All right, I'm going to begin reading Matthew 5, verse 43, and I'll end at verse 48. You have heard that it was said, you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so. And then this verse 48, therefore you shall be perfect just as your father in heaven is perfect. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time again to look at a portion of church history. And we pray that you would help us today as we work through Augustine, Pelagius and the council of Carthage. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. So we have met Augustine. We've spent two weeks talking about Augustine. The first week talking about his growth as a person and his conversion and his relationship with his family and those sorts of things. And then last week we talked about him as a preacher and a teacher of the word of God, some of his theories on preaching, and then also talked about looked at some of his preaching as examples. So we've met Augustine. And most people, when they hear about Augustine, they know something of the name Pelagius. So Pelagius, or the movement that's named after him, which is Pelagianism, or the modified version of Pelagianism, which is called semi-Pelagianism. People know something about that. So I thought we would talk about that today. And when we talk about Pelagianism, as we'll get into it, I want you to understand right from the beginning that Pelagianism had an appeal to a universal theme within humanity. And that universal theme is something that is run wild in our culture today. And it's the idea that each person has the right to define themselves. And we are free to create our own values. And in the midst of society, the idea of my will or my rights or my freedoms being something that is universally appealing. I think that touches on the heart strings of us as people when we hear something about pulling up ourselves by our bootstraps or, the idea of the freedom to do what we want and these sorts of things. So there's a universal appeal to what was being taught. Now, let's start with who was Pelagius. We don't actually know a ton about Pelagius. We know more about him from things written about him. We don't actually have a whole body of corpus. Remember with Augustine, we have 5 million written words that can help us to figure out who he is and work through who he is. In Pelagius, we have a lot less writing that's available. But we do know some things. His name, Pelagius, comes from the word pelagos, meaning seaborne. And as he's in Rome, and as he gets a reputation in Rome, he takes on the name of somebody who had to cross the sea in order to get to Rome. He's born around 354. of course and then also he is British or Celtic or Irish so he's from either Scotland or he's from Ireland and he's very well-educated. So he's well-educated, he knows Latin, he knows Greek, he knows the ancient philosophies the way that Augustine did. He knew rhetoric so he's very well-versed. in these things the way that Augustine also was very well-versed. So when we think about Pelagius, I don't want you to think about just some clown coming on to the scene of history that needs to be dealt with. We're talking about somebody who is an intellectual, somebody who is capable of drawing in a crowd, somebody who is capable of writing and convincingly and promoting his own work. And that's connected to the fact that he, was noted for being gregarious. He was able to gather a following. He's able to gather patrons around himself and using sort of modern parlance, he was a marketer. He knew how to market his ideas and market himself and bring around those who would fund that which needed to be marketed as his ideas. Now somebody we haven't really met yet in church history but we're going to shortly is Jerome. Jerome writing against Pelagius said that he was stuffed with Irish porridge. So that was something that is almost out of character for Jerome but it tells us something about where he's from and it also tells us something about the fact that he had great enemies in the church. A lot of the movers and shakers that are important in ancient church history at this time are opposed to him. Now, Pelagius leaves Ireland or the British Isles, Scotland, wherever he's from in there, and he ends up going to Rome. He goes to Rome because he's provincial. And he's beyond his area and he needs to go to the center of the world so that he can be involved in intellectual life and conversations and part of that cultural milieu that Rome had provided. And when he gets to Rome, that's really when the problems with Pelagius begin. And eventually, his plan was to leave Rome and then go to Palestine via North Africa. Now, we haven't talked about the reason he left Rome yet but there's something substantial that happens in Rome that drives a lot of the financially able and the intellectuals out of Rome. We'll talk about that next week. But we know that he leaves Rome for Palestine and he does that by crossing the Mediterranean so that he can go over through Egypt and up into Palestine that way. And when he does that, he ends up in North Africa. Now, as he's in North Africa, that is when this clash between Augustine and Pelagius is going to happen. Now, what is at the center of that clash? We could probably summarize in just a few short words within the writings of St. Augustine. And that is, command what you will and give what you command. Now, this is a statement that's found in the confessions of St. Augustine. And what he means by that is this is a prayer where he's praying to God. He's saying, God, you do whatever it is. You tell me what to do in life. And then you have to be the one that gives me the strength and the grace to be able to do the things that you've commanded. Now, we may hear that as reformed people. We may hear that and it not affect our minds at all. We just might say, yes, amen, and be ready to hold on to a statement like that. But for those that are convinced that the human will is totally free and totally able and without sin, hearing the idea of command what you will and then give what you command, those are contradictory statements. And this is a statement that as Pelagius got into Rome, he would talk about this, and he would lecture on this, and he would speak against even these words that were well known in the ancient world, even through Saint Augustine or Augustine. So he thought that these words were that they promoted cheap grace and they undermined human responsibility, that these were not words in his mind that were worth having. One said that he was the British monk who denied the human race had fallen in Adam, he denied original sin, he denied total depravity, and he denied predestination. So his system of doctrine or his system for how he understands the scriptures is completely different from that system that Augustine is promoting where this absolute human depravity and that need for grace in order to even reach out and to hold on to Christ and that idea that there is predestination and there is election according to the scriptures. One said that he was a refugee from Rome, had landed at the harbor and called to pay his respects on his way through Jerusalem. This is when he gets to North Africa. The visitor was a monk named Pelagius who lived in Rome for several years and there acquired a considerable reputation as a moralist and spiritual director. He left behind him in Africa a friend and a traveling companion named Celestius. He was a lawyer. who too eloquently advocated for Pelagius' opinions and soon created a buzz of anxiety at Carthage. So there's Pelagius that's the speaker, there is the promoter or the marketeer who's a lawyer and he's able to argue even on behalf of Pelagius and he's doing that work of going before him and promoting his ideas and helping people to see something about who Pelagius is. Now, We mentioned some of what it is. We'll get more into that. We've mentioned some of who Pelagius is. But I want you to think about how when we started with Lecture 1 or Talk 1 in this, we talked about some of the ways that we do history as a Christian. And one of the things that I mentioned is that movements and ideas are never created in a vacuum. Right? So, some idea isn't just going to spring up in history and it not be related to what's going on in society. Like those of you that do a lot of reading on World War II, you'll talk about how World War I crashed the German economy and how all of the imposed limits on the German people and how all of the financial restrictions put on the German people, how these, these things led to the rise of Nazism that ended up being part of the cause of World War II. So that's a sociological reason that a historical event happens. And this is true for all of history. And here for Pelagianism, finding a root in Christianity and in its time period in the Roman Empire, We have to ask some about what is going on, what is that sociological background or what are the cultural milieus that are involved in that. Now, in Rome, there is this oppressive idea that the families who were members that Pelagius had addressed, so there's this idea that those that Pelagius is speaking to, They had lapsed in their Christianity and they began living in such a way that moral decline was what was seen in the church. You remember some of the ways that Christianity began to flourish in the Roman Empire was that people looked on to the Christians and they said they live differently than we do. They love life differently than we do. They take care of their own differently than we do. They take care of the poor. They take care of the orphan. They take care of the widow. And what had happened is that there is a moral laxity that is seen within the church and it is causing the church to decline. It's the idea that the good man of the Roman Empire had become the good Christian of the fifth century. That's how one said it. So just you look out at society and say, yeah, that's a good person and they have no religious values. They're pagan. And then you look at the Christian church and you say, they're good Christians. And you compare the good man in society and the good Christian and you say, they're really the same. There's not really something that distinguishes the Christians in the way that they're used to be. Someone said, late Roman etiquette could pass as Christian humility, generosity traditionally expected of an aristocrat, as Christian almsgiving. It is better to give than receive was a popular tag, but like all biblical citations, it was used to ease the conscience and no one could quite remember where it came from. Yet good Christians, true believers, are members of a ruling class committed to maintaining the imperial laws by administering brutal punishment. So there are Christians that are in power and those Christians that are in power are becoming oppressive to those that disagree with them. and they're living with moral laxity and they're not demonstrating that Christianity is something that is of great value. And then they go on and the things that they are most concerned about or that people generally see them most concerned about are their properties, One said that they could discuss at the dinner table a theological opinion at which they prided themselves as experts and then also the judicial torture that they inflicted on some poor wretch. So in the same conversation, having these conversations. And for the first time, we see that Christianity as it's on the rise, it's becoming easy to say, I know God, I believe in God, I serve God, I'm a Christian, and all of this moral laxity that is happening within the church. So this is something that we see as the Christians are living in such a way that an idea like Pelagianism that talks about freedom of the will and moral perfection, we can see that connection and that rise. One said that while many Christians were enjoying the ease of the empire and the freedoms allowed, the Pelagians were being serious about their works-based faith. So the people saw the works of the Pelagians. even though they're trying to earn salvation or to be made right with God or to be seen of God. And yet people are looking and they're saying, these people have works. It's sort of like people that see the Mormons today or the Jehovah's Witnesses today, and they say, oh, look what they're doing. But behind what they're doing is they're trying to be made right with God. We saw Christians increasing in wealth and comfort. while political assassinations and raids from barbarians and ruling class living as libertines, that's people with total freedom, immoral freedoms, these are the ones that are calling themselves Christians. So the culture is starting to crumble, barbarians are coming in and those that are the Christians that are supposed to be protecting society because of their ruling class They're just concerned about eating, drinking, and being merry. And then also, the Pelagians were organized, and they were looking outwardly. So they weren't just looking in and serving with themselves, but they were looking outwardly. And that brought influence to others outside of the Christian church. So another reason is that the Pelagians sought a church without spot or blemish. I read from Jesus' words in Matthew 5 where he says, be ye perfect as your father in heaven is also perfect. That became something of a promoted idea that we were able to reach perfection because God commands perfection. Remember, it's not command what you will and give what you command. It's whatever God commands is something we can attain by our own strength and by our own power, something that is completely different from what we would believe. And the Plagians also saw the church as a moderate or a compromising institution. Again, one said, the average good Christian layman of the late empire over an austere reforming ideal, Augustine described just the sort of man that he had found a place in the church, a man with a few good works to his name, a man who slept with his wife for lack of a better alternative and often just for the pleasure of it, touchy on points of honor, given to vendettas, not a land grabber but capable of fighting to keep his own, though only in the bishop's court, and for all that, a good Christian in Augustine's sense, was looking on himself as a disgrace and giving the glory to God. So Augustine saw that there are these struggles in the Christian life. You know, a man may not love his wife or a man may struggle with doing good works or a man may be more concerned about his own property than other people's property. And Augustine says that he looks on himself as a disgrace and turns and looks to God and gives God the glory. for what he is. And Pelagius looks on that and he says, this is wrong. This is totally not what Christianity should look like. So what is this? What is Pelagianism? I mentioned there's a lack of primary sources. There's a lack of, you know, we don't have like the corpus of the writings of Pelagius. There's some writings but there's not as much as he, not everything that he wrote has been kept and a lot of his writing has been destroyed but it's kept either in people that promote Pelagius or the enemies of Pelagius. So if you write against Pelagius and you've got a whole bunch of quotes that are in there, scholars are able to look at those quotes and pull out what Pelagius believed about certain things and then that is compared to the promoters of Pelagius to see if the enemies and the promoters are being intellectually honest in what they say. And that's important to understand in history. But here's something that we do have. We have a partial commentary on Romans and in that commentary we see that it's clear that there's no hereditary transmission of sin passed down since the fall of Adam through the reproductive process. And Pelagius told us that we sin by voluntary imitation of Adam's transgression, corrupted indeed by external environment and successive wrong choices that weaken the will's resolution, but never by fault inherent in our nature with which we are born in this world. So we see a system that is completely foreign to our thinking. He also said that, this is Pelagius, he says, he had made men to execute his commands and he would condemn to hell anyone who failed to perform them. So Pelagius understands wrath, he understands punishment for sin, but his ideas of human responsibility are that we are capable and we are able to fulfill all of these things even to the glory of God. So some other things about Pelagius. He defines grace in the way that is said on the screen there. It's divine aid conveyed through moral exertion and the supreme example of Christ. You imagine if that's all of your hope in the world, like you're really struggling as a Christian. And you're like, Lord, I need grace. And the Pelagian pastor comes to visit you. And you're like, actually, what is this grace that I need? And he says, work harder and see the perfect example of Jesus and do that. That's not much hope, is it? And that's what Pelagius is promoting. He also said that the natural faculties of reason and free will are given to all of humans as they were given at creation. He says we have moral instruction from the scripture and the example of Christ's life. So all of the commands of the Bible, these are all things that we are able to fulfill according to Pelagius. And he says that the revelation of God's law is there as one that we can obey. It's not there to show us our sin. It's there so that we can follow that and obey that at will. Another quote from Pelagius, he says, whenever I have to speak of laying down rules for the behavior and conduct of a holy life, I always point out, first of all, that the power and functioning of human nature and show what is capable of doing, lest I should seem to be wasting my time by calling on people to embark on a course which they consider impossible to achieve. So again, just this real heavy focus on you're able to do anything because your will is free. And when you fail, when you make mistakes, that's on you not because of your nature, not because of a fallen nature, but because you've chosen to do that. So he had no patience for the idea that the human nature was fallen. He was unable to deal with that and he refused to regard this power of self-improvement as something that is damaged. And it is damaged. It's not something that we are able to do. And the idea of original sin, that we are born with Adam's sin, was absurd to Pelagius and he loathed Augustine's confessions. He loathed the idea that there was a man who struggled with sin and was fully reliant upon the grace of God. He saw that as a weakness. So was this a big deal? We hear that, and I'm not intending to promote it this way, and I mentioned this at the beginning, but we hear that and we sort of hear like a clown. You know, like, why would anyone think that? Or why would that be something that Christians would get sucked into? And the answer is, yes, it is a big deal. When we think about the big ideas and the big movements in the church, even the negative ideas, this is probably the second largest crisis in Christian history. So, so far we've had the Aryan controversy. There was a major crisis within the church, and in some ways, if you looked at it merely from our eyes, we could see that the church was about to crash as Arianism was flourishing. And here we have a second major crisis where it looks like Pelagius is able to succeed. Human nature and free will and the virtue of the law, these are all things that promoted the self-acquired virtue that Pelagius was promoting and it found itself flourishing first in Rome and then as he comes to North Africa, remember North Africa there's a large intellectual tradition that we talked about in North Africa. And these ideas are beginning to flourish. So Augustine also in North Africa decides to pick up his pen. And we know that he is a prolific writer. He's an extensive writer. He seems to have time for writing books at all times. And he does. He writes against Pelagius. And he does that with several books. So the first that he writes is called On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin. So this is a book specifically against Pelagius. And he, Augustine, defends the doctrine of original sin. He emphasizes the need for divine grace. in order for us to be converted so that we can even believe the gospel. And he talks about the Lord Jesus and the way that grace comes to us as believers. But one book for Augustine was not enough. He goes on and he writes a second book against Pelagius. And that book is called On Nature and Grace. And this is a book that addresses Pelagius' denial Original sin and it is a book that talks about the corruption of the human heart and how we are in need of grace in order to be redeemed and then book two goes around Pelagius is still going and Augustine says I'll write another book and that is on the spirit and the letter and here he responds to Pelagius is teaching of the nature of the Bible, the nature of the law, how we are able to fulfill the law through our good obedience. And here he tells us that the Holy Spirit is given to the church as a gift of grace, and only through the Holy Spirit are we able to fulfill the word of God. So that controversy goes on and then another book is written. This one is actually two letters that are, remember when the ancients wrote letters, they were very extensive and they were essentially like what we call maybe a pamphlet or a booklet. It's not just an email or a text, you know, it's something extensive. And these two letters are a response to the supporters of Pelagius where again he focuses on, grace and he focuses on original sin. And then he writes on the predestination of the saints. And there, you know, I think it's self-explanatory what he's writing on but he's arguing against the idea that we are free to choose because our nature is free. And he speaks of predestination and how the Bible teaches predestination. And then he gives one more called On the Gift of Perseverance. And this refutes the idea that we, through human effort, are able to persevere in the Christian faith. And Augustine writes that the gift of perseverance is I almost said persecution. The gift of perseverance is that we are able to do this through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit because we've been converted, because God gives us the grace to continue. So you see this blows up where Pelagius is writing, Augustine's writing. It's part of the discussion of the ancient world. And then as the church has done and as the church still does today, there is a council called to deal with this issue because it's blowing up the churches. So we might call it, this is a local council, but we may call it a presbytery meeting or a synod meeting where there's some idea that's being promoted and there's pastors that are saying, this is right and good and biblical. And there are other pastors, normally a minority, that are saying, this is right and good and biblical. And the pastors and the elders need to come together to hash it out with the Bible open and to determine what the Bible says. And the Council of Carthage was called in 419 for the purpose of dealing with Pelagius. Now, this is a regional council of bishops in North Africa. These decisions will be passed on to a greater council a few years later. in Ephesus which we'll talk about at another time. So there's three meetings at the Council of Carthage. There's one in May of 419 where the most of the discussions were administrative and dealing with appeals that had been sent to Rome. and discussion on what the power of the local synod was versus a higher synod. So anyone that's been to a Presbytery meeting or a synod meeting or knows enough about Presbyterian polity, all of that sounds so familiar, right? You spend like a whole day talking about administrative stuff and how we should do this and the way that we should do that. And then the next meeting happens in June or July. And this is to clarify the Pelagian controversy. This is to make decisions on the relationship between grace and the Christian life, the nature of sin, the nature of humans, and how we are born. And that debate happened in mid-419. And then in August, there's another meeting regarding church discipline. So how do we follow through with the discipline of those that have been talked about? So the overall theme is really the condemnation of Pelagianism. And this council in 419 rejects Pelagius' teaching and it declares that humans inherit original sin from Adam and all are born in need of God's grace for salvation. And divine grace is not just external aid, but it's essential for human action for salvation. It determines or restates that infants must be baptized. And the baptism has a cleansing from sin. And the council condemns the Pelagian view that said that baptism was not necessary since infants are not tainted by sin. So you see some of the ways that the council deals with that. Now, you may remember last week, we talked about the reformation years later, century later, millennia later, how during the reformation, there's almost It's Augustine's ecclesiology versus Augustine's soteriology. And you hear a little of both of those coming out in the Council of Carthage, things that we would find to be a bit cringy or we'd say things that sound Roman to us. But also there's things that sound very reformed that don't sound Roman Catholic at all at the Council of Carthage. A lot of what we would talk about in our ideas of the doctrine of salvation are promoted at this council. And then also ideas concerning baptismal regeneration come out in the Council of Carthage. So what are the canons? What are the decisions that are made? There are eight canons that are decided at the Council of Carthage. The first is this condemnation of the denial of original sin. So anyone who claims that we are not affected in the most sense of the word by Adam's sin. This is anathema. This is not Christian teaching. It's something that is accursed. The second canon, the necessity of infant baptism. So the canon says that infants, although they've not committed personal sin, are to be baptized for the remission of sin. So there's this theological separation between the sin we're born with, inherited from Adam, and the sin that we commit because we are sinners. And they make that distinction and they say the sin that we have in Adam necessitates the baptism of infants even if they've never committed sin. So that's promoted as Canon 2. Canon 3. says that baptized infants are free from original sin, says that they're cleansed from original sin and they do not need penance after baptism. Anyone who claims that after baptism infants need to perform penance to be free from original sin are anathema. So again, this is a canon that we would not agree with, but it is a decision that was made. Canon four, Grace is necessary for every good work. So anyone that says that that grace is given only for the forgiveness of past sins and not to help avoid future sins or claims that grace is merely a help to know God's will but doesn't assist in doing his will is anathema. Grace is not merely so that we can see what we need to do. Grace gives us the strength to do anything that we need to do. Canon 5 says grace is not given according to human merits. So the idea that because we do good works, we're given grace, the council flips that and says that grace is given there and then we do good works rather than good works done then. And then Canon 6, humans cannot achieve salvation by free will alone. It says anyone who claims that the human will can obey God's commands or overcome sin or attain eternal life by its own strength is anathema. So human free will is insufficient because we need grace. And then Canon 7, the saints acknowledge that they need grace. So if you claim to be a Christian, part of that claim or connected to that claim is the claim that you're fully reliant. upon the grace of God in order to be saved. And then the last is God's grace is necessary for perseverance. So this is some of what we see done at the Council of Carthage and some of what is there. Now, I mentioned last week that Augustine had several influential men who were converted under him, who trained under him, and who became ordained under him and went into the ministry. And you see a few of these major players of North African history, church history, being at the Council of Carthage as well as Augustine being there. So the council had 217 bishops in attendance for this discussion. And among them, we mentioned Augustine is there. So that full second debate that we talked about is really this debate debating the writings and sayings of Augustine versus the writings and sayings of Pelagius and needing to unfold that and determine that. But among the others that were there, there was Aurelius that I mentioned last week. He was the moderator of the council. Aurelius was converted under Augustine and trained for the ministry under Augustine as well and he's moderating this meeting where Augustine's writings in a sense are on trial or at least in defense as Pelagius is on trial. Allopius is there. He's another close friend of Augustine and he was supportive of the decisions at Carthage and one that was a major promoter. of these decisions and then Posidius is there and Posidius, I quoted last week, he's the first biographer of Augustine. So he's one who also was converted under and trained under Augustine and writes in defense of his doctrines. So this council is strongly influenced by Augustinian theology. particularly original sin, views of original sin, and views of human depravity, and views of the necessity of grace. Again, all things that are very, very familiar to us as reformed Christians. These ideas are being promoted in the ancient church. We see that this council ends up condemning Pelagius and then Pelagius is going to have to move on. And as he moves on, he's condemned in 419, he's excommunicated from the church, his teachings are deemed heretical, and largely after Carthage, Pelagius just kind of disappears from the scene of church history. They say that he went into Egypt and sought refuge there. Some said he probably went to a monastery and just lived out his life as an intellectual in the monastery but knew enough to not promote his ideas because that's how he would lose his head in the ancient world. And others said that he went to Egypt and just became a part of the population in Alexandria and just sort of disappears from the scene of history. This is probably true or largely true because we don't see the heretic, the one condemned as a heretic, having this extraordinary death or this largely displayed death that ends up being circulated through the church. He just kind of disappears. Now, I thought that this was interesting. One historian says that, So maybe someone will ask you if you hate babies. And that question maybe has been posed to you before, or what you think of babies. And this one historian says, the basic difference between these two men is found in two radically different views on the relationship between man and God. It's summed up succinctly in the choice of language. Augustine had long been fascinated by babies. The extent of their helplessness had grown up Even since he wrote the confessions, in the confessions, he had no hesitation in likening his relationship to God with that of a baby to his mother's breast. Utterly dependent, intimately involved in all the good and evil that was contemptuous of babies. or all of the good and evil that might come to this, the only source of life. The Pelagian, by contrast, was contemptuous of babies. There's no more pressing admonition than this, that we should be called the sons of God, and to be a son was to become entirely separate person, no longer dependent on the father, but capable of following out by his own power the good deeds that the father had commanded." I thought that was a really interesting thought one looking at the Christian life as an infant on His or her mother's breast and that full dependence on on the mother and that's the way that the Christian approaches the Lord and yet Pelagius says no the Bible says we're sons of God and the Roman idea of the Sun as one who's inherited is that he's separate from and away from the father and he's able to do everything on his own strength. And I think that sums up these two ideas quite well. But I want to answer this question too. We read that one. The question concerning Pelagius' lasting influence. Is this something that just died off in the church or is there in influence and I'll just quickly end with this and then I'll take a second for questions and then we need to move on. So, I mentioned semi-Pelagianism, an idea that Pelagius is basically right with some nuances. So between Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism, much of our world has been influenced by these ideas. So the first picture is John Locke. who is influenced by Pelagius and another name that you may remember from the Enlightenment, Rousseau, is also one. The next guy, the black and white guy in the middle is Socinius. So the Socinians were the great enemies of the Puritans. If you read the Puritans, and once in a while you'll see this line where, and so were against the Socinians who say, and then something about the Socinians. So Socinius was highly influenced by Pelagius. Humanism was highly influenced by Pelagianism as well, if you've Studied humanism, not even secular humanism but genuine renaissance humanism. This idea that we have within ourselves all of the power that we're going to need. Rationalism is influenced by Pelagius. The guy with the Elizabethan collar or the coffee filter collar in the corner, that's Arminius, Jacob Arminius. Arminianism is highly influenced by Pelagius. The guy in the bottom middle is John Wesley. Methodism is highly influenced by Pelagianism. Even the name Methodism says that there's a method to do Christianity and it's highly influenced. And then the last guy, the one with the really creepy eyes is Charles Finney. in American revivalism. So American revivalism and Finney and all of those that went into the early revivals of Americanism using the ideas of pulling at the emotional heartstrings because we will respond. And if our will is free, we will respond with whatever means will draw us in. And then a current title, that is used in the church today is therapeutic deism. So anything that is, you know, your best life now or choosing the good or girl, wash your face. All of that stuff is influenced by Pelagian ideas that you are able to do the Christian life because you have been equipped so by God.