CRPC Podcast - Of Effectual Calling - Westminster Confession Ch 10
Introduction: How does a fallen, enslaved sinner become a Christian? The answer to this question has been at the storm center of the greatest debates in all of church history. It was the British Monk Pelagius who gave the world its first major, formal heresy on the issue of grace. The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology defines Pelagianism as follows:
Pelagianism is that teaching, originating in the late fourth century, which stresses one’s ability to take the initial steps toward salvation by one’s own efforts, apart from special grace. It is sharply opposed by Augustinianism, which emphasizes the absolute necessity of God’s interior grace for salvation.
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The keystone of Pelagianism is the idea of unconditional free will and moral responsibility.
... The rest of Pelagianism flows from this central thought of freedom. First, it rejects the idea that a person’s will has any intrinsic bias in favor of wrongdoing as a result of the fall. Since each soul is created immediately by God, as Pelagius believed, then it cannot come into the world soiled by original sin transmitted from Adam. Before a person begins exercising his will, “there is only in him what God has created.” The effect of infant baptism, then, is not eternal life but “spiritual illumination, adoption as children of God, citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem.” Second, Pelagius considers grace purely an external aid provided by God. He leaves no room for any special interior action of God upon the soul. By “grace” Pelagius really means free will itself or the revelation of God’s law through reason, instructing us in what we should do and holding out to us eternal sanctions. Since this revelation has become obscured through evil customs, grace now includes the law of Moses and the teaching and example of Christ.
Over against this notion stood the great Augustine of Hippo who taught that it is the grace of God alone that saves lost sinners - and that grace is not merely an aid God provides to all which
