Question 28 · Salvation

What is grace, and can anyone do good without it?

What the sources show

Pelagius (quoted by Augustine) c. 416Nature can

Pelagius, about 416, taught that a person can be without sin and keep God's commands easily, if he wishes. For him grace meant our God-given nature, the law, and Christ's teaching and example. ³

Augustine of Hippo c. 400 · Council of Orange c. 529 · Council of Trent 1547Grace needed

Augustine's prayer "Give what you command, and command what you will" sums up the opposite view: every good will is God's gift. The Council of Orange (529) made that the Western rule, and Trent repeated it. ¹⁶⁷

The answers given:

ApostolicBefore NicaeaNicaea and afterMiddle AgesReformation to today

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Nicaea to Chalcedon

325–451

400c. AD

Grace needed

Augustine of Hippo 354–430 ADConfessions 10.29.40

All my hope is nowhere but in your great mercy. Give what you command, and command what you will. You command us to be continent. ... And as I knew, someone says, that no one can be continent unless God gives it, this too was wisdom, to know whose gift it is.

"Give what you command": the prayer Pelagius could not bear to hear read at Rome, as Augustine later recalled (On the Gift of Perseverance 20.53). The quotation inside is Wisdom 8:21.

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415c. AD

Grace needed

Augustine of Hippo 354–430 ADOn Nature and Grace 68

For we do not deny that human nature can be without sin, nor should we in any way deny that it can be perfected, since we do not deny that it can make progress; but we say that this comes about by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, with his help, so that it may be righteous and blessed, by the one who created it to be.

Augustine answers Pelagius's book On Nature: sinlessness itself is not denied. What is denied is that our nature can reach it without grace.

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416c. AD

Nature can

Pelagius (quoted by Augustine) c. 354–c. 418 ADLetter, quoted in Augustine, On the Proceedings of Pelagius 30.54

By the judgment of fourteen bishops our definition was approved, in which we said that a person can be without sin and easily keep God's commandments, if he wishes.

Pelagius wrote this after a synod at Diospolis in Palestine (415) cleared him. Augustine's reply: "if he wishes" leaves out God's help. Pelagius said grace is given in our nature and in the law and teaching.

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418c. AD

Grace needed

Council of CarthageCanons against the Pelagians Canon 5

It was also resolved: whoever says that the grace of justification is given us so that what we are commanded to do by free choice we may more easily fulfil through grace, as if, even if grace were not given, we could, not easily indeed, but still could, fulfil the divine commandments without it, let him be anathema. For the Lord was speaking of the fruits of the commandments when he did not say, 'Without me you can do things with difficulty', but said, 'Without me you can do nothing' (John 15:5).

The African bishops at Carthage (418) condemned Pelagius's teaching canon by canon; Pope Zosimus approved the canons, and they became the West's rule on grace before Orange.

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429c. AD

Grace needed

Augustine of Hippo 354–430 ADOn the Gift of Perseverance 20.53

In them I said to our God, and I said it often: 'Give what you command, and command what you will.' ... What, then, does God command first and most of all, if not that we believe in him? So this too he himself gives, if it was rightly said to him, 'Give what you command.'

Augustine, near the end of his life, recalls that Pelagius at Rome could not bear to hear the prayer from his Confessions quoted. Even faith, the first thing God commands, is God's gift.

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Late antiquity and Byzantium

451–1054

529c. AD

Grace needed

Council of OrangeCanons Canon 6

If anyone says that mercy is given by God to us when, without God's grace, we believe, will, desire, try, labor, keep watch, study, ask, seek and knock, but does not confess that it is by the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit in us that we believe, will, or are able to do all these things as we ought ... he resists the apostle (1 Corinthians 4:7; 15:10).

A small Gallic council, later approved by Pope Boniface II (531). It settled the West against the view that the first step toward God is ours.

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Reformation

1500–1700

1547AD

Grace needed

Council of TrentSession 6, Canons on Justification Canon 3

If anyone says that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his help a person can believe, hope, love or repent as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be given to him: let him be anathema.

On this point Trent and the Reformers agreed: no one turns to God without grace going first.

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Witnesses not in the library yet

These writers also matter for this question. Their texts will join the timeline above once they are translated.

426
John Cassian, Conference 13
The view that the first stirrings of good will can be ours. Orange answers it.
413
Pelagius, Letter to Demetrias
Pelagius on human nature in his own words.

How this page was made

Every early quote was read in its Greek or Latin and translated for this page by Claude (Opus 5.5) on 13 October 2026. Each line names the printed edition it was read from. A quote marked indirect does not state the answer outright; read its note. A writer's silence is never counted as an answer.