RE: What Bible? (Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels)

I agree with much of what you said, but I feel there are two issues.

One issue is the Pelagian issue.

The other is disillusionment. When one is taught that the Bible is perfect
and infallible and literally true in every way for years, and when those who
don't believe it are condemned. Aut then logical thought combined with
science show that that just is not so, then disillusionment can cause faith
to crumble.

My mother told me to always let my children see that I am not perfect. She
said otherwise, when they hit their teens and sought my imperfections, they
would think that I was a fraud and a liar and would be alienated for years.
I have had teachers who graded from average, rather than grading from
perfection. A 90 was not flawed by ten, it excelled by 20. When we use
perfection as our standard of judgement, we cannot help but be disappointed.
What is perfection? What is the standard of excellence? The one defined by
certain groups is certainly not useful - but rather poisonous. We should not
judge things by how far they are below a lofty and imaginary rule, instead
we should view them from how far above our starting point they are. Many of
the Psalms do that, proclaiming how amazing God is above the writer's
capabilities.

Debbie Mann
(765) 477-1776

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Janice Matchett [mailto:janmatch@earthlink.net]
  Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:56 AM
  To: Debbie Mann; Asa
  Subject: RE: What Bible? (Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels)

  At 11:06 PM 3/14/2006, Debbie Mann wrote:

    "... I find so many people who have lost *their* faith due to not
finding the perfection they sought. ~ Debbie Mann (765) 477-1776

  @ When people pursue the religion of natural man, *the faith* they lose
has nothing to do with God. (If it did - they wouldn't have lost it).

  It's not arguable - boiled down to their essence, there are only two
religions ---ie: there are only two faiths.

  [1] Man trusts (has been given the gift of faith) God --- or

  [2] Man trusts (has faith in his own abilities) himself.

  Those who deny that faith is the gift of God are Pelagians. Even the
Council of Trent (condemning the reformers) anathematized such a denial as
Pelagianism.

  Those who think that people are basically good, are the same people who
think that they can perfect themselves and society by the decisions they
make. (Evolving into perfection over time). Of course to be "perfect" is to
be God. An impossible goal. There is only ONE God.

  I'm sure most on this forum are familiar with the term, "pelagianism", and
know its meaning. They can stop reading here.

  Those who maybe have heard the term, but haven't really looked into it
(and are interested in knowing more), the item below will help get you
started:

  Pelagianism: The Religion of Natural Man by Michael S. Horton

  http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/pelagiannatural.html

  [huge snip]

  Pelagianism in Church History

  Every dark age in church history was due to the creeping influence of the
human-centered gospel of "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps." Whenever
God is seen as the sole author and finisher of salvation, there is health
and vitality;. To the degree that human beings are seen as agents of their
own salvation, the church loses its power, since the Gospel is "the power of
God unto salvation for everyone who believes" (Rom 1:16).

  Throughout the period that is popularly known as the "dark ages,"
Pelagianism was never officially endorsed, but it was certainly common and
perhaps even the most popular and widespread tendency among the masses. That
should come as no surprise, since thinking good of our nature and of
possibilities for its improvement is the tendency of our sinful condition.
We are all Pelagians by nature. There were debates, for instance, in the
eighth century, but these did not end well for those who defended a strict
Augustinian point of view.

  Since Pelagianism had been condemned by councils, no one dared defend a
view as "Pelagian," but Semi-Pelagianism was acceptable, since the canons of
the Council of Orange, which condemned Semi-Pelagianism, had been lost and
were not recovered until after the closing of the Council of Trent in the
sixteenth century.

  On the eve of the Reformation, there were fresh debates over free will and
grace. Reformers benefited from something of a renaissance of
Augustinianism. In the fourteenth century, two Oxford lecturers, Robert
Holcot and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine, became leading
antagonists in this battle. Two centuries before the Reformation,
Bradwardine wrote The Case of God Against the New Pelagians, but, "Holcot
and a host of later interpreters found Bradwardine's defense of the 'case of
God' was at the expense of the dignity of man." 3 If that sounds familiar,
it should, since the truth and its corresponding objections never change.

  The archbishop's own story gives us some insight to the place of this
debate:

  Idle and a fool in God's wisdom, I was misled by an unorthodox error at
the time when I was pursuing philosophical studies. Sometimes I went to
listen to the theologians discussing this matter [of grace and free will],
and the school of Pelagius seemed to me nearest the truth. In the
philosophical faculty I seldom heard a reference to grace, except for some
ambiguous remarks.

  What I heard day in and day out was that we are masters of our own free
acts, that ours is the choice to act well or badly, to have virtues or sins
and much more along this line." Therefore, "Every time I listened to the
Epistle reading in church and heard how Paul magnified grace and belittled
free will-as is the case in Romans 9, 'It is obviously not a question of
human will and effort, but of divine mercy,' and its many parallels-grace
displeased me, ungrateful as I was." But later, things changed:

  "However, even before I transferred to the faculty of theology, the text
mentioned came to me as a beam of grace and, captured by a vision of the
truth, it seemed I saw from afar how the grace of God precedes all good
works with a temporal priority, God as Savior through predestination, and
natural precedence. That is why I express my gratitude to Him who has given
me this grace as a free gift."

  Bradwardine begins his treatise, "The Pelagians now oppose our whole
presentation of predestination and reprobation, attempting either to
eliminate them completely or, at least, to show that they are dependent on
personal merits." 4

  These are important references, since many think of the emphasis of Luther
in The Bondage of the Will and of Calvin in his many writings on the subject
as extreme, when in actual fact, they were in the mainstream of Augustinian
revival. In fact, Luther's mentor, Johann von Staupitz, was himself a
defender of Augustinian orthodoxy against the new tide of Pelagianism, and
contributed his own treatise, On Man's Eternal Predestination.

  "God has covenanted to save the elect. Not only is Christ sent as a
substitute for the believer's sins, he also makes certain that this
redemption is applied. This happens at the moment when the sinner's eyes are
opened again by the grace of God, so that he is able to know the true God by
faith. Then his heart is set afire so that God becomes pleasing to him. Both
of these are nothing but grace, and flow from the merits of Christ

  Our works do not, nor can they, bring us to this state, since man's nature
is not capable of knowing or wanting or doing good. For this barren man God
is sheer fear."

  But for the believer, "the Christian is just through the righteousness of
Christ," and Staupitz even goes so far as to say, that this suffering of
Christ "is sufficient for all, though it was not for all, but for many that
his blood was poured out." 5 This was not an extreme statement, as it is
often considered today, but was the most common way of talking about the
atonement's effect: sufficient for everyone, efficient for the elect alone.

  To be sure, these precursors of the Reformation were not yet articulating
a clear doctrine of justification by the imputation of Christ's
righteousness, but the official position of the Roman Catholic Church even
before the Reformation was that grace is necessary for even the will to
believe and live the Christian life. This is not far enough for
evangelicals, but to fall short of this affirmation is to lose touch with
even the "catholic" witness shared at least on paper by Protestants and
Roman Catholics.

  What About Today?

  Ever since the Enlightenment, the Protestant churches have been influenced
by successive waves of rationalism and moralism that have made the Pelagian
heresy attractive.

  It is fascinating, if frustrating, to read the great architects of modern
liberalism as they triumphantly announce their project. They sound as if it
were a new theological enterprise to say that human nature is basically
good, history is marked by progress, that social and moral improvement will
create happiness, peace, and justice.

  Really, it is merely a revival of that age-old religion of human nature.

  The rationalistic phase of liberalism saw religion not as a plan of
salvation, but as a method of morality.

  The older views concerning human sinfulness and dependence on divine mercy
were thought by modern theologians to stand in the way of the Enlightenment
project of building a new world, a tower reaching to heaven, just as
Pelagius viewed Augustinian teaching as impeding his project of moral
reform.

  Instead of defining Christianity in terms of an announcement of God's
saving work in Jesus Christ, Schleiermacher and the liberal theologians
redefined it as a "feeling."

  Ironically, the Arminian revivals shared with the Enlightenment a
confidence in human ability. This Pelagian spirit pervaded the frontier
revivals as much as the New England academy. Although poets such as William
Henley might put it in more sophisticated language ("I am the master of my
fate, the captain of my soul"), evangelicals out on the frontier began
adapting this triumph of Pelagianism to the wider culture.

  Heavily influenced by the New Haven theology and the Second Great
Awakening, Charles Finney was nearly the nineteenth-century reincarnation of
Pelagius.

  Finney denied original sin. "Moral depravity is sin itself, and not the
cause of sin," 6 and he explicitly rejects original sin in his criticism of
the Westminster Confession, 7 referring to the notion of a sinful nature as
"anti-scriptural and nonsensical dogma." 8

  According to Finney, we are all born morally neutral, capable either of
choosing good or evil. Finney argues throughout by employing the same
arguments as the German rationalists, and yet because he was such a
successful revivalist and "soul-winner," evangelicals call him their own.
Finney held that our choices make us either good or sinful. Here Finney
stands closer to the Pharisees than to Christ, who declared that the tree
produced the fruit rather than vice versa. Finney's denial of the
substitutionary atonement follows this denial of original sin. After all,
according to Pelagius, if Adam can be said to be our agent of condemnation
for no other reason than that we follow his poor example, then Christ is
said to be our agent of redemption because we follow his good example.

  This is precisely what Finney argues: "Example is the highest moral
influence that can be exerted. If the benevolence manifested in the
atonement does not subdue the selfishness of sinners, their case is
hopeless." 9 But how can there be a "benevolence manifested in the
atonement" if the atonement does not atone? For those of us who need an
atonement that not only subdues our selfishness, but covers the penalty for
our selfishness, Finney's "gospel," like Pelagius's, is hardly good news.

  According to Finney, Christ could not have fulfilled the obedience we owed
to God, since it would not be rational that one man could atone for the sins
of anyone besides himself. Furthermore, "If he obeyed the law as our
substitute, then why should our own return to personal obedience be insisted
upon as the sine qua non of our salvation?"10 One wonders if Finney was
actually borrowing directly from Pelagius' writings. Many assume "that the
atonement was a literal payment of a debt, which we have seen does not
consist with the nature of the atonement. It is objected that, if the
atonement was not the payment of the debt of sinners, but general in its
nature, as we have maintained, it secures the salvation of no one. It is
true, that the atonement, of itself, does not secure the salvation of any
one." 11

  Furthermore, Finney denies that regeneration depends on the supernatural
gift of God. It is not a change produced from the outside.

  "If it were, sinners could not be required to effect it. No such change is
needed, as the sinner has all the faculties and natural attributes requisite
to render perfect obedience to God." 12

  Therefore, "...regeneration consists in the sinner changing his ultimate
choice, intention, preference." Those who insist that sinners depend on the
mercy of God proclaim "the most abominable and ruinous of all falsehoods. It
is to mock [the sinner's] intelligence!"13

  Of the doctrine of justification, Finney declared it to be "another
gospel," since "for sinners to be forensically pronounced just, is
impossible and absurd. As has already been said, there can be no
justification in a legal or forensic sense, but upon the ground of
universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to law...The doctrine of an
imputed righteousness, or that Christ's obedience to the law was accounted
as our obedience, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption" and
"representing the atonement as the ground of the sinner's justification has
been a sad occasion of stumbling to many." 14

  From Finney and the Arminian revivalists, evangelicalism inherited as
great a debt to Pelagianism as modern liberalism received from the
Enlightenment version directly.

  When evangelists appeal to the unbeliever as though it was his choice that
determines his destiny, they are not only operating on Arminian assumptions,
but Pelagian assumptions that are rejected even by the official position of
the Roman Catholic Church as a denial of grace.

  Whenever it is maintained that an unbeliever is capable by nature of
choosing God, or that men and women are capable of not sinning or of
reaching a state of moral perfection, that's Pelagianism.

  Finney even preached a sermon titled, "Sinners Bound To Change Their Own
Hearts."

  When preachers attack those who insist that the human problem is
sinfulness and the wickedness of the human heart-that's Pelagianism.

  When one hears the argument, whether from the Enlightenment (Kant's "ought
implies can"), or from Wesley, Finney, or modern teachers, that "God would
never have commanded the impossible," 15 they are echoing the very words of
Pelagius.

  Those who deny that faith is the gift of God are not merely Arminians or
Semi-Pelagians, but Pelagians. Even the Council of Trent (condemning the
reformers) anathematized such a denial as Pelagianism.

  When evangelicals and fundamentalists assume that infants are pure until
they reach an "age of accountability," or that sin is something outside-in
the world or in the sinful environment or in sinful company that corrupts
the individual-they are practicing Pelagians.

  That which in contemporary evangelicalism is often considered "Calvinism"
is really "Augustinianism," which embraces orthodox Roman Catholics and
Lutherans as well. And that which in our circles today is often considered
"Arminianism" is really Pelagianism.

  The fact that recent polls indicate that 77% of the evangelicals today
believe that human beings are basically good and 84% of these conservative
Protestants believe that in salvation "God helps those who help themselves"
demonstrates incontrovertibly that contemporary Christianity is in a serious
crisis.

  No longer can conservative, "Bible-believing" evangelicals smugly hurl
insults at mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics for doctrinal treason.
It is evangelicals today, every bit as much as anyone else, who have
embraced the assumptions of the Pelagian heresy.

  It is this heresy that lies at the bottom of much of popular psychology
(human nature, basically good, is warped by its environment), political
crusades (we are going to bring about salvation and revival through this
campaign), and evangelism and church growth (seeing conversion as a natural
process, just like changing from one brand of soap to another, and seeing
the evangelist or entrepreneurial pastor as the one who actually adds to the
church those to be saved).

  At its root, the Reformation was an attack on Pelagianism and its rising
influence, as it choked out the life of Christ in the world. It asserted
that "salvation is of the LORD" (Jon 2:9), and that "it therefore does not
depend on the decision or effort of man, but on the mercy of God" (Rom
9:16). If that message is recovered, and Pelagianism is once more confronted
with the Word of God, the glory of God will again fill the earth.

  [snip] Clink link to continue ..

  ~ Janice
Received on Wed Mar 15 10:38:56 2006