Julian of Eclanum
Encyclopedia
Julian of Eclanum (c. 386 – c. 455) was bishop of Eclanum, near today's Benevento
(Italy
). He was a distinguished leader of the Pelagians of 5th century.
. His father was an Italian bishop named Memor or Memorius and his mother a noblewoman named Juliana. Augustine of Hippo
was intimate with the family, and wrote of them in terms of great affection and respect. Around 404 Julian became a "lector" in the church over which his father presided, and while holding that office married a layperson named Ia.
Paulinus, afterwards bishop of Nola
, composed an elaborate Epithalamium, which represents him as on terms of great intimacy with the family. By c. 410 Julian had become a deacon
, but whether Ia was then living does not appear. He was consecrated to the episcopate by Innocent I
c. 417, but the name of his see is variously given. Marius Mercator
, who was his contemporary, distinctly speaks of him as "Episcopus Eclanensis". Innocent I died on March 12, 417. Up to that date Julian had maintained a high reputation for ability, learning, and orthodoxy, and Mercator concludes that he must have sympathized with Innocent's condemnation of the Pelagians. Yet there is reason to believe that even Innocent had ground for at least suspecting his connection with Pelagianism
.
and Coelestius were reopened by Zosimus
, shortly after the death of Innocent, Julian seems to have expressed himself strongly in their favour in the hearing of Mercator; and when Zosimus issued his Epistola Tractoria 577 against the Pelagians (417 CE) and sent it to the bishops of the East and West for subscription, Julian was among those who refused. He was accordingly deposed, and afterwards exiled under the edicts issued by the emperor Honorius in March 418. Julian now addressed two letters to Zosimus
, one of which was very generally circulated throughout Italy before it reached the pontiff. Of this Mercator
has preserved some fragments. Of the other we have no remains.
About the same time Julian addressed a letter to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica (410–431), on his own behalf and that of 18 fellow-recusants. Rufus was vicarius of the Roman see in Illyricum and just then in serious collision with Atticus the patriarch of Constantinople. As Atticus was a strenuous opponent of the Pelagians, Julian and his brethren perhaps thought Rufus might be persuaded to favour them. Zosimus died December 26 418, and was succeeded by Boniface I, April 10 419. The letter of Julian to Rufus, with another to the clergy of Rome which he denied to be his, were answered by Augustine in his Contra Duas Epistolas Pelagianorum. Julian avows an earnest desire to gain the aid of the Oriental bishops against the "profanity of Manicheans," for so he styles the Catholics; accuses Zosimus of tergiverisation and the Roman clergy of having been unduly influenced in their condemnation of the Pelagians; charges both with various heresies; and protests that by their means the subscriptions of nearly all the Western bishops had been uncanonically extorted to a dogma which he characterizes as "non minus stultum quam impium". Garnier assigns the letter to Rufus and the two to Zosimus to 418 CE.
When Julian addressed his two letters to Zosimus he was preparing a reply to the first of Augustine's two books de Nuptiis et Concupiscentiâ, which he
addressed to a fellow-recusant named Turbantius, whose prayers he earnestly asks that the church
may be delivered from the defilement of Manicheism. He sent some extracts from the work, which was in four books, and apparently entitled Contra eos qui nuptias damnant et fructus earum diabolo assignant , to Valerius, who forwarded them to his friend Augustine, who at once rejoined in a second book de Nuptiis et Concupiscentiâ. When Julian's work subsequently came into his hands, Augustine published a fuller rejoinder in his contra Julianum Pelagianum. Augustine freely quotes his antagonist, and Julian again insisted upon the Manicheism of his opponents ; again charged Zosimus with prevarication, and elaborated the whole anthropology for which he contended.
When driven from the West, Julian and some of his fellow-exiles went into Cilicia
and remained for a time with Theodorus
, bishop of Mopsuestia, who is charged by Mercator with having been one of the originators of Pelagianism and who wrote against Augustine. Meanwhile the rejoinder of Augustine had reached Julian, who answered it in 8 books, addressed to Florus
, a fellow-recusant. Mercator has given various extracts, but it is best known from Augustine's elaborate Opus Imperfectum, which was evoked by it, but left incomplete. On the death of Boniface I and the succession of Celestine I in September 422, Julian apparently left Cilicia and returned to Italy, probably hoping that the new pontiff might reconsider the case of the Pelagians, especially as a variance had then arisen between the Roman see and the African bishops. Celestine repulsed him, and caused him to be exiled a second time. Julian was also condemned, in his absence, by a council in Cilicia, Theodorus concurring in the censure). On this Julian went to Constantinople
, where the same fate awaited him both from Atticus
and his successor Sisinnius
(426, 427 CE). On the accession of Nestorius to the patriarchate (428 CE) the expectations of Julian were again raised, and he appealed both to Nestorius and to the emperor Theodosius II. Both at first gave him some
encouragement, which may be why there is no mention of the Pelagians in the celebrated edict which the emperor issued against heresies at the instance of Nestorius. The patriarch wrote to Celestine more than once on his behalf and that of his friends, but the favour he shewed them necessitated his defending himself in a public discourse delivered in their presence, and translated by Mercator. In 429 Mercator presented his Commonitorium de Coelestio to the emperor, wherein he carefully relates the proceedings against the Pelagians and comments severely upon their teaching. Julian and his friends were then driven from Constantinople by an imperial edict.
Towards the close of 430 Celestine convened a council at Rome, which condemned Julian and others once more.
to the convent of Ephesus
, 431 CE, and took part in the Conciliabulum
held by Joannes of Antioch. Baronius infers from one of the letters of Gregory the Great that the "Conciliabulum" absolved Julian and his friends, 578 but Cardinal Noris has shown that the council repeat their condemnation of the Pelagians, expressly mentioning Julian by name.
Sixtus III
, the successor of Celestine (July 31 432) when a presbyter, had favoured the Pelagians, much to the grief of Augustine. Julian attempted to recover his lost position through him, but Sixtus evidently treated him with severity, mainly at the instigation of Leo, then a presbyter, who became his successor, 440 CE. When pontiff himself, Leo showed the same spirit toward the Pelagians, especially toward Julian. We hear no more of Julian until his death in Sicily, c. 454). Some years after his death Julian was again condemned by Joannes Talaia, bishop of Nola
around 484.
Julian was an able and a learned man. Gennadius speaks of him as "vir acer ingenio, in divinis Scripturis doctus, Graeca et Latina lingua scholasticus". He was of high character, and especially distinguished for generous benevolence, and seems actuated throughout the controversy by a firm conviction that he was acting in the interests of what he held to be the Christian faith and of morality itself. Besides his works already mentioned, Bede
speaks of his Opuscula on the Canticles, and among them of a "libellus" de Amore, and a "libellus" de Bono Constantiae, both of which he charges with Pelagianism, giving from each some extracts. Garnier claims Julian as the translator of the Libellus Fidei a Rufino Palaestinae Provinciae Presbytero, which he has published in his edition of Marius Mercator, and as the author of the liber Definitionum seu Ratiocinationem, to which Augustine replied in his de Perfectione Justitiae.
Sin and will: Some Pelagians denied that the original sin of Adam was transmitted to all humans at birth. Babies, therefore, need not be baptized: they are born innocent. Adult baptism does remit sins, but for the Pelagian, this meant that the baptized Christian, after this dramatic fresh start, was now free to perfect himself alone, with or without the aid of the Church. It is worth noting that in the surviving fragments of Pelagius' writings, Pelagius writes that infants must be baptized and that there is no goodness without grace. Julian himself wrote a letter to Rome in which he said “We confess that the grace of Christ is necessary to all, both to grown-up people and to infants; and we athematize
those who say that a child born of two baptized people ought not to be baptized.” He also affirmed that grace was necessary for all: “We maintain that men are the work of God, and that no one is forced unwillingly by His power either into evil or good, but that man does either good or ill of his own will; but that in a good work he is always assisted by God’s grace, while in evil he is incited by the suggestions of the devil.” To Augustine, all humans are profoundly tainted by original sin, and the baptized Christian is still an invalid in constant need of the Church’s guidance and absolution
. Pelagians viewed sin as a matter of will and not of nature, as a choice that can be reversed. Strengthened by baptism, everyone possesses enough self-control to reject evil. (In this, Pelagians drew on pagan Stoicism.) For Augustine, such optimism was dangerously naive: human will is caught in a dark internal labyrinth of untamable compulsions. No one is strong enough to save himself without God’s grace and the sacrament
s of the Church.
The equity of God: Julian drew on the Jewish equation of divinity and law. For him, our concept of law as something rational, sensible, and proportionate is divine in origin, and mirrors the attributes of God himself. An unjust God is inconceivable as God. For Pelagians, God would not condemn every human because of one sin committed by Adam; God would not condemn to infinite torment those whose sins were finite or who had simply never heard of Christ (again, Pelagius appears to have felt differently in some of his framents, as he claimed baptism was required for salvation for anyone). Augustine dismissed such notions of justice as too fallible to be attributed to God, whose ways are inscrutable. And his concept of predestination, by which God elects some creatures to be saved and consigns all others to eternal torment before they even sin, goes very far in the opposite direction. Pelagians rejected predestination as incompatible with the freedom of each person to effect his own salvation. Julian charged that Augustine was still Manichean, if only in temperament; Augustine’s concept of sin offered the best evidence of that.
Sexuality: As Brown puts it, “Julian spoke boldly of the sexual instinct as a sixth sense of the body, as a [morally] neutral energy that might be used well...delicately poised between reason and animal feeling.” (1) Augustine, after more than 13 years of fornicating with prostitutes and concubines, considered all non-procreative sex sinful (and said that the feelings of arousal that accompanied procreative sex were evil and were the cause of the transmission of original sin), and human sexuality itself a debilitating curse. Julian scorned this as hypocrisy, and instead said “We say that the sexual impulse—that is, that the virility itself, without which there can be no intercourse—is ordained by God.”.
Social reform: Julian’s Pelagianism was a purifying reform movement that sought to inspire morally perfected Christians to remake Roman society from the inside out, countering its brutality and injustice. By contrast, Augustine was always comfortable with the Imperial establishment and used it to persecute dissident movements like the Donatists, relentlessly and brutally.
Benevento
Benevento is a town and comune of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 50 km northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill 130 m above sea-level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino and Sabato...
(Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
). He was a distinguished leader of the Pelagians of 5th century.
Life
Julian was born in ApuliaApulia
Apulia is a region in Southern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Òtranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south. Its most southern portion, known as Salento peninsula, forms a high heel on the "boot" of Italy. The region comprises , and...
. His father was an Italian bishop named Memor or Memorius and his mother a noblewoman named Juliana. Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
was intimate with the family, and wrote of them in terms of great affection and respect. Around 404 Julian became a "lector" in the church over which his father presided, and while holding that office married a layperson named Ia.
Paulinus, afterwards bishop of Nola
Paulinus of Nola
Saint Paulinus of Nola, also known as Pontificus Meropius Anicius Paulinus was a Roman senator who converted to a severe monasticism in 394...
, composed an elaborate Epithalamium, which represents him as on terms of great intimacy with the family. By c. 410 Julian had become a deacon
Deacon
Deacon is a ministry in the Christian Church that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions...
, but whether Ia was then living does not appear. He was consecrated to the episcopate by Innocent I
Pope Innocent I
-Biography:He was, according to his biographer in the Liber Pontificalis, the son of a man called Innocens of Albano; but according to his contemporary Jerome, his father was Pope Anastasius I , whom he was called by the unanimous voice of the clergy and laity to succeed -Biography:He was,...
c. 417, but the name of his see is variously given. Marius Mercator
Marius Mercator
Marius Mercator was a Catholic ecclesiastical writer.In 417 or 418 he was in Rome where he wrote two anti-Pelagian treatises, which he submitted to Augustine of Hippo...
, who was his contemporary, distinctly speaks of him as "Episcopus Eclanensis". Innocent I died on March 12, 417. Up to that date Julian had maintained a high reputation for ability, learning, and orthodoxy, and Mercator concludes that he must have sympathized with Innocent's condemnation of the Pelagians. Yet there is reason to believe that even Innocent had ground for at least suspecting his connection with Pelagianism
Pelagianism
Pelagianism is a theological theory named after Pelagius , although he denied, at least at some point in his life, many of the doctrines associated with his name. It is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without...
.
Connections with Pelagianism
When the cases of PelagiusPelagius
Pelagius was an ascetic who denied the need for divine aid in performing good works. For him, the only grace necessary was the declaration of the law; humans were not wounded by Adam's sin and were perfectly able to fulfill the law apart from any divine aid...
and Coelestius were reopened by Zosimus
Pope Zosimus
Pope Saint Zosimus was Pope from March 18, 417 to December 26, 418 .He succeeded Innocent I, and was followed by Boniface I. Zosimus took a decided part in the protracted dispute in Gaul as to the jurisdiction of the see of Arles over that of Vienne, giving energetic decisions in favour of the...
, shortly after the death of Innocent, Julian seems to have expressed himself strongly in their favour in the hearing of Mercator; and when Zosimus issued his Epistola Tractoria 577 against the Pelagians (417 CE) and sent it to the bishops of the East and West for subscription, Julian was among those who refused. He was accordingly deposed, and afterwards exiled under the edicts issued by the emperor Honorius in March 418. Julian now addressed two letters to Zosimus
Zosimus
Zosimus was a Byzantine historian, who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I . According to Photius, he was a comes, and held the office of "advocate" of the imperial treasury.- Historia Nova :...
, one of which was very generally circulated throughout Italy before it reached the pontiff. Of this Mercator
Mercator
Mercator may refer to:* Marius Mercator , a Catholic ecclesiastical writer* Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer** Mercator projection, a cartographic projection devised by Gerardus Mercator...
has preserved some fragments. Of the other we have no remains.
About the same time Julian addressed a letter to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica (410–431), on his own behalf and that of 18 fellow-recusants. Rufus was vicarius of the Roman see in Illyricum and just then in serious collision with Atticus the patriarch of Constantinople. As Atticus was a strenuous opponent of the Pelagians, Julian and his brethren perhaps thought Rufus might be persuaded to favour them. Zosimus died December 26 418, and was succeeded by Boniface I, April 10 419. The letter of Julian to Rufus, with another to the clergy of Rome which he denied to be his, were answered by Augustine in his Contra Duas Epistolas Pelagianorum. Julian avows an earnest desire to gain the aid of the Oriental bishops against the "profanity of Manicheans," for so he styles the Catholics; accuses Zosimus of tergiverisation and the Roman clergy of having been unduly influenced in their condemnation of the Pelagians; charges both with various heresies; and protests that by their means the subscriptions of nearly all the Western bishops had been uncanonically extorted to a dogma which he characterizes as "non minus stultum quam impium". Garnier assigns the letter to Rufus and the two to Zosimus to 418 CE.
When Julian addressed his two letters to Zosimus he was preparing a reply to the first of Augustine's two books de Nuptiis et Concupiscentiâ, which he
addressed to a fellow-recusant named Turbantius, whose prayers he earnestly asks that the church
may be delivered from the defilement of Manicheism. He sent some extracts from the work, which was in four books, and apparently entitled Contra eos qui nuptias damnant et fructus earum diabolo assignant , to Valerius, who forwarded them to his friend Augustine, who at once rejoined in a second book de Nuptiis et Concupiscentiâ. When Julian's work subsequently came into his hands, Augustine published a fuller rejoinder in his contra Julianum Pelagianum. Augustine freely quotes his antagonist, and Julian again insisted upon the Manicheism of his opponents ; again charged Zosimus with prevarication, and elaborated the whole anthropology for which he contended.
When driven from the West, Julian and some of his fellow-exiles went into Cilicia
Cilicia
In antiquity, Cilicia was the south coastal region of Asia Minor, south of the central Anatolian plateau. It existed as a political entity from Hittite times into the Byzantine empire...
and remained for a time with Theodorus
Theodore of Mopsuestia
Theodore the Interpreter was bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428 AD. He is also known as Theodore of Antioch, from the place of his birth and presbyterate...
, bishop of Mopsuestia, who is charged by Mercator with having been one of the originators of Pelagianism and who wrote against Augustine. Meanwhile the rejoinder of Augustine had reached Julian, who answered it in 8 books, addressed to Florus
Florus
Florus, Roman historian, lived in the time of Trajan and Hadrian.He compiled, chiefly from Livy, a brief sketch of the history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus . The work, which is called Epitome de T...
, a fellow-recusant. Mercator has given various extracts, but it is best known from Augustine's elaborate Opus Imperfectum, which was evoked by it, but left incomplete. On the death of Boniface I and the succession of Celestine I in September 422, Julian apparently left Cilicia and returned to Italy, probably hoping that the new pontiff might reconsider the case of the Pelagians, especially as a variance had then arisen between the Roman see and the African bishops. Celestine repulsed him, and caused him to be exiled a second time. Julian was also condemned, in his absence, by a council in Cilicia, Theodorus concurring in the censure). On this Julian went to Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, where the same fate awaited him both from Atticus
Atticus
Atticus, a Latin name meaning "Man of Attica", may refer to any of:People*Titus Pomponius Atticus , ancient Roman littérateur / philosopher*Atticus , a Platonist philosopher and author of lost Plato commentary...
and his successor Sisinnius
Sisinnius
Sisinnius may refer to:*Pope Sisinnius, Pope for about three weeks in 708*Sisinnius I of Constantinople, Archbishop of Constantinople from 426 to 427*Sisinnius, Martyrius and Alexander, martyrs...
(426, 427 CE). On the accession of Nestorius to the patriarchate (428 CE) the expectations of Julian were again raised, and he appealed both to Nestorius and to the emperor Theodosius II. Both at first gave him some
encouragement, which may be why there is no mention of the Pelagians in the celebrated edict which the emperor issued against heresies at the instance of Nestorius. The patriarch wrote to Celestine more than once on his behalf and that of his friends, but the favour he shewed them necessitated his defending himself in a public discourse delivered in their presence, and translated by Mercator. In 429 Mercator presented his Commonitorium de Coelestio to the emperor, wherein he carefully relates the proceedings against the Pelagians and comments severely upon their teaching. Julian and his friends were then driven from Constantinople by an imperial edict.
Towards the close of 430 Celestine convened a council at Rome, which condemned Julian and others once more.
Last years
Whither he went from Constantinople does not appear, but he with other Pelagians seem to have accompanied NestoriusNestorius
Nestorius was Archbishop of Constantinople from 10 April 428 to 22 June 431.Drawing on his studies at the School of Antioch, his teachings, which included a rejection of the long-used title of Theotokos for the Virgin Mary, brought him into conflict with other prominent churchmen of the time,...
to the convent of Ephesus
Ephesus
Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...
, 431 CE, and took part in the Conciliabulum
Conciliabulum
Conciliabulum is a Latin word meaning a place of assembly. Its implication transferred to a gathering, such as a conventicle or conference....
held by Joannes of Antioch. Baronius infers from one of the letters of Gregory the Great that the "Conciliabulum" absolved Julian and his friends, 578 but Cardinal Noris has shown that the council repeat their condemnation of the Pelagians, expressly mentioning Julian by name.
Sixtus III
Pope Sixtus III
Pope Saint Sixtus III was pope from 31 July 432 to 18 August 440.The name of Sixtus is often connected with a great building boom in Rome: Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill was dedicated during his pontificate and he built Santa Maria Maggiore, whose dedication to Mary the Mother of God reflected...
, the successor of Celestine (July 31 432) when a presbyter, had favoured the Pelagians, much to the grief of Augustine. Julian attempted to recover his lost position through him, but Sixtus evidently treated him with severity, mainly at the instigation of Leo, then a presbyter, who became his successor, 440 CE. When pontiff himself, Leo showed the same spirit toward the Pelagians, especially toward Julian. We hear no more of Julian until his death in Sicily, c. 454). Some years after his death Julian was again condemned by Joannes Talaia, bishop of Nola
Nola
Nola is a city and comune of Campania, southern Italy, in the province of Naples, situated in the plain between Mount Vesuvius and the Apennines...
around 484.
Julian was an able and a learned man. Gennadius speaks of him as "vir acer ingenio, in divinis Scripturis doctus, Graeca et Latina lingua scholasticus". He was of high character, and especially distinguished for generous benevolence, and seems actuated throughout the controversy by a firm conviction that he was acting in the interests of what he held to be the Christian faith and of morality itself. Besides his works already mentioned, Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
speaks of his Opuscula on the Canticles, and among them of a "libellus" de Amore, and a "libellus" de Bono Constantiae, both of which he charges with Pelagianism, giving from each some extracts. Garnier claims Julian as the translator of the Libellus Fidei a Rufino Palaestinae Provinciae Presbytero, which he has published in his edition of Marius Mercator, and as the author of the liber Definitionum seu Ratiocinationem, to which Augustine replied in his de Perfectione Justitiae.
Julian's theology
A sympathetic and accessible account of Julian’s Pelagian theology can be found in chapter 32 of Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967, 2000). From the year 419 on, Julian and St. Augustine waged a well-matched war of books, pamphlets, letters, and sermons from which we gain a clear idea of their contrasting views—optimistic for Julian, pessimistic and coercive for Augustine. Their debate is still alive today:Sin and will: Some Pelagians denied that the original sin of Adam was transmitted to all humans at birth. Babies, therefore, need not be baptized: they are born innocent. Adult baptism does remit sins, but for the Pelagian, this meant that the baptized Christian, after this dramatic fresh start, was now free to perfect himself alone, with or without the aid of the Church. It is worth noting that in the surviving fragments of Pelagius' writings, Pelagius writes that infants must be baptized and that there is no goodness without grace. Julian himself wrote a letter to Rome in which he said “We confess that the grace of Christ is necessary to all, both to grown-up people and to infants; and we athematize
Anathema
Anathema originally meant something lifted up as an offering to the gods; it later evolved to mean:...
those who say that a child born of two baptized people ought not to be baptized.” He also affirmed that grace was necessary for all: “We maintain that men are the work of God, and that no one is forced unwillingly by His power either into evil or good, but that man does either good or ill of his own will; but that in a good work he is always assisted by God’s grace, while in evil he is incited by the suggestions of the devil.” To Augustine, all humans are profoundly tainted by original sin, and the baptized Christian is still an invalid in constant need of the Church’s guidance and absolution
Absolution
Absolution is a traditional theological term for the forgiveness experienced in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This concept is found in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Anglican churches, and most Lutheran churches....
. Pelagians viewed sin as a matter of will and not of nature, as a choice that can be reversed. Strengthened by baptism, everyone possesses enough self-control to reject evil. (In this, Pelagians drew on pagan Stoicism.) For Augustine, such optimism was dangerously naive: human will is caught in a dark internal labyrinth of untamable compulsions. No one is strong enough to save himself without God’s grace and the sacrament
Sacrament
A sacrament is a sacred rite recognized as of particular importance and significance. There are various views on the existence and meaning of such rites.-General definitions and terms:...
s of the Church.
The equity of God: Julian drew on the Jewish equation of divinity and law. For him, our concept of law as something rational, sensible, and proportionate is divine in origin, and mirrors the attributes of God himself. An unjust God is inconceivable as God. For Pelagians, God would not condemn every human because of one sin committed by Adam; God would not condemn to infinite torment those whose sins were finite or who had simply never heard of Christ (again, Pelagius appears to have felt differently in some of his framents, as he claimed baptism was required for salvation for anyone). Augustine dismissed such notions of justice as too fallible to be attributed to God, whose ways are inscrutable. And his concept of predestination, by which God elects some creatures to be saved and consigns all others to eternal torment before they even sin, goes very far in the opposite direction. Pelagians rejected predestination as incompatible with the freedom of each person to effect his own salvation. Julian charged that Augustine was still Manichean, if only in temperament; Augustine’s concept of sin offered the best evidence of that.
Sexuality: As Brown puts it, “Julian spoke boldly of the sexual instinct as a sixth sense of the body, as a [morally] neutral energy that might be used well...delicately poised between reason and animal feeling.” (1) Augustine, after more than 13 years of fornicating with prostitutes and concubines, considered all non-procreative sex sinful (and said that the feelings of arousal that accompanied procreative sex were evil and were the cause of the transmission of original sin), and human sexuality itself a debilitating curse. Julian scorned this as hypocrisy, and instead said “We say that the sexual impulse—that is, that the virility itself, without which there can be no intercourse—is ordained by God.”.
Social reform: Julian’s Pelagianism was a purifying reform movement that sought to inspire morally perfected Christians to remake Roman society from the inside out, countering its brutality and injustice. By contrast, Augustine was always comfortable with the Imperial establishment and used it to persecute dissident movements like the Donatists, relentlessly and brutally.
External links
- Letter To Rome by Julian of Eclanum
- Letter To Rufus of Thessalonica by Julian of Eclanum