As a side not to this discussion, while waiting for Drfuss’s response, it might help the reader to understand the import of this discussion.
In the day that Pelagius lived, there was no dogma of constitutional depravity in the Church until Augustine. Augustine injected an idea foreign to the church until that time of constitutional depravity, know by the term of original sin. Not only did he inject this thought into the Church, but wielded his powers to silence and destroy, reduce to ashes, any and all that would stand in his way of making this novel invention of his ‘necessitated dogma’ within the Church. Augustine’s heathen philosophical background, in which he was steeped, played a large role in this novel notion of original sin and the granting of abilities by God to overcome this novel manufactered malady. From his heathen studies and writings as a heathen philosopher, he brought into the Church the notion that sin lied in the constitution of the flesh and not in the will of man.
Along came a man named Pelagius well know for his pious demeanor. Pelagius obviously understood clearly that such a notion as original sin also lead Augustine to develop the notion that God must regenerate the soul in order to have the necessary abilities to gain salvation. This Pelagius obviously understood to mandate a fatalistic and deterministic system of thought that Pelagius believed was not only contrary to what had been doctrine in the church for hundreds of years, contrary to reason, and contrary to the Word of God. Pelagius believed that man was endowed by his Creator with the necessary abilities to obey, and that it was not necessary for God to bestow special abilities to do so. Pelagius never denied grace at work in salvation, or that once a man had sinned that it took grace to gain salvation, but rather denied that God had to grant special grace for a man in his natural state the abilities to choose benevolence, or special grace for a sinful man to accept or reject the gospel. Pelagius obviously felt that Scripture and reason depicts man a willful rebel and rightfully blamed by God, not because he could not help himself, but rather denoted a sinner and guilty before God, because he could do something other than what he did but willfully rejected his God given powers to do right and willfully chose to do wrong.
Pelagius obviously understood clearly, as I have attempted to bear out in these discussions with Drfuss, that when one makes one a sinner from birth, and then mandates that in order to do right or to accept the gospel, God must grant to man the abilities to do so, you cannot logically avoid the trap of determinism and fatalism. You cannot logically avoid the logical end of limited atonement and unconditional election. I believe, as did Pelagius, that such notions are absolutely contradictory to Scripture, reason, and experience.
What this debate is about is whether or not one can logically escape the notions of limited atonement and unconditional election, both of which are fatalistic and deterministic notions, and cannot avoid the trap of making God the author of all evil, if carried out to their logical ends. This debate is about whether of not one can hold to the notion of original sin and the necessitated regeneration of the sinner by God in order to act benevolently or accept or reject the gospel message, without landing in the same trap of determinism that has plagued the Augustinian/Calvinistic viewpoint since Augustine’s introduction of these ideas into the Church.
The twist that this debate is now encountering is due to the fact that the object is now being shifted away from regeneration of the soul with a distinction Drfuss calls a ‘drawing of God.’ The burden of proof now lies upon Drfuss to explain just what the ‘drawing’ he speaks of consists of, and whether or not man possesses the needed abilities to act benevolently or accept or reject the gospel message apart from the granting of abilities the Calvinist is known to believe. The question is simple. Does this drawing of God Drfuss claims to be of a different nature than the granting of abilities of the Calvinistic viewpoint entail the granting of abilities as well? If so, how can View #2 support any other logical end than the purely Calvinistic held position?
If the position of viewpoint #2 rejects the position that abilities must be granted by God to man in order to accept or reject salvation, how can this differ substantially from the view point of Pelagius that believed that God did not have to grant some special grace or ability for man to act benevolently or accept and reject salvation?
Thank you.