This directly contradicts the concept of human beings as fallen because of Adams sin, needy, helpless, dependent on a savior and on organized religion to rescue them. It is threatening to the Church because it permits people to recognize that life is a do-it-yourself job. It undercuts the power of Church authority to control them.
Pelagianism argues that the consequences of Adam's sins affected only himself. The first man, allegedly disobeying God, did not transmit guilt to humankind, he says. The Pelagians said that each baby born enters the world with a nature as innocent as Adam himself possessed before the alleged Fall. The Gospels are therefore a remedial scheme rather than a program to rescue mankind from damnation due to original sin.
The Pelagian doctrine of faith in humanity caught on widely in the ranks of the Roman legions. St. Jerome went to see St. Augustine to warn him. These ideas must be suppressed, they agreed. So Germanus and troops under his command were dispatched from Gaul. Pelagianism was eradicated by the sword. To this day, Pelagianism remains a heresy of the church.
Around 450 A.D., according to Constantius and Bede, Germanus again visited Britain, with Severus, to deal with the recurring traces of Pelagianism. By performing miracles and a lot of preaching and some bloody violence, the forces of orthodoxy forced the Britons to accept permanently the Roman version of the faith. The heretics were banished, and the writings of Pelagius burned.
Those people, therefore, the people who thought like Humanists, were thus expelled from the mainstream of Christianity. To this day, Humanism remains on the outside of the dominant current of religious thought. Christianity failed to listen to Pelagius and learn from him. Christianity missed its chance to develop in accordance with Humanism. It is their loss. And Pelagius deserves to be remembered with honor as one of the ancestors of modern Humanism.
