Category Archives: Heresy

Pelagianism

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Sproul Jr In an article entitled “Pelagianism: Self-Righteousness” Dr. R. C. Sproul, Jr writes:

Pelagianism is an ancient error built on man’s self-righteousness. Though roundly condemned when it began, it’s still with us.

Transcript:

I suspect that when we are finally ready to wrap up all the “-ism Fridays,” all the –isms that we end up doing, that this for many of us may very well be the most obscure -ism that we will cover because I’d like to talk today about Pelagianism.

Unless you’re some sort of theology wonk, you probably have never heard of Pelagius. Pelagius was a British monk who lived in the fourth century who came onto the radar of the church when he determined to publicly grumble about the prayer of another believer. That other believer was none other than St. Augustine.

Now, St. Augustine is, in my judgment and I would suspect in the judgment of anybody with any sense of sanity, the greatest theologian of the first millennium of the church era. Augustine was perhaps the greatest theologian ever. And so Pelagius was rather bold in striking up his beef with Augustine. What was the prayer that Augustine pray? He prayed this way, “oh Lord, command what thou wilt and grant what thou doest command.” In this prayer, Augustine was acknowledging God’s sovereign authority. That God has the ability, the liberty, the authority to impose obligation on us. Command what thou will – “God, you are our God, I am at your service, I am your servant, I am your creature, whatever you want to command, I know that is what I have an obligation to do.” And that part of the prayer did not upset Pelagius. Rather, what upset him with the second part, “…grant what thou doest command.”

Augustine is praying to his Maker, “you do whatever you want, you command whatever you want but please give me the ability to do what it is you command me to do.” That is what got in Pelagius’ craw. Pelagius argued that it would be immoral, wrong of God to command that which we do not innately, inherently, have the ability to do on our own.

In making that objection, Pelagius fired a shot across the bow of the doctrine of original sin. And, to his credit, he recognized that that was what he was doing. In defense of his own position Pelagius reached the necessary conclusions that flowed out of it. One conclusion being that there is no such thing as original sin. Now, please understand that “original sin” is not the story of what happened to Adam and Eve, rather it is the doctrine of the fruit of Adam and Eve’s sin.

Original sin holds that because Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they became fallen creatures and that the fallen nature, that inclination towards evil was passed on to all of humanity that would flow from them ever afterwards. That all of us (of course with the exception of Jesus who was conceived of the Holy Spirit) that all of us are born in sin, we were conceived in unrighteousness, that the imaginations of our heart and minds are wicked from our youths, that we are sinners from the beginning. We are in fact slaves to sin.

Pelagius said, “nope, we are born like a blank slate, a tabula rasa. There is no impact of Adam and Eve’s sin upon us. This means of course that we not only innately have the ability to embrace the work of Christ for us, but we have the innate ability to not need the work of Christ for us. Pelagius not only affirmed that we would come to faith in Christ out of an island of righteousness in ourselves, but he also affirmed that we don’t even need faith in Christ because faith in for Christ is for sinners and we can of our own goodness obey the will God.

Happily, Pelagius’ error was roundly condemned by the Early Church in an ecumenical council. The perspective of Augustine was affirmed and defended by the Church and became the doctrine of the Church at least until hundreds and hundreds of years later. In fact “Augustinianism,” even though it is a part of the history of the Roman Catholic Church, is rightly understood as another nickname for what we might call Calvinism or Reformed Theology. Indeed, if you read through the corpus of Calvin you find that Calvin quotes Augustine not only more than any other scholar, but he quotes Augustine more than all other authorities combined.

Augustine is truly the father of the Reformation. On the shoulders of Augustine stood such giants as Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, Knox, and Farel. It is on Augustine’s shoulders that these giants stood. And it was Augustine who wisely, faithfully, truthfully first slew that ancient version of theological liberalism that we call Pelagianism.

Pelagianism is not completely gone, it is still with us here in different forms, but it began with Augustine and Pelagius. It was condemned then and it must be condemned now. We need to reject Pelagianism and give thanks for the biblical doctrine of Augustinianism.

To be sin for us

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cross02Nathan Busenitz serves on the pastoral staff of Grace Church and teaches theology at The Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles. In an article entitled, “In what way was Jesus ‘made sin’ on the cross?” he writes:

Yesterday, as I was reading through portions of Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians, I came across the following:

“Christ took upon Himself our sins, not by constraint, but of His own good will, in order to bear the punishment and wrath of God: not for the sake of His own person (which was just and invincible, and was not in any way guilty), but for our person. So by means of a joyous substitution, He took upon Himself our sinful person, and gave to us His innocent and victorious person: with which we, being now clothed, are free from the curse of the law. . . . By faith alone therefore we are made righteous, for faith alone lays hold of this victory of Christ.” (Commentary on Gal. 3:13)

Calvin’s comments on 2 Corinthians 5:21 are similar:

“How can we become righteous before God? In the same way as Christ became a sinner. For He took, as it were, our person, that He might be the offender in our name and thus might be reckoned a sinner, not because of His own offences but because of those of others, since He Himself was pure and free from every fault and bore the penalty that was our due and not His own. Now in the same way we are righteous in Him, not because we have satisfied God’s judgment by our own works, but because we are judged in relation to Christ’s righteousness which we have put on by faith, that it may become our own.” (Commentary on 2 Cor. 5:21)

Those quotations, which underscore the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and Christ’s imputed righteousness, reminded me of an earlier study I had done regarding 2 Corinthians 5:21, specifically with regard to this question: In what way was Jesus “made sin” on the cross?

I thought it’d be worth rehearsing some of that material in today’s post. To state the question another way: Did Jesus become the literal embodiment of sin, or take on a sin nature, or become a sinner when He died at Calvary?

The heart of the question centers on Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

In what sense did Jesus become “sin on our behalf”? Does that phrase mean that Jesus literally became a sinner on the cross?

There are some today who teach that Jesus became a sinner (or took on a sin nature) at the cross. Benny Hinn is one such advocate. In a TBN broadcast, Hinn exclaimed:

“He [Jesus] who is righteous by choice said, ‘The only way I can stop sin is by me becoming it. I can’t just stop it by letting it touch me; I and it must become one.’ Hear this! He who is the nature of God became the nature of Satan when he became sin!” (Benny Hinn, Trinity Broadcasting Network, December 1, 1990)

Prosperity-preacher Kenneth Copeland echoes those same teachings. In Copeland’s words:

“The righteousness of God was made to be sin. He accepted the sin nature of Satan in His own spirit. And at the moment that He did so, He cried, ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ You don’t know what happened at the cross. Why do you think Moses, upon instruction of God, raised the serpent upon that pole instead of a lamb? That used to bug me. I said, ‘Why in the world would you want to put a snake up there; the sign of Satan? Why didn’t you put a lamb on that pole?’ And the Lord said, ‘Because it was a sign of Satan that was hanging on the cross.’ He said, ‘I accepted, in my own spirit, spiritual death; and the light was turned off.’” (Kenneth Copeland, “What Happened from the Cross to the Throne,” 1990, audiotape #02-0017, side 2)

On another occasion, Copeland reiterates that same teaching:

“How did Jesus then on the cross say, ‘My God’? Because God was not His Father any more. He took upon Himself the nature of Satan.” (Kenneth Copeland, “Believer’s Voice of Victory,” Trinity Broadcasting Network, April 21, 1991)

But do assertions like these accurately reflect Paul’s teaching that “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf”?

To come back to the original question: “Did Jesus become the literal embodiment of sin, or take on a sin nature, or become a sinner when He died at Calvary?” My answer to that question is a resounding no.

Here are five reasons why:

1. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul declares that Jesus “knew no sin.” Whatever the rest of the verse means, it must be interpreted in light of Paul’s statement that Jesus “knew no sin”—meaning He had no personal experiential knowledge of sin in any way. If Jesus became a sinner or took on a sin nature then Paul would have contradicted himself in that very verse. Continue reading →

Taking Error Seriously

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EdenJohn J. Murray C. H. Spurgeon concluded: ‘Modern criticism, like modern theology, is like the sirocco that blasts and burns; it is without dew or suction, it proves itself to be unblest of God and unblessing to men’. What can be said of the situation today?

WHERE WE ARE TODAY

1. NO PLACE FOR TRUTH.

There was a day when men believed there was such a thing as objective truth and believed that the truth could be stated in propositions, using human language and comprehensible to human minds. A sea-change has taken place in Western intellectual life. It is now argued that we can no longer speak of objective truth. Truth and falsehood have been replaced by what is ‘true for me’ or ‘true for you’. This has infiltrated the church, as has shown in David Wells’ book No Place For Truth, a work which charts the demise of evangelical theology in the United States. He said: ‘The emptiness of evangelical faith without theology echoes the emptiness of modern life’.

2. NO FEAR OF ERROR.

How can we profess to love God without loving his truth? Truth is the revelation of his nature, character and works. Horatius Bonar warned in his day:

The spirit of the age which makes light of error, as if it were not sin. Even some who call themselves Christians, have lost their dread of error, and are hurrying on from opinion to opinion, exulting in their freedom from old fetters and trammels, reckoning themselves peculiarly honest and unprejudiced. Alas for truth in such a case! How can it be reached? Alas for the love of truth! How can it exist where there is no fear of error?

3. NO EXERCISE OF DISCIPLINE.

Ministers and elders can hold the most outrageous views and no action is taken against them. Trials for heresy seem to have become a thing of the past. We are living in a day when such matters have ceased to concern the evangelical church. Professor Thomas C. Oden has said: ‘The very thought about asking about heresy has itself become the new heresy. The archheresiarch is the one who hints that some distinction might be needed between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong’.

WHAT WE MUST DO

1. WE MUST BE INTOLERANT OF A FALSE GOSPEL. Continue reading →