Saturday, November 16, 2024

Communion

Before you believe something, just ask yourself: "Where did I get this information from?"

Do not be stressed out about unconfessed sin before communion. Communion is not an "inventory of your sin"—it is a celebration! Preachers tell you to examine yourself for unrepentant/unforgiven sin before you eat communion so that you do not eat "unworthily." (Completely ignoring the context of what the Corinthians were doing.) News Flash: You have no unforgiven sin! Your sin (past, present, and future—all of it) was handled at the cross—once and for all (Heb. 10:14). You have been "perfected for all time" in Jesus. God is not keeping a record of your unrepentant sin as He remembers it no more. Communion is a time for celebrating Jesus' finished work and looking toward His second coming. Instead of fixating on failures, focus on what Jesus already did! If you believe and trust in Jesus, if you profess the name of Jesus, then you should be partaking of communion. Period. No church has the authority to prevent you from partaking, even if you are merely visiting them!

Jesus was crucified on the cross long before you were born. At that time, all your sin was future. The idea that you have future sin you might commit that you need to ask forgiveness for is unbiblical. When you come to Jesus, His righteousness is imputed to you and your slate is wiped completely clean. "You have been made complete" in Jesus (Col. 2:10). "His divine power has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness" (2 Pet. 1:3). We lack nothing! The perfection, righteousness, and holiness required by God is provided to you by the New Covenant. It is an eternal and unconditional covenant because God swore it by Himself and fulfilled it through Jesus (Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12). Stop asking Him for forgiveness and start thanking Him for His forgiveness! "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).

Embrace the truth and live free!

Thursday, November 14, 2024

The Baptist's Confusion with Children

Like most Baptists, Fred Zaspel is confused concerning the New Covenant, the Gospel, and where children fit in. He writes, "We wonder in the first place on what exegetical ground our Reformed paedobaptist brothers can affirm the idea of covenants being made with believers and their children." Um... how about because Peter said so!

"For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." Acts 2:39

What was it Jesus said again? "When I am lifted up from the Earth, I will draw all men to Myself" (John 12:32). God is calling all men to Himself. That does not mean, however, that all men will accept His calling.

I do not consider myself to be Reformed in the least, especially considering the early Christians rejected the core foundation of Calvinism (or the Doctrines of Grace, or TULIP) as heretical, having been originally taught by the Gnostics. But, consider this, my Baptist brothers and sisters: Which makes more sense? That with the coming of the New Covenant, male children, who partook of the Old Covenant, no longer had that blessing and were now excluded from the New Covenant, or that female children, who had no part of the Old Covenant, are now included and share the same blessing as the males in the New Covenant?

The New Covenant is always simpler, more inclusive, and greater reaching than the previous covenant. Eight-day-old male children received the sign and seal of the Old Covenant, which acted as a witness or testimony for or against them, and became members of the Old Covenant community. What faith can an eight-day-old express, Baptists?!?!? Be consistent! Why can children today not receive the sign and seal of the New Covenant, which acts as a witness or testimony for or against them, and become members of the New Covenant community? Where the male children were included in the Old Covenant, you would have us believe that all children are now excluded from the New Covenant??? So children are worse off under the New Covenant than they were under the Old Covenant? It seems to me that the New Covenant, which is far more inclusive and of greater reach, would now include all children.

Read that last paragraph again. Do it slowly if need be to let it sink in.

You are saying, Baptist, that children today are worse off under the New Covenant than they had been under the Old Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, at least the male children were partakers. But, according to you, all children are now excluded from the New Covenant and its promises. Again, it seems to me that a "better covenant" that is greater reaching and more inclusive would now include female children with the male children just as it includes gentiles with Jewish believers.

You attempt to argue that there are no examples of the children of believers being baptized in Scripture, yet you ignore the fact that there are no examples of the children of believers growing up and being baptized (as you believe) either. You claim that it is reaching to assume that the household baptisms in Scripture had infant children, but you ignore the fact that it is just as reaching for you to assume that they did not. Especially considering people had more children in the past than most people do today. Furthermore, the Greek is on our side. Every case says the householder believed (singular) and the household (plural) was baptized.

You also have history to contend with. The earliest mention of infant baptism is from the second century. You would have us believe that the apostles never taught such a practice, and yet within 50 years it was being taught and no one objected to it?!?!? The fact is, infant baptism has been practiced for the majority of church history by the majority of denominations, and is still practiced by the majority of denominations today. Granted, many of them, like yourselves, do not fully understand baptism, but nevertheless it is what it is.

If you do not understand how the New Covenant is simpler, more inclusive, and greater reaching than the Old Covenant, then you clearly have not been paying attention and have no understanding of the differences between the covenants.

"Leave the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Pelagius was NOT a Heretic! Pelagianism is a MYTH!

John MacArthur's right-hand man, Phil Johnson, is clueless concerning "Pelagianism." Phil knows nothing about Pelagius. The verbal diarrhea he spews is merely hearsay and gossip, and he ignorantly regurgitates and parrots it without doing his homework to see if it is true in the least. [Just as Phil's blind followers will do with me.] He teaches as "fact" something that never actually existed, as you are about to witness. You see, Phil is lazy. He believes things simply because he was told to believe them. He has never done a lick of research to weigh the various interpretations on any issue to see if they legitimately square with the Scriptures. There are over 40,000 Christian denominations, each with their own set of "scholars" or "experts." They cannot all be right, but they can certainly all be wrong. Phil believes what he believes because of blind tradition. He believes what he believes because of how he was raised and what he was taught. He has never approached the beliefs he has embraced in the manner which the Bereans approached Scripture. The guy follows two bankrupt systems of theology simultaneously: Dispensationalism and Calvinism. 'Nuff said!

After reading this entire post, do you think Phil has the humility to acknowledge his error and to admit he was wrong? I am willing to bet not. With his ego, pride, and hubris, because he is unable to argue the main point and can never provide a reasonable refutation or intelligent counter-argument, Phil will simply turn around and attack me by utilization of denial, deflection, IMAX-level projection, censorship, "cancelling," manipulation, smearing, gaslighting, jamming, framing, ad hominem, name calling, character assassination, attempted intimidation, and the use of fallacious arguments that have no basis in reality, the way he has always done with any of his opponents. He is a narcissistic bully. The dumb sheep who follow him and hang on his every word will do likewise because they do not possess an ounce of ability to critically think for themselves. If some clown like Johnson tells them to hate someone, inventing reasons the way Augustine did with Pelagius, they will hate that person without ever knowing them or attempting to know them and without ever weighing the matter for themselves. "I heard this or was told this, therefore is must be true." As Augustine brought Pelagius into disrepute, I have no doubt that Phil will attempt to do the same with me, because he is of his father the devil: a liar! I have no doubt that at least one person to several people (including Phil himself) will write me to express their godless hatred because they behave more like the Devil than they do the Saviour. They have a Christ-less "Christianity"! They are a cult.

Augustine leveled fourteen accusations against Pelagius, of which only half of one is true. In other words, 96% of what Augustine accused Pelagius of simply was not true. Let us take a look, shall we. Here are the fourteen tenets Augustine leveled against Pelagius, and the evidence for or against:
[Note: the information provided for all fourteen tenets has been taken from the well-researched and well-documented book The Myth of Pelagianism, a book that Phil Johnson will no doubt be too cowardly to purchase and read in order to educate his glaring ignorance. You know what the Bible says about pride, Phil...]

1.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'Adam was created mortal so that he was going to die, whether he sinned or not.'

In On Virginity, Pelagius referred explicitly to the fact that Adam died as a result of sin. In a discussion of how failure to obey God's positive as well as his negative injunctions would incur punishment, Pelagius wrote:

For I do not want you to flatter yourself on the grounds that there are some things that you have not done, since it is written: Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it [Jas. 2:10]. Adam sinned once, and died: do you suppose that you can live, when you are frequently committing the very same act which killed another, though he had perpetrated it only once? Or do you suppose that he had committed a great crime, because of which he was deservedly condemned to undergo a more severe punishment? Let us see then what it was he did: he ate of the fruit of the tree contrary to the commandment given to him. What then? Did God punish a man with death because of the fruit from a tree? No, not because of fruit from a tree but because of his rejection of a commandment.

Pelagius then repeated the idea that Adam's sin caused his death. After a list of divine commandments, he concluded that if his addressee did not observe them all, then God would reject him:

If you reject him in any respect, if he spared Adam, God will spare you also. Indeed there would have been greater reason for him to spare Adam, who was still ignorant and inexperienced, and did not have the example of anyone who had previously sinned, and died for his sin, to deter him.

In On the Divine Law, Pelagius wrote that Adam was punished for his sin:

Thus Adam, after enjoying familiarity and conversation with God, easily believed the devil when the devil seduced him, and as a result, overcome by desire for one apple, lost Paradise; and because he presumed to possess one good thing through transgression, he lost many good things at the same time ... I ask you, after so many proofs and so many deaths, whence grows in us this feeling of immunity from punishment for our sin?

2.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'The sin of Adam harmed him alone and not the whole human race.'

Pelagius wrote that Adam's transgression damaged all his descendants:

So I want you to know in full what I believe that you already know in part, that our Lord, the word of God, came down from heaven for this reason, so that through his assumption of our human nature, the human race, which was lying prostrate since the time of Adam, might be raised up in Christ; and the new man rewarded for his obedience with a salvation as great as the destruction that befell the old man through disobedience.

Pelagius taught that Adam's sin established for his descendants an example and habit of sin so strong that it almost seemed part of human nature. In this way it indeed harmed all his descendants. This was why it was important to remind people that inclination to sin was not, in fact, innate. By contrast, Augustine taught that Adam's sin damaged human nature, and all humans inherited 'original sin' (peccatum originale) from Adam, transmitted through the procreative act.

3.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'The law leads to heaven in the same way as the Gospel.'

Pelagius was clear that the Gospel led to salvation much more than the law, since after Christ's coming mankind were 'under grace' (sub gratia). He argued that if men were able to lead holy and righteous lives before Christ's advent, then it had to be possible for men to do so after Christ's coming:

How much more must we believe that we are able to do this after the light of his coming, we who have been renewed through the grace of Christ and reborn as better men; we who have been purified and cleansed by his blood, roused by his example to pursue more perfect righteousness, we ought to be better than those who lived before the time of the law, better even than those who lived under the law, as the apostle says: Sin will have no dominion over you. For you are not under the law but under grace [Rom. 6:14].

Pelagius also made this clear in On the Divine Law:

Because the present time of grace is different, in which the fullness of perfection has arrived; the time of the law was different, the time of the prophets was not the same as now, as the Lord says: You have heard that it was said to the men of old [Matt. 5:21], that they should not kill, but I give you more perfect commandments, which the reader will find set forth in order in their appointed place in the Gospel. For from the time when the son of God became the son of man, from the time when the old leaven of the Jewish tradition was made the new scattering, from the time when the lamb is eaten not metaphorically but in truth, from the time when according to the apostle: The old things have passed away and all things are made new [2 Cor. 5:17], from the time when it was commanded to set aside the image of earthly man and take up the form of the heavenly man, since that time, having died with him, we live, and by his power we have risen again in Christ alongside him.

Pelagius paired the teachings of the law with the Gospels suggesting both of them were required in order to achieve righteousness (iustitia). He also asserted: 'Indeed anything that goes against the Gospel of Christ is unrighteous'. Furthermore, it was axiomatic in Pelagius' writings that imitation of Christ saved Christians, and this made them dependent on the teachings of the Gospels.

4.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'Newborn infants are in the same state as Adam before his transgression.'

The idea that newborn infants were in the same state as Adam before his sin is not asserted in Pelagius' surviving writings. The only evidence that Pelagius taught that infants did not require baptism comes from the accusations of his opponents. They read into his assertion of the goodness of human nature the entailment that infants were in the same state as Adam before his transgression. They then drew from this the further entailment that Pelagius taught infants did not require baptism, on the grounds that the idea that infants lacked sin deprived the sacrament of infant baptism of any purpose.
Pelagius' response to this accusation when it was put to him at a synod was to deny that he had made the statement and to anathematise it. In his Statement of Faith, composed as part of his defence for his third trial, he asserted that baptism was necessary and should use the same wording for infants as for adults. This perhaps looks like a response to this hostile entailment being read into his defence of the goodness of human nature. This tenet therefore reveals the degree to which a bogus set of statements were attributed to Pelagius and made synonymous with his name. Both tenets 4 and 6 in Augustine's list of the constituent theses of 'Pelagianism' refer to this one issue, and this doctrine has been attributed by many scholars to Pelagius and taken as a defining tenet of 'Pelagianism', which shows how far understanding of Pelagius' teaching has been determined by his opponents' account of it. The fact that in his surviving writings Pelagius only mentioned infants in his Statement of Faith after he had been accused of heresy for denying the need for infant baptism suggests that he was responding to a criticism of his teaching. This was an example of how the polemical context determined the nature of the debate, which proceeded through accusation and counter-accusation. Pelagius stressed the importance of baptism as a sacrament of cleansing from sin and second birth. It was a hostile entailment read into his writings to suggest that this might make more sense for an adult than for an infant, and once again a doctrine that Pelagius did not assert was attributed to his writings.
Caelestius was a Christian from a noble family who was linked to Pelagius by Pelagius' opponents through their description of Caelestius as Pelagius' 'pupil' (discipulus). He was tried for heresy three years before Pelagius, at an ecclesiastical council held in Carthage in North Africa, on charges similar to those later levelled against Pelagius. According to the account of some of the proceedings of the council, included by Augustine in his On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin, Caelestius appears to have raised the issue of infants as a way to attack the notion of original sin, by drawing out a consequence of the doctrine which might offend peoples' sense of justice and thus turn them against the idea (because it entailed that God condemned infants to hell). While Augustine could see malign intent in babies, others found the idea of evil in infants at best counterintuitive and at worst a damaging idea. Caelestius' move was then countered by adducing an entailment from the assertion of the goodness of human nature, that if infants lacked sin then infant baptism would have no purpose, since there would be no sins to remit; and this was then turned into the accusation that Pelagius denied infant baptism.
However, Pelagius asserted the good of human nature because he believed that in order to encourage Christians to moral behaviour he had to convince them that it was within their capacity and depended only on their choosing it. Thus he offered his critique of the idea of original sin through a positive presentation of his own perspective and not through attacking the position of his opponents. Brynley Rees pointed out that in the surviving fragments of the writings of Julian of Aeclanum, a Christian who wrote texts opposing aspects of the triune [original sin, prevenient grace, and predestination as preordainment] after Pelagius' condemnation, there is a justification of infant baptism that does not depend on the existence of original sin. As things stand, there is no way of knowing what Pelagius' understanding was of the reasons for infant baptism. What is clear is that he did not deny the need for it, and that tenets 4 and 6 were entailments read into his writings with hostile intent, that are possible, but not necessary, entailments of Pelagius' assertion of the goodness of human nature.

5.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'The whole human race does not die through the death or transgression of Adam, and the whole human race does not rise through the resurrection of Christ.'

Pelagius wrote that the example of sin that Adam established caused mankind to die spiritually, and Christ raised mankind from this destruction. He also wrote that Christians were saved through the cleansing of Christ's passion: 'God our Lord and Saviour, when he thought fit to take manhood upon himself for the sake of the salvation of the human race'.

6.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'Even if they are not baptized, infants possess eternal life.'

As discussed with regard to tenet 4, the issue of unbaptised infants possessing eternal life is not dealt with in Pelagius' surviving writings. He drew a distinction between eternal life and the kingdom of heaven in so far as he wrote that there were many mansions in heaven, and that different levels of goodness would receive different levels of reward in the afterlife. This was expressed in his letters when he wrote about the vocation to virginity, and it appears to have been intended as a means to differentiate the special reward given those who dedicated themselves as virgins. It would perhaps have afforded room somewhere for unbaptised infants, but in his surviving writings Pelagius did not mention infants until he was accused of teaching something he had not written, which forced him to deny having written it, and to anathematise hostile entailments read into material he had not written—namely, alleged quotations from the writings of Caelestius.

7.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'If wealthy person who have been baptized do not renounce all their possessions, they have no merit, even if they seem to do something good, and they will not possess the kingdom of heaven.'

There is no evidence that Pelagius taught that wealth was an impediment to achieving salvation. The reverse seems to be the case. When he wrote a letter of advice to the young Roman patrician girl Demetrias about how to live a life dedicated to following Christ's injunctions, at no point did he advise her to distribute her fortune to the poor, nor did he establish poverty as a future goal, nor did he denigrate her wealth. When Pelagius wrote a letter of advice to Celantia, a Roman matron, he did not tell her to give away her wealth. Nowhere in his surviving writings did Pelagius advise anyone that they should give away their property. With regard to the ability of the rich to enter heaven, he did not suggest either to Celantia or to Demetrias that they should in any way diminish their wealth as he set out for them how they should live in order to reach heaven. He was explicit in his letter to Demetria that everyone in every station in life was called to righteousness and could thereby attain eternal life: 'In the matter of righteousness we all of us owe one obligation: virgin, widow, married woman, a person in the highest station in life, the middle station, or the lowest rank, all are commanded equally to fulfil the commands.' Pelagius told Demetrias that she could expect to enter the kingdom of heaven if she maintained her virtuous behaviour, and, since his advice was explicitly predicated on her living within her ancestral household, he was clearly not suggesting that she had to embrace poverty in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Access to every area in the kingdom of heaven would be determined by how closely a person had imitated Christ, but nowhere did Pelagius suggest that poverty was part of that imitation.
What Pelagius did do was seek to downgrade the social status of wealth. He sought to elevate spiritual riches above material wealth by asserting that they had a more real value because they determined attainment of and status within the kingdom of heaven. In his letters of advice he redefined nobility as spiritual and unrelated to nobility of birth. In his rejection of earthly social status, Pelagius condemned the social order in strong words: 'It was not the equality of nature that was responsible for worldly nobility but the ambition of greed.' This is the only sentence in Pelagius' surviving writings reminiscent of the anonymous tract On Riches (De diuitiis) in the Caspari Corpus, which took a dim view of wealth. In his comment, however, Pelagius cast a critical eye on secular nobility, not wealth per se. Pelagius wrote this comment in a letter to the unknown addressee of On Virginity, clearly not a girl of patrician stock.
If other Christian writers, animated by enthusiasm for ascetic values, extended critique of worldly status to include criticism of wealth per se, that does not imply that Pelagius did so. Once again, the tenet listed by Augustine cannot be found in Pelagius' surviving writings.

8.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'God's grace and help is not given for individual actions, but consists in free will and the law and teaching.'

As already noted, in Christian literature the word 'grace' could be used to refer to any gift from God. It is useful here to set out some of the different aspects of God's grace to which reference is made in Christian texts from this period. At least seven possible aspects of God's grace were referred to. First, there was the grace of creation, which included man's endowment with free will.; the extent of this free will was at issue, whether it was free will to evil only, or 'dual' or 'effective' free will—that is, to virtue as well as to sin. Second, the grace of God's teaching was regularly referred to, which included all Scripture and Christ's examples. Since they were gifts from God, all of these things could be described as God's grace. Third, there was the grace of Christ's passion which washed away the sins of mankind. This gift was made available to man in a fourth aspect of grace, the grace of the sacrament of baptism, as demonstrated by Pelagius' use of the term 'grace' to refer to baptism in On Virginity. Fifth, there was the grace of salvation. Sixth, the word 'grace' was used to describe the individual gift given by God, such as that of healing, eloquence or wisdom. Seventh, there was prevenient grace, which consisted of the Holy Spirit pouring into a person to cause them to love virtue and to choose it.
The implicit assumption within tenet 8, however, was that there was only one correct interpretation of the word 'grace', which was an absolute form of prevenient grace; and further, that all Christians had to subscribe to this interpretation of grace and the absolute prevenience of God's grace in causing all their good actions. Augustine's view of grace was that it was always a free gift; if grace was given in return for anything at all then it simply was not grace, which was by his definition always gratuitous. Augustine derived this interpretation of gratia from the Latin word gratis, meaning free, on the basis of biblical citations that made this connection. This interpretation of the word gratia diverged from everyday Roman secular usage in which gratia commonly meant favour, with an implication of mutual reciprocity. It diverged also from the meaning of gratia in texts associated with Roman law. Jill Harries documented how in legal usage gratia was a 'morally ambivalent concept' which had negative connotations in which 'favour' meant favouritism or improper influence, and referred to a type of injustice.
Examination of Pelagius' writings shows that he referred to other aspects of God's grace besides free will, the law and teaching. For example, he referred to Christ's passion wiping away mankind's sins as grace and to the help of God's grace, and he was clear that grace was something that Christians received over and above instruction and example: 'What can Christians do, whose nature has been renewed in a better condition by Christ, and who are assisted by the aid of divine grace as well?' Pelagius also referred to the 'help of the Holy Spirit' (auxilium Sancti Spiritus).
In a passage in Pelagius' On Free Will (De libero arbitrio) quoted by Augustine, Pelagius wrote of God's daily help, but Augustine refused to accept the statement and read into it an account of grace that did not describe the action of the Holy Spirit causing goodness but a grace that merely made goodness more easily achieved:

'But although we have free will within us that is so strong,' he says, 'and so steadfast for avoiding sin, which the creator implanted in human nature universally, again on account of his inestimable kindness we are defended daily by his own help'. What need is there of this help, if free will is so strong, so steadfast for avoiding sin? But even here he wants the help to be understood as for this purpose, that the thing may be done more easily through grace, which, even if less easily, he nevertheless thinks may be done without grace.

It is noteworthy that Pelagius here offered a compromise with Augustine's stress on the constant need for God's grace by specifically referring to 'daily help' (auxilium cotidianum).
Three patrician Romans who were living as ascetics in Palestine—Melania the Younger, her mother Albina and her husband Pinianus—wrote to Augustine in AD 418 apparently to try to persuade him to have the charges against Pelagius dropped. In his reply to them, Augustine referred to their report of a visit they had made to Pelagius, when Pelagius had repeated his assertion of the need for daily help and made the further concession that God's grace was needed for every action:

You wrote to me that you had conferred with Pelagius, so that he condemned in writing whatever was said against him, and so that he said in your hearing: 'I anathematise anyone who thinks or says that the grace of God by which Christ came into this world in order to save sinners [1 Tim. 1:15] is not necessary, not only at every hour and every moment, but also for every action of ours, and those who try to do away with this doctrine deserve eternal punishment.'

The context of the meeting of Melania, Pinianus and Albina with Pelagius must have been the spring or summer of AD 418, after Pelagius had sent his written defence to Pope Innocent, which contained his Statement of Faith. In this statement, Pelagius still maintained, at the last hour in the face of excommunication, the irreducible minimum which he did not feel able to disavow—namely, the existence of human free will—but he chose compromise by adding a rider noting the constant need for God's help: 'We confess free will in such a way that we say that we always have need of God's help'. These three pieces of evidence—the quotation from his On Free Will, the testimony of Melania, Pinianus and Albina, and Pelagius' assertion in his Statement of Faith—suggest that Pelagius was not uncompromisingly opposed to the doctrine that there was an aspect of God's grace that was required every day to help man to be virtuous. However, he felt the need also to confess free will alongside grace. This tenet therefore seems to be another case of a thesis being read into Pelagius' teaching which cannot be found in his writings, and which instead runs counter to the surviving textual evidence. Augustine's objection was that 'the grace of God by which Christ came into this world in order to save sinners [1 Tim. 1:15]' was not explicitly prevenient grace. Tenet 8 implicitly asserted Augustine's interpretation was the only correct understanding of God's grace and its operation. It is nevertheless clear that what Pelagius was accused of publicly was not the real reason for his indictment, which was his assertion of the goodness of human nature and effective free will. The list of tenets could simply have contained these two principles. It did not do so because that would have made visible the true process at work in the accusation of heresy made against Pelagius.
Support for the idea that Pelagius sought compromise, and characterised the relationship between God's grace and man as one of co-operation, comes in his On the Divine Law. In this letter he directly addressed two points of doctrine involved in the controversy. In both cases his approach was cautious and inclined towards moderation. First, he discussed the criticism that stress on free will 'made grace ungrateful' (in the sense that God's grace would receive no thanks, gratiam faciat ingratam). Pelagius accurately identified the point Augustine was making in his criticism of him—namely, that it was necessary for man to remain grateful to God and to acknowledge God's gifts. Pelagius sought to answer this criticism directly:

But someone will say: 'If everything is expected to come from our own efforts, then grace performs nothing'. I do not want anyone rashly and under the title of ignorance to make grace ungrateful, lest he should turn his faith into a stumbling-block and the cause of his salvation should be made into an occasion for his destruction. If reasoning about this thing is pursued with moderation, only then will it be an aid to life, reasoning which would perhaps have hurled him to his death through presumption. But grace indeed dismisses sins for free, but with the consent and the will of the believer.

In this passage, Pelagius presented a model of co-operation. Grace here seems to encompass Christ's redemption of man's sins through his passion, which was another facet of God's grace (not mentioned in tenet 8), over and above aspects of grace such as man's created nature, the law, and Christ's teaching. Pelagius' characterisation of the process of achieving virtue identified two agents: God's grace and human will. The suggestion that Pelagius denied that God's grace was given for individual actions was something read into Pelagius' writings with hostile intent. Not mentioning something does not equate to denying it. The burden of the surviving evidence therefore suggests that Pelagius sought compromise as long as God's justice, founded on human responsibility, was maintained.
The second point of doctrine in the controversy that Pelagius addressed in On the Divine Law was predestination. Without using the word 'predestination' (praedestinatio), he raised the problem that if interpreted as preordainment it might preclude the universality of God's salvific will, an objection that many ecclesiastics in southern Gaul later held to be crucial:

This first I want to ask you and to hear your answer, whoever you are that proposes this argument: if the choice is made by God himself, who also makes the calling, why did he want to call more when he was going to choose only a few out of the many? Surely out of the two called you want that one to hold his place whom God has appointed by his choice, and conversely the other to fall whom God does not protect by the power of his choice. But if this is how things are, on this account neither good nor bad actions belong to us, and the result will be that neither fault will be punished nor good needs praised .... Secondly, if you consider to be saints only the few whom you say have been chosen, you say that those who have been called are reprobate; how then does the same apostle Paul summon those called to be saints at the start of his letters, as he does at the beginning of his book to the Romans, saying: To all God's beloved in Rome, called to be saints [Rom. 1:7]? If Christ died for a few, it is just that a few keep his commandments. But if all of us who believe receive the sacrament of his passion in baptism without discrimination, if all of us equally renounce the devil and the world, if to all of us who do not live rightly the punishment of hell is promised, then we ought all of us with the same diligence both to avoid what has been forbidden, and to fulfil his commandments.

In this passage, Pelagius raised questions in a direct and reasoned manner, and avoided attacking his opponents. The passage suggests that there were two motivations behind his defence of free will: first, the desire to maintain the transparency of God's justice; second, the desire to maintain the message of God's universal salvific will. These could both be characterised as objections to exegetical interpretations of the Pauline Epistles that made prevenient grace absolute and omnipotent, and therefore interpreted predestination as preordainment rather than foreknowledge. Despite these concerns, Pelagius' writings show that he acknowledge the need for God's grace, even for individual actions; that he explicitly characterised one aspect of grace as the 'help of the Holy Spirit'; and that he proposed a synergistic model of the relationship between God's grace and human will.

9.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'God's grace is given in accord with our merits, and for this reason grace itself is located in the human will, whether one becomes worthy of it or unworthy.'

This tenet comes closest to being something that Pelagius taught, since the first part of it—that God's grace was given in accord with merit—was something that Pelagius asserted: '[James] shows how we ought to resist the devil, if we are indeed servants of God, and by doing his will we may merit divine grace and may resist more easily the evil spirit with the help of the Holy Spirit.' The additional statement attributed to him by his opponents—namely, that grace was therefore located in the will—was not something that Pelagius wrote, nor is it a necessary entailment of the idea that some aspects of grace might be merited.
In fact Pelagius frequently referred to several aspects of grace. Of the many possible referents of the word 'grace', the issue of Augustine was that Pelagius' references to it might not refer to Augustine's interpretation of the word, which for him was the most important aspect of grace. Prevenient grace was inextricably bound to its twin, predestination interpreted as preordainment. Augustine described prevenient grace and predestination as two stages in one process. Both were causally tied to original sin because sin made human nature so weak that it was unable to choose virtue unaided, and on every occasion it required prevenient grace to cause it to choose virtuous action. Thus these three doctrines formed a mutually dependent triune. So closely bound together were they that although it is possible to separate out two questions at issue—namely, whether human virtue was caused by man's effective free will or by prevenient grace or by some combination of the two, and whether human nature was innately capable of goodness or inherently inclined toward sin as a result of damage done to it by Adam's transgression—they could also reasonably be described as one question, at base. Augustine referred to there being one fundamental point of disagreement: 'The whole dispute with these people turns on this point: that we should not, through a perverse defense of nature, make the grace of God which lies in Jesus Christ our Lord, of no effect.'
That Pelagius asserted that the human will worked alongside the action of the Holy Spirit is also shown by a passage in On Virginity, in which Pelagius told his addressee that the Holy Spirit chose those who possessed merit:

While the whole multitude of believers receives similar gifts of grace and all rejoice in the same blessings of the sacraments, those to whom you belong have something peculiar to themselves over and above what the rest possess; they are chosen by the Holy Spirit out of the holy and spotless flock of the Church as holier and purer offerings on account of the merits of their will.

At issue is not whether Pelagius referred to a direct causal relationship between human merit and the reward of the grace of salvation; he certainly did. At issue is the fact that this had been a presumption within Christianity for centuries (as will be detailed in Chapters 3 and 4) until a change occurred. After much study of the Pauline Epistles in the Latin West in the last decades of the 4th century, and scrutiny of their references to predestination, to God's grace and to God's control of man as a potter controls clay, the issue became which way the trigger worked—whether the action of the Holy Spirit triggered human goodness which earned merit, or whether human free decisions created merit which triggered the action of the Holy Spirit to work in the virtuous individual. The first half of tenet 9 does refer to something that Pelagius genuinely taught, although the suggestion that he invented either the idea of a causal relationship between human effort and God's reward of grace, or the idea of man's effective free will, is false. It is also false to suggest that Pelagius did not argue for co-operation between the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the human will.
The second half of the tenet, 'and for this reason grace itself is located in the human will, whether one becomes worthy or unworthy', attributed to Pelagius the further idea that there was never any other sort of grace than that which was a consequence of the unaided action of the human will. The attribution of this view to him was unwarranted since, as has been seen, Pelagius certainly referred to many aspects of God's agency through his grace, and he did not deny prevenient grace. In his statement to Melania the Younger, Pinianus, and Albina, Pelagius acknowledged the role of grace in every human action every day, and Augustine objected that it was unclear which type of grace Pelagius meant when he made this assertion. Augustine then attributed to Pelagius' writings a doctrine that was not in them and which Pelagius rejected, in this case a denial of God's grace. As much as Augustine was certain that Pelagius had not meant prevenient grace, it is impossible to know that Pelagius excluded the grace of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit prior to virtuous action. Furthermore, Augustine insisted that Pelagius had to acknowledge the absolutist account of prevenient grace that Augustine proposed, in which prevenient grace was always the sole cause of virtue. While Pelagius did not acknowledge in writing the role of prevenient grace in the way that Augustine wanted him to do, his discussion of the issue in On the Divine Law points to a compromise model of co-operation between the Holy Spirit and man. In this regard it is noteworthy that Pelagius drew attention to the interpretative nature of discussion of Scripture, prefacing his readings with such comments as: 'I think that this should be understood to this effect'. This suggests that he acknowledged that what he wrote was simply one possible way to explain a passage, and sought to avoid dogmatic interpretation of Scripture.

10.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'Only those people can be called children of God who have become entirely without sin.'

Pelagius stated that all Christians were reborn as children of God through baptism:

We are all made equal by the grace of the divine water, and there can be no distinction amongst those who have been created by a second birth, through which the rich man as much as the poor man, the free man as much as the slave, the noble as much as the man of low birth, is made a son of God.

He reminded Demetrias that she was a daughter of God. He also explained that the phrase 'children of God' was used in Scripture in order to instil in Christians a sense of their own worth and the value of Christ's teaching. He did not limit this to a subset of Christians. He did not suggest that Demetrias was without sin; he stressed the opposite: 'As long as we are in this body we should never believe that we have attained perfection.' Pelagius told the anonymous addressee of On Virginity that she should remember that she was a daughter of God and act appropriately as befitted her high status. He did not tell her that she should act well in order to gain the status of child of God, but so as to make visible a status she already possessed: 'Present yourself in such a way that your heavenly birth may be visible in your person and your divine nobility clearly shine out.' Pelagius addressed her as a daughter of God but presupposed that she was not perfect when he advised her to keep improving in her imitation of Christ: 'Reckon as wasted all the time in which you have failed to notice an improvement in yourself.'

11.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'Forgetfulness and ignorance are not sinful, because they do not come about willingly, but necessarily.'

The suggestion that forgetfulness and ignorance were not sinful is not found in Pelagius' surviving writings.

12.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'A choice is not free if it needs the help of God, since everyone has their own will either to do something or not to do it.'

Pelagius did not write that the help of God made the will unfree. He acknowledged continuously the need for God's help, such as when he paired free will and God's help in his Statement of Faith. In On the Divine Law he also twice explicitly asserted the co-operation of divine grace and the human will, expressed in the word 'consent' (consensus): 'We comprehend that our calling has a standing according to the honour of the one who calls us, yet also that it rests upon the consent of our will'. Pelagius also acknowledged the help of God's grace in the passage from his On Free Will, already cited in relation to tenet 8. In these passages already examined, Pelagius asserted man's need for God's help and man's co-operation with God, and he raised the concern that predestination interpreted as preordainment, as opposed to God's help, might limit human responsibility and God's universal salvific will.
The exact content of the term 'help' (auxilium) was at issue. Augustine used the words 'to help' and 'to co-operate' freely in an indeterminate manner. He argued that Pelagius located God's help in nature and free will or in the law and teaching: 'So that plainly when God helps man so that he turns from wrong and does good [1 Pet. 3:11], he is believed to help by revealing and showing us what should be done; not by co-operating with us and breathing love into us so that we do what we know must be done.' Yet elsewhere Augustine characterised the help of grace differently: as a force that caused good action by driving a person rather than co-operating with them or helping them: 'For those who are children of God are governed and driven by this Spirit [Rom. 8:14], not by their own will.'
Thus the statement that Pelagius did not acknowledge God's help was untrue. It was the nature and role of God's help that was at issue because it equated to the nature and role of grace itself. Nor did Pelagius teach that God's help rendered man unfree. This was an argument about the meaning of the word 'grace' and the extent of God's control of man. It was perhaps also a conflict over authority, as represented in the authority to interpret Scripture, and whether authority lay with the episcopacy alone or with lay preachers and monks also. This possibility is suggested by Augustine's comment: 'A new heresy has now been introduced, not by bishops or priests or by any clerics, but by certain supposed monks'.

13.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'Our victory is not the result of God's help, but of free will.'

As already noted, Pelagius explicitly wrote that God helped man, and stated that Christ was the cause of man's victory over death. In another passage from his On Free Will quoted by Augustine, Pelagius described human virtue as the result of co-operation between man and God:

'For God helps us', he says, 'through his revelation and teaching, when he opens the eyes of our heart; when he discloses to us what is to come so that we are not absorbed with the present; when he exposes the snares of the devil; when he enlightens us with the gift of his heavenly grace, which comes in many forms and cannot be explained in words.'

14.) Augustine claimed Pelagius taught: 'From Peter's statement: "We are sharers in the divine nature" [2 Peter 1:41], it follows that the soul can be as sinless as God.'

In Pelagius' surviving writings there is no statement that man's soul could be as sinless as God. This thesis was an inference read into his positive account of man as created in God's image and his advice to his addressees to pursue perfect righteousness. It seems unlikely that Pelagius wrote that a person could achieve sinlessness in one of his works that do not survive, such as his On Nature or his On Free Will, because if he had done, Augustine would have quoted that passage. In On the Divine Law, Pelagius acknowledged that few people observed God's commandments. In his Letter to Demetrias Pelagius explicitly denied perfectibility. He argued at length that the key to Christian virtue was constant striving to make progress and that any other approach led to slipping backwards, citing Philippians 3:13-14: Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God. Pelagius advised Demetrias to consider that she was starting afresh every day, because if she ever stood still she would lose what she had achieved up to that point.

 

So there you have it. The fourteen tenets were a fabrication, a distraction, a smear, which was necessary to obscure the real process being affected: the installation of a different anthropology and soteriology into Christian doctrine. Not only does Phil Johnson know nothing about Pelagius, but he also knows nothing about Augustine. In truth, Augustine was the real heretic! Observe:

  • Augustine taught that there is an irreconcilable conflict between salvation based on grace and salvation conditioned on works or obedience. This stems from the False Dilemma fallacy, stating that it is either one or the other. It is not! These passages obliterate that heretical teaching once and for all: Matt. 25:31-46; John 5:28-29; 2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Pet. 1:17; Rev. 22:12, 14; cf. Matt. 16:27; Rom. 2:5-8; 11:19-22; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; 10:1-12; Gal. 6:7-9; Eph. 5:3-8; Jude 1:3-5; et al.
  • Augustine radically altered the doctrine originally taught by the Church, becoming the most influential teacher of all time. The list of doctrines and practices Augustine either initiated or gave his authority to is impressively long:
    • Mary was born and lived her entire life without actual sin.
    • All unbaptized infants are eternally damned.
    • Sex within marriage is an inherently debased act.
    • Taught the doctrine of "holy war." (see Violence: To Commit or Not to Commit)
    • There is no forgiveness of sins outside the Catholic church.
    • Some of the practices and teachings of the apostles no longer apply to Christians because they lived in a different era.
    • There is a purgatorial fire.
    • The dead can benefit from the sacrifice of the Eucharist.
    • It is proper for a "Christian" state to persecute heretics.
  • Augustine is the father of Western theology. Modern Westerners can usually follow Augustine's logic; but they cannot follow the logic of the pre-Nicene Christians.
  • Augustine never mastered Greek, which is likely why he departed from early Christianity in so many areas—more than any other teacher of his time.
  • Because Pelagius taught a no-nonsense message of repentance and holiness, Augustine responded with these teachings that went to the opposite extreme of Pelagius' disciple Celestius:
    • Man is totally depraved; he cannot believe or have faith in God.
    • Man can believe or have faith in God only if by grace they are given the faith or belief. Man has no free will.
    • God arbitrarily chooses whom to give faith to and who to condemn.
    • Before creation, God arbitrarily predestined who would be saved or condemned.
    • The elect cannot lose their salvation; the damned cannot be saved.
    • No one can know if they are of the elect. Some people God has given the gift of believing have not been given the gift of perseverance and will be lost.
    • Salvation is totally of grace. Faith, obedience, perseverance are gifts from God.
  • Augustine obliterated the original early Christian teachings of free will and man's involvement in salvation.
  • Nicene theologians took the lead in the veneration of Mary. Augustine gave his support to the false teaching that Mary was a perpetual virgin and lived a sinless life. He even called those who disagreed "heretics." They also taught Mary was bodily assumed into Heaven and ruled as Queen of Heaven. Not one whit of protest came from the lips of the Nicene theologians.
  • Augustine gutted the Sermon on the Mount, explaining away Jesus' teachings. The teachings had become meaningless. Nicene theologians exalted Jesus but did not hesitate to contradict His words. Christianity had become corrupted. Catholicism was born.
  • Augustine believed that the purpose of marriage is procreation, and that lust during sex—even among married Christians—was wrong.
  • Augustine believed that the use of contraception to prevent children was perverting the purpose of marriage, "committing adultery within marriage" and "turning the bed-chamber into a brothel."
  • Augustine believed that if you are going to teach Scripture, you must have a knowledge of the natural world, mathematics, music, science, history, the liberal arts, and a mastery of dialectics (the science of disputation).
  • Augustine believed that sacramental baptism produces regeneration and is necessary for the forgiveness of sins.
  • Augustine believed it was permissible to use force against heretics.
  • Augustine believed that the Lord's Supper (the Eucharist) was necessary for salvation.
  • Augustine held to a dualistic view of the world, which was heavily influenced by non-Christian philosophy.
  • Augustine believed that a person can fall from grace and lose their salvation.
  • Augustine believed that Mary (mother of Jesus) was a perpetual virgin.
  • Augustine believed in praying for the dead.
  • Augustine believed infants were subject to eternal death unless baptized (baptismal regeneration).
  • Genuine followers of Jesus do not leave the sick and elderly to die. They do not force others to sell their children in exchange for dog meat. And they do not retaliate against their oppressors and slaughter and plunder them.

By the way, if the teaching of man's free will was considered "Pelagian," then the entire first three centuries of Christian believers must have been "Pelagian", and long before Pelagius ever existed. I could provide every single quote they wrote on man's free will, but that would be overkill on an already deathblow to the myth of "Pelagianism."

If Phil knew anything of the early Christians of the first three centuries, he would know that the things Pelagius taught were a reflection of those teachings, whereas Augustine was presenting entirely new things and/or things that had been previously rejected as heresy by the early Christians. For example: in the days of the early Christians, there was a religious group who strongly disputed the Congregation's ("Church's") stance on salvation and works. This religious group taught:

  1. that man is totally depraved,
  2. that we are saved solely by grace,
  3. that works play no role in our salvation, and
  4. that we cannot forfeit our salvation once we obtain it.

This religious group was labeled as heretics by the early Christians. You might be thinking, "This group of 'heretics' were the real Christians while these 'orthodox' Christians were really heretics." However, such a conclusion is impossible. Who was this religious group, you ask?

The Gnostics!

If you think the Gnostics were "true Christians," observe what the apostle John said about them: "Many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist" (2 John 7). If our Evangelical doctrine of salvation is true, we are faced with the uncomfortable reality that this doctrine was first taught by "deceivers and antichrists" before it was taught by Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and others.

Ponder that point promptly.

Scholars have noted that "Calvinism" (a.k.a. "TULIP" or "The Doctrines of Grace") has risen up in popularity four times over the past 500 years. Every single time, it always dies back down. Why do you suppose that is? Well, either God ordained it to be such, or else the system just does not hold any water theologically and/or logically. When Christians actually hold Scripture as their authority rather than what some preacher has told them to believe (or what is dictated in their creeds, confessions, catechisms, constitutions, statements of faith, or systems of theology—all examples of proof text methodology, eisegesis and Scripture twisting), they inevitably come to a conclusion that is opposed to these beliefs.

To all you dumb sheep who basically worship John MacArthur and Phil Johnson, because you are really MacArthurites and Johnsonites than you are Christians, for your thoughts and studies are most of all directed to the works of these men—and you have neglected the teaching of Jesus, bring on your hatred and your false accusations against me. We both know you are unable to argue the main point and will never provide a reasonable refutation or intelligent counter-argument, but have to rely on denial, deflection, IMAX-level projection, censorship, "cancelling," manipulation, smearing, gaslighting, jamming, framing, ad hominem, name calling, character assassination, attempted intimidation, and the use of fallacious arguments that have no basis in reality. Maybe you should take the time to learn what it means to be an actual Christian. Jesus commands you to "Love one another, just as I have loved you," to "Love your neighbour as yourself," and to "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." When are you going to do so?

If you need more evidence that Grace Community Church is a cult, look no further than Abuse at Grace Community Church. Like the Pharisees made false accusations against Jesus, I know for a fact that Phil Johnson and his Johnsonites will attempt to make false accusations against me. Bring it on, cowards! You cannot refute me, so you have to attack me. I have listened to Johnson for years, so I am well acquainted with how he deals with his opponents: like a coward. You can hate me all you want, Phil, and level whatever false accusations you want against me. I will still love you and pray for you.

Friday, September 27, 2024

Tithing is Obsolete

“When anybody takes from a man the right to go to Jesus Christ and get instructions and follow Him, he is on the way to greater heresies. Popery of a Baptist preacher is wrong just like popery of Rome is wrong. If a pastor has a right to tell the people where their money must go, then a local denominational secretary will have the right to say so, too. If a church will have a right to tell you where you can give your money, it will have a right to tell you what you must believe also. If a church can tell you that you have no right to inquire directly from God about where to give your money, then the church can tell you that you have no right to come to Christ for salvation except as you come through the local church and let the church decide it. That way is Catholicism and that is wrong. Any bold and insistent step into heresy means further heresy ahead. Giving? Oh, yes. Giving tithes and offerings? Oh, yes, and far beyond that as I have delighted to do now for many, many years. If God leads, give it all through the local church, but only as He leads. But remember... [Jesus] has a right to say where it should go. No one has a right to take this crown right of Jesus Christ and put it on a preacher or board of deacons or a finance committee.” —John R. Rice

John Rice is absolutely correct here. However, he is wrong on one point: Tithing has nothing to do with the Christian!

Tithing was a part of the Old Covenant Law. It was a requirement in order to run Israel. In other words, tithing was Israel's taxation system. There is no tithing in the New Covenant Scriptures. Nor does tithing have anything to do with money. When the Old Covenant and the Law were abolished, having been fulfilled in and by Jesus, tithing went with them.

For the Christian, according to the New Covenant Scriptures, we have the option of voluntary free-will offerings. We are not obligated to give to anyone or anything, but are free to give according to what we want. It needs to be from the heart, and it should be done cheerfully. Our giving is meant to support widows, orphans, the sick, poor, and imprisoned. Our giving (which includes talent, time, and treasure) is not meant to fill some preacher's pocket or pay for some building that is not supposed to exist in the first place!

If giving is a duty to be fulfilled by you, Christian, then you are no different than the religious Pharisee. You are trying to be perfected by a law of your own, which means you are severed from Christ and have fallen from grace. There is no checklist for the Christian! There is no "do this" requirement to be in good standing with Yahweh God. You should be doing such things for others because love fills your heart; not because you think you are fulfilling some ignorant religious duty or trying to earn favour with God.

Get in the Word and learn the Scriptures for yourself! Learn to read things in their proper context and STOP believing the LIES that preachers are feeding you from behind the pulpit with their colossal ignorance of Scripture. They are leading you astray, trying to indoctrinate you into their cult.

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Augustine and His Teachings

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

"Perhaps you know the legend, or perhaps true history of the awakening of Augustine. He dreamed that he died, and went to the gates of Heaven, and the keeper of the gates said to him, "Who are you?" And he answered, "I am a Christian." But the porter replied, "No, you are not a Christian, you are a Ciceronian, for your thoughts and studies were most of all directed to the works of Cicero and the classicsand you neglected the teaching of Jesus. We judge men here, by that which most engrossed their thoughts, and you are judged not to be a Christian, but a Ciceronian." When Augustine awoke, he put aside the classics which he had studied, and the eloquence at which he had aimed, and he said, "I will be a Christian!" And from that time he devoted his thoughts to the Word of God, and his pen and his tongue to the instruction of others in the truths of the gospel."

That is a nice story and all, but for anyone who has bothered to actually look at Augustine in the slightest, he/she will know that while he may have "devoted his thoughts to the Word of God, and his pen and his tongue to the instruction of others," it was not in the "truths of the Gospel." Augustine contradicted the very words of Jesus in the Teaching on the Mount. Jesus instructed us to "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also." But Augustine taught that it is okay to "return evil for evil" as long as you have love in your heart toward them. Augustine also taught that Christians were allowed to make "holy war" on others. Again, contrary to the teachings of Jesus and His apostles and the early Christians of the first three centuries. A great deal of what Augustine taught was not "truths of the Gospel" in the least. In fact, Augustine was a heretic in several senses of the word. He condemned others as "heretics" who were not nearly the heretic he was. Observe some of his teachings:

  • Augustine taught that there is an irreconcilable conflict between salvation based on grace and salvation conditioned on works or obedience. This stems from the False Dilemma fallacy, stating that it is either one or the other. It is not! These passages obliterate that heretical teaching once and for all: Matt. 25:31-46; John 5:28-29; 2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Pet. 1:17; Rev. 22:12, 14; cf. Matt. 16:27; Rom. 2:5-8; 11:19-22; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; 10:1-12; Gal. 6:7-9; Eph. 5:3-8; Jude 1:3-5; et al.
  • Augustine radically altered the doctrine originally taught by the Church, becoming the most influential teacher of all time. The list of doctrines and practices Augustine either initiated or gave his authority to is impressively long:
    • Mary was born and lived her entire life without actual sin.
    • All unbaptized infants are eternally damned.
    • Sex within marriage is an inherently debased act.
    • Taught the doctrine of "holy war."
    • There is no forgiveness of sins outside the Catholic church.
    • Some of the practices and teachings of the apostles no longer apply to Christians because they lived in a different era.
    • There is a purgatorial fire.
    • The dead can benefit from the sacrifice of the Eucharist.
    • It is proper for a "Christian" state to persecute heretics.
  • Augustine is the father of Western theology. Modern Westerners can usually follow Augustine's logic; but they cannot follow the logic of the pre-Nicene Christians.
  • Augustine never mastered Greek, which is likely why he departed from early Christianity in so many areas—more than any other teacher of his time.
  • Because Pelagius taught a no-nonsense message of repentance and holiness, Augustine responded with these teachings that went to the opposite extreme of Pelagius' disciple Celestius:
    • Man is totally depraved; he cannot believe or have faith in God.
    • Man can believe or have faith in God only if by grace they are given the faith or belief. Man has no free will.
    • God arbitrarily chooses whom to give faith to and who to condemn.
    • Before creation, God arbitrarily predestined who would be saved or condemned.
    • The elect cannot lose their salvation; the damned cannot be saved.
    • No one can know if they are of the elect. Some people God has given the gift of believing have not been given the gift of perseverance and will be lost.
    • Salvation is totally of grace. Faith, obedience, perseverance are gifts from God.
  • Augustine obliterated the original early Christian teachings of free will and man's involvement in salvation.
  • Nicene theologians took the lead in the veneration of Mary. Augustine gave his support to the false teaching that Mary was a perpetual virgin and lived a sinless life. He even called those who disagreed "heretics." They also taught Mary was bodily assumed into Heaven and ruled as Queen of Heaven. Not one whit of protest came from the lips of the Nicene theologians.
  • Augustine gutted the Sermon on the Mount, explaining away Jesus' teachings. The teachings had become meaningless. Nicene theologians exalted Jesus but did not hesitate to contradict His words. Christianity had become corrupted. Catholicism was born.
  • Augustine believed that the purpose of marriage is procreation, and that lust during sex—even among married Christians—was wrong.
  • Augustine believed that the use of contraception to prevent children was perverting the purpose of marriage, "committing adultery within marriage" and "turning the bed-chamber into a brothel."
  • Augustine believed that if you are going to teach Scripture, you must have a knowledge of the natural world, mathematics, music, science, history, the liberal arts, and a mastery of dialectics (the science of disputation).
  • Augustine believed that sacramental baptism produces regeneration and is necessary for the forgiveness of sins.
  • Augustine believed it was permissible to use force against heretics.
  • Augustine believed that the Lord's Supper (the Eucharist) was necessary for salvation.
  • Augustine held to a dualistic view of the world, which was heavily influenced by non-Christian philosophy.
  • Augustine believed that a person can fall from grace and lose their salvation.
  • Augustine believed that Mary (mother of Jesus) was a perpetual virgin.
  • Augustine believed in praying for the dead.
  • Augustine believed infants were subject to eternal death unless baptized (baptismal regeneration).
  • Genuine followers of Jesus do not leave the sick and elderly to die. They do not force others to sell their children in exchange for dog meat. And they do not retaliate against their oppressors and slaughter and plunder them.

Many a professing Christian is in no different a boat than Augustine in his dream. They are Augustinians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Mennonites, Wesleyans, Spurgeonites, MacArthurites, Piperites, etc. They pour over and study the works of these men, and their grave errors in interpretation, but they have neglected the teachings of Jesus, His apostles, and the early Christians. They would more accurately be judged not to be Christians but to be named after these men instead because they are their followers rather than Christ's.

Saturday, September 7, 2024

Child Molesters Who Come to Christ

Abusers are human beings. Yahweh God can forgive them. We can, too. Convicted child molesters can come to Christ Jesus the same as any other sinner. That does not mean they should get off scot-free. We are to love them ("Love one another, just as I have loved you," "Love your neighbour as yourself," and "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you"), but the Law is to serve their due punishment. Any criminal who comes to Jesus and thinks they should be released from the consequences of their crimes is delusional and quite obviously not repentant. If you truly came to Jesus in repentance, you would demand that the Law fulfill the consequences of your actions. There is no sin for which Jesus did not die and for which we cannot forgive. Christians should never pray just for the victim, but also for the perpetrator! If you cannot think of any reason to pray for an offender, then your faith is stunted at best and non-existent at worst.

RULES FOR CHILD MOLESTERS IN WORSHIP
(Borrowed from Wade Burleson)

  1. We have to be informed when they are coming.
  2. Once they step foot on the property, they have to be escorted.
  3. They can never be around children or walk through the children’s wing – for life.
  4. A photo of the sexual offender with their background and the specificity of the crimes is passed around to all church leaders and children workers.
  5. The photo is hung on the wall in our print room for all staff to see.
  6. If any child sexual offender ever violates these guidelines, the police are called.
  7. These guidelines are the proper consequences of their crime of child sexual molestation.

The same thing can be said of rapists, and a similar type of rules should be adopted for them, too. There is no sin for which Jesus did not die and for which Yahweh does not forgive and that we cannot forgive. But there are consequences, and truly repentant believers will accept such consequences without feeling "offended."

Monday, September 2, 2024

Violence: To Commit or Not to Commit

Looking at professing American "Christianity" today, you would think Jesus and the apostles never opened their mouths regarding this topic. However, from the very beginning, Christians had always renounced violence, war, and killing of every sort.

If you are a professing Christian serving in the American military (or any military for that matter), you are in direct defiance, disobedience, and rebellion to the teachings of Jesus and the practices of the early Christians of the first three centuries! Your only allegiance is to King Jesus and the Kingdom of God!!! You are commanded to conduct yourself according to the Royal Law: "Love one another, just as I have loved you." You owe no allegiance whatsoever to America (or any other country), and should not be patriotic or nationalistic toward such!

You may have been born in America, or immigrated to America, and have citizenship, but it is not your home! You are an alien, a foreigner, a pilgrim, a sojourner. You can appreciate the country you live in, but it is not yours. Your loyalty, commitment, citizenship, and ultimate allegiance are to Jesus' Kingdom. When you crown Jesus as Lord of your life, you must relinquish allegiance to all other kingdoms. Observe this early letter to Diognetus that describes the followers of Jesus:

"They live in their own countries, but only as non-residents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign."

Are you calling yourself a follower of Jesus without actually following Him? Then you are a HYPOCRITE at best and a LIAR at worst! Repent!!!

Maximilian (AD 296) was just twenty-one years old, but when recruited by the Roman army, he knew how followers of Jesus should respond. Standing before the proconsul, he boldly announced, “I cannot enlist; I cannot serve; I cannot do evil. I am a Christian!” The proconsul said, “You must serve or die!” “You can cut off my head,” Maximilian calmly replied, “but I will not be a soldier of this world. I am a soldier of Jesus Christ!” Maximilian was beheaded for his faith.

Marcellus, a converted Roman centurion stationed in Spain, was arrested in AD 298 for throwing down his sword in front of the flag during a military parade. When challenged in court, Marcellus declared, “It is not fitting that a Christian, who fights for Christ his Lord, should be a soldier according to the brutalities of this world.” Marcellus was executed by the sword.

From the fourth century onward, and especially within American "Christianity," men have opposed the teachings of Jesus and attempted to use Scripture to justify their defiant, disobedient, rebellious, and godless thinking, actions, behaviour, and conduct. American "Christianity" has much to learn. If you are a genuine biblical follower of Jesus, then you CANNOT serve in the American military (or any other military)!

So what was Jesus' stance on violence?

Jesus said that Christians are to be peacemakers. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God" (Matt. 5:9) But He does not stop there. "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kings of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Matt. 5:10-12). How were the prophets persecuted? They were violently assaulted and/or put to death! Followers of Jesus are to be peacemakers, following the path of peace (Rom. 12:18; Heb. 12:14; cf. 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 5:22; James 3:17).

Jesus' position on non-violence was made abundantly clear in His Teaching on the Mount. "You have heard that it was said, 'AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.' But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you" (Matt. 5:38-42). This was not just about one's honour being assaulted. Paul explained this further when he said, "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone" (Rom. 12:17), and then quoted from the Old Testament: "But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head" (Rom. 12:20).

Jesus went even further: "You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:43-48).

Why were you commanded to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you"? The answer is crystal clear: "So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." Scripture reveals that Jesus did not just teach these things, but practiced them (Matthew 10:23; 26:51-53; Luke 4:28-30; John 8:49; 10:39). This operates on the principle found in Romans 13:10: "Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."

Jesus also said, "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell" (Matt. 5:21-22). Jesus expanded the meaning of this command by revealing the spirit of the law against taking human life. He showed that it is not just the physical act of murder that breaks the command, but inner anger and hostility toward others also breaks it. The apostle John made clear this teaching: "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15; cf. 1 John 2:9-11).

When Jesus was going to travel through Samaria on His way to Jerusalem, a route that would typically be avoided by Jews, the Samaritans refused to receive Him. "When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But He turned and rebuked them, and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." And they went on to another village." (Luke 9:54-56). Jesus rebuked His disciples because violence was to have no place in their practice or in their hearts.

On the night of His arrest, "Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave's name was Malchus" (John 18:10). What was Jesus response? "Put the sword into the sheath" (v.11). "Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword" (Matt. 26:52). He then healed the man's ear. All violence was repudiated: "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone" (Rom. 12:17).

Jesus taught how to prevent violence and cut it off at its origins by teaching His followers to love their enemies (Matt. 5:43-45). By refusing to see anyone as an enemy, the violence that begins in the heart is stopped before it can fester. If and when violence should break out, Jesus taught how to use practical transforming initiatives that intervene and stop the escalation of violence (Matt. 5:38-42). Jesus taught how to attack and overcome the causes of violence through civil resistance—non-violent direct action. Jesus taught and modeled the way to reconcile a community after it has been ravaged by violence and division in order to bring the community back together again (Matt. 18:15-17, 20; 18:21; Luke 23:14). Jesus demonstrated how to defend both the innocent and guilty with non-violent action instead of violence (John 8:4-10). Jesus taught how to build a community and culture of non-violence as an antithesis to regimes of domination through violence. He taught and modeled how to live a life of non-violence to the full, and to the end. If you love your neighbour and your enemy, you will do nothing but good to him. No matter what he might do to you, you are commanded to love him.

The early Christians took Jesus’ command to love others very seriously. Let us review what the early Christians had to say on the issue, shall we:

"Christians … love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life. They are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred." —Letter to Diognetus

"We who formerly murdered one another now refrain from making war even upon our enemies" —Justin Martyr

"For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" [Is. 2:3]. And that this did come to pass, we can convince you. For from Jerusalem men went out into the world, twelve in number and these illiterate, of no ability in speaking; but by the power of God they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach to all the word of God. Now we who used to murder one another do not only refrain from making war upon our enemies, but also, that we may not lie nor deceive our examiners, willingly die confessing Christ. For that saying, "The tongue has sworn but the mind is unsworn" [a justification for lying used in Justin's time], might be imitated by us in this matter. But if the soldiers nrolled by you, who have taken the military oath, prefer their allegiance to their own life, parents, country, and all kindred, though you can offer them nothing incorruptible, it would be truly ridiculous if we, who earnestly long for incorruption, should not endure all things in order to obtain what we desire from him who is able to grant it." —Justin Martyr

"We who were filled with war, mutual slaughter, and every wickedness have each, through the whole earth, changed our warlike weapons—our swords into ploughshares and our spears into implements of tillage. In their place, we cultivate godliness, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have from the Father himself through the One who was crucified." —Justin Martyr

"We have learned not to return blow for blow, nor to go to law with those who plunder and rob us. Instead, even to those who strike us on one side of the face, we offer the other side also." —Athenagoras

"For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even watch, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder?" —Athenagoras

"For we are not to delineate the faces of idols, we who are prohibited to cleave to them; nor a sword, nor a bow, since we follow peace." —Clement of Alexandria

"Christians are not allowed to correct with violence the delinquencies of sins." —Clement of Alexandria

"The Christian does no harm even to his enemy." —Tertullian

"God puts His prohibition on every sort of man-killing by that one inclusive commandment: 'You shall not kill.' " —Tertullian

"They will inquire concerning the works and occupations of those who are brought forward for instruction. If someone is a pimp who supports prostitutes, he shall cease or shall be rejected. If someone is a sculptor or a painter, let them be taught not to make idols. Either let them cease or let them be rejected. If someone is an actor or does shows in the theater, either he shall cease or he shall be rejected. If someone teaches children (worldly knowledge), it is good that he cease. But if he has no (other) trade, let him be permitted. A charioteer, likewise, or one who takes part in the games, or one who goes to the games, he shall cease or he shall be rejected. If someone is a gladiator, or one who teaches those among the gladiators how to fight, or a hunter who is in the wild beast shows in the arena, or a public official who is concerned with gladiator shows, either he shall cease, or he shall be rejected. If someone is a priest of idols, or an attendant of idols, he shall cease or he shall be rejected. A military man in authority must not execute men. If he is ordered, he must not carry it out. Nor must he take military oath. If he refuses, he shall be rejected. If someone is a military governor, or the ruler of a city who wears the purple, he shall cease or he shall be rejected. The catechumen or faithful who wants to become a soldier is to be rejected, for he has despised God. The prostitute, the wanton man, the one who castrates himself, or one who does that which may not be mentioned, are to be rejected, for they are impure. A magus shall not even be brought forward for consideration. An enchanter, or astrologer, or diviner, or interpreter of dreams, or a charlatan, or one who makes amulets, either they shall cease or they shall be rejected. If someone's concubine is a slave, as long as she has raised her children and has clung only to him, let her hear. Otherwise, she shall be rejected. The man who has a concubine must cease and take a wife according to the law. If he will not, he shall be rejected." —Hippolytus

"To those who inquire of us from where we come, or who is our founder, we reply that we have come agreeably to the counsels of Jesus. We have cut down our hostile, insolent, and wearisome swords into plowshares. We have converted into pruning hooks the spears that were formerly used in war. For we no longer take up 'sword against nation,' nor do we 'learn war anymore.' That is because we have become children of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our Leader." —Origen

"Who among the believers does not know the words in Isaiah? "In the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be revealed, and the house of the Lord on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills. All nations shall come to it. Many people shall go and say, 'Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his way, and we will walk in it." For out of Zion shall go forth a law, and a word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more [Isa. 1:2-5]." —Origen
[The early Christians used Isaiah 1:2-5 so regularly that every Christian was familiar with it, believing this passage to be fulfilled by Jesus and His apostles who brought the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem to the entire world, creating a kingdom that lived in peace and refused warfare.]

"Christians do not attack their assailants in return, for it is not lawful for the innocent to kill even the guilty." —Cyprian

"The whole world is wet with mutual blood, and murder, which in the case of an individual is admitted to be a crime, yet is called a virtue when it is committed wholesale. Impunity is claimed for the wicked deeds, not on the plea that they are guiltless, but because the cruelty is perpetrated on a grand scale." —Cyprian

Today's Christianity is famous for saying great things and promoting beautiful concepts. Many Christians today are saying great things but not living them. Early Christianity was exactly the opposite!!!

"We do not speak great things, but we live them." —Mark Felix (~AD 200)

Today's Christianity would be laughed at for making that kind of claim. In fact, today's Christianity would be laughed at if they attempted to make any of the claims that the early Christians made. But the Romans were not laughing. They knew it was true.

You CANNOT be a Christian and serve in the military!!! You are doing the very things Jesus and the early Christians of the first three centuries opposed. History is replete with their stories, from both the mouths of Christians and of their antagonists. If they became Christians while in the military, they sought to leave the military or to do something else that did not violate their conscience. If they became Christians outside of the military, they never sought to join the military. Many professing American Christians are confused and have divided allegiance. They are serving America unbiblically, doing the very things Jesus was against, while trying to claim they belong to Jesus' Kingdom of peace. The American military asks you to use force upon and/or violence against others. Jesus commands you to "Love one another, just as I have loved you," to "Love your neighbour as yourself," and to "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." You cannot serve two masters, Christian! Choose this day whom you will serve!

Christians also CANNOT be police officers! At some point, you know that you are going to be faced with the decision to take another person's life, which Jesus and the early Christians of the first three centuries were absolutely opposed to.

If you have no problem taking the life of another person, regardless of the circumstances, then you have no idea what it means to be a Christian!