The monstrous conception of Pelagianism in its fullest sense is expressed in the thinking of various forms of liberalism and humanism. It is nothing more than the poison of self-sufficiency that the serpent of old has injected into the human race with his venomous bite. As the poison of a viper begins to have effects on the nervous system and/or circulatory system of the one bitten, so the venom of the serpent of old has many effects. It brings a delusion of ability to the subject. It also brings pride into the soul which hides the effects of the poison. The proud heart enamored with its own ability will become religious in order to avoid punishment for its sin, but it simply hates the idea of having to be saved by grace alone. The proud heart that has taken hold of religion is ensnared with itself in religion. That proud heart gives lip service to the grace of God while living in its own power. That proud heart will change the grace of God into licentiousness, but another proud heart will turn grace into strict morality. The proud heart that is so enamored with its own ability can also hide itself in the creeds of Reformed thinking.
In Ashamed of the Gospel MacArthur points this out:
Finney did not distinguish between Calvinist orthodoxy and hyper-Calvinism. ..But the doctrines Finney enumerates are not doctrines unique to hyper-Calvinism; they are simply Calvinist orthodoxy—and in most cases, plain biblical teachings. Finney jettisoned them all—and thus repudiated the heart of biblical theology.
This is what is happening today, though somewhat differently. Warfield said that Finney was a Calvinist in many ways except his Pelagian view of the will. Luther thought of the doctrine of the enslaved will as the very hinge of the Gospel and of the Reformation. Pelagianism is really dangerous to the Gospel of grace alone, and is an attack on the Gospel of grace itself. It can do so in the guise of Reformed theology. Regardless of our professed doctrine and creed we hold to or confess, if we have a view of the will that is Pelagian in some form, we have rejected the Gospel of grace alone. In MacArthur’s words, we have “thus repudiated the heart of biblical theology.” If we jettison the true doctrine of the bondage of the will we have jettisoned the Gospel. Again, we may claim to be Reformed and preach in accordance with the creeds in some way, but if we hold to some form of Pelagianism in the way we view the Gospel then the heart of the Gospel we preach and hold to is Pelagian despite some Reformed externals. The heart of our message would be Pelagian because our doctrine of the will is Pelagian while the externals are simply that.
What was the result of his hyper-evangelism when he rejected Calvinism as hyper-Calvinism?
To put it briefly—that everyone who was concerned in these revivals suffered a sad subsequent lapse; the people were left like a dead coal which could not be reignited; the pastors were short of all their spiritual power; and the evangelists—“among them all,” he says, “and I was personally acquainted with nearly every one of them—I cannot recall a single man, brother Finney and father Nash excepted, who did not after a few years lose his unction, and become equally disqualified for the office of evangelist and pastor.” Thus the great “Western Revivals” ran out into disaster.
This is what happens when true Reformed theology is rejected even if it is rejected as hyper-Calvinism and done so with a Reformed covering. In our day we have various degrees of Pelagianism hiding itself in the guise of Reformed theology. One way it does this is by hiding under human responsibility. Calvinists have been attacked and accused as saying that human beings are robots and they respond by making excuses and saying that they are not like those other people. But it is easy to flee from hyper-Calvinism and run right into Pelagianism. It is easy to say that we are simply Calvinists who are zealous in evangelism because it makes us fit in with Pelagians better. But a person that holds to the biblical doctrine of the enslaved will cannot evangelize in the same way that a person that does not. It makes a massive difference when this is seen as reality and something more than semantics.
While Finney did not distinguish between hyper-Calvinism and Calvinism, we absolutely must because Pelagianism utterly destroys the Gospel of grace alone even when it is held by a professing Calvinist. We will be guilty of what Finney did in throwing out the Gospel though we may do it in a different way and do it with different motives. But we will still be throwing out the biblical Gospel if we confuse hyper-Calvinism with true Calvinism and so resort to some form of Pelagianism in our thinking and in the way we preach the Gospel. On the one hand true Pelagians are attacking the Gospel while on the other hand professing Calvinists are attacking the Gospel because they think they are fleeing from hyper-Calvinism. They have misunderstood the historical teaching of the bondage of the will and are giving themselves to teaching a form of Pelagianism. It is still a form of Pelagianism and it is still heresy.
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