heresies including Donatism, Pelagianism, Manichaeism, and Arianism. Augustine argues that Donatists resist Catholicism due to tradition, while he emphasizes the necessity of divine intervention for overcoming sin in Pelagianism. He also refutes the notion of a purely evil being in Manichaeism and asserts the eternal existence of Christ against Arianism, which the church ultimately deemed heretical.

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16 views1 page

Augustine's Views on Heresies Explained

The document discusses Augustine's critiques of various heresies including Donatism, Pelagianism, Manichaeism, and Arianism. Augustine argues that Donatists resist Catholicism due to tradition, while he emphasizes the necessity of divine intervention for overcoming sin in Pelagianism. He also refutes the notion of a purely evil being in Manichaeism and asserts the eternal existence of Christ against Arianism, which the church ultimately deemed heretical.

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gehanelvi
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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• Donatism

- Donatists, according to Augustine, are unwilling to convert to Catholicism because of


the "bondage of tradition" and a "inveterate sluggishness of intellect," even though
they are aware that Catholicism is true. Augustine offers an excursus on civil
disobedience and persecution. Augustine acknowledges that it is true that a good
person must abide by civil rules that conflict with God's truth. However, it is also true
that people who disregard moral rules that are in line with God's truth will be judged.
As a result, those who receive punishment for disobeying just rules do not benefit.
Those who suffer for the cause of virtue are the "true martyrs."

• Pelagianism
- In Augustine’s view, no amount of moral training can deliver a person from his
inherited sinfulness. That can only be achieved by spiritual death and resurrection to
a new life, which is not ours but Christ’s. Augustine maintained and developed his
opposition to Pelagianism until his death in AD 430, but by then most of the church
had been won over to his views. The heresy of Pelagius and his followers was
constantly denounced. Pelagianism go beyond the heresy of a single person and his
followers. The idea that there is a universal human sinfulness for which we are all
responsible is hard for many people to accept, even if they are officially committed to
Augustinian principles.

• Manichaeism
- The Manichaeans viewed God as the leader of the good and Satan as the most evil
opponent. Augustine was opposed to the thought of a fully evil being since God,
being purely good, could not create a purely wicked being, and any entity with some
good from the beginning could not be corrupted to purely evil. In any case, the idea
that evil came into the world from a pure evil force was diametrically opposed to
Augustine's notion that evil is caused by man's unwillingness to love God and his
fellow man.

• Arianism
- Arianism is considered a heresy since it denies Christ's eternal existence. Arius
believes that the Son did not always exist and that Jesus was created by the Father.
This would imply that Christ was a creation of a higher force rather than being
completely God. After more than a century of debate in many early church councils,
the Christian church officially rejected Arianism as a heretical teaching. Since that
time, arianism has never been recognized as a legitimate Christian theology.

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