Semi-Pelagianism

Semi-Pelagianism constitutes a more mixed and more prevalent variation of Pelagianism. It understands the sovereignty of God and human effort as working together toward human salvation/justification. You may have heard it in terms of “meeting God half-way”, or “co-laboring with God”, or “God knocks at the door, and I answer”, or “Let go and let God”, or even “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Semi-Pelagianism is particularly seductive because it appeals to our sinful desire to stand on our own two feet, while still “throwing God a bone”. We want to have something to offer God, something by which we can be measured. We desperately want to play a part in the salvation tango. The problems here should be fairly self-evident. Questions of exactly how much of a role we play – and how we know we’ve done so successfully – plague the Semi-Pelagian, fostering the sort of anxiety and judgment that eventually drives people away from Christianity altogether. That is to say, in practice Semi-Pelagianism has a tendency to revert to the non-semi version.