ChadS is right on the money. A book that I believe offers the best account of the different positions in the Pelagian controversy is J. N. D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrine.

M. Jay Bennett,

I think you have severely misunderstood Roman Catholic theology when you attempted to label the Church as being semi-Pelagian (see posts 3, 21, 25 & 28 for various parts of the discussion). Your assumption seems to be that Catholics believe that their good works and actions achieve some merit with God that acts in addition to the the grace already given freely to us by God.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism, by extension, are heresies that the Church has already condemned. First at the Council of Carthage, led by St. Augustine, in 416 & 418 and then further ratified by the ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431. The Church has never taught and never will teach those false teachings. Any idea that the Church has endorsed those teachings comes from an erroneous view of Church theology.

The book of James provides many examples of verses that praise good works. James 2:18 says “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” Further along, James writes: “You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?” and “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

These verses provide the Catholic understanding of the role of good works in the life of a Christian. Good works are the fruit of our faith. Faith is partially an action on our part but it is only possible through the grace that God has poured out upon us. Good works result from our faith and desire to serve and please God. None of this is possible without God’s grace.

Pelagius held that man had the ability to fulfill God’s commands by exercising his free will totally apart from God’s grace or will. The Catholic Church rightly and explicitly rejects this view from the moment it first condemned it in 418 until the present day.

So, to say that the Catholic Church teaches a semi-Pelagian or cooperationist theology is simply wrong.

ChadS

[...] it is interesting to read some questions raised by my old mentor Daniel Wallace over at the “Parchment and Pen” blog. Although Wallace’s remarks are not a response to the Pope’s recent [...]

[...] it is interesting to read some questions raised by my old mentor Daniel Wallace over at the “Parchment and Pen” blog. Although Wallace’s remarks are not a response to the Pope’s recent [...]

I was wondering the same thing Ross.

I am waiting to see the responses from some of the Protestants/Evangelicals before assuming too much

I wonder if the vatican got wind of this post?

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-eur/2007/jul/10/071000950.html

This has been a great discussion!

rs

I’ve been following this post and its comments and, just for fun, I pasted it all into Word (Microsoft’s, not God’s) to see how much I’ve read and you’ve wrote.

With standard 1 inch margins and a 12-point Times New Roman font, it spans 59 pages and 27,509 words (not counting this comment)! If you subtract the words that are parts of the blog (names, times, links), you’ve probably got nearly 27,000 words!

Cool stuff, and great conversation. I’ve never had or seen a dialogue like on, on this topic.

-T

You’re welcome! It really is a great organization and I love being involved with it!

Vance,

Thank you for your service as a Gideon! I was impacted deeply by the Gideon ministry while in college. I praise God for it.

Jay

Exactly. The way some fundamentalists talk, you wonder how anyone ever gets saved without a Bible in their hands. Think of the first few hundred years of the Church when some had no texts whatsoever, and no one had anything like the complete group of texts we have now.

And, some had incorrect texts, and some texts now considered non-canonical.

How on Earth did they ever get saved?!

Now, I say that as a member of the Gideons with nothing but love and dedication to the power of the Bible. But our desire for fixed and certain answers, and simple ones at that, can lead us pretty far astray sometimes.