The Gospel and the Enslaved Will 9

May 24, 2010

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news to those who recognize it as good news. Those who recognize it as good news are those who understand how bad the bad news is. The announcement of an apple and a small sandwich is not good news to those who are used to large steaks, but to a starving person the small meal is like a feast. When a person thinks that s/he has a free-will and that the good news is that God will save him or her the moment s/he makes a choice and an act of the will, the Gospel is good news but only to a degree. It is nothing pressing. But to the soul that has experientially discovered that it is in bondage to sin and self, the promises of grace to receive a new heart and new life are great news. That is the soul that feels the weight of its enslavement and the weight of its own pride. The sound of deliverance by grace alone from those enslavements is really good news.

God has surely promised His grace to the humbled; that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another—God alone. As long as he is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God; but plans out for himself (or at least hopes and longs for) a position, an occasion, a work, which will bring him final salvation. But he who is out of doubt that his destiny depends entirely on the will of God despairs entirely of himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work in him; and such a man is very near to grace for his salvation.

Ephesians 2 is the classic passage on salvation being by grace through faith and not as a result of works at all. There is no room for boasting even if one has many works, because the saved soul is the work of God and is created for good works that God has prepared beforehand. The soul that God raises from the spiritual dead is dead in sins and trespasses and is by nature a child of wrath. “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. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (vv. 8-9). While this text does not explicitly and with extreme clarity say what Luther said in the quote from above, for the text to be true what Luther says must be true. A person cannot be delivered from trusting or believing in his or her own works until s/he realizes that salvation is utterly beyond his own powers. A person dead in sins and trespasses (Eph 2:1-3) with a nature that is a child of wrath cannot do one spiritual thing to please God. The person is dead in sin and cannot do anything but sin. There is no contribution that the person can make to his or her salvation because the person is still looking to self for that one little thing. This person is still looking to self for one little thing which will guarantee salvation. That one little thing really becomes one gigantic thing which the person is trusting wholly in for salvation. That is a salvation by works.

It is only to the degree that we accept that our own soul is enslaved (dead) can we believe in the Gospel of grace alone. As long as we don’t think of our own soul as dead and enslaved we will look to our own soul for at least one work though we may call it something else. We should also remember that the slightest work makes grace to be no grace at all (Rom 11:6). Grace, in order to be biblical grace, cannot be added to or assisted. So Luther’s point is not going beyond the bounds of Scripture at all, but is simply explaining what Scripture teaches. It is not until the soul arrives at the point of realization and submitting to the fact that his or her eternal destiny depends entirely on the will of God that the person will despair of any hope in his or her own will or works of that will. It is not until then that a person can look to grace alone. Until a person has reached the point of having no hope in his or her own will that person will not look to grace alone to be saved. The grace of God will have no help from any work of the human will in salvation so that salvation may be by grace alone and to His glory alone.

Luther was right. The soul must despair of any hope in itself or it will look to self for one little thing. But that one little thing is poison to the Gospel of grace alone. That one little thing, as some would call it, is actually a very large thing. It is enough to make salvation to be by grace plus one work. While it seems small, in actuality it is the attempt to wrest the Gospel from the hand of God by the act of the will of man. For salvation to be by grace alone it must be the will of God alone that chooses to give grace and it must be God’s will alone that applies grace. The unbroken heart of man desires to choose for God to give him or her grace and apply that grace at his or her own choice. It is nothing but a proud heart wanting to have God do what it wants and when it wants it. That is not a humbled heart looking to grace alone, it is a proud heart looking to self alone to do what it thinks God cannot do.

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The Gospel and the Enslaved Will 8

May 21, 2010

Pelagian thinking regarding the free-will is simply a statement of human autonomy. The human will was never created to come up with its own love and merit in order to be able to please God. It was created to be an instrument by which the fruit of the Spirit would manifest the glory of God. The Gospel enables the soul to receive all from Christ by grace and not look to self to fulfill any of God’s demands. The Gospel of grace alone stands firm against all forms of Pelagianism. There is nothing that a soul can do to earn merit or please God apart from being emptied of self and then for God to manifest Himself in and through that soul. The soul was and is not meant to do anything good in and of its own power because there is no good it can do apart from Christ. “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The soul that believes in free-will has not learned of its own helplessness apart from Christ and has not learned that it can bear no fruit of the Spirit apart from the Spirit Himself working it in the soul.

The soul that believes in free-will must believe that it can do something apart from God that is good enough to move God to respond to it with salvation. As long as the will looks to itself for anything it is not looking to Christ alone. As long as the will thinks that it is free to make a choice and be saved, it is not looking to Christ and grace alone. This is why Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards were so strong against the teaching of free-will regarding the Gospel. It is not just an innocent difference that has little to do with anything important, it is vital to the Gospel of grace alone that comes to the soul through faith alone.

God has surely promised His grace to the humbled; that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another—God alone. As long as he is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God; but plans out for himself (or at least hopes and longs for) a position, an occasion, a work, which will bring him final salvation. But he who is out of doubt that his destiny depends entirely on the will of God despairs entirely of himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work in him; and such a man is very near to grace for his salvation.

In the quote above Luther lays down the gauntlet to his day and then our own. We must not think that we can avoid what Luther says and go on our merry way and still think of ourselves as Reformed or as children of the Reformation. The Gospel that thundered forth from the Reformers was a Gospel that destroyed a person’s hope in self. It was a Gospel that required that the sinner be humbled and broken from all hope in self so that the sinner could truly rest in Christ alone. As long as the sinner is not broken from all hope in self and is thoroughly humbled, that sinner is enslaved to his or her own so called ‘free-will.” Jesus called those who were weary and heavy-laden to Himself (Mat 11:28). He said that He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Mat 9:13; Mar 2:17; Luke 5:32). The soul that is full of self and pride will never rest in the humble Savior until the self and pride has been removed from that soul. As long as the soul is full of self and pride that soul is enslaved to the will of itself in self and pride. An enslaved soul must be delivered from its slavery, and that is true even when it is in slavery to its own self and pride. Trusting in a free-will is really trusting in an enslaved will.

A soul that looks to its own free-will as a way of deliverance is not looking to Christ alone for deliverance. There can be no trusting in the will of God in Christ and the free-will at the same time. As Luther points out, God has promised grace to the humbled. But He has also promised His opposition to the proud. For a proud person to be saved either the pride of that person must be crushed or God must change His mind. The proud soul will never trust in anything completely but will always trust in self to some degree. But the Gospel is of Christ alone and grace alone. The promises of the Gospel are always based on grace and nothing in the sinner. How can the sinner receive and rest in the promises of the Gospel when the sinner is still resting in what is thought to be his or her own free-will? Resting in what we think of as free-will is resting in something other than free grace.

The soul that rests in his or her own will in any way is a soul that is not resting in the will of God. One cannot have it both ways. The soul that still looks to free-will and holds on to it is a soul that is still hoping in self to make some contribution to salvation. That is a soul that has not been thoroughly humbled and is a soul that still rests in its own plan for salvation rather than acquiescing to the plan of God in Christ which is by grace alone. A soul that still looks to self for anything at all is still a soul that is enslaved to its own self and pride. It is not really free at all.

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The Gospel and the Enslaved Will 7

May 20, 2010

For Luther and the Reformers the teaching about the bondage of the will was the hinge of the Reformation and an utterly vital point. The reason Luther thought that this was true was because “The whole work of man’s salvation, first to last, is God’s; and all the glory for it must be God’s also.” The real issue of the Gospel has to do with the glory of God. If salvation comes to man on the basis of his own will, then salvation is not totally of grace and comes to man to some degree on the basis of his own merit or choice. If salvation comes to man as a result of something he has done, then Romans 11:6 comes down on us in this by telling us that a work makes grace to be no longer grace. Salvation must be by grace alone because salvation is clearly to the glory of God alone.

Erasmus, who in a sense has the same spirit as so many today, refused to say that salvation is totally of God. While there are those today who will say that salvation is by grace alone, when they hold to the freedom of the will in reality they deny it. Erasmus and so many today want man to be saved with the help of God, but not by a will that needs much if any help from God. In this there is a great lesson for us today. Erasmus, a man who desired peace instead of tension, wanted to meet Luther part of the way. He wanted to diminish the amount of power that man can exercise so that the smallness of the power that man can exercise would show that there is almost no amount of merit that man can obtain apart from God. The Augustinian tradition that the Reformers held to was that there is no work a man can do that has any possibility of earning the slightest merit before God. Nothing man can do can put God under any obligation to respond to man with grace. The smallest merit destroys grace. But Luther saw what Erasmus was doing and went after him for that. Instead of getting closer to the teaching of grace alone, Luther thought Erasmus was really cheapening his own Pelagianism. Instead of standing for a lot of hard works for salvation as Pelagianism in effect teaches, Erasmus brought salvation down to one feeble effort of the will.

This is another place that people need to consider again the implications of what a free-will means. The position of a full Pelagian is that a person must work hard to obtain salvation. But the semi-Pelagian, while seeming to hold to something of grace, is able to obtain grace by a very small act of the will that for some reason moves God to save. This is not to move closer to the biblical teaching of grace alone, but instead it still holds to a view of the human will that is not biblical and it has a lower view of God. As B.B. Warfield states, that view tries to find a middle ground between grace and works and yet retains neither. This cannot be stressed too strongly. The enslaved will must look to Christ alone to deliver it and so salvation is by grace alone to the glory of God alone. The will that is allowed to have just enough to make one choice in reality cheapens both the standards of and the grace of God. It is not a true middle position at all, but rather is a position that has nothing of either to really commend it.

For Luther no form of Pelagianism could possibly be true because of the nature of man who is dead in sin and has an enslaved will. All that this person does is sin because this person can only be motivated by sin. The unregenerate sinner can do nothing but merit wrath. Another point that has to be stressed from Luther’s view is that for a person to do something that had merit to God the man must perform the act apart from God. But for Luther (and Scripture) there is nothing good that a human being can do that does not come from God in the first place. That utterly takes away any hope of merit for man. The only good that a man can do must be worked in the man by God. There is simply no hope for a human being to obtain merit from God on the basis of a good work or a good choice because anything good that can come from man must come from God first.

The power of the previous paragraph may not be obvious to those steeped in humanism. Let me give it another shot. The soul of a human being consists of the ability to think, to feel, and to choose. But the nature of that soul determines in some measure what is attractive to that soul. For an action to be pleasing to God that soul must love God with all of its being and intend God’s glory in the action it takes. But the soul that is dead has no spiritual life in it at all. Spiritual life is that life of the Spirit in the soul and God is the Originator of love. So the soul that does not have God has no love and no ability at all to love God. In fact, it hates Him. Once God makes a soul alive, then that soul has the capacity to receive from the Spirit and so it receives love from God and can love God in what it does. But there can be no merit in that action for the human soul because all the ability to do it came from God. This line of thinking, which is thoroughly biblical, destroys the Pelagian view of morality and merit. The enslaved will can never do the slightest thing that would please God. It is only when the will is set free from its slavery to the devil and sin that it can now do any good at all. But it is to the glory of God and not to the glory of free-will.

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Pelagianism, Hyper-Evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism 10

May 19, 2010

The basic points of Pelagianism may seem like common sense to many people, but that simply points to the need for humanity to recognize its fallen condition. What seems like common sense is simply natural sense or the sense that comes from sinful human nature. We begin to reason from ourselves and the way we perceive things. For example, we know that we should not expect our infants to obey our commands to mow the yard. We know that they are unable to do so. We would also not command a frail person to lift a thousand pounds and press it. These things are common sense. But there is the distinction between physical ability and moral or spiritual ability. A person has the physical ability to do what s/he can do according to the physical nature. But the moral or spiritual ability of people is according to the judgment of God upon them. Adam acted as the federal representative of all humanity (see Romans 5). When he sinned, all fell into sin in him.

Pelagian thinking is an outright denial of Ephesians 2:1-3 in all parts: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” The thinking of the Pelagian is that we are not dead in trespasses and sin because ability is the measure of responsibility. The Pelagian denies that all are children of wrath by nature because of the same reason. The Pelagian also says that if we are dead in sin and are children of wrath by nature, then we have no ability and so we have no responsibility as well.

It is here that we run into a major teaching of Pelagianism which is diametrically opposed to the Gospel of grace alone. Now, if virtually anyone who really believed and loved the Gospel of grace alone would be asked if s/he could love a doctrine that was directly opposed to the Gospel of grace alone, that person would deny that with some degree of vehemence. It may be that a person may have read the basic tenants of Pelagianism and believe that they are wrong. But there is still a major teaching that hides itself in the background of Pelagianism. It is believed by the vast majority of people in the religious world today and by most of those who don’t believe it (though few in number), they don’t see it as a major issue at all. This major issue is free-will.

Let me give the basic tenants of Pelagianism again in something of a logical form.
(a) Moral character can be predicated only of volitions.
(b) Ability is always the measure of responsibility
(c) Therefore, every man has always the plenary power to do all that it is his duty to do.
(d) Therefore, the human will alone, to the exclusion of the interference of an internal influence from God, must decide human character and destiny.
(e) Therefore, the only divine influence needed by man or consistent with his character as a self-determined agent is an external, providential, and educational one.

Now, let us look at them again. A volition is simply an act of the will in choice. If moral character can be predicated only of volition, then the will must be free in order to make choices that are moral in nature. The truth of this assertion would be seen from statements (d) and (e) above. The Pelagian asserts that man, as a self-determined agent, makes choices apart from any internal influence of God. So for a volition to determine moral character rather than an internal and moral nature, the will must be free from the internal influences of God.

If ability is always the measure of responsibility, then a person must have free-will so they could have any ability at all. This shows that man has no responsibility apart from the free-will. Even more, if the soul always has the plenary power to do all that it is its duty to do, then the will always has the power to be free in order to do what it is commanded to do. Pelagianism, then, is really the attempt to assert free-will over the free grace of God. We could also turn that around and say that free-will is the attempt to assert Pelagianism over the free grace of God. Free-will and free grace are opposed to each other at each point. If we are going to fight Pelagianism because it is opposite of the grace of God in salvation, then we must fight free-will as well. There is no fighting one without the other. In fact, the doctrine of the free-will is really the heart of the Pelagian system. To fight Pelagianism is to fight free-will. Yet to staunchly defend free-will is to defend the heart of Pelagianism. Pelagianism stands or falls with the teaching of free-will. Christianity only stands when it defends the truth of free-grace against the error of free-will. The heart of the Gospel of free grace will only stand when it is free of the tentacles of free-will.

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Pelagianism, Hyper-Evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism 9

May 18, 2010

If the devil could have his way in the churches across a nation, it may not be the case that he would totally do away with them. Instead he would use them to deceive the people in differing ways. His work is given to us in the New Testament when this is said: “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist” (II John 7). The devil is also described in Revelation 12 as “the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (v. 9). Without question, then, the devil is one that deceives. Some of his work is in disguising himself as an angel of light (II Co 11:14). Another aspect of his work, as god of this world, is to blind “the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (II Cor 4:4).

So as the deceiver who disguises himself as an angel of light and who blinds people to the glory of Christ, we can see that it is not necessarily his work to deny the truth of Christianity but it is his work to hide the glory of it and to distort it. This is the massive problem in an age that does not like to think closely about issues and has enough pride to blind a billion worlds. We are also bound with the problem of thinking that we know something if we have heard of it with the ears and can memorize it. So because people have heard something about Pelagianism and they know that it is heresy, and assuredly they know they have the truth, they think that they are not guilty of it. The devil has the professing Church in his clutches as he is devouring it by deceiving it and hiding the true glory of the Gospel from the people. He is busily snatching the Word from the hearts of a sleepy and unsuspecting people while they go on their busy ways deceived and enslaved to the devil. The road to hell is without bumps for them as they go smoothly along fast asleep to eternal flames with their unregenerate hearts while ministers who are externally orthodox croon them to sleep with words of ease.

We can speak of revival and even desire it to some degree, but we must also realize that a desire for revival in name can also simply deceive our own wicked hearts from us. Our own zeal for evangelism can hide our unregenerate hearts from us. We think that surely a person that has zeal in evangelism must be a believer, but if we are shot through with a Pelagian way of thinking we are not proclaiming the Gospel. We can have all sorts of people pray prayers with us and make commitments, but if they have not been delivered from Pelagianism they are not converted. We can even get people in the churches and get them busy doing “ministry” in all sorts of activities, but unless they are delivered from Pelagianism they have not been delivered from their sin. Religion is being used in their case to hide their eyes from the true Gospel. As they sink deeper and deeper into their religious activities they are actually sinking deeper and deeper into their own sinful hearts and the ways set out for them by the devil.

A major thought today in Christendom is that we are not to worry about our feelings but do what needs to be done. How is that any different from the first point of Pelagianism? “Moral character can be predicated only of volitions.” On the other hand, people focus on their feelings greatly and told to let them go. We also use music and fiery sermons to fire up the feelings as if true religious affections could be fired up by external influences. This is no different than believing the last point of Pelagianism as listed by Hodge: “the only divine influence needed by man or consistent with his character as a self-determined agent is an external, providential, and educational one.”

Pelagianism is very much alive and the devil is fighting to deceive and blind. He is using hyper-evangelism to blind those who are using it to evangelize as well as blind those hearing it to the truth of the Gospel. Finney’s methods were used and so the areas that he held his evangelical services were referred to as “the burned out district” because of his practices that actually hardened people to the truth. It may be the case that the United States of America is one large burned out district today because of Finney’s methods being used by so many. Hyper-evangelism has held the day and has been preaching at the very best a very diluted gospel. On the other hand, some have confused Calvinism as hyper-Calvinism and the Gospel itself was thrown out. Finney’s errors have grown and have been reproduced over and over again. Hyper-evangelism and confusing true Calvinism with hyper-Calvinism are massive errors that spring from Pelagianism. These are both the ways of the devil who wants to hide the true glory of the Gospel from sinners. Not only does He hide the glory of Christ from the eyes of many, but he does so to many by hiding the true glory behind a false glory. So many think of the glory of the Gospel as being what it does for them only. The true glory of the Gospel is the glory of God shining in the face of Christ. It is when God shines forth His true grace in Christ that His glory is seen. But Pelagianism also attacks the nature of true grace. Oh the wiles of the devil!

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Pelagianism, Hyper-Evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism 8

May 16, 2010

The “gospel” of Pelagianism leaves a person still in the bondage of self-love and independency. The pride of the natural man is like the child that always wants to do it ‘by myself.” The proud heart blinds a person to the proud heart and the real inability of self to do one good thing apart from Christ. If it every occurs to the Pelagian that s/he is to love God with all of the soul and of something what that means, the proud heart will quickly shut that out and remind itself that (a) Moral character can be predicated only of volitions and (b), ability is always the measure of responsibility. This is one way the proud and sinful heart blinds itself to what must happen in salvation. The heart must repent of its love of self as its chief love and motive in what it does to love God as its chief love and motive in all it does. The Great Command to love God with the whole soul is far beyond the natural human soul when it is seen for what it really commands. It is not just a command to do external things, but it is a command to the depths of the soul to love God with all of its being at all times. The soul that loves self will respond with enmity because it cannot do that and it cannot turn from self-love apart from the glory of grace changing it. But it can produce an external moral reformation and convince itself that the external acts are the love of God.

The “gospel” of Pelagianism then leaves the human soul in bondage to self-love and pride because it leaves it in the power of self rather than the power of Christ and the Spirit. It leaves the human soul to its choices when the true Gospel takes the human soul and leaves it in the power of the life of God in the soul. Pelagianism will leave the human soul in the power of its own ability since it says that ability is the measure of responsibility. That means, they would say, that God would not require what is beyond human ability. Oh what a weak and inept (not to mention filthy) message of a so-called gospel that is. How utterly hideous it is to leave men and women in the bondage of their own ability whether that is what we are actually saying or not. We must preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His ability to sinners by grace alone. Sinners need to be delivered from their own ability to they may look to the ability of God to save them by the ability of Christ and the Spirit. How utterly impoverished is the Pelagian so-called “gospel” that does not point poor sinners away from their own wills to the omnipotent will of God. How desperately wicked it is to leave people to their own choices and so-called “ability” and not point people to the power of the Spirit of Christ to give them a new heart. The “gospel” of Pelagianism is no true gospel at all.

We would charge a medical doctor in criminal court if a patient came to him or her in need of heart surgery or even a new heart and s/he just told the patient to will themselves to health. The Great Physician alone can deal with sinners who need new hearts rather than new choices. Yet those who claim to speak for Him today are simply telling people that they are responsible to give themselves new hearts. They tell sinners that they have the ability because they are responsible before God. They tell sinners that all they need to do is to repent and believe which comes down to a choice that the sinner is supposed to make. Even if we don’t tell sinners that, if we don’t tell them of their need for a new heart and who alone has the ability to give them new hearts, we have effectively told them nothing more than a Pelagian would do. God commands all sinners to repent, but that does not mean that sinners have the power to repent. When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born from above (again) to enter the kingdom, He did not leave it at that or Nicodemus would have reasoned that he must have the power to do it. Instead Jesus told Nicodemus this: “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

In John 15 Jesus taught on the vine and the branch. The branch does not have a free-will to produce fruit, but instead all true fruit comes from the vine and then through the branch. Jesus said that apart from Him we can do nothing (v. 5). In other words, the only fruit that can be borne through the branch must come from the vine. No soul has the free-will to produce spiritual fruit because spiritual fruit has its source in the spiritual realm and will only come from its true origin. But even more, a branch that bears spiritual fruit must be one that was grafted in by another (see Romans 11). God must graft a branch into the tree so that it may be nourished of the root, which shows that the free-will cannot do this. The will cannot be free to do what only God can do. When the will tries to be free and mimic what God alone can do, that will is then being like Adam and Eve who believed the promise of the devil to be like God. The idol of Pelagianism, therefore, is to bow at the feet of its own will and pretend that it can do what God alone can do. The ability of free-will is not just a speculative doctrine or metaphysical nicety, but instead it is that by which men go to war with God over to see if they will worship self or God. Pelagianism, even when it is trying to cover itself by wearing the dress of Arminianism or Calvinism, is a wicked teaching that is enmity against God.

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Pelagianism, Hyper-Evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism 7

May 15, 2010

Pelagianism has been condemned by council after council and creed after creed. Until modern days it has been considered non-Christian by all champions of orthodoxy. While many “Reformed” people in the modern day are zealous against hyper-Calvinism, it appears that some are simply fighting historical Calvinism. True hyper-Calvinism, while not something to just ignore, has no real impact today. Pelagianism, on the other hand, has made massive inroads in the professing Church. While many would not hold to all the teachings of Pelagianism in their own minds, they are practical Pelagians in evangelism and sanctification. Pelagianism hides behind the teachings on man’s responsibility, of free-will, and then by those in methods of evangelism. It hides in the guise of Arminian theology and it hides in the guise of Reformed theology. It is rampant.

The basic tenants of Pelagianism are given below in something of a logical form.
(a) Moral character can be predicated only of volitions.
(b) Ability is always the measure of responsibility
(c) Therefore, every man has always the plenary power to do all that it is his duty to do.
(d) Therefore, the human will alone, to the exclusion of the interference of an internal influence from God, must decide human character and destiny.
(e) Therefore, the only divine influence needed by man or consistent with his character as a self-determined agent is an external, providential, and educational one.

In evangelism and preaching we must teach people the nature of sin. Now, if all we do is try to get them to see that they have committed external acts of sin rather than teach them the nature of their sinful hearts, then we are practical Pelagians at this point. This cannot be stressed too much as it is so dangerous. If all people admit to is that they are sinners because of the fact that they have committed external sins, they still don’t have any idea of what it means to be a sinner. If people have no idea that they have sinful hearts that sin in all that comes from the heart, they have no concept of the biblical teaching of sin. They will have no concept that they need a new nature and not just some external forgiveness. If they have no idea of what it means to have a sinful heart, they will have no idea of the Gospel which is a promise of a new heart.

While many will say that of course they believe that morality is of the heart, it could not be seen in their methods of evangelism. There are popular methods of evangelism that focus on the externals of the Ten Commandments. This can get quite tricky, but we can think of certain “inward” sins and still think of sin as external. We can still leave people as thinking that a sinful desire or a sinful thought is nothing more than an act of the will or choice. We may think that we have escaped Pelagian thinking if we tell people that their lusting is sin, but we have not if we have not pressed home the reason people have lustful thoughts. We must take people to the point where they see that they have a sinful nature and all that flows from their hearts is sin. They have sinful actions and lustful thoughts because they have sinful hearts. If we don’t take them to the very depths of their sinful natures they will think that repentance is nothing more than an external turning from sin and that amounts to nothing more than a moral reformation.

The New Covenant is built on the fact that God will give a new heart. It is built on the fact that it is God who will come in the soul and be the life of that soul in Christ. The New Covenant is built on the indwelling of Christ by the Spirit and so the believer becomes a temple of the living God. Salvation is to be rescued from the devil and the bondage of sin and not just external sins. In chapter 7 of Mark we have the words of Jesus on this: “After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, “Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.” The only thing that can happen to a sinful heart that is the spring and fountain of sin is to be replaced with a new heart. We must be born from above (again) if we are going to enter the kingdom. Once a sinner understands that s/he has a sinful heart, it becomes clear that s/he needs a new heart and so must be born from above. But if we do nothing but get people to see that they have sinned and need a sacrifice for sin to be saved, we have not gotten beyond what a Pelagian would teach. Can a person repent of a sinful nature if the person does not know about that nature and feel its power on them? Can a person repent of pride of the heart (a sinful heart is full of self and pride) if s/he thinks that only acts of the will need to be repented of? Pelagianism attacks the Gospel even when it is disguised in Arminian or Reformed clothing. It is the deception of the devil to keep people from seeing that they must become new creatures. It can be the difference between the Gospel and a distortion of it.

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Pelagianism, Hyper-Evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism 6

May 12, 2010

We have looked at three of the points of Pelagianism according to A.A. Hodge over the past few posts. The fourth point is as follows: “(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.”

Hodge has set out the Pelagian view in somewhat of a logical argument. When adjusted a little it fits easily into argument form and appears something like what follows:

(a) Moral character can be predicated only of volitions.
(b) Ability is always the measure of responsibility
(c) Therefore, every man has always the plenary power to do all that it is his duty to do.
(d) Therefore, the human will alone, to the exclusion of the interference of an internal influence from God, must decide human character and destiny.
(e) Therefore, the only divine influence needed by man or consistent with his character as a self-determined agent is an external, providential, and educational one.

Notice the power of this argument and its reliance upon the freedom of the will and the absence of the hand of God on the soul itself. In (a) moral character can only be predicated only of volitions. This statement denies that a moral character can be of the person’s nature or comes from the heart. It is only of a bare volition as such. If one accepts that moral character can only be predicated of volitions, then one must accept that (b) ability is always the measure of responsibility. In a sense (a) and (b) are separate, but in another sense they are inextricably linked together. The trap, if one is following it, has been sprung and it is hard to get out of it. If we accept that (a) and (b) are correct, we are driven to the following conclusion of (c). If ability is always the measure of responsibility, then every man always has the plenary power to do all that it is his duty to do. Surely that would shock Paul who did all by the power that worked in him (Col 1:29) and not by some external influence.

There is no getting out of the argument at this point unless one goes back to (a) and (b) and looks at the rotten foundation that they are built on. But notice where this argument has taken us and where we are at if we have agreed to it. We are now at the point of holding that whatever it is man’s duty to do it is also in his power to do. If it is in man’s power to do all that it is his duty to do, and man is not responsible apart from what he has the power and ability to do, then it is the human will alone to the exclusion of the interference of an internal influence from God that must decide human character and destiny. What man needs from God, then, is simply a God that will work on his external parts in a providential and educational way. This describes the vast amount of religion in America today. It sounds a whole lot like a lot of modern “Reformed” teaching as well. It sounds like almost all of the evangelism and “gospel preaching” today. The real choice and power is that of the human will, though the theory may be different. Practically speaking, however, that is what we are left with.

What we are told over and over again is that we must balance the teaching of the sovereignty of God with the responsibility of man. We are told that it is man who must repent and it is man who must believe. But that is not the whole issue. Is it the will of man that enables the man to repent or is it the will of God that enables the man to repent? Is it the will of man that enables man to believe or is it the will of God that enables man to believe? This is a vital question. The word “responsibility” can be used by Pelagians of differing degrees and of Reformed people as well. A Pelagian can speak of the sovereignty of God as well. So both a Pelagian and a Reformed person can state the words that “we must teach the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God.” But they mean something totally different by the statement, or at least if they are consistent with the historical positions they will. Historically, the two positions are polar opposites. Today, different words are used but it seems as if the meanings are getting closer and closer. But the Reformed position is the one changing and so is becoming like the Pelagian side and not the other way around.

The semi-Pelagian position will have God reaching out to man with co-operative grace which may render the man’s efforts successful. But the Augustinian or Reformed position teaches that the will cannot cooperate with God until God has renewed the will and has been renewed by grace. These positions cannot be more opposite. There is no middle ground between the Augustinian view and anything else. It is that God saves by grace alone and nothing else. Man does not assist in his own salvation but instead is saved by God alone. God saves to the praise of the glory of His grace (Eph 1:3-6). God reaches down and saves sinners by raising them from the dead because of who He is and not because of anything He finds in them (Eph 2:4-10). There is utterly no room for boasting in any saved person other than boasting in the cross of Christ.

The “Reformed” teaching of today tells us that we must stress the responsibility of man, and indeed we must tell man that he is obligated to love God with all of his being and to repent and believe if s/he is to be saved. But does man have the ability to do that of himself? When we leave human souls to their own devices and do not tell them that the grace and power of God can give them new hearts by grace alone, we are practical Pelagians. We have done nothing but given them external words that tell them of external duties if we do not tell them the truth of their rotten and sinful hearts and natures. Men are Pelagians by birth and will hear us as Pelagians when we tell them the externals of the Gospel. But the only real Gospel is the Augustinian one. It is by grace alone from beginning to end and it is a grace that changes the hearts of human beings and it is grace that enables them to repent and believe. Salvation is by grace alone. In this case, alone means alone and by itself.

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The Gospel and the Enslaved Will 6

May 10, 2010

According to Martin Luther and the Reformers the glory of the Gospel was a display of the free grace of God. But there can be no free grace as long as sinners trust in their free-will to do the slightest thing. In one sense the very heart of the battle of the Reformation was the teaching of free-will versus free grace. The Reformers battled for free grace in order that all the glory would be God’s and that justification would be by (through) faith alone. What is not often set out in the modern day are the deep roots and destructive tentacles of free-will. Once again, here is a quote by Packer and Johnson in the introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will.

“That human choices are spontaneous and not forced he knows and affirms; it is, indeed, fundamental to his position to do so. It was man’s total inability to save himself, and the sovereignty of Divine grace in his salvation, that Luther was affirming when he denied ‘free-will,’ and it was the contrary that Erasmus was affirming when he maintained ‘free-will.’ The ‘free-will’ in question was ‘free-will’ in relation to God and the things of God. Erasmus defined it as ‘a power of the human will by which man may apply himself to those things that lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from the same.’ It is this that Luther denies…He now has no power to please God. He is unable to do anything but continue in sin. His salvation, therefore, must be wholly of Divine grace, for he himself can contribute nothing to it; and any formulation of the gospel which amounts to saying that God shows grace, not in saving man, but in making it possible for man to save himself, is to be rejected as a lie. The whole work of man’s salvation, first to last, is God’s; and all the glory for it must be God’s also.”

Here, once again, the contradiction between free-will and the sovereignty of God’s grace is seen. The will is free in the sense that human beings are not forced to make the choices they make. But the position of the Reformation was that there was no free-will in terms of the things of God. Erasmus was quite clear in the Roman Catholic position in saying that man may apply to himself the things that lead to eternal salvation. This is precisely what Luther and the Reformers fought against and it is also precisely what modern versions of Pelagianism hold to. Despite the fact that there are few that would call themselves “Pelagians” in our day, this is not the same thing as there not being many Pelagians. Pelagianism is rampant today and it is operating freely in denominations and churches under the title of “Arminianism.” Whenever we leave salvation up to the choice of man, even if our little secret is that God is sovereign in it, we are telling the person virtually nothing different than Erasmus would have.

A free-will is part of our sinful nature that we must be delivered from if we are going to be saved by Divine grace alone. What is thought of as the free-will by fallen man is nothing more than man’s desire to be sufficient for his own destiny on the earth and in eternity. The teaching of free-will leaves man free, at least in his own mind, to determine if he will repent and believe. If faith and believing are up to a free-will, then man is in charge of his eternal destiny and not God. Once again, Erasmus would have cheered for that belief, but Luther would have fought it as the doctrine of demons. The problem, at least for the modern day, is that the doctrine of Erasmus has swept the land. It is the doctrine and attitude of Erasmus that has taken the day rather than the Gospel of Divine grace alone. The doctrine of free-will is intellectually denied by some, but it is not fought against as a teaching which contradicts and overthrows the glory of Divine grace alone in salvation. Instead we have those who want to be gracious toward all in what they call “minor disagreements.” That is what Erasmus did and wanted.

John 1:12-13 should overthrow that convincingly: “12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” In John 1:3 the Scripture says that “all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” The words “came into being” in both places in verse 3 is really one Greek word, ginomai. It has the basic idea of come into being as it is translated. In John 1:12 the word “become” in the phrase “become children of God” is that same word. The same word is used in the very same context. In fact, it is also used in John 1:14 where “the Word became flesh.” The point, in this context, is that a person becomes a child of God not because of his bloodline. One does not become a child of God because of the will of his own flesh or of any other human flesh. A person does not become a child of God based on the will of any human being. A person becomes a child of God only because of the will of God. The human will is not free to cause itself to become a child of God. The human will is not free to cause itself to be born again. A human soul is born again only because of the will of God. He only does this by grace alone.
If we look at the awesomeness of John 1:12-13, surely it is obvious that a person cannot just make an act of the will and so be saved. It is not in the power of the human will to do what God alone can do. The human soul is utterly dependent on the will of God to be made a child of God and He only does that by grace. The new birth is also an act of God by which Christ comes to dwell in that soul and He becomes its very life. No act of the human will can bring Christ down and move Him into the soul. Until the soul quits striving to do what God alone can do, can it be saved? Until the soul is delivered from its self-sufficiency, can it really rest in the sufficiency of God alone? Until the soul is delivered from its bondage to self in self-love, can it will love God. Until the soul is delivered from its bondage to the devil, can it bow to King Jesus? Until the soul has been delivered from its enmity to God, can it love Him as a child of God? The human will was never given this power. The very attempt to attain these things by an act of human will shows the sin of pride and self-sufficiency that human being have fallen into. Apart from repenting of the fallen state of the free-will, can a person really believe from the whole soul (including the will) the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?

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Pelagianism, Hyper-Evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism 5

May 8, 2010

In the last BLOG on Pelagianism, Hyper-Evangelism, and Hyper-Calvinism a quote, taken from John MacArthur’s Ashamed of the Gospel, made and makes an important (vital) point. “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.” That teaches us that we must be careful to make an accurate distinction between orthodox Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism. If not, we will do what Charles Finney did and cast out orthodoxy in the name of hyper-Calvinism. We may also cast out the heart of Reformed thinking if we erroneously identify the heart of Calvinism as hyper-Calvinism. That is exactly what I am claiming is being done. Warfield stated that the heart of Calvinism is really irresistible grace and not election. What many have done is throw out the real meaning of irresistible grace while adhering to the words. That leaves them with a form of orthodoxy with practical Pelagianism at the heart of their system. With practical Pelagianism at the heart of their practice of evangelism and preaching, they can join hands in agreement with Pelagians on many points. When they do that, orthodox Calvinists see that as wrong but their protestations are dismissed with the pejorative “hyper-Calvinist.”

The above quote from Finney should awaken many from their slumbers and their witch hunts on hyper-Calvinism. While many are out to get hyper-Calvinists, in doing so they have cast out orthodox Calvinism. Real and true hyper-Calvinism is quite a different thing than what many are calling it today. A person who is a Pelagian will think that virtually all Calvinism is hyper-Calvinism. So when one that thinks of himself as a Calvinist has a form of Pelagianism at the root of his system of evangelism, that person will automatically think that true Calvinism is hyper-Calvinism. Thus making an accurate distinction is vital. We speak of those who have a historical faith in the Gospel which is to hold to the facts without the whole soul being changed by them. In our present discussion a person can be blinded to true Calvinism by holding to the historical facts about Calvinism.

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 (A.W. Tozer).

If our real idea of God can lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and as such requires us to make an intelligent and vigorous search to unearth and expose it, then the heart of Pelagianism may be in us and stay there unless we make an intelligent and vigorous search for it. However, we live in a day which prefers to hear a teaching and accept it as true of false based on the intellect alone. For example, Jeremiah 17:9 can be accepted as true and yet there be no deep understanding of our own heart because of it. “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” We may even think of that verse when we have differences with others, and yet apply it to them and never even think that we may be deceived.

Hodge’s third point (Pelagianism): Hence every man has always the plenary power to do all that it is his duty to do.
Pelagians believe in the free-will of man and will not relinquish that. They believe that man has all the power that is needed to do all that is his duty to do. Compare that with the Augustinian (Calvinism) view: “Which was adopted by all the original Protestant Churches, Lutheran and Reformed. (a.) Man is by nature so entirely depraved in his moral nature as to be totally unable to do any thing spiritually good, or in any degree to begin or dispose himself thereto.” All the original Protestant Churches adopted this? How many really believe that today? Now if we compare those two statements with the way Calvinists are teaching and preaching today, what would we conclude? My conclusion is that most Calvinists preach or teach more in line with the Pelagians on this matter. While they may deny the creed of the Pelagians, yet in practice they are practical Pelagians. Put in a different way, the difference between how a Pelagian and a Calvinist speak of grace is telling. If deep in our souls we believe that a person is entirely depraved that s/he is totally unable to do anything spiritually good, or in any degree to being or dispose him or herself to do so, then we must tell the person of the need for grace to bring him or her to Christ. The failure to do that is practical Pelagianism. Calvinism speaks of irresistible grace in doctrine, but if we hold back and don’t tell people that grace is needed to apply grace to them, our practice is not treating people as totally depraved.

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