Pelagius: The Church Father that Saved Me from Christianity

all right so wait i'm not a cartoon avatar come on let me fix that [Music] so uh i might as well address the obvious thing yes this is me in front of a camera and i hope this will be a normal thing from now on this opens up some possibilities uh for making new videos and with the growth of the channel every once in a while you gotta switch things up and actually putting my face on the camera it opens up some new possibilities plus i get to play with cameras and stuff and make things that are like more casual my phone that kind of thing uh i don't know what's gonna happen i'm bad with plans uh but this is gonna have like a whole new set of challenges so bear with me but anyway things are happening patrons shout out to you guys for making that possible but on to the video because there are video things to say a lot of people have asked me about my spiritual journey over my time around here and one of the elements of it is actually pretty funny as one of the main inspirations for me leaving christianity was actually a fourth century british theologian and i get questions for uh book recommendations every once in a while and i wanted to throw out a fun one for y'all this is actually a christian book um called listening for the heartbeat of god uh and it's one of the books that started me in my path out of christianity actually it's a quick read um and while i think it made me a better christian it's something that i honestly credit with helping me leave that's going to be fun so the big thing that was helpful for me here was actually the first chapter of this book about pelagius and it's a book written by a celtic christian reverend and i suggest diving into some other sources if you want to dive into plagias um but i should stress that they are really hard to find uh and often really hard to get um but this is one of the more accessible ones and there are some things about pelagius that you have to kind of realize when researching him the first thing is that his teachings are considered heretical today by most christians his teachings are antithetical to subjects like original sin or biblical infallibility and i suspect that he would just laugh at the idea of solo scriptura these are things that just don't work within celtic christianity especially as described by pelagius and while my time in celtic christianity was a stop for me on my way out of the faith it is something that i'd say is an extremely important iteration of christianity because it has a lot of elements of spirituality that i think christianity has sort of purposefully forgotten to include which has turned it into this like rigid thing that christianity commonly presents as today next i want to talk about his writings which seem to have been purposefully destroyed in large part however some of his letters and references to his work by other theologians still survive but he was ousted like that's something that's important to note that christianity at large rejected him after some controversies now where was i before getting into plagiarism um i was actually on a much more conservative path um i think i was more influenced by sola scriptura than i'd like to admit solo scriptura for anybody keeping score is the idea that the bible is the sole infallible authority on the christian faith and i actually figured that this was obvious within christianity at the time i figured honestly that if you were a christian you held to this idea like i didn't really understand at the time that catholics didn't do this and one of the things that got me questioning this concept was pelagius now who was this guy pelagius seems to be described as this like goliath of a man who apparently walked really slowly and and really liked porridge um but notably had weird hair he grew out the top of his hair and he shaved the sides and the back as was like traditional druidic style apparently um this was in opposition to the popular monastic hairstyle which at the time was like to shave the top of the head and grow out the sides which you usually see represented in like movies and stuff about uh with when you have like monastic orders on that i get a script or something this was one of the things that actually set people off about pelagius like his hair because it was a tell-tale sign that he was probably very much inspired by the pre-christian spirituality although we don't really know whether or not he was as much of the pre-christian faith was erased but there are some things that he taught that might have shown up in celtic polytheism such as the concept of a in celtic polytheism specifically i'm sorry um such as the concept of a soul friend which is a friend that you reveal everything to mutually so that the two of you can more easily explore what's in your hearts and provide perspective for each other but this giant of a man shows up in rome and starts teaching people and he's accepted his writings are circulated he's teaching aristocratic families he's a spiritual guide for some and this becomes a problem now why was this guy a problem like some of his teachings were a little controversial the most important of pelagius's teachings was the goodness of creation his writings contain rhetoric of seeing god in nature itself that god dwells within the trees and the rivers and even in the insects and the fish and that there's no place in the world where god is absent that if you look at the world through god's eyes nothing is ugly and the fallout of this goes into the words of jesus as jesus says you should love your neighbor as yourself and that this would apply then to all of creation that you should show compassion for the animals and trees around you and that this is how you participate in god's love the tough part about this is that it's valid even within christianity this makes sense but and here's where it got dangerous his emphasis wasn't on belief his emphasis was on living a life of wisdom and this is another thing that might have been taken out of celtic polytheism and i want to read to you actually um it's in here i can find it it's a thing here we go uh that he wrote to a new christian uh it's in the 400s in rome you were getting new christians all the time uh 300 actually um so he said this you will realize that the doctrines are inventions of the human mind as it tries to penetrate the mystery of god you will realize that scripture itself is the work of human minds recording the example and teachings of jesus thus it is not what you believe that matters it is how you respond with your heart and your actions it is not believing in christ that matters it is becoming like him you see how this can get dangerous he even makes discussions of relative morality arguing that the same actions by someone of wealth and influence are worse than those same actions done by someone without those things pointing out that a person who is rich and yet refuses to give food to the hungry may cause more death than even the cruelest murderer a controversial thing to say in a world where bishops in rome sat upon mounds of wealth and influence but oddly enough there were two things that got him directly criticized very harshly and it was that he wasn't opposed to he was not opposed to teaching women and that he thought that the image of god could be seen in a newborn so teaching women was like a huge problem he was mocked by saint jerome of all people for the idea that women should be taught to read and interpret scripture which was this like guarded knowledge at the time uh the issue of disagreement that got him into the most trouble was the baby thing because that got him into butting heads with saint augustine which is actually where the problem was and the fact that the problem isn't what he was fighting about but more who he was fighting with is very interesting now the idea of seeing god in a newborn threatened augustine's idea of original sin sin that is like that's passed down from person to person from adam and eve and this fed into augustine's idea that the desire for sex is bad which pelagius also disagreed with um so another controversial thing about the baby thing was that it fed into his position that goodness comes from nature and nature being a manifestation of god and therefore those who are not christians can still be good and in that way can be followers of christ in the same way that christians are this of course leads to an argument of sort of like open source christianity and allows for salvation that isn't governed by the church now this wasn't stated as a concern but you know a pelagian church would have fashioned itself as a liberator rather than a custodian of salvation it would simply show up and show you the key where the treasure of god is rather than being a keeper of that treasure and because that treasure is just out there in the universe it follows that following other paths other than christianity could find that treasure now pelagius put these teachings into a letter sent to a woman as well that augustine got his hands on and tried to use to convict pelagius of heresy in 4 15 two attempts were made to convict him of heresy in palestine and the church there argued with him there uh and acquitted him on both occasions as pelagius seemed pretty knowledgeable about how to argue his case in such a way that it fit within the teachings of the church however in 416 augustine convened two councils that condemned not only pelagius but his celtic friend colestius which i may be pronouncing horribly here's how you say it or pronounce it or spell it that's what the word is here's how you spell it uh pronounce it correctly i'm probably not but anyway i'm going to say chalestius um but the pope actually got in the way of this condemnation and the interesting part about this condemnation is that during these trials neither pelagius or cholesteus were even there but after a change of popes in 417 pelagius and kalestius were both condemned and exiled in 418 and nothing was ever heard of them afterwards though it is theorized that because some writings came out of ireland in the mid 400s that pelagius might have gone there and it's true that pelagianism kept rearing its ugly head out of ireland in the following centuries now why did this help me out of christianity it got me to question a number of items that i'd originally found to be foundational in christianity such as solo scriptura i'd already had issues with original sin but pelagius kind of helped me find out how to word my objections the idea that goodness was locked behind being a christian didn't make much sense to me when i looked through history at figures that genuinely seemed to be good people who had never heard of christ salvation is so ultimate in christianity that it seems strange that thinkers such as lao tzu or aristotle should go to hell because they live before christ or heroes in ancient chinese history such as leo bay who lived after christ but never heard of him and yet there are stories that depict him as this incredible man that sacrificed for his people and yet what happens to him he goes to hell because he didn't receive the word of christ never even heard of him never had the chance never the opportunity pelagius provided a solution here so it seemed to me that either pelagius was right or the god of christianity was a fool for passing up so many good people so then you start to wonder why is this the standard that god laid down it seems like such an arbitrary and terrible standard that has nothing to do with actual goodness in the world just mere belief in a specific historical figure that is so inaccessible for many that's the primary thing goodness is secondary to that and salvation cannot be accessed without this simple belief it's ridiculous so i became a pelagian for a few years and i got into a lot of arguments with christians about it they didn't like my view of god they didn't like my view of salvation and this caused me to investigate more and more into these ideas and i found that the pelagian ideas that i favored the ones that so often got me into trouble with fellow christians seemed inspired by ancient pagan religions that didn't require salvation from hell because their afterlives were just wildly different but anyway this is my first video with my face on the camera i hope it worked uh once i got it together it felt a little easier to record but i'll experiment a little with it we'll see how this goes maybe i'll do some more stuff that isn't as on-script as i usually do but let me know what you think about pelagius i'm especially interested in christian opinions here i've seen you in my comments i know you're there uh but with that hail to my patrons for making this content possible it's good to have people at your back hit that subscribe button and dip that bell in a bowl of pelagius porridge and remember to find a way or make one [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Ocean Keltoi

Views: 72,103

Keywords: Pelagius, Celtic Christianity, Celtic Polytheism, Ocean, Ocean Keltoi, Christianity, Church Fathers, Church, Catholicism, Sola Scriptura, Salvation, Pagan, paganism, polytheism, Germanic Polytheism, Caelestius, Darth Pelagius, Darth Pelagius The Wise, Goodness in Nature, Nature, Nature spirituality, spirituality, St. Augustine, Augustine, City of God, Celtic Spirituality, Celtic, Celt, Heathen, Heathenry, Norse Paganism, Celtic Paganism

Id: Mfo1U7suuE4

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020