8
condemned him as a heretic in A. D. 448. This decision was upheld by the Council of
Chalcedon in 451. A sect known as Monothelites taught that Christ had only one will,
the divine. The Council of Constantinople in A. D. 680 rejected this doctrine and
affirmed that Christ possessed a divine and a human will.
A major attack on the work of Christ came from Pelagius. His denial of any
transmission of Adam's sinful nature or his guilt resulted in the denial of any need for the
atoning death of Christ. He argued that men are born in the same state as Adam without
any sinful tendencies and that they are capable of not sinning. Man's primary need is
proper inducement toward good. William G. T. Shedd explains that according to
Pelagius, "The Son of God became man, in order, by his perfect teaching and example, to
afford the strongest motives for self-improvement, and thereby redeem us."
7
The Council
of Ephesus condemned Pelagius as a heretic in A. D. 431.
The Council of Trent was another attack on the Gospel. The council met from 1545
to 1563 in order to prepare a "response to the Protestant doctrine of free, gracious
justification, received by the imputation of Christ's righteousness through faith without
works."
8
Shedd astutely observed that "the Council of Trent resolved justification into
sanctification, and in the place of a gratuitous justification and remission of sins through
the expiation of the Redeemer, substituted the most subtle form of the doctrine of
justification by works that has yet appeared, or that can appear."
9
7
A History of Christian Doctrine (1889 rpt., Minneapolis: Klock and Klock Christian Publishers, 1978), II,
97
8
Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, 2
nd
ed. (Greenville, SC: Ambassador-Emerald
International, 1998), 414.
9
Ibid., 322.