Introduction: How does a fallen, enslaved sinner become a Christian? The answer to this question has been at the storm center of the greatest debates in all of church history. It was the British Monk Pelagius who gave the world its first major, formal heresy on the issue of grace. The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology defines Pelagianism as follows:
Pelagianism is that teaching, originating in the late fourth century, which stresses one’s ability to take the initial steps toward salvation by one’s own efforts, apart from special grace. It is sharply opposed by Augustinianism, which emphasizes the absolute necessity of God’s interior grace for salvation.
The keystone of Pelagianism is the idea of unconditional free will and moral responsibility.
… The rest of Pelagianism flows from this central thought of freedom. First, it rejects the idea that a person’s will has any intrinsic bias in favor of wrongdoing as a result of the fall. Since each soul is created immediately by God, as Pelagius believed, then it cannot come into the world soiled by original sin transmitted from Adam. Before a person begins exercising his will, “there is only in him what God has created.” The effect of infant baptism, then, is not eternal life but “spiritual illumination, adoption as children of God, citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem.” Second, Pelagius considers grace purely an external aid provided by God. He leaves no room for any special interior action of God upon the soul. By “grace” Pelagius really means free will itself or the revelation of God’s law through reason, instructing us in what we should do and holding out to us eternal sanctions. Since this revelation has become obscured through evil customs, grace now includes the law of Moses and the teaching and example of Christ.
Over against this notion stood the great Augustine of Hippo who taught that it is the grace of God alone that saves lost sinners – and that grace is not merely an aid God provides to all which makes salvation possible. On today’s podcast, we will look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 10, “Of Effectual Calling.” Who saves who? How do sinners come to know Christ? Does God save them? Does man save himself? Does God merely assist and make man’s salvation possible? That is our subject – and what could be more important. The same debate was reprised about 1000 years later between Luther and Rome, and indeed the entire Protestant Reformation and Roman Catholicism. The Roman Catholic humanist and priest who wrote a book called “On the Freedom of the Will,” in which he vigorously argued for the autonomy of man being the decisive factor in the use of his will in his own salvation – but then dismissed the whole question as superfluous and irreligious! The great Martin Luther responded in a volcanic blast titled “The Bondage of the Will” where he stated:
Therefore, it is not irreligious, curious, or superfluous, but essentially wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know, whether or not the will does any thing in those things which pertain unto Salvation.
For, if I know not how much I can do myself, how far my ability extends, and what I can do God-wards; I shall be equally uncertain and ignorant how much God is to do, how far his ability is to extend, and what he is to do toward me: whereas it is “God that worketh all in all.” But if I know not the distinction between our working and the power of God, I know not God Himself. And if I know not God, I cannot worship Him, praise Him, give Him thanks, nor serve Him; for I shall not know how much I ought to ascribe unto myself, and how much unto God.
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