Wesley & Imputed Sin

HP: Seriously I almost like what you write here. You speak of acquiring a propensity to sin. I would say Adam developed a propensity to sin by his sins. Remember though a propensity to sin is an occasion or influence to sin, not sin itself. Sin is when we yield our wills in the direction of the formation of intents in agreement with selfishness as opposed to benevolence. What did James say? Jas 1:13 ¶ Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.

Note the clear progression towards sin. You do not start off as sinners, but rather we sin as we yield to temptation. Certainly we receive a proclivity to sin, a temptation or influence to sin via our natural sensibilities that have indeed been corrupted by the fall, but that is not actual sin until again we yield to it and form intents consistent with its selfish influences.

 

He didn't try, he did support Free Will... as do 'all' Arminians but he/we didn't/don't support Palegianism or even semi-Palegiansim.

Prevenient Grace plays a crucial role in Wesleyan/Arminian evangelical teaching. There is no single treatise where this important teaching is concentrated, but it is found profoundly in the homilies "On Working Out Our Own Salvation," and "On Conscience."

The most important homily that touches upon prevenient grace takes for its text Philippians 2:12-13: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (NRSV). God working in us enables our working and co-working with God (note: this is, in a real sense, a synergism). What appears to be a contradiction (that grace elicits freedom) is a call to action that attests the ground of its action. We can work because God is working in us.

God's prevenient grace works everywhere, since the Holy Spirit is present to all, though most powerfully among a vital community of believers. "No one sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace he hath." All are called to be ready to stir up whatever grace is in them that more grace will be given.

Prevening grace works sufficiently in every domain in which original sin is working. The deficiencies of human willing do not negate the sufficiency of grace offered. Assuming the depth of the human predicament as spelled out in "The Doctrine of Original Sin," it is impossible without grace to make the least motion toward God.

What I fear is that you are conflating Calvinist extremes with what is actually consistant with the normative interpretation of Sacred Scripture... 'modern' Orthodox Anthropology is simply 'not' without using Hellenistic Philosophy as a means to 'correct' Sacred Scripture. We can't correct the "Word of God".

I would love to discuss this further but you'll have to slow down and cease with the rhetorical attacks and start using Scripture to make your case.

If your are Eastern Orthodox, it would be fair to share your sources instead of pretending your are claiming all this on your own.

That God works in us both to will and to do his good pleasure, "removes all imagination of merit from man... God breathes into us every good desire, and brings into us every good desire, and brings every good desire to good effect." Inward religion (holiness of heart) is grounded in God's work in us "to will" (to telein, to desire, wish, love, intend), and outward religion (holiness of life) is grounded in God's giving us the energy "to do" (to energein, to energize, execute, actualize) his good pleasure. Energy from God "works in us every right disposition, and then furnishes us for every good word and work."

Paul's call to "work out your own salvation" does not Pelagianly imply that one may work without the prevening grace of God, but rather only with it. Yet the co-working (sunergia, cooperation) design of grace asks for our responsive willing, through which it is God who is working concurrently in us to will and do God's own good pleasure.

No stage of saving faith, not the slightest motion, is a matter of merited goodness. God comes our way not when we merit it, but before we merit it. Precisely while we are yet sinners. God is helping us come to the desire to do the good through prevening grace, then to enable a result of good action from that good will.

God comes personally to humanity in the form of a servant. This calls each hearer of the gospel to have that mind that was also in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God counted not equality with as something to be grasped (Phil. 2:1-6). This is the mind in which we are called to share. This pivotal Christological passage concludes with the imperative, which calls us to work out our own salvation, not that salvation is our work but that it involves our free response to grace. We are to work because it is God who is working in us to enable our working.

Since God is working in you, you are called to share responsively in the working out of your own salvation. God asks us to respond as fully and situationally as we are proportionally able. This is a matter of our willing, which God does not coerce, but seeks to draw forth by illuminating, wooing the will, inwardly convicting.

"Faith is the work of God; and yet it is the duty of man to believe. And every man may believe if he will, thought in when he will.

Prevenient Grace, Convicting Grace, Justifying Grace is all resistable. Within Arminian and Wesleyan Theology man has Free Will.

Once again you are in error. God wills that 'all' men be saved and God is no liar. We cannot know exactly how 'all' men is given the capacity to be saved but we do know a surefire means of attaining salvation (i.e. Faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ).

Perhaps we will discuss more later.

 

Imputed sin

propensity
PROPENS'ITY, n. [L. propensio.]


1. Bent of mind, natural or acquired; inclination; in a moral sense; disposition to any thing good or evil, particularly to evil; as a propensity to sin; the corrupt propensity of the will.

This has not happened to mans will.

Romans 7
14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

Sounds like Pauls will to do good was functioning. When Adam and Eve excercised their God given free will to sin or not sin, it did not change their ability to continue to choose. To exercise the ability to choose did not cause this ability to be destroyed in them or any person since.

Abel chose a sacrifice that was pleasing to God. Enoch chose to walk with God. Abraham chose to believe God. Were they sinners? Yes. Did they deserve condemnation? Yes, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. They did not deserve condemnation because they were born sinners.


Throughout history, man has been equipped to know what is right and can choose to sin or not. If he were not capable of choosing to do good their would be no justice in punishing him for doing evil.

Psalm 51
1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out [B]my transgressions.[/B]
2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

Trustitl
David was very aware of his sin. The law was doing its designed work on him. Does he then go into a lame excuse as to why he sins?

5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Trustitl
Is God here in v. 6 giving a statement that he desires us to have a will that we cannot have?

6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts:

Psalm 119
10 With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.

Here David is giving the Romans 7 of the OT. He wanted, that is willed, to do good but found himself not always doing it.

Romans 7
21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.


Then the Gospel

24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.



"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." Phil 2:12
Some make the conclusion that we didn't want to do good before salvation. That fits with their theology but is not consistent with scripture.

It is all possible because of Christ:
"In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." Col 2:11

 

The following comes to mind as I read Bound’s post.

Men have always tried to place their opposition in the poorest light possible. They are prone to making claims about the other that in reality are simply not the case. They try and make the issues something other than what they are. Such has been and most likely always be the case.

The issue of Augustine and Pelagius has been mentioned in conjunction with the word ‘grace.’ The argument of some goes as follows. If you do not use the word grace according to the way I understand it, you are denying grace. That simply begs the question as to what grace is, and presupposes that whatever I believe it to be is the only thing it can possibly be.

The question, as I see it should surround the question of what constitutes grace. Pelagius did not in any way that I can detect claim or state that man did not need the grace of god to either become a believer or remain faithful. That was a paper duck erected to make the views of Pelagius’s detractor 'Augustine' seem at first glance to be taking the higher ground. I see it as a completely false and slanderous account of the views of Pelagius. The issue, again as I see it, in reality was really whether or not the grace of God was the 'granting of the abilities' to respond to God’s offer and or cooperate with God subsequent to salvation. Augustine’s view of grace was tainted by his view of man’s condition as set forth in his notion of original sin.

Pelagius on the other hand believed that God had granted to all men the abilities to right as a natural consequence of being created as a moral being. Pelagius, I believe, believed as Bound stated when he said that God’s “prevenient grace works everywhere, since the Holy Spirit is presented to all.” Man is not in some special need of receiving more grace, he just needs to respond in obedience to the ‘natural grace’ the illumination of the Holy Spirit granted to all men as one hears the plan of salvation revealed to their hearts. Augustine obviously viewed grace as the forced granting of abilities, where Pelagius believed that God had already, as a natural result of being created moral, been granted and are in need of nothing other than for the sinner to turn to God’s influences and offer of salvation. Again, Augustines view of grace was driven by, and developed as a result of, his false notion of original sin.

So you see, it is not that one believes that grace is needed and the other denies it, but rather the question focuses on what is grace. Is grace some force or coercion upon the soul of man that forces or causes a dead man to respond favorably by the granting of some want of ability to respond, or is grace a passive influence upon the will of man that serves as an influence and opportunity for the will of man to form the intents consistent with obedience the gospels demands and or cooperate with God? The first idea genders determination and fatalism, while the latter sets freedom of the will and justice in its true light. I believe Scripture presents grace as an influence or opportunity for the will to respond with the abilities it already has been universally granted by God as a moral agent when it is used in conjunction with salvation. I do not believe that Scripture aligns grace with any ‘lack of abilities’ as Augustine’s obvious definition forces one to believe. Grace, in the offer of salvation, is a passive influence not a coercive force.

Grace is only seen as grace as one understands that man willfully refuses to obey God with the abilities he has been given, but in spite of that willful rebellion, God offers him a way of escape, IF man will turn and exercise those abilities he posses as a free moral agent in response to God’s offer and stated conditions for man to fulfill.

If man lacks abilities, and God is going to punish him for failure to do that which he cannot do on his own, it would be justice, not grace, for God to grant to such a miserable victim of his inherited circumstances, the abilities to respond.

Augustine did not have a proper understanding of grace and neither do those that still follow in his error.

 

Grace and Peace Heavenly Pilgrim,

"Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear" - Isa. 59:2

You post is nuanced enough for me to offer no harsh rebuttal, regardless I believe you are conflating several items which risks unraveling the necessity of a Savior. When one conflates 'grace' as an attribute of one's 'inherent human nature' as Pelagius did we cease to understand the Fall as a fall nor understand the necessity of Redemption as redemption. When we articulate 'the favor of God' as an 'inherent element' of our human nature we dilute a normative interpretation of the Biblical meaning of Grace. This dilution is part and parcel due to the co-mingling of Platonism, which didn't and doesn't make an 'essential' distinction between creation and it's Creator (i.e. Demiurge) and viewed The Messiah as a Pagan God-Man (i.e. the ultimate achievement of man as he ascends through purification the multiple layers of emanations from The One to union with the World-Mind or Nous). It is a far departure from the Apostle Paul's simple message "I preach nothing but Christ and Christ Crucified".

Pelagianism is the conflating of our human existence, which is in some sense, God's Will with Walking in God's Favor. To be in God's Good Graces assumes our existence but just because we exist doesn't mean we should presume His Grace. This distinction is creates all of the essential dualism found in our faith and yet within Platonism one 'must' recognize that no matter how far down the emanation scale one finds oneself one 'is' a product of God's Will and thus a participate in 'the good'. Much of the very early Church Fathers were influenced by the Neo-Platonism of the Alexandrian School and thus co-mingled these ideas but there is a point of departure when one weighs the normative interpretation of the Scriptures against it. For example, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ establishes the distinct dualism between 'the Sheep' and 'the Goats'; 'the repentant' and 'the unrepentant'; etc. Although these two distinct groups 'exist' in creation the two do not have an equal share in 'God's Favor' (i.e. Grace). Conflating all creation as participating in God's Grace (i.e. favor) because it exists is a product or artifact of the Platonist Presupposition inherent in many of the early Fathers due in large part because they were educated in the pagan philosophies.

If I asked you for your definition of 'grace' I would assume you would offer some form of Platonist Emanationism but I would ask you to take a serious look at who we define the Hebrew "hen" and the Greek "Charis" as they are found to mean within the context of the Scriptures.

 

HP: Bound, this is such a paper duck or a straw man argument that it does not even merit a response other than to say it is nothing more than a figment of your imagination and does not have the slightest hint of truth in it. You speak often about rhetoric without substance. Look deeply into this paragraph and you will be viewing a fine specimen of such pure unadultrated and unsubstantiated rhetoric.

One request I do have is to ask you for your definition of grace and to tell us how you arrive at it as the ‘normative interpretation.’ I suppose I did not just give a definition of grace, but I did try and show the distinction between grace and justice, one from all appearances so far you have not made in your explanations involving grace. I see you as confusing grace with justice if in fact you feel that man is devoid of necessary abilities to obey and respond to any of God’s offers, and that as an intrinsic part of being moral in nature.

 

What have I said in my last post that you would like us to focus in on and I'd do my best to dissect it with greater detail.

The word "grace" in biblical parlance can, like forgiveness, repentance, regeneration, and salvation, mean something as broad as describing the whole of God's activity toward man or as narrow as describing one segment of that activity. An accurate, common definition describes grace as the unmerited favor of God toward man.

The word hen occurs around sixty times in the Old Testament. There are examples of man's favor to man, but the theological concept of importance to us is the grace of God demonstrated toward man. The term occurs most often in the phrase favor "in your (i.e. God's) sight" or "in the eyes of the Lord." This assumes the notice of God as a watchful master or king, with the one who is finding favor, a servant, an employee, or perhaps a soldier.

Grace in the New Testament is largely encompassed by the use of the word charis. It is worth noting that though Jesus is never quoted as using the word charis, his teaching is full of the unmerited favor of God. Perhaps the parable of the prodigal son is the most obvious example. In that parable grace is extended to one who has no basis which to be shown grace, other than the fact that he has asked in humility and repentance to be shown it. Other parables demonstrate grace in the teaching of Jesus, perhaps most notably the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16) and the parable of the great supper (Luke 14:16-24).

The concept of grace is most prominently found in the New Testament in the epistles of Paul. Overwhelmingly in the letters of Paul God is the subject of grace. He gives it freely and without merit. Hence the many different phrases connected with grace: the grace of God (Rom. 5:15), the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 13:14), and the like. Sometimes this is explicitly stated, as in Ephesians 4:7: "to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.".

Of course, as far richer study can be done but I believe I've offered a reasonable amount of examples to begin.

 

HP: I like that attitude Bound. :thumbs: It indeed will be to our advantage to focus clearly a step at a time together to at least a better understanding of the beliefs we hold to.

I am reminded that I had conversed with one individual for numerous posts on the specific issues in question, when he asked me one day if in fact I held to a particular belief that I thought there could be nothing clearer I had ever posted than to state my beliefs in that area. It went to show me that at times we must walk together for a while and even find ourselves repeating the same things to a certain extent before others come to honestly understand what we believe. Some I am certain is due to the meager and limited way, I for one, communicate the ideas I hold to, and possibly there is the lack on the part of others to give diligence to what the other is really saying being blinded at least in part due to their own bias. I am sure I have failed on both accounts many times.

Let’s start with one of the first remarks you made. You said,

HP: Tell me how this is so.

PS: I am not overlooking the great job you did with the word of 'grace.' I am certain it will do us well as we proceed.

 

All of your threads are winding in on themselves. Frankly, they cannot be discussed in a vacuum and each needs to reference the other.

"The Christian doctrine of sin in its classical form," Reinhold Niebuhr has written, "offends both rationalists and moralists by maintaining the seemingly absurd position that man sins inevitably and by a fateful necessity but that he is nevertheless to be held responsible for actions which are prompted by an ineluctable fate." Only seldom in Christian history have the spokesmen for the Christian tradition been confronted with equal force by those who denied that sin was inevitable and by those who denied that man was responsible. Martin Luther, for example, one of the most eloquent interpreters of the inevitability of sin, did not face opponents whose fatalism would have made a mockery both of moral responsibility and of salvation; and therefore he was able to ignore the potentially fatalistic implications of his own one-sided formulations. Most of the doctrinal development in the first four centures, like Luther, faced only one option; but in this instance it was the deterministic alternative that constituted the major opposition, with the result that Christian anthropology, as formulated in the course of the ante-Nicene and immediately post-Nicene debates, leaned noticeably to one side of the dilemma, namely, the side of free will and responsibility rather than the side of inevitability and original sin. Why was this so?

Augustine's own answer was to note that "before this heresy [Pelagiansim] arose, they did not have the necessity to deal with this question, so difficult of solution. They would undoubtedly have done so if they had been compelled to respond to such men." That is, both the attacks upon Christianity from without and the distortions of it from within had tended in the same direction, the deterministic explanation of the human predicament, with the result that the defenders of the faith were obliged to define man's responsibility for his condition much more carefully than they did the inevitability of the condition itself. One horn of the dilemma of Christian anthropology, that of resonsibility, seemed to be the one demanded by the polemical situation. Yet in the long one to which the interpretation of Christian doctrine was obliged to give its primary attention. To explain this development, we must look at the athropological implications of the history we have traced so far.

Both responsibility and inevitability had been prominent in the classical understanding of man. In the Homeric poems "destiny" was a power which the Olympian gods could not dominate; but at the same time it is true to say that "chthonian powers are not so much absent from the Odyssey as they are subdued or brought into his service by the hero's extraordinary feats of will and intelligence," so that neither the presence of destiny nor that of the gods vitiated the importance of human virtue. There was not in Homer any systematic formula for the relation between destiny and the gods, a relation which was bequeathed as a problem to later Greek thinkers. With the loss of confidence in the gods of Olympus, fortune or fate became increasingly prominent, and men "tended more and more to resign themselves to fate." Aeschylus sought to balance the three forces... the tyranny of fate, the power of the gods, and the responsibility of man... concluding the Oresteia trilogy with the words: "There shall be peace forever between these people / of Pallas and their guests. Zeus the all-seeing / met with Destiny to confirm it." And Plato, although he seemed in the Timaeus to elevate necessity to the status of an overriding force and in the Laws quoted the tradition that even God could not oppose necessity, attempted to maintain some similar balance between divine governance, "luck", "timing", and "skill".

The Romans, too, were impressed with the power of destiny. Ovid represented Jupiter as acknowledging to the other gods that both he and they were ruled by the fates. But in the period of the empire this consciousness of fate grew even more dominant, as the Stoic doctrine of necessity coincided with the incursion of the Choldean astrologers. "Reason compels us to admit," Circero asserted, "that all things take place by fate...namely, the order and series of causes." Stoicism identifies fate with divine will, but in the process had to surrender the freedom of human will. According to Pliny, the goddess Fortune was being invoked everywhere, even though there were those who, with Juvenal, insisted that it was human beings who had made Fortune a goddess. In the popular mind, not Stoic theories of necessity, but the predetermination of the stars undercut human freedom and responsibility. "Fate has decreed as a law for each person the unalterable consequences of his horoscope," said a pagan contemporary of the Christian apologists. And even the emperor Tiberius stopped paying homage to the gods because everything was already written in the stars.

In the conflict of Christian theology with classicism it was chiefly this sense of fate and necessity that impressed itself upon the interpreters of the gospel as the alternative to their mesage, rather than, for example, the Socratic teaching that with proper knowledge and adequate motivation a man could, by the exercise of his free will, overcome the tendency of his appetites toward sin. With very few exceptions the apologists for the gospel against Greek and Roman thought made resonsibility rather than inevitability the burden of their message.

The definition of "human" was a part of the presupposition of christological doctrine, and that in at least three ways: the understanding of the human condition and its need for salvation; the definition of the human nature of Christ; and the picture of a human race redeemed and transformed by his coming. The two principle options in the doctrine of the incarnation contained, each in its own distinctive manner, elements that served to preclude a full investigation of the inevitability of sin. The proponents of the hypostatic union could certainly never be accused of taking the human predicament lightly. As the anthropology of Athanasius demonstrated in vivid detail, these theologians set the coming of the Logos into flesh against the somber background of the human condition of sin, corruption, and death. By turning away from God in disobedience, men "became the cause of their own corruption in death." This stat, moreover, was deteriorating progressively, and men had become "insatiable in sinning." Not satisfied with the first sin, men "again fulled themselves with other evils, progressing still further in shamefulness and outdoing themselves in impiety." Nether sun nor moon nor stars had fallen away from God; only man was vile. Viewed against this background, the incarnation of the Logos was seen as the only means of rescue for fallen mankind.

 

While I agree with Pastor Bob on that - doctrine is important -- I don't understand how the Baptist teaching on "priesthood of all believers" fits in -- with this pure doctrine "as a group" idea. How do you avoid having a creed, a statement of beliefs on the one hand to hold to a standard of pure doctrine for the group -- yet with the priesthood of all believers you would think that this is not "allowed".

in Christ,

Bob

 

HP: I appreciate history as much as anyone, but you gave us nothing in your entire discourse that answers the question I asked concerning your remark. Being the patient man I am, I will await a direct response to my inquiry.

A good start for your answer would be first to begin with an explanation on how, from the writings of Pelagius, he conflated ‘grace’ as an attribute of ones ‘inherent human nature.’

 

The longer lesson was for your benefit to give context for the writings of the early Church Fathers and why they tended to focus on 'responsibility' over 'inevitability' at least until the pendulum swung to the other side. Ultimately, these are the two sides of the argument in which you have been debating in your many threads. Pelagius mingled grace (i.e. God's Favor) with nature itself... including human nature. Pelagius was accused of failing to acknowledge that grace "which is neither nature with its free will nor the knowledge of the law nor merely remission of sins, but that which necessary in all our actions [toward the good]". This mingling of grace and human nature made grace an 'inherent' element in one's existence. One's own piece of divine participation, if you will. Pelagius held this opinion because he viewed God, not only as the 'Author of nature' but a 'participate'. The emanate energies of God, if you are familiar with Orthodox Theology, were seen as God's Willful approval and participation in creation thus Pelagius could not accept 'graceless life' for example. This conflation of life (i.e. nature) with grace (i.e. God's favor) forced Pelagius to argue that man cannot be cut off from a participation in the divine life of his Creator. These theories (largely Platonist in origin) contradict the necessity of a Saviour, the necessity of being Born Again as well as the existence of evil itself.

Ultimately what I think you really troubled by isn't Original Sin but Predestination (i.e. Hard Determinism). Original Sin doesn't preclude Free-Will, Hard and Soft Determinism does. Your focus on attacks of the Doctrine of Original Sin distracts from a critical overview of Predestination but I will let you determine where the conversation goes.

 

HP: I gathered that much and I believe that is true up until Augustine came on the scene.

HP: Let’s review what you said about grace.

HP: Show me a man anywhere at any time that it can be said that God was not at work with activity revealing truth to his heart either by conviction or offers of forgiveness. Grace, in this broad form using your definition of the “whole of God’s activity towards man” would include the abilities requisite of moral agency, would it not? How could this be not God’s favor mingled with the very nature God gave to us? God placed within us not only the capacity to know Him but the requisite abilities to realize that gift.

Let me ask you. Is it grace to be created able to know God and to be made in His image and to possess the abilities requisite of moral agency designed to make fellowship with God a possibility? Can you show us how you can separate our human nature, granted to us by God Himself with requisite abilities of moral agency and fellowship with our Creator God, from His grace in the broad sense you defined grace as being properly understood in?

 

If I kept my Arminian/Wesleyan hat on I would continue to affirm a distinction between who we are 'inherently' (i.e. a creature) and the Favor God shows toward us. Again I would point out that mingling the two 'is' what Pelagius did and it is an influence of Emanationism and thus contradicts the distinction between God reaching out toward us and our Free Choice to participate in that Favor. The fact that God is merciful doesn't means that His mercy is an inherent quality of our being. We only share in 'the good' when we participate in God's Grace not through our own 'inherent' agency but through His Favor.

Remember, we are 'made' Sons of God through 'adoption' through 'Grace'. I believe it is fair to maintain the distinction between God's work in our lives and our own inherent capacity. I can appreciate the struggle but I continue to believe Pelagius was in error to mingle the two.

I would affirm that it is a work of God (i.e. Grace) that lifts human capacity to participate in the divine nature. Without that work the capacity is not available thus it is not an inherent quality of human nature. In Orthodox and Arminian/Wesleyan Theology this is what is called "synergism". It is the co-working (i.e. synergy) of God's Grace and our Free-Will to participate and ultimately regenerate our nature. Remember, we must be born again... That assumes a radical resurrection of the original nature into a new nature (regeneration).

We don't have to be antagonistic in discussing this topic or topics. Your are free to believe what you want but I would like to point out that there are very good reasons to reject Pelagius' Theory.

Be Well.

 

We are made sons of God BY grace THROUGH faith.

 

Actually, I was not attempting to quote Ephesians 2:8 per se but merge it with Galatians 4:5 to make the distinction between an inherent quality of man and the gift of God...

To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

 

Bound,

Not so. When we obey the law though we be without the "law," we share in God's mercy and grace, Rom 2:13-14. This, in fact, is how the Gentiles before Abraham were saved and blessed. Noah was such an one.

There are 7 "Spirits of God" sent forth unto all the earth (Rev 5:6) from the creation. We may or may not respond to these but our response (as with "God-fearer" Cornelius) precedes God's calling. Example: Even unsaved, you went to church believing (or your parents believing - God's "sanctification" of you through your parent) that God was there. It was that persoanal "agency" that helped bring you to Christ.

It is inherent to the extent that we all have "free will" and make choices between good and evil every day our conscience bearing witness (conscience is one of the Spirits, BTW).

skypair

 

How can a 'response' precede God's 'calling'? No, my friend, what you are suggesting isn't a 'response'. This is Pelagianism or at best semi-Pelagianism. This is not the Classic teaching of Arminianism. Arminians/Free-will Baptists believe and profess Free-Will as a 'product' of God's Grace. A 'response' to 'God's Call' not a turning to God by one's own agency. That is clearly Pelagianism...

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God - Ephesians 2:8

Note the order... 'grace' (i.e. God's Favor) precedes 'faith' (i.e. our response). It is a synergism which is always initiated by God and not our own agency.

"Since mankind is hopelessly dead in trespasses and sins and can do nothing to obtain salvation, God graciously restores to all men sufficient ability to make a choice in the matter of submission to him. This is the salvation-bringing grace of God that has appeared to all men." ~Henry C. Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949], pp. 344-345

I cannot agree with you in this opinion, friend.

 

Acts 11:17...

17 Therefore, if God gave them the same gift that He also gave to us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, how could I possibly hinder God?"

 

This 'gift' of which the verse speaks is 'Salvation' which can only be received by the 'regenerate' whose eyes have been opened to receive it. Please don't conflate the two.

We are spiritually dead until that time in which preventing grace quickens us and in that quickening we choice to grasp eternal life with Faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

What you are promoting is not Arminianism nor the teachings of Free-Will Baptists but Pelagianism or at best semi-Pelagianism.

My guess is your time in battle with Calvinists have forced you into extremes... Free-Will is an act of Grace impossible through our own Fallen Nature alone. It is no longer an attribute of our Fallen Nature except through Preventing Grace, which is a gift of God not via our own agency.