In the last newsletter in this series A.A. Hodge was quoted in setting out the distinctive beliefs of Pelagianism. It is vital to understand this insidious worm that eats into and distorts the Christian faith and deceives those who hold to it. When we realize that Scripture teaches us that “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it” (Jer 17:9), we should realize with an increasing sense that our hearts may be deceiving us about the very heart of the Christian faith as well. B.B. Warfield said that Finney was an example of what happens when a Reformed view of salvation is joined to a Pelagian view of the will. Once a Pelagian view of the will is joined to other Reformed thinking, it takes the heart out of it. Hodge puts it this way:
Pelagian.—(a.) Moral character can be predicated only of volitions. (b.) Ability is always the measure of responsibility. (c). Hence every man has always the plenary power to do all that it is his duty to do. (d). Hence the human will alone, to the exclusion of the interference of an internal influence from God, must decide human character and destiny. The only divine influence needed by man or consistent with his character as a self-determined agent is an external, providential, and educational one.
As stated in the last newsletter in this series, not many people think that they are Pelagians and prefer to think of themselves as orthodox. However, this is where the statement of A.W. Tozer comes in. Let me quote it again:
Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God…It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God currently…is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.
If we put the statement of Hodge beside that of Tozer, we begin to see that despite what our creeds are and what we profess to believe, our real idea of God and our actual thoughts about Him may have to be searched out with a vigorous search. Tozer thinks that it will take an ordeal of painful self-probing to discover our actual beliefs about God. If Tozer’s words are really an application of Jeremiah 17:9, then they are even more sobering. Pelagianism is thought to be something out there or perhaps something that is historical, but it could be that we are indeed in a Pelagian Captivity of the Church (R.C. Sproul). What if those who identify themselves as Arminian are actually Pelagian? What if many of those who are Reformed have Pelagian thinking to some degree hidden deep in their hearts? Could it be that Pelagian thinking has crept into the churches as a wolf in sheep’s clothing? If so, we need to recognize this and with great concern begin to search our own hearts.
Hodge’s First Point: “Moral character can be predicated only of volitions.”
This is taught in various ways in many places. We hear this when people say that it does not matter what one believes, but what matters is how a person lives. Another way this can be hidden is when people say that we are not to worry about our feelings but instead just what we do. This can be hidden in biblical language such as “faith without works is dead,” which is true, but not in the way it is used by Pelagian thinking. It can be used to examine a person’s salvation by examining the external behavior from I John or even if a person has said the words of a prayer or has walked an aisle. We have to be careful of our own hearts and the hearts of others in these methods and ways. We have to look at our own hearts very carefully and with much prayer be sure that we have not been caught in the quicksand of Pelagianism. It can lurk and hide very well in Reformed circles as well as any other.
Pelagianism can be hidden in many methods of evangelism. It is there when we ask a person to pray a prayer or to walk an aisle because those are external acts that we take to be indicative of what a person must do to become a Christian. But anyone can do those things without a change of heart. They are external acts only. Jesus told us that a person must be born again to enter the kingdom, but we think that a person must have something to do with this. We can even reach the point of excusing our ways of Pelagian evangelism by simply saying that God is sovereign and that we don’t have to tell people everything. Indeed people to not need to be told everything, but they do need to know something about God and the Gospel that has to do with what God must do to them if they are going to be saved. Hyper-evangelism is really a product of Pelagianism and the desire of men for large numbers. It is also used to give people who practice a lot of evangelism assurance of salvation because they think that because they do something called evangelism they must be saved.
It is so easy to look at the external morals of a person and just assume that the person is a Christian. But many people are outwardly moral and nice, but those are not the same things as holiness and love. We can assume that because a person is against abortion, homosexuality, and divorce that a person is a Christian. But Jesus and His apostles did not teach that. The standard of salvation is not external morality, it is a new heart. A person that is truly saved will have a moral change, but that change will come from a new heart and not just changed morals. The biblical idea of faith is not simply a person having an intellectual belief about Jesus, it is that faith comes from a heart that is born into the kingdom of God and that faith is a gift of God. Faith is not just an intellectual idea in the brain; it is that which receives grace and Christ Himself in the soul. Faith is also the spiritual sight of the soul. Faith does not just believe certain facts to be true, but it has to do with living by received grace moment by moment. Pelagianism is so deceptive in that it takes things that are centered on God and changes them to be centered on man. It is so deadly.
Hodge’s Second Point: “Ability is always the measure of responsibility.”
This sounds rather innocuous in some ways, but then we start to hear the modern Arminian speaking of human responsibility as if there is ability involved. Even more, we hear the chant of modern Calvinists that speak much of human responsibility as well. If a person means (when speaking of human responsibility) that human beings have an obligation to God, then “responsibility” and “obligation” are used as synonyms at that point. But when the idea that ability is the measure of responsibility sneaks in, we are back to Pelagianism. It sounds so right to stress human responsibility, but it is also so easy to slip into some form of Pelagianism when we do. Human responsibility must never have the idea that human beings have the ability to do spiritual acts apart from Christ (John 15:4-6). Paul put it like this: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Cor 15:10). The battle is over grace from beginning to end and to the degree we have grace His glory manifested.
What happens when we approach a fallen man who is born as a Pelagian dead in sins and trespasses and by nature is a child of wrath? We will either approach this man as one that has the ability to respond to the Gospel or we will approach this man as one that only God has the ability to open his heart so that he can respond. We will approach him with one idea or the other in our minds and our evangelistic efforts will be based on one of those ideas as well. Even if we have a different theology in our brains, we can have a different idea deep in our hearts. We will also approach that person in our evangelism and speak to him or her in a way that will either point to his or her great need to have God do the work in the soul or to the person’s own choice and ability. We may assume that if the person makes a choice of some kind that God has done the work, but that is nothing more than an assumption at best. As a Pelagian the person we are evangelizing may just believe that s/he has the ability and so hear what we say through the Pelagian lenses. That person will think that s/he has the ability to respond and so our evangelism will be Pelagian evangelism. Despite the best efforts of many people to diminish these differences, they still stand. A Pelagian by birth will always think that he has the ability to respond. Even if he is taught and understands this intellectually, he will always think of his response as coming from himself. He may say the words that God enabled Him to respond, but it will still be the response of the man rather than God working that in him.
Pelagianism sets itself against the reality of the Gospel which is grace alone from beginning to end. It may use and defend something called grace alone, but it is not grace alone. This is one reason why it is so deceitful. Pelagianism wants grace to help man save himself or perhaps provide a way of salvation, but it does not want grace to do all the saving. It uses the same terminology but means something different by the words. The Gospel of grace alone is under attack today and that by those who use the same words but mean something different by it. Perhaps they are deceived themselves and don’t realize what they are doing, but the result is the same. Pelagianism is at war with the Gospel of grace alone even as it uses the same words as orthodoxy does. The evil one is so sneaky and deceptive that he is able to bring Pelagian thinking into orthodoxy simply by using what we think of as common sense and the same terms with different meanings. With the chilling words of Galatians 1:8 in mind, let us be careful as to our own theology and Gospel. The devil is not sleeping but the “adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8). He hates the Gospel of grace alone and knows that one little work in a heart will fell it in that heart.
God Loves... Himself 
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