semi-Pelagianism, in 17th-century theological terminology, the doctrine of an anti-Augustinian movement that flourished from about 429 to about 529 in southern France. The surviving evidences of the original movement are limited, but it is clear that the fathers of semi-Pelagianism were monks who stressed the need of ascetic practices and who were highly respected leaders in the church. The writings of three of these monks had positive influence on the history of the movement. They were St. John Cassian, who had lived in the East and who founded two monasteries in Massilia (Marseille); St. Vincent, a monk of the celebrated Abbey of Lérins; and St. Faustus, bishop of Riez, a former monk and abbot at Lérins, who at the request of Provence bishops wrote De gratia (“Concerning Grace”), in which semi-Pelagianism was given its final form and one more naturalistic than that provided by Cassian.
Unlike the Pelagians, who denied original sin and believed in perfect human free will, the semi-Pelagians believed in the universality of original sin as a corruptive force in humanity. They also believed that without God’s grace this corruptive force could not be overcome, and they therefore admitted the necessity of grace for Christian life and action. They also insisted on the necessity of baptism, even for infants. But contrary to St. Augustine, they taught that the innate corruption of humankind was not so great that the initiative toward Christian commitment was beyond the powers of a person’s native will.
This commitment was called by St. John Cassian initium fidei (“beginning of faith”) and by St. Faustus of Riez credulitatis affectus (“feeling of credulity”). According to this view, an individual by unaided will could desire to accept the gospel of salvation but could not be actually converted without divine help. In later semi-Pelagianism, divine help was conceived not as an internal empowering graciously infused by God into a person but as purely external preaching or the biblical communication of the gospel, of the divine promises, and of the divine threats. The strong point for all semi-Pelagians was the justice of God: God would not be just if humans were not natively empowered to make at least the first step toward salvation. If salvation depended initially and unilaterally only on God’s free election of the saved, those not chosen could complain that they were doomed by the mere fact of being born.
The result of semi-Pelagianism, however, was the denial of the necessity of God’s unmerited, supernatural, gracious empowering of human will for saving action. It contradicted St. Paul and St. Augustine, and the latter was by papal declaration the approved Catholic doctor in the question of grace and thus beyond attack.
In its early stages, semi-Pelagianism was opposed in Gaul by two polemicists, St. Prosper of Aquitaine and an otherwise unknown St. Hilary of Arles. After Faustus’s death (c. 490), semi-Pelagianism was still highly respected, but the doctrine declined in the 6th century, primarily through the action of St. Caesarius of Arles. At the instigation of Pope Felix IV (526–530), Caesarius condemned semi-Pelagianism at the Second Council of Orange (529). The condemnation was approved by Pope Boniface II, Felix’s successor. From that point on, semi-Pelagianism was recognized as a heresy in the Roman Catholic Church.