Nicholas Rengger introduced me to the British philosopher Gillian Rose in 2004, and in so doing opened a door to a way of thinking and an ethos that continues to capture my imagination nearly two decades on. It is fitting that I return to Rose in this chapter honouring Rengger’s work on anti-Pelagianism, as I have no doubt that part of what attracted me to Rose’s thought was her resolute refusal of the Pelagian heresy of seeking a ‘short cut to heaven’ twinned with a rejection of the politics of tragedy. My years studying with Rengger imbued in me a profound mistrust of theories that refuse to ‘deal in darkness’; Rose’s work emphatically does, enjoining us to ‘keep [our] mind[s] in hell’ but– crucially– to ‘despair not’.

This chapter has two parts. In Part One, I briefly sketch modern anti-Pelagianism, drawing primarily on Rengger’s collected essays on the Anti-Pelagian Imagination: Dealing in Darkness. I highlight four elements of Rengger’s anti-Pelagianism: a sceptical relation to knowledge; a disconnect between theory and practice; a refusal of tragic visions of politics; and a particular orientation to ‘the world’. In Part Two, I argue that Rose’s speculative philosophy can rightly be understood as anti-Pelagian – she, too, refuses Pelagian heresies that would ‘mend diremption in heaven or on earth’; instead, she cultivates equivocation in relation to knowledge and exchanges blueprints for action for aporia, or pathlessness. Like Rengger, Rose also refuses the temptation of tragedy in response to the ‘darkness’ of modern politics. However, I argue that Rose’s work commits more fully to the project of dealing in darkness. While Rengger (following Oakeshott) cultivates a certain distance from the world, exemplified by his meditations on the relationship between theory and practice, Rose calls us to a dogged and risk-filled engagement (and re-engagement) with everyday practical politics.

Modern anti-Pelagianism

In early Christianity, the Pelagian heresy refers to the idea promulgated by Pelagius, contra Augustine, that human beings are essentially good and can work unaided towards salvation.