How Did We Get Here?

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a world without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." In this famous and more than slightly scolding description of Protestant liberalism in the 1950s, Yale's H. Richard Niebuhr actually put his finger on the perennial heresy of the human heart since humanity's fall in Adam. In this article, I will lay out in very broad terms the rationale for the theme we have chosen for 2007: "A Time for Truth."  

The Glory Story: Why Pelagianism Always Makes Sense

 

A British monk named Pelagius arrived in Rome and set about to initiate a widespread moral clean-up operation. Augustine, a North African bishop of great standing in the church, stood in his path. Hardly uninterested in holiness, Augustine himself had been set free from a licentious life. Nevertheless, he knew that the power of that liberation was the gospel of God's free grace. By the time the fracas was over, Pelagianism, with its denial of original sin and rigorous demand that people save themselves by following Christ's moral example, was condemned by more church councils than any heresy in church history. Nevertheless, it has remained the most constant threat to the gospel. Why does it keep growing back so quickly right after it has been cut down? Because Pelagianism just makes sense to us. It's the "glory story."

Following Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, which was following Romans 10 and 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, the Reformation contrasted the theology of glory with theology of the cross. As Gerhard Forde nicely summarized,

The most common overarching story we tell about ourselves is what we will call the glory story. We came from glory and are bound for glory. Of course, in between we seem somehow to have gotten derailed-whether by design or accident we don't quite know-but that is only a temporary inconvenience to be fixed by proper religious effort. What we need is to get back on "the glory road." The story is told in countless variations. Usually the subject of the story is "the soul." ... The basic scheme is what Paul Ricoeur has called "the myth of the exiled soul."     Continue at Michael Horton

Growing in Grace & Knowledge

Knowledge and truth have fallen on hard times in contemporary American culture. We are distracted from thinking deeply about anything because we are too busy focusing on ourselves and our own entertainment. Sadly, this problem is not merely “out there” in the world. Overnight, contemporary churches have become entertainment centers and purveyors of self-centered spirituality. Encouraged by smiling television preachers to have our best life now, modern Christians have almost lost sight of Jesus and his saving work. We desperately need to follow the advice of the apostle Peter, who encouraged believers to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Pet 3:18). R. C. Sproul joins the panel for this special edition of White Horse Inn recorded before a live audience in Orlando, Florida.

RELATED ARTICLES

What is Discipleship Anyway?
Michael Horton

The Pelagian Captivity of the Church
R. C. Sproul

Evangelical Biblical Illiteracy
David Niehuis

WHI Discussion Group Questions
PDF Document

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

The Gospel Commission
Michael Horton

Knowing Scripture
R.C. Sproul

The Christian Faith
Michael Horton

RECOMMENDED AUDIO

Biblical Ignorance
WHI-834

The Preached Word
WHI-494

The Case for Theology & Apologetics
WHI-891

 

HT: WHI

R.C. Sproul on Pelagianism in the Church Today

Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification. You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen — that it’s actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.

I’ve often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say? Of course I can’t answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church. Luther saw the doctrine of justification as fueled by a deeper theological problem. He writes about this extensively in The Bondage of the Will. When we look at the Reformation and we see the solas of the Reformation — sola Scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, sola gratia — Luther was convinced that the real issue of the Reformation was the issue of grace; and that underlying the doctrine of solo fide, justification by faith alone, was the prior commitment to sola gratia, the concept of justification by grace alone.  Keep Reading >>>

IMAGE

Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth by Alister McGrath

Somehow the notion has gotten around that ideas condemned by the church as heretical are a lot more interesting and attractive than stodgy old orthodoxy. In fact some scholars to try to suggest that what are now regarded as heretical versions of the faith were in fact more authentically Christian than orthodox teaching. To make things worse, it is claimed that orthodox Christians were the big bullies of church history. They were not above using the dark arts of political manipulation to impose their will on the church at the expense of poor, downtrodden heretics. On a popular level Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code perpetuates the idea that the development of orthodox Christian faith was little better than a grand theo-political conspiracy. Keep Reading...

The Skeleton in the Closet

A few days ago, I posted a very informative article by Dr. R. C. Sproul concerning the widespread destructive Pelagian influence on the modern day church (found here.) Below is a video on the same vital theme.

airo: “One of the main reasons for the resurgence of Pelagianism today is the ministry of Charles Finney. Many call him America’s greatest revivalist. Few are aware he rejected essential Christian truth.”

Nicenecouncil.com: “For years Charles G. Finney has gotten a free ride from evangelical preachers and churches for various reasons, but mostly because few had ever taken the time to read his obtuse books or even try to understand his theology. Many supposedly came to Christ under him, and that was enough to convince the multitudes that he must be sound and Biblical. But now a number of writers and theologians are opening the door to his theology, and many are shocked to see what he truly believed – Charles G. Finney was clearly and undeniably a heretic – he did not preach nor teach the true gospel, as set forth in the Scriptures. In fact it is not an exaggeration to say that he was one of the greatest heretics of church history!”

Finney’s influence is widespread in our day, but even more troubling is the pervasive Pelagianism that he taught. Why is this such a problem? Dr. Sproul explains: See Video HERE

Three Views on Man’s Condition

Pelagianism: The Religion of Natural Man

Cicero observed of his own civilization that people thank the gods for their material prosperity, but never for their virtue, for this is their own doing. Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield considered Pelagianism "the rehabilitation of that heathen view of the world," and concluded with characteristic clarity, "There are fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, and that salvation is from ourselves. The former is the doctrine of common Christianity; the latter is the doctrine of universal heathenism."1

But Warfield's sharp criticisms are consistent with the witness of the church ever since Pelagius and his disciples championed the heresy. St. Jerome, the fourth century Latin father, called it "the heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno," as in general paganism rested on the fundamental conviction that human beings have it within their power to save themselves. What, then, was Pelagianism and how did it get started? Continue reading>>>

The Pelagian Captivity of the Church

Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification. You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen-that it's actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.

I've often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say? Of course I can't answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church. Read the rest HERE