The gravest error of the reformers Luther and Calvin was that they did not go back far enough toward the source of truth. Even though Luther popularized, and Calvin affirmed, the term “Sola Scripture,” both men relied heavily on Augustine, whose false teachings stemmed from multiple factors, including reliance on very poor Latin translations of the Bible. His personal foibles in regards to sexuality led him to regard even sex as God intended—that is, exclusive and faithful relations between husband and wife—to somehow be sinful (much as a recovered [drunk] who becomes a militant prohibitionist, and refuses to see that full prohibition of alcohol is not a Biblical doctrine). And his personal hatred and loathing toward Pelagius that led him to import many aspects of his old Manichean religion into Christianity, and make up a “heresy” out of whole cloth and falsely attach the name of Pelagius to it.
To be truly free of Romanism and pursue Christianity, one must also reject any extra-biblical source as a basis for doctrine, building theology on the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, rather than relying on the shaky and often contradictory positions of so-called “Church fathers.”
Email from “DN” to The Berean Call, published in July 2023 issue.
8 comments:
No thanks, Glenn. You are not correct this time around. I will stick with theological geniuses who could return Christianity to its proper foundations than some old, senile, tin-foil hat wearing fool who has been panned all across the board by scholars and historians for taking statements out of context.
Mike,
I don't think you are correct. Augustine WAS the background for Calvinism. And people call me a Pelagian because I stick to what the Bible says vs what "reformers" claim.
https://watchmansbagpipes.blogspot.com/2013/02/i-am-not-calvinist.html
You might think you are being pious when you speak of "sticking to what the Bible says," but it really isn't at all. Ephesians 1 and many other passages of Scripture prove your viewpoints to be without foundation. Period. End of story. Encyclopedia Britannica defines Pelagianism as a "heresy" that "stressed the essential goodness of human nature and the freedom of the human will." That is precisely what you are, which makes you a heretic.
Mike,
See, you either are or just sound like a Calvinist because I disagree with Calvinist, hence I must be a Pelagian.
No where do I believe or teach the "essential goodness of human nature." I do teach the freedeom of human will because that is what the Bible teaches. If we have no will then we are just God's puppets.
End of discussion.
Glenn: Keep up the sound defense of Scripture!
Augustinism/Calvinism is a philosophy! Period! It is not Biblical; it is rooted in philosophy and not scripture. It is appalling! I am NOT a Pelagian. Augustine went from Manachiean(held to the philosophy of Determinism) to Free -Will then back to Manacheism(Determinism). He went from debating against the Manachiean’s Determinism to embracing it…but not because of sudden enlightenment by Scripture. He sounds like a very confused person to me.
I will not follow such a person’s teachings.
He introduced Determinism into the church. It wasn’t there before him. Period!
Glenn - I thought you might be interested in the following quotation from a commenter on Leighton Flowers' blog, which is related to this theme, and resonated with me when considering the obsession with authority and nitpicking over doctrine that is so prevalent sadly in much of modern evangelicalism, imo the Calvinist constituency in particular:
“The great men who built up the Western Church were almost all trained Roman lawyers. Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Gregory the Great (whose writings form the bridge between the Latin Fathers and the Schoolmen) were all men whose early training had been that of a Roman lawyer,—a training which moulded and shaped all their thinking, whether theological or ecclesiastical. They instinctively regarded all questions as a great Roman lawyer would. They had the lawyer's craving for exact definitions. They had the lawyer's idea that the primary duty laid upon them was to enforce obedience to authority, whether that authority expressed itself in external institutions or in the precise definitions of the correct ways of thinking about spiritual truths. No branch of Western Christendom has been able to free itself from the spell cast upon it by these Roman lawyers of the early centuries of the Christian Church.”
Thomas Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, vol. 1, pg. 168
Ken B
Thanks for that quote, Ken.
Long time follower, but first time responding. It is interesting to me that 'Mike' - who I don't know, doesn't seem to actually refute anything asserted, was the 'reform' ideas reflective of Augustine or not? Did Augustine hold the positions asserted or not? If you read Church history, the simple reality is that these things are true. Augustine was the source of much of the divisive theological positions that the Catholic Church and the Reform movement espouse. That is just historical fact.
Greg
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