Pelagianism Past and Present

The collapse of empires brings much spiritual confusion and an attraction to the exotic. Thus, the collapse of the Soviet Union a generation ago led to some Russians adopting occultism, Hare Krishna and even Catholicism (!), the collapse of the British Empire led to some British people adopting irrationalism, Transcendental Meditation and even Islam. In ancient times the collapse of the pagan Roman Empire led to its citizens adopting all manner of ‘end of the world’ -isms. For example, in provincial Britain one secularist philosopher came up with a heresy of Christianity which asserted that man did not really need God, that he could cope quite well on his own in effortless consumerism. His name was Pelagius and his humanist fantasy of confidence in man became known as Pelagianism.

His fantasy was typical of the psychology of provincials who placed an irrational and over-confident false hope in man’s ability to survive, just when he faced the menace of the collapse of the Empire. Today, as the Western Empire, headquartered in the USA and taking in Western Europe and Japan, collapses all around, both economically through debt and morally through depravity, we see the same phenomenon. It is the collapsing West that has heard talk of ‘The Triumph of the West’, ‘The West is Best’, ‘The End of History’ etc. It is most ironic, but such things always happen among the spiritually blind just before the end. Such was the case among the pagan Romans 1600 years ago, such is the case in the pagan West today, with its defeated NATO legions and EU vassal states held hostage.

What we have to do in such negative times is to find the positive way ahead out of and after the collapse which is already taking place. What will survive from beneath the rubble is all that is spiritually living. That which was invented for reasons of elitist self-justification 1000 years ago and manipulation of the masses 500 years ago will not last. The old manmade, crowd control religions with their hypocritical moralizing, the old State-controlled Western propaganda media used to justify imperialism and exploitation, the irrational philosophies of death whose founders are dead, are all doomed. Just as the poor slaves of pagan Rome brought the Light of Christ to that fallen and discredited Empire, so we plebs can bring the Resurrection again here and now. If not, then the end is here.