The Council of Orange (529) ended what has come to be called the Semi-Pelagian debate and established a basic confessional consensus on the relationship between grace and free will. Like Nicaea and other earlier councils, consensus was achieved through the rejection of extreme examples. The conclusions of the council condemned “semi-Pelagian” views of the relationship between grace and free-will but stopped short of adopting a full-fledged, Augustinian doctrine. Thus, it has sometimes been argued that the Council of Orange adopted a “semi-Augustinian” position.
This paper will examine the nature of the theological conclusions of Orange for soteriology, the application and utility of later terms like “semi-Pelagianism” and “semi-Augustinianism” for the conclusions of Orange, and the functional impact of Orange in establishing a consensus position that would largely go unchallenged (or ignored?) until the Protestant Reformation.
The purpose of conciliar action is to define dogma and contextualize it for a particular theological and cultural moment. Conciliar statements function best when they provide opportunities for robust doctrinal discussion within dogmatically defined parameters. The use of later theological terms to analyze conciliar statements can lead to misguided historical interpretations, impede the process of theological retrieval, and skew modern theological discussions.