It may seem like a stretch to some, but reality tells a different story. We are looking at the history of Christianity and of the world in a sense by looking at it through the lenses of God-centeredness and man-centeredness. This is simply to say that each even in Church History can be interpreted according to the pride of man or the glory of God. The pride of man may even use God and a form of God-centeredness, but it is not the same thorough God-centeredness that Luther and the Reformers had. The pride of man will speak highly of a God that is good to him (as he thinks) and think of the goodness and greatness of that God in man-centered terms. Thus the pride of man will deceive man into thinking that he is God-centered. But the real God-centeredness is of a God that is God-centered and all of His dealings with man flow from His love for Himself and His own glory.
“The history of Christianity is a story of continuous conflict between the two contrasted tendencies. In the light of what has been said, it should be clear what is implied by the claim that Luther is a Copernicus in the realm of religion. Religion as he found it in medieval Catholicism was of an essentially egocentric character-despite the presence of certain undeniably theocentric traits in it. His significance in the history of religion is that in him the theocentric tendency fully and unequivocally asserted, or rather reasserted itself. For it had done so at least once before. In primitive Christianity, God was both Alpha and Omega, both the ground and the goal of the religious relationship. Of Him and through Him and unto Him were all things. But this insight early began to be obscured and subordinated to the egocentric tendency that crept in with moralistic and eudemonistic ideas. Such ideas Luther found playing a dominant role in medieval Catholicism.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)
In the last BLOG I gave a quote that said Arminianism was really a return to Rome in principle. This would likely raise howls of protest in many circles, even of some so-called Reformed circles, if they read it. However, the question is not who howls about it but if it is true or not. The essential problem with Arminianism, at least with the older Reformed thinking, was that the core of it was man-centered rather than God-centered. If you simply looked at a chart with the doctrines of Arminian thinking and Reformed thinking lined up side by side, you may not notice a whole lot of difference. After all, on paper a lot of the same language is used. Both sides agree with justification by faith alone. Both sides agree with salvation by grace alone. However, if we begin to look at these things in terms of whether God is the very core and substance of the theology, the view of these things will begin to change.
Roman Catholicism did not appear fully developed. Instead it started with a “small” deviation. That deviation was that it began to see theology in terms of man-centeredness and the freedom of man’s will. The core deviation was over man-centeredness versus God-centeredness. Man-centeredness is the flow of pride expressed in the desire to see things from man’s view and to cast out the total need of God. The heart of Roman Catholicism is that God has made a provision and has turned these things over to men to apply them. That is also the very essence of Arminian thinking. It sees God as having provided salvation and all that is needed is for man to exercise His will in order to be saved. However, Ephesians 2 says this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (vv. 8-9). Romans 11:6 gives an emphasis on this: “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.”
The pride of man will always leave something for self to do. The pride of man cannot bear to give up all rights and power to another and will refuse to give up all hope concerning his eternal destiny to another. But this is what must happen if salvation is truly to be by grace alone. Despite the clarity with which Scripture speaks on this issue the pride of man wants to retain some little something for himself to do. The doctrine of grace in Scripture teaches us that God finds nothing in man to move Him to give salvation. This means that God must find something in Himself to move Him to give man salvation. But man wants to reserve some little act of the will that God will respond to and save man. This little something is not thought to be all that important by many, but in fact it is nothing but the pride of man in his man-centeredness and is an overthrow of salvation by grace alone. That so-called little something takes salvation out of the hands of God and puts it into the hands of men which makes salvation out to be less than all grace and therefore not all to the glory of God. Once the pride of man takes that apparently little step on the road of leaving man something to do, that road leads to Roman Catholicism. It may not seem like much at the start, but pride is the hateful thing in the heart that opposes true grace and God-centeredness in all things.
God Loves... Himself 
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