1. Pelagians “deny original sin”.
Sin is not transmitted to the whole human race by Adam’s fall. Sin grew by imitation. Thus, infants are free from original sin.
Pelagius insisted that God would not command something of man that man cannot accomplish. He reasoned that a divine command implies human ability (responsibility implies ability). A favorite saying of his was, “If I ought, I can.” Therefore, he taught that no one inherited the sin nature from Adam nor were they ‘born in sin’. Infants are born tabula rasa (Latin for a ‘blank slate’) and are therefore perfectly capable of obeying and pleasing God. His error here on the fundamental doctrine of original sin led to his belief that a person could live a sinless life. He said that, “a man can be without sin and keep the commandments of God, if he wishes.”
According to St. Augustine the Pelagians held
“. . . actual sin has not been transmitted from the first man to other persons by natural descent, but by imitation. Hence, likewise, they refuse to believe that in infants original sin is remitted through baptism, for they contend that no such original sin exists at all in people by their birth”
This is contrary of course to the Romans 3:9-20 but also to passages like Psalm 51:5.
5 Behold, I was born in iniquity, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.
What the Pelagians held to is the idea of sin by imitation and what this meant is that in order for sin to be eliminated bad examples need to be eliminated. This is called environmentalism. It is the idea that we sin because of bad examples around us. Our Parents set a bad example and we imitate it. Our extended family sets a bad example and we imitate it. This inevitably leads to a conclusion that the way to rid sin is to change the environment where all the bad examples are being set. This in turn, when given its head, leads to all kinds of social engineering projects whereby the attempt is made to create a better social environment so that we can create a New Humanist Man and so arrive at a better if not perfect world.
In this regard we live in a Pelagian world. People are not held responsible for their sin because their sin isn’t their fault. It is the fault of the environment. And so the Psychology industry booms as this industry is used to provide a type of salvation in helping us to overcome our environment and so become a righteous people. The Psychologist tells the patient that what is responsible for their behavior is environmentally driven. Whereas the minister tells the person that they in their sin are responsible for their behavior.
And so the Christian answer to this has always been that the problem is NOT that the sinful environment creates sinners who imitate its example but rather the problem is that sinners create sinful environments. The solution then is NOT to change the environment to change sinners. The solution is to change sinners in order to change the environment and this is done by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in the context of the Preaching of the Gospel and the setting forth of the Sacraments.
2. Pelagians “say that the grace of God whereby we are justified is not given freely, but according to our merit”.
Of course this is a denial that we were “Dead in our Trespasses and sins.”
From this claim stems three associated errors to back it up.
First, free will is inherent in the nature of man such that there is an “absolute autonomy for the will. Thus, for Pelagius freedom would be destroyed if the will were inclined to evil because of sin or if it needed to be strengthened by another’s help”. So, we have the denial of any interior influence on free will. The will is free.
Pelagianism, concerned to protect this Free Will, insisted that if people are born sinners by nature (if sin is something we inherit) it would be unjust for God to hold individual sinners responsible for their sin. That is why Pelagius reasoned that the human will must be totally free—inclined to neither good nor evil—or else our choices cannot be free. If our choices are not free, then we cannot be held responsible for what we do. So, how can we be held responsible for how we were born?
And the answer to this is simply that we can be held responsible by God for how we were born because we are responsible in as much as we are in Adam.
Romans 5:18 [a]Likewise then, as by the offense of one, the fault came on all men to condemnation, so by the justifying of one, the benefit abounded toward all men to the [b]justification of life.
Pelagianism denies this covenantal union in favor of the each and every sovereign individual.
All of this leads to the second error that the Law in the Old Testament as well as the preaching and example of Christ are only an external influence on us.
By external influence only the Pelagian believes that it is a influence by our observation or learning. We see the example of Christ we learn the law and then we can follow them. There is no necessity of a renewing work within us. Once observing Christ’s example. Once learning the law we can do it on our own.
Augustine summarized against this by saying,
“. .. by the law of works, God says to us, Do what I command thee; but by the law of faith we say to God, Give me what Thou commandest. Now this is the reason why the Law gives its command,—to admonish us what faith ought to do, that is, that he to whom the command is given, if he is as yet unable to perform it, may know what to ask for; but if he has at once the ability, and complies with the command, he ought also to be aware from whose gift the ability comes”.
Scripture teaches consistently that it is God’s grace working within us that is prior to our working out what God commands.
Philippians 2:12-13 — “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
Third, Jesus came to remit our past sins only, forgiveness of which we merit through good acts, but with no reference to power over sins in the future. Grace as understood by Pelagius becomes a totally external act from God to enlighten us that “we may have from the Lord God the help of knowledge, whereby we may know those things which have to be done.”
3. They “say that in mortal man . . . there is so great righteousness that even after the washing of regeneration, until he finishes this life of his, forgiveness of sins is not necessary to him”.
And so Pelagians held that a perfection could be reached in this life.
St. Augustine’s definition of perfection included a true self-awareness of one’s imperfection coupled with a movement forward toward Christ-likeness. Augustine leveraged passages like Philippians 3 where St. Paul says he desire to,
Phil. 3:11 be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith … 12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
So God gives us righteousness in Christ by faith not by our own righteousness in keeping the Law as the Pelagians would have us believe. St. Augustine says the righteousness the Pelagians are describing in this life will only be attained in our resurrected bodies in the next.
Bible scholars at the time of Pelagius recognized the contradiction between Pelagiaus teachings and Scripture. As a result, Pelagianism was condemned as heretical at church councils that included the Councils of Carthage (in 412, 416 and 418), the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Orange (529). Pelagians remains as outside of orthodoxy today as it was 1600 years ago.
But their is a New Pelagianism in town and it is married to Modernity and it is called “Theistic Evolution.” Along the way I hope to tie Theistic evolution to Pelagianism. Theistic evolution is the idea that Evolution is true but adds the twist that God is the one who kicked off Evolution and who is guiding it along the way. At least some variants of Theistic evolution are teaching,
“that people do not all originate with Adam and Eve but that, “humans descended from a group of several thousand individuals who lived about 150,000 years ago.”
This attack on the historical reality of Adam and Eve, typical of Modernity, but now also found among those promoting Theistic Evolution is now in the Homeschool community through a reach out organization called Biologos,
In 2010 BioLogos president Darrel Falk wrote:
“Option #1 [that Adam and Eve are actual historical people] is the standard argument put forward by those who believe in a young earth created by God in six twenty-four hour days less than 10,000 years ago. BioLogos exists in no small part to marginalize this view from the Church. A fundamental part of our mission is to show that Option #1 is not tenable.”
This idea has been floating around at least since 1925,
“The evolution of man from lower forms of life was in itself a new and startling fact, and one that broke up the old theology. I and my contemporaries, however, accepted it as fact. The first and most obvious result of this acceptance was that we are compelled to regard the Biblical story of the Fall as not historic, as it had long been believed to be. We were compelled to regard that story as a primitive attempt to account for the presence of sin and evil in the world …. But now, in the light of the fact of evolution, the Fall, as a historic event, already questioned on other grounds, was excluded and denied by science.”
Charles E. Merriam
New Aspects of Politics, 3rd Edition — pp. 59-60
This idea though is not restricted to the Homeschool community or in musty old books but has even been recently promulgated in the CRC Banner when it was written and published this past May that,
“Traditionally we’ve been taught that Adam and Eve were the first human pair, Adam made out of dust and Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. But sustaining this doctrine is extremely difficult when we take seriously the human race as we know it today sharing ancestry with other primates such as chimpanzees. Where in the slow evolution of homo erectus and homo habilis and homo sapiens do Adam and Eve fit? We will have to find a better way of understanding what Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve, one that does justice to Genesis and also to what the Bible teaches about their connection to Jesus.”
The fact that Pelagainism is among us in terms of a Modernity that desires to interpret all of reality via the centrality of man is seen even in the CRC Banner’s Pelagian suggestion that we need to re-think Original Sin. In the quote that follows you find the Pelagainism of Modernity being advocated,
“According to this doctrine (Original Sin), the fall of Adam and Eve is an actual historical event that plunged the entire human race into sin. Ever since, both the guilt of sin and the pollution of sin, theologically speaking, have been passed on from parent to child in such a way that we all come into the world tainted by them. We say that our children are conceived and born in sin. But if Adam and Eve are not understood as real historical people, then there can hardly be an inheritance of sinfulness from parent to child all the way back to Adam—in which case the entire doctrine of original sin falls by the wayside. We will have to find a better way of understanding not only what sin is but its effect on the population in general—a way that does justice both to the Bible and to science and that helps us understand how sin works in our own lives under God.”
So, the point here is that even though Pelagianism was rejected over 1500 years ago it is making a comeback via Theistic Evolution which itself is just one component of the Modernity project.
And I’m hoping that you will join with me in giving up all this Theistic Evolution, this Modernity, This Pelagianism for Lent.
Another aspect of this is to understand that the current Pelagian Modernity project also falls under the head of interpreting the Bible with a anti-supernatural presupposition. In other words, what the Pelagain Modernity project is doing as it puts forward Theistic Evolution is that it begins with the assumption that the Supernatural can not be true and then proceeds from there reinterpreting all the supernatural of the Scriptures in the context of naturalistic presuppositions.
So, what we have is Modernity coming into the Church via Theistic Evolution and the consequence is a new kind of Pelagianism in the Church where not only Original Sin is denied but also nearly all the doctrines that make Christianity — Christianity. The result then is a Christianity that would not be recognizable to the Saints who have gone before.
Illustration — Egg
Here is the lesson:
As the Church has repeatedly rejected Pelagius assertion that Adam’s sin and guilt was NOT transferred to all of Adam’s descendants how is that we now are suggesting, in keeping with Modernity, that Adam was not a real person in space and time History? What our Denomination is promoting in print is far worse than what Pelagius promoted. At least Pelagius believed Adam was a real person who lived in space and time. This Denomination and many others are advocating, in keeping with Modernity, that all of Christianity must be re-tooled in order to fit the hair-brained speculations of a Science that is uninformed by Christian presuppositions.
Romans 5:18 teaches,
18 Therefore, as one trespass[a] led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness[b] leads to justification and life for all men.
You see the problem here right? If there was no historical Adam and no fall and so no original sin then that calls into question the whole characterizing of the Lord Christ as the Second Adam who takes away our sin and provides for a positive righteousness which Adam forfeited. If we lose a real Adam and Eve, a real Fall into sin, and the reality of Original Sin we lose the Faith once forever delivered unto the Saints. If we lose Original sin we lose Christ crucified.
And we are of all men to be pitied.
Now a brief word about Science. The way that Modernity desires to frame this is that this is a contest between Science and Theology. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I have taught you here repeatedly, Science is worldview and Theology dependent. This is not a contest between the facts of Science vs. Ideas from the Bible. This is a contest between a Science that is informed by a Christian worldview vs. a Science that is informed by a Pagan Worldview. It is a clash of Theologies. But the Modernity / Pelagian cause is advanced by telling you that Scripture has been overwhelmed by their Science. Don’t you believe it. Remember, scientific “facts” require a philosophy of fact to make sense and if your philosophy of fact is in error all your facts will be in error. We are contending that the Theistic Evolutionists who are part of the Modernity project have their philosophy of fact wrong and so their are serious problems with their facts.
Illustration — Puzzle Box.
Conclusion,
This has vast implications,
If you would like to see the consequences of this Pelagian version of Modernity that yields a theology where original sin is denied — the place to look is at the Soviet Gulags, the Cambodian Killing Fields, or the Cuban Psychiatric wards. If man has no original sin then we have no reason to think that man is basically sinful. If man is a blank slate and not sinful then man can be molded to become a better if not perfect human being. Historically speaking, part of that molding process is the Gulag, the killing fields, and the Communist Psychiatric wards.
If man is not basically sinful then man is either basically good, and only needs to discover his goodness, or man is neutral and so is a plastic that can be molded to fit the State’s ends and so needs to be socially engineered to achieve Utopian desires.
Most people don’t have the capacity to trace out the consequences of their ideas and so they unwittingly embrace what their Church is doing in reinterpreting Christianity through a Modernity grid that resurrects Pelagianism via theistic evolution.
The few of us who get it must raise our voice to protest this silliness that, if given its head, will get us all killed.