Pelagianism and the ‘Common Celtic Church’

Abstract

A handful of direct references to the existence of Pelagianism in the British church in the fifth century, another reference to Pelagianism in the Irish church in the seventh, and the use of Pelagius' works (one work in particular, often cited under his own name by Irish writers) have all raised the suspicion that from the fifth century on there may have been a distinctive British and Irish theological tradition, one of whose characteristics was that it was shaped by Pelagianism.The idea has been debated until recently in articles rather than in full-length monographs.Some authors have concluded that there was no commitment to Pelagian theology in Ireland, and no long-term serious dalliance with Pelagianism in Britain either, apart from whatever was going on in that short-lived episode in Britain when Germanus was sent (perhaps twice) to sort out an allegedly Pelagian church, or a Pelagian element in the British church.J.F. Kelly, for example, having studied the use of Pelagius' writings in Hiberno-Latin literature, and in continental writings with an Irish link, concluded:Available evidence links the Irish somehow to every known use of Pelagius by name in the early Middle Ages and to considerable anonymous use as well.There are a number of ways to explain this phenomenon.One way, however, not to explain it is as a Pelagian party or movement in the Irish church.Most of the Irish use of Pelagius was selective and for explication of certain passages.Nowhere was Pelagius used to exclusion of orthodox Fathers, especially not to his adversaries Augustine and Jerome.His use simply does not reflect Pelagian attitudes. 2 Kelly pointed out that all the known Irish uses of Pelagius' writings are those taken from his Expositiones XIII epistolarum Pauli, which contain only one seriously 'Pelagian' comment, that on Romans 5:15, which is not used by the Irish writers except once where it is cited and highlighted as erroneous: 'this is an answer to the lies of the heretics.' 3 In other words, though the Irish were happy to use Pelagius' commentary on the Pauline epistles, there is no evidence that they adopted Pelagian theology.Indeed the way they used Pelagius' commentary suggests that they were both aware of, and determined to avoid, his views on grace and nature.Other scholars have formed the view that the evidence of British and Irish sources points towards a non-Pelagian but pre-Augustinian orthodoxy on the questions of grace that lie at the heart of the Pelagian dispute. 4 Prior to the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius in the 1

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