History Affects Us

(Image courtesy of RefToons.)

When I was twelve years old, I went on a mission trip to Mexico with some of my family. When we were making our flight down there, my grandma got up to use the bathroom, but instead she accidentally opened the door to the cockpit. I remember seeing the pilots, with their headsets on, turn around in surprise. (I also remember seeing out of the windshield at the clouds ahead.) The flight attendants kindly and calmly shut the cockpit door and directed my grandma to the bathroom door, which was right around the corner.

The year was 2000.

Fast forward one more year to September 11, 2001, and everything changed for flight travel. Security checks took a lot longer, and if anyone would have opened the door to the cockpit in-flight, he might not make it to where he was going alive.

History affects us.

Western, Christian theology has been shaped in large part by a series of debates by two 5^th century theologians: one by the name of Augustine and one by the name of Pelagius. Sparing you the details, in short, Pelagius taught that there was no such thing as original sin (the doctrine that all people are plagued by sin because of Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden [see Romans 5]), and that mankind had a free-will to choose God to be saved. God’s grace, therefore, in salvation wasn’t really necessary. One writer sums it up like this: “Pelagius believed that human beings were morally neutral at birth, with neither an inherent inclination towards good nor evil. He argued that individuals could achieve their own salvation through their own efforts and willpower, without the need for divine grace.”

On the other hand, Augustine, a contemporary of Pelagius, understood the biblical doctrine of original to be far-reaching. He understood that man is a slave to sin, which means he cannot choose God because his will is captive to what is evil. He would first need to be set free in order to respond to God. For a sinner to be set free would require the merciful action of God.

Augustine’s arguments were not original; they were Pauline, meaning they came straight from the apostle Paul himself. Salvation depends so much so on the mercy of God that the apostle Paul wrote, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – for by grace you have been saved…” (Ephesians 2:1, 4-5).

Pelagius was labeled by the church as a heretic. Yet, today, his teachings are still alive in what is called semi-Pelagianism. The western church has been severely affected by these teachings, which say that mankind is still free in his will to choose or reject God; man’s salvation is in his own hands, his own choice. The problem is that mankind is still in bondage to sin, and apart from a supernatural act of God in regeneration, there is no hope for anyone to be saved. But thanks be to God that he has been gracious in choosing some to be appointed to glory! (See Ephesians 1:3-14.) To God belongs all the glory and praise for our salvation!

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:3-6).