The Gospel...A History Lesson Part 3

Church historian Philip Schaff helped us see what the Roman Catholic Church would become by reminding us that Zosimus, the Bishop of Rome, agreed with Pelagius and denounced the Council of Carthage for cursing Pelagius and calling his teaching heretical.  Enter Cornelius Otto Jansen.

Jansen was a leader of the post-Reformation movement within Roman Catholicism.  He died in 1640 but it was after his death that a majority of his writings were published and his teachings became popular.  He believed, like Martin Luther, that the Church of Rome had strayed away from the teachings of the early church that all of life was by the grace of God.  He believed and taught what Augustine had taught; that man is born with a DEAD spirit that needs regeneration...a resurrection...what the Bible calls being "born again".  We will come back to this "born again" concept a little later and explain this next verse and another to help bolster this argument of being "dead" and needing "resurrection".  Here are the verses I'm talking about:

Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."  (John 3:3) 

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.  Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.  But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)
(Ephesians 2:1-5)

Jansen knew that what happened to man was by God's grace and His grace alone, not man making it happen because he had some faith.  The Jesuits, on behalf of the Pope, attacked the Jansenists.  Pope Clement XI issued a "papal bull", or a formal condemnation of the Jansenists in 1713, disagreeing with and condemning 101 statements in the Jansenist writings.  Many of the statements denounced by the Bishop of Rome, or Pope, were direct quotations from Augustine against Pelagius.

The church, in times past, had been on the side of the Augustinians against the Pelagians.  So how does this drift happen?

In his history of the church that we quoted last time, Philip Schaff merely gave us a small glimpse into what had happened.  As the church moved into the Middle Ages and the Bishop of Rome became the quote, unquote "visible head of the church", or Pope, the "Pelagianizing tendencies" spoken of by Schaff had mutated, metastasized and began to spread like a cancer running through the human body.  By the time of the Reformation, the church in Rome was teaching that man saved himself by cooperating with God and His grace...basically, by allowing God to save him.  This is known as semi-Pelagianism, an in-between view that is neither Pelagian, which teaches that man is not born dead in sin, or Augustinian, which teaches that man is born dead in sin.  Semi-Pelagians teach that man is born, well, just kinda sick.

If Pelagius is correct and man is born innocent and ok, then he simply needs a guide to kinda, sorta lead him.

If man is born sick, then he merely needs the help of a doctor and the two of them, working together in cooperation, can make the sick man well.

If, as Augustine taught, man is born dead, he needs to be resurrected.  THAT is something he simply cannot do for himself.

So, the logical result of all of this is:

If you are a Pelagian, you need a teacher to teach you how to do it.  You can do it on your own with some guidance.

If you are a semi-Pelagian, all you need is a doctor with whom you can cooperate.

If you are an Augustinian, or someone who believes in the doctrines of grace and would be called a.....gasp.....Calvinist today, then you need a resurrection; a raising from the dead.  Furthermore, you realize that salvation is all of God's grace.

The semi-Pelagian view is a synergistic, as opposed to a monergistic, approach to redemption.  We will look at those two terms and give a definition in our next post in this series...if you do not already know what they mean.  Basically, in a nutshell, semi-Pelagianism teaches that man and God work together, or cooperate, to accomplish redemption.  That is not biblical.  Not in the slightest.

Back to our two verses and the idea of needing to be "born again".  And before we look at the verses in some depth, let me make an argument about birth from a completely logical, human point of view.  Then we will look at the grammar and verbiage of the original language.  

Did you choose where you were born?  Did you choose your parents?  Did you choose the timing?  Did you ask for it?  Did you plan it?  Did you have anything, at all, to do with your birth, other than the fact that it happened to you?  The answer to all of these questions is no, obviously.  I'll close this thought with words from AW Pink in his work The Sovereignty of God:

The new birth is solely the work of God the Spirit and man has no part or lot in it.  This from the very nature of the case.  Birth altogether excludes the idea of any effort or work on the part of the one who is born.  Personally we have no more to do with our spiritual birth than we had with our natural birth.  The new birth is a spiritual resurrection, a "passing from death unto life"  (John 5:24)  and, clearly, resurrection is altogether outside of man's province.  No corpse can re-animate itself.

AW Pink
The Sovereignty of God
Apple iBooks Edition
Page 168

Back to our verses.  Here is John 3:3:

Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

In this verse, the verb "is born again" translates two Greek words.  They are "gennao anothen".  Translated literally, it means "born from above".  There are two important points to make about the original language here.  In the Greek, the verb is in the passive voice and the subjunctive mood, according to blueletterbible.org.  The passive voice means that the verb is happening to the subject or, in other words, the subject is the recipient of the action.  So, in this verse, the subject, "one", is the recipient of the action of being "born again".  It happens to the one.  The one doesn't do anything to make it happen.  It just happens.  It is a moving of the Holy Spirit that you cannot coerce.  Also, the subjunctive mood means that the action is a possibility or a potentiality.  The action may or may not happen, depending on circumstances.  This is corroborated by John 3:8:

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

In other words, quite frankly, God the Holy Spirit is in complete control of when and how He works.  Period.

Here is Ephesians 2:1-5 again:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.  Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.  But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)

In these verses, the word dead translates the Greek word "nekros".  After having done an in depth word study, I have discovered that the word "nekros" in the Greek can be translated into English as DEAD, meaning DEAD, as in NOT ALIVE.  If something is not alive, it does not need a Pelagian teacher-guide.  It does not need a semi-Pelagian doctor assistant to help you get well.  It needs to be brought to life...a regeneration...a resurrection.  Later on, the phrase "made us alive together with" translates one Greek word, which is "syzoopoieo".  This word means "to make one alive together".  Do you see the important word here?  It is "MAKE".  You have to go back to the beginning of verse 4 to figure out who does the "making alive".  It is God:

 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)

There is not way around it.  Scripture is packed full of this teaching; that God is sovereign over salvation.  That it is Him and Him alone who does the saving of a soul.  The book of John is probably the most concentrated, densely packed place in all the Scripture to see the doctrines of grace expounded and taught.

Pelagianism is heretical and semi-Pelagianism is dangerously close to that.  Semi-Pelagianism is also known by a different name and as we continue our jet tour through church history, we will see what that name is.