The Original Sin of Sex in Augustine, Ambrose, and Lombard

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Bobby Grow

It is no secret, for those whom it is no secret, that Augustine believed that original sin was a genetic material stuff that was propagated in and among the human mass through the lust of sexual intercourse. Indeed, some of this, no doubt, was developed in the context of his Manichean background; but also, Augustine believed that the passions themselves were ultimately representative of the very base of sin, or what he identified as concupiscence (self-love). He wasn’t the only one who believed this, there were many others, following, like Ambrose, and later Peter Lombard, who affirmed the same in regard to the relationship between post-fall sexual relationships and the propagation of original sin sired in that act. Here is Lombard in his Sentences giving his own view on this, followed by prooftexts from both Ambrose and Augustine.

Chapter 4 (209)

HE SHOWS THE CAUSE OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE FLESH, FROM WHICH SIN OCCURS IN THE SOUL. For the flesh became corrupt in Adam through sin. Before sin, a man and a woman could join together without the incentive of lust and the burning of concupiscence, and there was a marriage bed without stain; but after sin, there cannot be carnal joining without lustful concupiscence, which is always a flaw, and even a fault, unless it is excused by the goods of marriage. And so it is in concupiscence and lust that the flesh is conceived which is to be formed into the body of the offspring. And so the flesh itself, which is conceived in vicious concupiscence, is polluted and corrupted. From contact with such flesh, the soul, as it is infused, derives the stain by which it is polluted and becomes guilty, that is, the vice of concupiscence, which is original sin.

THAT BECAUSE OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE FLESH, WHICH IS THE CAUSE OF SIN, SIN IS SAID TO BE IN THE FLESH. And that is why sin is said to be in the flesh. And so the flesh which is sown in the concupiscence of lust has neither guilt nor the action of guilt, but its cause. Therefore, in that which is sown, there is corruption; in that which is born by concupiscence, there is vice.
Hence Ambrose, on the words of the Apostle, says as follows: “How does sin live in the flesh, since it is not a substance, but a privation of the good? In this way: the body of the first man was corrupted through sin, and that corruption remains in the body through the nature of the offense, preserving the force of the divine sentence promulgated against Adam, by association with whom the soul is stained by sin. And so it is because the cause of the deed remains that sin is said to live in the flesh.” This is the law of the flesh.—The same: “Sin does not live in the spirit, but in the flesh, because the cause of sin is from the flesh, not from the soul; because the flesh is, from its origin, of the flesh of sin, and through its transmission all flesh becomes [flesh] of sin.” But the soul is not transmitted and so it does not have the cause of sin in it.
Augustine too, in a sermon On the Words of the Apostle, shows that the soul contracts sin from the flesh; he says: “The vice of concupiscence is what the soul contracted, but from the flesh. For human nature was not first established with vice by God’s work, but it was wounded by vice coming from the choice of the will of the first humans,” so that there is not good in the flesh, but vice, by which the soul is corrupted.[1]

A truly unbiblical development and accretion, but one that Augustine, and those following, felt needed to be pressed in order to keep the heretical teachings of Pelagius, and the Pelagians at bay. This is what happens when an imbalance is presented into the mix of theological development, particularly as that obtains in the heat of polemical relationships. Not to mention, by time the Augustinian and Pelagius disputation occurred, theological matters had also become a deeply political aggression.

Clearly, from Scripture, the Apostle encourages sexual intercourse (not to mention the epistle to the Hebrews) as a duty, and yet a pleasure, to be had in the marriage bond between a man and a woman.

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. ²But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. ³The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. ⁴The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. ⁵Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ⁶But this I say by way of concession, not of command. ⁷Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that.[2]

Not simply as an act for reproduction, as Augustine would press. But indeed, as an act of undefiled and pure intimacy; i.e., the two become one in the ‘flesh’ in the communal bond of the love of the Holy Spirit. Latterly, Bernard of Clairvaux, Martin Luther, Puritans like Richard Sibbes et al. would pick up on what came to be called ‘Marriage Mysticism,’ in regard to the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church. In other words, the intimacy envisaged by the act of sexual penetration in the bonds of holy matrimony were so (and are so) sanctified, that it could be the symbol of the intimacy that Christ and His Bride have within the bond of God’s Holy Life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (whose life itself is known to be perichoretic and interpenetrative in a Subject-in-Being fellowshipping relationship) (see Eph. 5:18ff). All of this to underscore that sex within marriage coram Deo is a peak event in the human experience in regard to attesting to the very triune life of God itself; inclusive of God’s life with us (Immanuel) and in us in Christ.

Augustine, Ambrose, Lombard et al. couldn’t get everything right.

[1] Peter Lombard, The Sentences: Book 2 On Creation: Distinction XXXI, trans. by Giulio Silano (Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), 154–55.

[2] I Corinthians 7:1–7, NASB95.

Using Apocalyptic Theology to ‘Re-fund’ the Doctrine of Total Depravity with the Hope of ‘De-funding’ the Pelagian-Impulse in the Christian Church

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Bobby Grow

I don’t have any quotes from someone else in this post; I simply wanted to state something very briefly. Many of my posts are in critique of what I have called classical Calvinism, which is a designation I use to classify the dominant form (in its reception) of ‘Reformed theology’ or Calvinism in its common expressions in the 21^st century west (whether that be an elaborate form of federal theology, or a reduced form of five-pointism). That notwithstanding, Evangelical Calvinism, as myself and Myk Habets articulate it (and in this post I am really just speaking for myself) have a strong doctrine of total depravity. That is, we believe that at a moral/spiritual level, theological-anthropologically, there is nothing in humanity but a homo incurvatus in se (human incurved upon themselves); a very Augustinian concept, or more pointedly, I’d argue, Pauline. It is at this point that Evangelical Calvinists can lock-arms with their classical Calvinist cousins; yet, I’d argue, that in many cases this is only in principle (de jure). The intention of articulating a doctrine of total depravity is to take away any sort of Pelagian notion that within humanity there is a neutral spot, a point of contact that remains lively between God and humanity; a point of contact that is not contingent upon God’s choice to be for humanity, but instead upon humanity’s choice to be or not to be for God. We see this principle, the ‘Pelagian-principle’ rearing its head over and over again through the history of interpretation in the church. Whether that be in Pelagius himself, John Cassian following, the Roman Catholic church with its teaching on created and cooperative grace, certain iterations of Reformed federal theology that have a doctrine of preparationism (quid pro quo contractual conception of salvation), or what have you. I contend that this impulse, this Pelagianizing impulse remains a pernicious devil that wants to remain present at all costs; and as such through many forms of sophistication and subtleties we do indeed see it remaining, even in various iterations (significant ones) of so called Christian theology.

As a proponent of what has come to be called ‘Apocalyptic theology’ I think that theology, which I take ultimately to be heavenly and Pauline, has the realistic resources to counter this Pelagian-impulse; in the sense that apocalyptic theology takes seriously the radicality required in order to deal with the human-inspired desire to continuously inject itself into the realm that alone belongs to God. Apocalyptic theology ultimately recognizes that creation is in such a dire place of irreconciliation with God that its only hope is if God breaks into his creation in Jesus Christ, puts it to death, resurrects and recreates such that creation itself only has hope if it lives from this new creation whose name is Jesus Christ. Apocalyptic theology sees nothing of value left in the old creation (in the sense of a moral component left in humanity before God), and by consequent, Pelagianism, and all its Genesis 3.15ish iterations go the way of the ‘stony ground.’ Humanity, soteriologically, only has hope as it lives from the reality of the new creation, from the new humanity in Jesus Christ; the humanity whose reality is only realized by the person of the eternal Logos, the Son of God, who we now know as Jesus Christ (an/enhypostasis).

We need to constantly repent and live from Christ. Total depravity recognizes the dangers of presuming a place in humanity that has spark for God apart from God’s intervention in Christ. Sometimes people who are proponents of total depravity in word, in deed end up undercutting the intention of total depravity by offering theological models and constructs that end up re-inserting the very premises that total depravity was intended to guard against (think of ‘created grace’ for example).

Maximus the Confessor, Cyril of Alexander, and the East are not with Leighton Flowers on Freewill

Posted on May 30, 2020 by Bobby Grow

In some of my more recent posts I have been engaging with a guy named, Leighton Flowers; and his ‘Provisionism.’ I have attempted to show how his position fits into, what historically, is understood as semi-Pelagianism. I still think that’s the case. In this post I want to get into a distinction that Flowers likes to appeal to himself; he likes to align his position with the pre-Nicene church fathers, with particular reference to what he takes to be their understanding of “freewill.” Mind you, Flowers isn’t really all that concerned with whether or not he can find historical catholic precedent for his soteriological view or not; but when debating Calvinists like, James White, or Lutherans like, Jordan Cooper—people who have been similarly framing Flowers’ position as semi-Pelagian—Flowers, in counter to their Augustinianism, which he takes to be a species, categorically, of Manicheanism, will attempt to find counter voices in the primitivism of said proto eastern church fathers. He believes that his understanding of freewill in salvation aligns with their respective understandings; particularly as that would stand in contrast to the mature Augustine’s doctrine of predestination/election and “determinism.” In this post I simply want to say to Leighton: not so fast! I will do that by way of reference to Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition: Vol 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700), and his brief sketch of Augustine’s position in contrast to Maximus the Confessor’s. By this simple reference my hope will be to alert the reader to the fact that Flower’s attempt to appeal to the eastern understanding of “freewill” in salvation is equivocal; particularly because the eastern Church has a robust Christological condition underwriting the way they think humanity vis-à-vis freewill in salvation. Further, in my attempt, I will also refer to some of Cyril of Alexander’s thinking with hopes of fortifying what we find out about Maximus’s thinking.

Pelikan writes:

No less striking was the contrast between the Augustinian tradition and the Greek tradition in the understanding of grace and salvation. An epitome of the contrast is the formula of Maximus: “Our salvation finally depends on our own will.” For “one could not conceive a system of thought more different from Western Augustinianism; and yet Maximus is in no way a Pelagian.” This is because the dichotomy represented by the antithesis between Pelagianism and Augustinianism was not a part of Maximus’s thought. Instead, “his doctrine of salvation is based on the idea of participation and of communion that excludes neither grace nor freedom but supposes their union and collaboration, which were re-established once and for all in the incarnate Word and his two wills.” Even though the century following the death of Augustine saw his predestinarianism attacked by his critics and mollified by his disciples, the Augustinian understanding of original son and of grace continued to shape Western theology. Eastern theology, on the other hand, continued to emphasize, with Maximus, that divine sonship was a gift of God and an achievement of man, and neither of these without the other. Such diametrically opposed interpretations of the very hear of the Christian gospel would almost inevitably come to blows when the ecclesiastical situation had shifted and all the other doctrinal differences that we have been examining became matters of open controversy. Nevertheless, over the centuries of the controversy, it was neither in the doctrine of grace nor even in the doctrine of the church that East and West came into dogmatic conflict most frequently, but in a doctrine on which, supposedly, not only East and West, but even Nestorians and Monophysites, were all agreed: the dogma of the Trinity.[1]

On the face of things, it might sound like Flowers is onto something, in regard to the idea of freewill, as that is ostensibly operative in Maximus’s and the East’s soteriology. But what Maximus has, and Flowers doesn’t, is a soteriology grounded in a robust understanding of Christology and our participation in His humanity as the ground and frame of reference wherein we have capacity to finally say yes to God. In other words, following Athanasius et al. the east understands that apart from union with Christ, by way of His hypostatic union with us, the person, in and of themselves, does not have the capacity to say yes to God. In other words, the east has a heavy doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ operative in their soteriological understanding; so heavy that they referred to their soteriological doctrina as theosis. Flowers doesn’t have this doctrine funding his conception of soteriology, which again, is why he is left open to the charge of forwarding semi-Pelagianism.

To help further fortify this thinking on participatio Christi in the eastern understanding of salvation, let’s turn to Donald Fairbairn’s discussion on union with Christ in the soteriology of Cyril of Alexandria (another eastern father). This passage from Fairbairn is rather lengthy, and you’ll notice that he has a dialogue between Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics in mind, but I think the whole context helps to grant greater insight into just what Cyril’s union with Christ and/or doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ was all about. Fairbairn doesn’t get into the how of union with Christ in Cyril’s theology, but he does point out that for Cyril it is the indicative of being in union with Christ wherein the person has the capacity to be for God and not against Him. This is what Flowers doesn’t have in his soteriological conception, and again, why his view easily falls prey to the charge of semi-Pelagianism. Here is Fairbairn:

From what I have written, it is clear that there are important similarities and differences between Cyril’s understanding of justification and that of Protestantism. Cyril repeatedly writes of the believer’s righteousness as one that is given by another, by Christ, from the outside. This emphasis on Christ as the source of the Christian’s righteousness is similar to the Protestant understanding of the passive nature of the Christian’s righteousness. Cyril, as much as Luther or any Protestant subsequently, sees the righteousness or holiness of the Christian as that which belongs to Christ and which Christ actively grants to the believer, who passively receives it through faith and grace. But as we have seen, there are also differences between Cyril and many classical Protestant writers. Cyril does not adopt a forensic framework as the dominant aspect of his soteriology. He does not distinguish justification and sanctification to any great degree at all. And he certainly does not make justification the central idea of his soteriology. Thus, Cyril stands as a caution against the potential dangers of a theology that is too exclusively forensic or makes the justification/sanctification distinction too sharply.

When one examines Cyril’s relation to modern Eastern Orthodoxy, we find that there are also similarities and differences. The participatory nature of salvation shines very clearly in both Cyril and modern Orthodoxy. But on the other hand, two things about Cyril’s understanding of participation stand in partial contrast to some expressions of modern Orthodoxy. First, the basis for Cyril’s understanding of participation is not the qualities of God (whether they be the energies, as in later Palamite theology; qualities such as incorruption and immortality that dominate the attention of many Greek patristic writers; or even qualities like righteousness and holiness on which this article has focused), but the person of Christ. For Cyril, participation is at heart personal. We become righteous when we are personally united to the one who is righteous, to Christ. (Notice again that this exactly parallels the fact that we become sons of God when we are united to Christ, the true Son.) Second, the very fact that participation is at heart personal means that it is not fundamentally gradual or progressive. The outworkings of union with Christ are indeed gradual, but union with Christ himself, effected in baptism at the very beginning of Christian life, lies at the heart of Cyril’s concept of participation. To say this even more directly, for Cyril even deification is primarily the present state of the believer, rather than the culmination of a process, and his teaching on justification undergirds this fact.

At this point, readers from both Protestant and Orthodox traditions may object that their tradition does in fact emphasize personal union with Christ. This is true. There are some – perhaps many – voices within both traditions that possess such an emphasis. But my point is that in both Protestantism and Orthodoxy, the centrality of personal union with Christ tends to be obscured by these other emphases: forensic justification in Protestantism and a more mystical and/or progressive approach to union with God in Orthodoxy. I ask my readers to recognize these tendencies, even though the mistakes to which they can lead are sometimes successfully avoided.

With that caveat registered, I suggest that as one looks at these two sets of similarities and differences between Cyril on one hand and either Protestantism or Orthodoxy on the other, they expose a false dichotomy that has perhaps hindered dialogue between the two groups. Protestants, schooled in on-going disputes with Roman Catholicism, are often quick to point out the difference between imputed righteousness and imparted or infused righteousness, and the classical Protestant concept of justification is closely tied to the first of these, in opposition to the second. It seems to me, though, that Protestants sometimes extend this dichotomy into an opposition between imputed righteousness and participatory righteousness, thus unhelpfully applying concepts borrowed from anti-Catholic polemic to anti-Orthodox polemic. (Whether those concepts are appropriate even in dialogue with Roman Catholics is another question, but one I will not address here.) I believe Cyril’s thought demonstrates that this is a false dichotomy. Instead, Cyril teaches us that participatory righteousness – or better, our participation in the one who is himself righteous – is the very heart of imputed righteousness. To say this in Protestant terms, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the Christian when the Christian is united to Christ, who is the righteous one. But to say the same thing in Orthodox terms, participation in Christ, because it is a personal participation granted to the believer at the beginning of Christian life, implies that his righteousness becomes ours.

As a result, I suggest that a deeper consideration of Cyril’s doctrine of justification can both challenge Protestants and the Orthodox, and help to uncover latent common ground between them. Protestants need to recognize that justification is not merely or even mainly transactional, but primarily personal and organic. We are united to Christ as a person, and as a result, his righteousness is imputed to us. The forensic crediting of righteousness grows out of the personal union. At the same time, the Orthodox need to recognize that the gradual process of deification (even the continual reception of life-giving grace through the Eucharist, one of Cyril’s greatest emphases) is grounded in an initial personal union with Christ, and thus, both righteousness and deification are at heart gifts that Christ gives us when he gives himself to us. Perhaps both Protestants and Orthodox can then recognize that as Christians, we are righteous, holy, and even divine, because – and only because – we are in Christ. And if we are righteous, holy, and divine in Christ, then throughout Christian life we will progressively become more and more who we already are.[2]

Lengthy, I know; but necessary to provide the whole context. These are details that Flowers never addresses when he almost casually refers to the eastern fathers and their conception of salvation and freewill. Their idea of freedom isn’t like Flowers’ understanding, which sounds more like libertarian free agency; their conception is drenched in a robust doctrine of participation with Christ (Calvin’s doctrine of unio cum Christo and duplex gratia actually sounds much more akin to someone like Cyril than what we find in Flowers’ naked conception of human freedom in the soteriological package).

Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m spending so much time with Flowers on these things. He has already doubled down over and over again on the idea that his position is not semi-Pelagian; but he dupes himself. My goal with this post was simply (in a bloggy way) to take away Flowers’ easy appeal to the eastern fathers, as if they stand with him contra, Augustine. They do stand against Augustine, but not in the way that Flowers does. Flowers, unfortunately, is more in the camp of Pelagius himself, and someone, early, like John Cassian. Pax Vobis

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: Vol. 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 182-83.

[2] Donald Fairbairn, “Justification in St. Cyril of Alexandria, With Some Implications for Ecumenical Dialogue,”Participatio Vol. 4 (2013): 142-44.

Is Leighton Flowers a Pelagian? The Answer Might Be Concerning

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Bobby Grow

What did the infamous, Pelagius, teach about human agency, within the broader category of anthropology? This is a question that has seemingly plagued the church throughout her history. We have Augustine/Pelagius; Luther/Erasmus; Calvin/Pighius; The Council of Dort/Remonstrants so on and so forth. This struggle will not go away. I have, once again, been provoked to enter this fray myself; not because I think this binary is a useful one, but because it continues to ensnare others within the broader Christian body. The provocateur for me has been popular-level podcaster and youtuber, Leighton Flowers. I have engaged with him before through a few blog posts, you can read up on those here. Without rehashing the nitty-gritty of Flowers’ approach (which he calls Provisionism), what is at greatest rub with his whole proposed system reduces down to the question that Pelagius has come to be known for (indeed, Pelagius, has come to be known as the heresiarch of the church because of this). Flowers just did a podcast where this issue takes centerstage (i.e. the human agent’s moral capacity to know or not know God); I responded, here, via a podcast of my own. For the remainder of this post we will attempt to offer a precis of Pelagius’ view on human freewill, and compare that to what Leighton Flowers presents. What should stand out by the end of this post, is that to Flowers’ protestations, his position fits with Pelagius’ perspective much more than he would like. It will be concluded that Flowers’ position isn’t simply equivocally related to Pelagius’, but instead, that Flowers operates with a form of the Pelagian position, that in the history has come to be called semi-Pelagianism.

In order to make a genuine attempt at representing Flowers’ view accurately I will quote directly from the statement of faith he has posted at his website. The statement of faith is said to be representative of the majority of Southern Baptists; Flowers is, by self-confession, within this ‘majority.’ I will quote a large section of the statement (for context), since it has to do with the very question under consideration:

ARTICLE ONE: THE GOSPEL

We affirm that the Gospel is the good news that God has made a way of salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for any person. This is in keeping with God’s desire for every person to be saved.

We deny that only a select few are capable of responding to the Gospel while the rest are predestined to an eternity in hell.

Genesis 3:15; Psalm 2:1-12; Ezekiel 18:23, 32; Luke 19.10; Luke 24:45-49; John 1:1-18, 3:16; Romans 1:1-6, 5:8; 8:34; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Galatians 4:4-7; Colossians 1:21-23; 1 Timothy 2:3-4; Hebrews 1:1-3; 4:14-16; 2 Peter 3:9

ARTICLE TWO: THE SINFULNESS OF MAN

We affirm that, because of the fall of Adam, every person inherits a nature and environment inclined toward sin and that every person who is capable of moral action will sin. Each person’s sin alone brings the wrath of a holy God, broken fellowship with Him, ever-worsening selfishness and destructiveness, death, and condemnation to an eternity in hell.

We deny that Adam’s sin resulted in the incapacitation of any person’s free will or rendered any person guilty (?) before he has personally sinned. While no sinner is remotely capable of achieving salvation through his own effort, we deny that any sinner is saved apart from a free response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing through the Gospel.

Genesis 3:15-24; 6:5; Deuteronomy 1:39; Isaiah 6:5, 7:15-16;53:6;Jeremiah 17:5,9, 31:29-30; Ezekiel 18:19-20; Romans 1:18-32; 3:9-18, 5:12, 6:23; 7:9; Matthew 7:21-23; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 6:9-10;15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Hebrews 9:27-28; Revelation 20:11-15

ARTICLE THREE: THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST

We affirm that the penal substitution of Christ is the only available and effective sacrifice for the sins of every person.

We deny that this atonement results in salvation without a person’s free response of repentance and faith. We deny that God imposes or withholds this atonement without respect to an act of the person’s free will. We deny that Christ died only for the sins of those who will be saved.

Psalm 22:1-31; Isaiah 53:1-12; John 12:32, 14:6; Acts 10:39-43; Acts 16:30-32; Romans 3:21-26; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:10-14; Philippians 2:5-11; Col. 1:13-20; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Hebrews 9:12-15, 24-28; 10:1-18; I John 1:7; 2:2

ARTICLE FOUR: THE GRACE OF GOD

We affirm that grace is God’s generous decision to provide salvation for any person by taking all of the initiative in providing atonement, in freely offering the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in uniting the believer to Christ through the Holy Spirit by faith.

We deny that grace negates the necessity of a free response of faith or that it cannot be resisted. We deny that the response of faith is in any way a meritorious work that earns salvation.

Ezra 9:8; Proverbs 3:34; Zechariah 12:10; Matthew 19:16-30, 23:37; Luke 10:1-12; Acts 15:11; 20:24; Romans 3:24, 27-28; 5:6, 8, 15-21; Galatians 1:6; 2:21; 5; Ephesians 2:8-10; Philippians 3:2-9; Colossians 2:13-17; Hebrews 4:16; 9:28; 1 John 4:19

ARTICLE FIVE: THE REGENERATION OF THE SINNER

We affirm that any person who responds to the Gospel with repentance and faith is born again through the power of the Holy Spirit. He is a new creation in Christ and enters, at the moment he believes, into eternal life.

We deny that any person is regenerated prior to or apart from hearing and responding to the Gospel.

Luke 15:24; John 3:3; 7:37-39; 10:10; 16:7-14; Acts 2:37-39; Romans 6:4-11; 10:14; 1 Corinthians 15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20; 6:15; Colossians 2:13; 1 Peter 3:18

ARTICLE SIX: THE ELECTION TO SALVATION

We affirm that, in reference to salvation, election speaks of God’s eternal, gracious, and certain plan in Christ to have a people who are His by repentance and faith.

We deny that election means that, from eternity, God predestined certain people for salvation and others for condemnation.

Genesis 1:26-28; 12:1-3; Exodus 19:6;Jeremiah 31:31-33; Matthew 24:31; 25:34; John 6:70; 15:16; Romans 8:29-30, 33;9:6-8; 11:7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-2; Ephesians 1:4-6; 2:11-22; 3:1-11; 4:4-13; 1 Timothy 2:3-4; 1 Peter 1:1-2; 1 Peter 2:9; 2 Peter 3:9; Revelation 7:9-10

ARTICLE SEVEN: THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

We affirm God’s eternal knowledge of and sovereignty over every person’s salvation or condemnation.

We deny that God’s sovereignty and knowledge require Him to cause a person’s acceptance or rejection of faith in Christ.

Genesis 1:1; 6:5-8; 18:16-33; 22; 2 Samuel 24:13-14; 1 Chronicles 29:10-20; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Joel 2:32; Psalm 23; 51:4; 139:1-6; Proverbs 15:3; John 6:44; Romans 11:3; Titus 3:3-7; James 1:13-15; Hebrews 11:6, 12:28; 1 Peter 1:17

ARTICLE EIGHT: THE FREE WILL OF MAN

We affirm that God, as an expression of His sovereignty, endows each person with actual free will (the ability to choose between two options), which must be exercised in accepting or rejecting God’s gracious call to salvation by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.

We deny that the decision of faith is an act of God rather than a response of the person. We deny that there is an “effectual call” for certain people that is different from a “general call” to any person who hears and understands the Gospel.

Genesis 1:26-28; Numbers 21:8-9; Deuteronomy 30:19; Joshua 24:15; 1 Samuel 8:1-22; 2 Samuel 24:13-14; Esther 3:12-14; Matthew 7:13-14; 11:20-24; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 9:23-24; 13:34; 15:17-20; Romans 10:9-10; Titus 2:12; Revelation 22:17[1]

Keep the aforementioned in mind. Now we will turn to a reading of Pelagius’ understanding of human nature, and freewill. I will refer to my friend’s, Nick Needham’s synopsizing of that:

Unfortunately for Pelagius, his ardent zeal for holy living was wedded to a rather unorthodox theology. Although his doctrine of God was Catholic enough (he believed in the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity), his beliefs about human nature sparked off a storm of controversy which ended in his condemnation for heresy. Pelagius held that all human beings were born into the world as sinless as Adam was before he fell, the apostasy of Adam had not corrupted humanity’s nature, but had merely set a fatally bad example, which most of Adam’s sons and daughters had freely followed. However, there were some people (according to Pelagius) who had managed to remain sinless throughout their lives by proper use of their free-will, e.g. some of the Old Testament saints like Daniel. In fact, anyone could become sinlessly perfect if only he tried hard enough. Pelagius admitted, of course, that human beings needed God’s grace in order to be good, but he had his own peculiar definition of grace. For Pelagius “grace” really meant two things: (i) God’s gift of natural free-will to all human beings; (ii) God’s gift of the moral law and the example of Christ, which revealed perfectly how people should live, and supplied strong incentives in the form of eternal rewards and punishments. Pelagius’s theology therefore made the fruits of human goodness grow almost entirely out of human free-will and effort; entry into heaven, in the Pelagian scheme, became a just reward for living a good life on earth, rather than an undeserved gift purchased for helpless sinners by the blood of an all-sufficient Saviour.[2]

Based on Needham’s description (which is a good one, the common one you will come across in any sound patristic theology book) of Pelagius’s doctrine, we can see some similarities and dissimilarities between what Flowers and the Baptists affirm, and what Pelagius ostensibly affirms. It is the Deny section of Article 2 from the statement above where we find the greatest similarity between Pelagius and Flowers. To reiterate that section it says: “We deny that Adam’s sin resulted in the incapacitation of any person’s free will or rendered any person guilty (?) before he has personally sinned. While no sinner is remotely capable of achieving salvation through his own effort, we deny that any sinner is saved apart from a free response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing through the Gospel.” In comparison, Pelagius’s position, according to Needham is this: “Pelagius held that all human beings were born into the world as sinless as Adam was before he fell, the apostasy of Adam had not corrupted humanity’s nature . . . Pelagius admitted, of course, that human beings needed God’s grace in order to be good, but he had his own peculiar definition of grace. For Pelagius “grace” really meant two things: (i) God’s gift of natural free-will to all human beings. . . .” I selected the aspects of the respective anthropologies that I think present the greatest similarities between Flowers and Pelagius. While there is not a one-to-one correlation, there is a correlation between the way Flowers believes humanity ‘retained’ a person’s free will, post-fall, and the way Pelagius maintained that human beings were born with an ‘uncorrupted human nature’ as that refers to ‘freewill.’ And as Needham points, out, for Pelagius grace is what fortifies this ‘uncorrupted’ or ‘retained’ (that’s Leighton’s language in his podcasts when attempting to explain his perspective even further) freedom of the will within the human agent. There are some obvious distinctions between Flowers/Baptists and Pelagius, such as Pelagius’s sort of naturalist full-blown moralist soteriology, and the way that Flowers attempts to soften that within a more classical soteriological framework. But what is of concern is the way they share a highly similar theological anthropology, in regard to humanity’s capacity of freewill vis-à-vis salvation. This is the locus classicus that led the early church to identify Pelagius’s teaching as heretical.

There is so much more that can be said. I haven’t even started critiquing Flowers’ position from my own theological program; that will have to wait for another day (if that day ever comes). We haven’t even applied concepts like created grace, a Thomist-Intellectualist anthropology, or considered concepts like operative and cooperative grace when it comes to Flowers’ approach. But I wanted to at least attempt to show how there is a serious and substantial connection between what these Southern Baptists and Flowers teach when compared to what Pelagius taught in regard to the retention of the so called human freewill post-fall. Earlier in my post I noted that I would place Flowers’ position, when considered from the historical valence, into the semi-Pelagian category. I would do this just at the point where we see Flowers/Baptists attempting to dress their soteriological understanding within classical and even orthodox categories, at least linguistically. But when we dress that down, we still end up with this underlying and nagging understanding of a retained ‘freewill’, post-fall, that Pelagius himself taught and was anathematized for. Even in the Deny we paid attention to, the statement says that ultimately the choice is the person’s, as that is understood from what already was affirmed in regard to the retention of human freewill, even if the idea of Pneumatic wooing is referenced. This is what Flowers&company cannot get past. At bottom they affirm that internal to the human agent, it is within the human agent’s power to ‘respond’ or not to the wooing of the Holy Spirit’s prompting. If the person responds in the affirmative to the wooing, Flowers will say this was because of God’s grace; if they reject this wooing, he will say it was because it was in their prerogative to do so because of their freewill. Either way, the response isn’t motivated by grace or no-grace, it is funded by the human agent’s inherent capacity of freewill to either reach out and take hold of God’s grace or not (which if you have read any John Cassian you will also recognize this in him, and his understanding of ‘grace as a hook’). This doesn’t even fit into what Aquinas et al. would refer to as cooperative grace. Grace in Flowers’ et al. approach is always external to the human agent, and this is why Flowers’ soteriological position can rightly be labeled Pelagian. As I reflect on this now, even, the ‘semi’ might not well be applicable at all to his position.

Much to consider. I will leave us with this: good intentions, which Flowers has, a high-piety, which Flowers has, never covers up for bad theology. What Flowers and this set of Southern Baptists are offering is bad theology, and unscriptural at every turn; at least when it comes to thinking about how ‘freedom’ is understood in Scripture’s witness to Jesus Christ.

[1] A Statement of the Traditional Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation, accessed 05-17-2020. I have italicized and emboldened all of Article 2; this is where the comparison between Pelagius and Leighton Flowers, and his like-minded Southern Baptists is most acute.

[2] Nick Needham, 2000 Years Of Christ’s Power: Volume 1: The Age Of The Early Church Fathers (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus Publication, 2016), 276.

A Mini-Sketch of Pelagius and His Teaching in Continued Response to Leighton Flowers and His Soteriological ‘Traditionalism’

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Bobby Grow

I continue to listen to Leighton Flower’s podcasts on the way home from and to work. As he acknowledges, he is not an “academic,” per se, but a popularizer of various academic themes within the sphere he is associated. Nonetheless, he is constantly engaging with so called “academic theology,” and has various guests on his podcasts who are. The one that stands out most to me, thus far, is his interview of Augustine scholar, Ken Wilson. What was most striking to me about this interview is that both Wilson and Flowers attempt to invert the usual and historic understanding of Pelagius and Augustine; they denigrate Augustine as the heretic and elevate Pelagius as the champion of how we ought to understand ‘freewill’ vis-à-vis salvific appropriation. This is rather striking, for obvious reasons, but also concerning because this message is being advocated for among the popular; a group of folks who don’t have critical resource (or time) to see if what Wilson and Flowers are proposing be so. In an effort to provide some sort of online counter I wanted to provide a small sketch of Pelagius, and the implications of his teaching. My contention, along with the church catholic’s, is that when Pelagius’s teachings are placed up against the Scriptural teaching, particularly the New Testament’s teaching (cf. Rom 3 etc), that it flounders just at the point Wilson, Flowers et al claim that it achieves the proper balance for how we ought to understand humanity’s capacity to choose God rather than self. There is a reason ‘no one seeks after God,’ it is because we ‘love the darkness rather than the light’ (cf. Jn 3.17ff). Pelagius’s teaching operates out of a notion of ‘pure nature’ that is funded by the idea that creation itself has an absolute and ontological orientation of its own, such that it remains impermeable to anything other than its own self-determination; ironically, we might identify this orientation, of the self-determined self, as the definition of a Genesis 3 understanding of sin. This is why Pelagius’s teaching has rightly been identified as heretical; i.e. because his teaching on the nature of humanity is grounded, narrativally, in an understanding of humanity that finds its antecedents in the very conception of humanity’s ability ‘to choose’ that God unilaterally came to put to death in the cross and humanity of Jesus Christ.

With the above noted, here is a short sketch on Pelagius and his theology that I offered a couple of years ago here at the blog.

We often hear of Pelagianism, or of Pelagius himself. We know it is a heresy which Augustine in the 5^th century combated; but we don’t often hear exactly what Pelagianism entails. I thought in an effort to remedy this type of lacuna, at least for those who don’t know, that I would share something from JND Kelly on Pelagius, and in brief, what the main aspect of his troubling teaching entails.

Kelly writes:

Pelagius was primarily a moralist, concerned for right conduct and shocked by what he considered demoralizingly pessimistic views of what could be expected of human nature. The assumption that man could not help sinning seemed to him an insult to his Creator. Augustine’s prayer, ‘Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt’ (da quod iubes et iube quod vis), particularly distressed him, for it seemed to suggest that men were puppets wholly determined by the movements of divine grace. In reaction to this the keystone of his whole system is the idea of unconditional free will and responsibility. In creating man God did not subject him, like other creatures, to the law of nature, but gave him the unique privilege of being able to accomplish the divine will by his own choice. He set life and death before him, bidding him choose life (Deut. 30, 19), but leaving the final decision to his free will. Thus it depends on the man himself whether he acts rightly or wrongly: the possibility of freely choosing the good entails the possibility of choosing evil. There are, he argues, three features in action—the power (posse), the will (velle), and the realization (esse). The first of these comes exclusively from God, but the other two belong to us; hence, according as we act, we merit praise or blame. It would be wrong to infer, however, that he regarded this autonomy as somehow withdrawing man from the purview of God’s sovereignty. Whatever his followers may have said, Pelagius himself made no such claim. On the contrary, along with his belief in free will he has the conception of a divine law proclaiming to men what they ought to do and setting the prospect of supernatural rewards and pains before them. If a man enjoys the freedom of choice, it is by the express bounty of his Creator, and he ought to use it for the ends which He prescribes.[1]

Augustine famously opposed this with his development not only of sin as privatio (privation), but also concupiscence (self-love). But beyond that, if you have ever wondered about Pelagius, or more pointedly about his teaching which has become known as Pelagianism, then this should at least give you a good start. If you want to see what Kelly says further about Pelagius I recommend you pick up his excellent book where he covers this, among other important developments in the early period of the church.

I think all Christians, whether classical Calvinist, classical Arminian, Evangelical Calvinist, Barthian, Lutheran, or what have you share common ground in their opposition towards Pelagianism. Sometimes it requires heresy in order for orthodoxy to be sharpened and articulated in such a way that it provides a fruitful way forward for the church. In this case what Augustine offered against Pelagius served as the basis for what many Christians, even today, think of Pelagianism, and more importantly, how Christians conceive of grace (of course we’ve had other developments since Augustine and Pelagius as well).

For my two cents, I think when attempting to offer an alternative model to classical Calvinism and Arminianism it is best to avoid associating your alternative, even grounding some of its key themes, in the theology of a known and worldwide heretic. This approach may work well when presented to folks who don’t have critical access to the history of ideas and their development, but that’s really as far as it will go; other than idiosyncratic appropriation in and among a small number of a scholarly caste of people. It is true that credentials, one way or the other, do not establish the veracity of ideas, but ultimately that is not my appeal here. My appeal to the “theologians” in the church catholic is to note that Pelagius is a known heretic precisely because his teaching correlates with what Scripture identifies as something we need to be saved from (i.e. ourselves and our enslavement to only and always freely choose us rather than God).

[1] JND Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. Revised Edition (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978), 356-57.

A Mini-Sketch of Pelagius and Pelagianism with Reference to JND Kelly

Posted on July 27, 2017 by Bobby Grow