Pelagius vs Augustine

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We continue tonight in our study of church history, and we are going to be looking.
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This is lesson seven, looking at the Council of Orange.
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So far in this study, we first looked at an overview of the last 2000 years of church history.
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We did sort of a bird's eye view of history.
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Then we looked in the Scripture and we saw that the Bible itself contains creeds and confessions.
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It contains statements of faith.
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Certainly the whole Bible itself is a statement of faith, but there are certain parts of it which lend themselves to didactic understanding, to teaching us about God and His nature and His will.
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We looked at those.
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We've also looked at early church documents.
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We've looked at the didache, which is called the teaching of the apostles.
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We've looked at the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.
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We've also looked at the Council of Chalcedon and what it meant and the confession that came out of the Council of Chalcedon.
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And last week we looked at the third and final, what was called ecumenical creed or the creed which was accepted by the universal church.
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The worldwide church had come together and accepted this as ecumenical.
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And that is what was called the Athanasian Creed, the creed which affirmed the dual nature of Jesus Christ, that He is both God and man and affirmed the full unity within the Trinity, that God is one in essence and three in person.
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So that is where we are to now.
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Tonight, we are going to examine the Council of Orange and its results.
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And this is actually, if you want to just make a note to yourself, this is the second Council of Orange.
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And we will discuss why we're looking at the second council later on in the lesson.
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In fact, some might even wonder why in a study of church history, why I would add the second Council of Orange in this study of history at all, especially seeing that it is not recognized as one of the ecumenical councils.
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It was recognized rather as a local council.
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Some have even referred to it as a synod, not really a council.
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Well, the reason for its inclusion is this study is intended to show us and underscore for us how within history doctrine has played a part in some of the greatest divides that have come in the church and how it took men of God coming together around the Word of God to make conclusions about these historical issues and to bring to us their statements of understanding about God's Word.
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Tonight, we are not going to focus so much on the Council of Orange as much as we are going to focus on the debate which led up to the council.
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We want to know why this council even came about.
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The issue at stake at the Council of Orange is whether or not the sin of Adam.
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Has affected the moral abilities of his descendants and just how much have they been affected? The first few hundred years of the church dealt primarily with the nature of God and the nature of Christ.
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But this debate deals with the nature of man.
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So that being said, let us now turn to our notes and I'll begin giving you some of the blanks so that you may fill them in.
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We're going to look first at the background of the council.
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Many years before the second council at Orange, there was a major theological dispute which had erupted in the church in regard to the nature of man.
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The primary men in that dispute were men by the name of Pelagius and Augustine, otherwise known as Augustine.
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And what I want to do is I want to sort of give you a little bit of a background about these two men.
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Certainly, this will not be an exhaustive study, but I want to give you just enough to where you will know where these two men are coming from.
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Pelagius was born in Britain.
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He was born in 354.
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He went on to become a monk and he lived in Rome.
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He taught that man has a completely autonomous, libertarian, free will.
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That's not in your notes, and if you want to write it down, you feel free.
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But basically what that means is that he taught that man is not influenced by his fallen nature and that his nature is, in fact, not fallen.
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But instead, he is completely autonomous, that he has the ability to choose either to do good or to do bad, and that his choices are not influenced by anything outside.
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That he is absolutely in and of himself a libertarian being.
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As a result of those teachings, he was excommunicated from the church at the Council of Carthage in 416.
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So so and we're going to talk about why in a little while, but I just want to mention that he was excommunicated at the Council of Carthage in 416.
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He had the support of the then Pope Innocent the first.
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But after that Pope died, Pelagius appealed to his successor, Pope Zosimas, who wrote an encyclical which affirmed the teaching of Pelagius as Orthodox.
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So we talked about this last week, how Athanasius had been exiled and then brought back.
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Well, the same thing sort of happened with Pelagius, where Athanasius was exiled by Constantine, the emperor.
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But Pelagius had been excommunicated by the church.
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And the Pope had supported that, but now that Pope died, another Pope comes in, so he brings him back.
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And not only does he bring him back, but he writes an encyclical supporting his teachings.
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Well, Pelagius, his teachings were condemned again at the second Council of Carthage in 418.
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So he was condemned once he convinced the Pope to let him come back and then he was condemned again.
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But why was he condemned? He was condemned because not only was his teaching against the Bible, and we're going to learn about that more later, but also there was a man who was willing to stand opposed to Pelagius.
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There was a man who was willing to take his teachings to task and to stand against his heresy.
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And that man was called Aurelius Augustine.
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Augustine, that was the primary opposition to Pelagius.
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Augustine is a man who has had many volumes written about his life.
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To express the entirety of his influence on the church would be impossible to do in one lesson.
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I could not sit here and give you everything about Augustine in just the short time that we have.
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But I'll give you a few things.
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He was born November 13th, 354.
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Interestingly enough, the same year as Pelagius.
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His mother, Monica, was a devout Christian and his father, Patricius, not Patricia, but Patricius was an official in the Roman administration who converted to Christianity later in life.
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So it really was Augustine's mother who was the primary Christian influence on him as a young man and into his adolescence and early adulthood.
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The story of Augustine's conversion is amazing, as he recounts it himself.
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He says that he heard a child's voice and there's some debate as to whether or not it was a real child's voice or if it was God speaking to him or whether he heard children playing.
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But he heard a child's voice and he recounts the story that he heard a child's voice singing Tola Lege, Tola Lege.
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And the phrase Tola Lege means take up and read, take up and read.
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So Augustine took that as an admonition from God to go and look at the scriptures.
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So he took the scriptures and he read and he ended in Romans, what would be chapter 13, verses 13 and 14.
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Of course, as Richard and I have talked about many times, there were no chapters.
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There were no verses at this time in scripture.
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But what we would call Romans 13, 13 and 14, which is this, let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling or jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
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That particular passage had a huge influence on Augustine and would ultimately lead to his conversion.
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He had lived up until that point a very hedonistic lifestyle.
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For a time in his youth, he had even dabbled in paganism and he had studied many errant philosophies.
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He'd studied many things that were just opposed to scripture, opposed to Christianity.
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And I imagine this doesn't say this in the history books, but I would say much to the chagrin of his mother, who was a devout Christian.
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But he had studied these things, he had invested himself in a hedonistic lifestyle.
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And here he reads this passage and this passage says, put away those things and put on Christ.
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And he took that as a command from God to him directly, put away these hedonistic things, put away the heathen things and put on Christ.
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And he went on as a result of his conversion to become one of the leading scholars, not only in early Christian history, but in Christian history in total.
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He went on to become the bishop of Hippo.
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Hippo Regis is the ancient name of the modern city Anabah, which is in Algeria.
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He would remain in the position of bishop of Hippo until his death in 430.
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Pretty long ministry there.
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Now, let's get back to Pelagius and Augustine, the division between the two.
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There's a serious theological divide between these two and the issue.
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And this is the next blank on your sheet.
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The issue which brought division was based on the teachings of Pelagius regarding human autonomy, human autonomy.
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If you want to make a little note beside the word autonomy, it means freedom or liberty.
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It's autonomous.
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It's self-governing.
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Self-law is where the term comes from.
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Your law unto yourself.
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That's the idea.
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Pelagius taught this, and I want to make sure everybody understands because this is foundational, folks.
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This is foundational not only to Christian theology, but this is foundational to understanding the nature of who you are as an individual.
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Pelagius taught that Adam was created good and everything God creates is good.
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As a result, he taught that every person is born as effectively a new Adam.
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Every person who is born is born morally neutral.
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He believed that man is neither inclined to evil or good.
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He also taught that man's will is unchangeable, meaning that it is not affected by sin.
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It is ultimately always neutral.
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A person's behavior may change, but his inherent nature never changes.
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He's always morally neutral.
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This was the teaching of Pelagius.
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And because of that, he taught that there is no inherent corruption in man.
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That's a serious issue to say.
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Pelagius was convinced by the idea that God had commanded men to be righteous and that God would never command that which is impossible.
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So man could be righteous.
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And Pelagius' view, free will, by the way, I'm going to write that term here in quotations because that's another way of saying human autonomy, free will.
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In his view, free will meant the absolute equal ability to choose good or to choose evil.
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He believed man's choices were not rooted in his moral character, but rather in his free and independent choices.
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Man is not a being who is influenced by his nature.
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Man is a being who makes choices uninfluenced.
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That is the Pelagian position.
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To Pelagius, sin or obedience was always a free choice of the will.
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Now, here's the thing.
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Many in the modern church would say, hey, no problem.
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Sounds good to me.
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Because many in the modern church do not have a biblical theology.
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I'm just straight up telling you the truth.
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There is a huge lack of understanding in the modern church of the most foundational biblical doctrines.
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And this issue of the nature of man is hugely there's a huge divide because people just don't invest the time to understand these things.
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So if I were to just give you Pelagius' view, there are many people, many churches that would go right on.
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Man, that sounds good to me.
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And yet it is not the biblical view.
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The next blank that you have is it was a prayer.
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It was a prayer of Augustine that caused Pelagius to take up this issue.
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Augustine had a prayer that became very famous.
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In fact, it's still famous down to this day.
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At times, I pray it myself.
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The prayer went like this.
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It was very short.
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God, grant what thou commandest and command what thou dost desire.
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God, tell me what you want.
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And then grant me the ability to do it.
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That's the modern language, the modern vernacular.
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God, command what you will and grant me the ability to fulfill that command.
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So it was a statement of absolute dependency from the position of Augustine.
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There's absolute dependency on the grace of God even to be able to fulfill his command.
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All right.
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Pelagius heard that command or heard that prayer from Augustine, and he considered it to be repugnant.
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He was opposed to the idea that a divine gift of grace was required for man to follow God's commands.
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For Pelagius, responsibility implied ability.
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This opposition was the impetus that became the foundation of the debate.
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He began to write.
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He began to develop a following.
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And here's the thing about Pelagianism.
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Pelagianism is the religion of the natural man.
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The natural man believes himself to be morally neutral.
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Actually, the natural man believes himself to be morally good.
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And so Pelagius had no problem finding converts.
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He had no problem finding people willing to side with him.
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Yes, sir.
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You have a that would be one of the ones that Psalm 51 would be one of the passages that we use to describe original sin, which is a doctrine that we're going to talk about, wherein David says that in mother did and sin, did my mother conceive me? I think the best scriptural defense for original sin is Paul's letter to the Romans in chapter 12, wherein he talks about the fact that when we're in Adam, we die.
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And in Christ, all are made alive.
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That's actually 1 Corinthians.
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But he says the same thing.
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1 Corinthians 12 gets a very he says, you know, through one man sin under the world and death through sin and death spread to all men because all sinned.
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And the reference he goes on to say is all the sin was in Adam.
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We sinned in Adam and Adam was our representative.
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We'll talk about that in a minute.
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But yes, Psalm 51 plays a part.
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I think Psalm 51 gives a I think Psalm 51 gives a precursor to the idea of our sin nature.
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But I think I think Paul really drives it home.
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And Romans chapter that's Romans 12.
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Yeah, I was wrong.
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Romans five.
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It's Romans 5.
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Twelve is the one I'm glad I corrected myself.
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It's Romans five verse 12, which says, therefore, sin into the world through one man.
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Yeah, that Romans 5, 12 through 18.
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I believe I have to look at it.
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But we see we see the effects and the teaching of original sin throughout Scripture.
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But that's the place where Paul really takes it to task.
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And you would have to deny that entire portion to deny the doctrine that we are, in fact, sinners in Adam.
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So let's look at the Augustinian position of what we've seen, the Pelagian position, human autonomy, absolute free will.
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The will itself is not influenced either for the good or for the bad.
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The Augustinian position that Pelagius found so objectionable was this.
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Augustine taught that the nature of man's will is not one of absolute freedom, but rather the nature of man is bound to sin and requires an act of God's grace to be able to obey him.
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That man's will is bound to sin and requires an act of God's grace to be able to obey God.
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This belief is rooted in the doctrine that we call original sin.
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That's on your sheet.
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Original sin, original sin doesn't refer to the original sin.
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This is kind of a this is confusing for some people.
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It's not the sin that Adam did.
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It's the effect that that sin had on all of us.
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Then we talk about the doctrine of original sin.
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Yes, it involves the sin that Adam did.
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But how did that sin affect everything? That's the doctrine.
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So it's more than just what he did.
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It's how does it affect? I want to read you a quote from Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul, one of my favorite theologians.
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He says this.
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Augustine's view of the fall was opposed to both Pelagianism and semi Pelagianism.
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He said that mankind is Masa Pekete or a mess of sin.
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Incapable of rising itself from spiritual death for Augustine, man can no more move or incline himself to God than an empty glass could fill itself for Augustine.
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The initial work of divine grace by which the soul is liberated from the bondage of sin is sovereign and operative to be sure we cooperate with his grace.
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But only after the initial divine work of liberation in quotes.
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So do we cooperate with grace? Yes, but only after we have been freed to do so.
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Only after we have been liberated from the bondage of sin are we then free to cooperate and do the works that God has called us to do.
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Augustine, Augustine, whichever, did not deny that man was able to make choices in accordance to his desires.
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That's an important principle, because by the way, Sunday I'm preaching on the question, how does God know the future? It's part of the text.
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We're in Matthew.
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I'm going verse by verse in Matthew, and I'm dealing with this issue.
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I'm dealing with the issue of of of freedom.
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And how does God know what choices a free person will make? We're going to talk about that Sunday.
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But the issue is this.
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Augustine didn't deny that people make choices.
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The problem was the desires of the individual are in bondage to sin, and that that blank should be on your sheet, that the desire of the individual is in bondage to sin.
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Here's the interesting thing about Augustine's teaching, and it's the interesting thing about reformed teaching, because it's often been said that reformed teachers like myself deny that humans have a will.
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I've been told that we believe that men are puppets.
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We believe men are robots, that God is a puppeteer, a marionette worker, whatever.
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Here's the thing.
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Augustine said he believed that man had a, quote, unquote, free will in the sense that he had a liberium arbitrium, that he had a freedom in his will, but that he had lost his libertas, he had lost the moral liberty because he's inclined to evil.
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Yes, he has the freedom to make choices.
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But when given the freedom to make choices, what choice does he make? The bad choice, the sinful choice.
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He's in bondage.
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Jesus said he who sins is a what? Slave to sin.
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All right.
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And that's the point.
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Yes, he has a will and yes, he's free to make choices.
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The problem is when he when he makes his choices, he makes the wrong choices.
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If a man were truly free, he could simply choose not to sin.
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But yet, because he is not able to not sin, he is not truly free.
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Do you understand that should register with our conscience? What I just said, because the vast majority of the people out there who don't know much about theology would hold to the position because they never considered the fact about their bondage to sin.
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There is something inherently wrong with the nature of man.
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That's what Augustine was teaching.
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That was the debate between Pelagius and Augustine.
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B.B.
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Warfield, the great theologian, said this.
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It is Augustine who gave us the Reformation, because if we look at the Reformation, not only do we see that Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, not only know that Calvin quoted more from Augustine than he did from anybody else in all of church history.
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But if we look at the Reformation, we see that all of the teachings there she goes.
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When we look at the teachings of Augustine, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, I'm sorry, I used Augustine in that list, Calvin, Zwingli, Luther, all of the reformers.
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They're all profoundly influenced by an Augustinian view of the nature of man.
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Why? Because it is the biblical view of the nature of man.
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It is the Pauline view of the nature of man.
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It is the Christian view of the nature of man.
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When the rich young ruler came to Jesus and said, good teacher.
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What did Jesus say? Why do you call me good? There is none good, save God alone.
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And as I've said many times, and I do always want to make this point, Jesus was not denying his own goodness.
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He was displaying the ignorance of that man who would think that another man could be good without truly understanding that Christ was who he was.
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He was demonstrating the man's ignorance of goodness.
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So this is where we are.
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We are Pelagius has this position of complete human autonomy.
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Augustine says, no man is in bondage to sin.
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He is not completely free.
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He is a slave to his sin until God works a miracle of liberation through regeneration.
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All right, now, in your notes, we go to Pelagianism and semi Pelagianism, semi Pelagianism.
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I said earlier that the majority report would be Pelagian in the church.
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I was wrong.
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Let me back up a second.
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The vast majority of the church today is semi Pelagian.
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Most people won't go as far as Pelagius did, but they will go here.
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So let's discuss what semi Pelagianism is.
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The idea that man is unaffected by the fall is absolute heresy.
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Anyone who reads the scripture honestly would never come to that conclusion.
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Pelagius was influenced by the philosophy of men, not the word of God.
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And his philosophy is a man centered philosophy.
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However, in the church today, we do not find Augustinianism.
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What we find is semi Pelagianism.
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Semi Pelagianism, as you can imagine, tries to strike a balance.
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But here's the thing.
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I heard a really good teacher say this today.
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I was listening.
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I always try to listen to other people teach on these subjects.
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So I sort of absorb these things as I get ready to teach myself.
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And he said something that was so profound.
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He said, you have the truth of Augustinianism and the error of Pelagianism.
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And people try to find a middle ground.
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He said, that's like somebody telling you the Trinity or not the Trinity.
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And somebody trying to find it.
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You're not going to find a middle ground.
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You're either believing in the Trinity or you're not in the same way here.
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There's no middle ground.
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But that's the problem with semi Pelagianism is it attempts to strike a middle ground where there can be no middle ground.
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But what is semi Pelagianism? Basically, it is this.
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It does not reject the necessity of grace for a person to be able to seek after righteousness.
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But where it divides from Augustinianism is that it contends that there remains in man a moral ability to respond positively to God.
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In essence, they say this.
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Grace is necessary, but grace is not necessarily sufficient.
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That's your blank if you want to.
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The Pelagian says grace is not necessary.
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The semi Pelagian says grace is necessary, but it's not sufficient.
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Now, you might say, well, who preaches that? Let me give you an example.
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And maybe you've heard somebody preach this before.
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Beloved God has done 99 percent, but you still got to do your one.
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You got to raise your hand.
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You got to come forward.
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You got to sign the card.
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You got to go up and get baptized.
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You got to do your part.
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God's done his 99 percent, but you've got to do your one.
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God voted for you.
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The devil voted against you.
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You break the tie.
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No, that's not Joel Osteen, but it's close.
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Joel is Joel's a little different.
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My accent for him is a little different, but you see, you've heard that.
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You've heard people say the 99 percent.
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God's done almost everything, but you still have to do your part, right? That is semi Pelagianism.
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That is semi Pelagianism.
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Also, earlier when I was teaching young people, I introduced them to a concept.
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This is not in my notes, so I know it ain't in your notes, but I want to introduce you to a concept that's very important.
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And I just want you to write it down.
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What is called Synergism and Monergism.
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Synergism and Monergism.
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The root of both of these words is the word ergos, which means work.
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You've seen an ergonomic keyboard.
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It's one that's supposed to make typing easier.
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It aids in work.
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That's what the term ergonomic means.
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It makes work easier, aids in work.
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Right.
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Ergos means work.
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The prefix syn means together.
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A synonym, two words that mean the same thing, right? They're together.
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We talk about synchronize your watches, synchronize, bring the two together, make them the same.
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Right.
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So what does synergism mean? Two or more who work together to accomplish a task.
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It's a big corporate word.
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A lot of corporations talk about synergy, work together, be a team, team player, come together and synergize, you know, work, work as a group.
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That's synergy.
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Mono monergism comes from the root of the root word in the root or the prefix, rather, M.O.N., which is actually mono.
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M.O.N.O means what? One.
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We know that from monotheism.
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What is monergism? There is one working.
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There is one who does the work.
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And beloved, Pelagius and semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism, which is the other expression, are synergism.
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They believe God does his part, but we participate.
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We cooperate in our salvation by doing our part.
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Beloved, the Scripture teaches monergism.
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It teaches that God is the one who begins the work in us.
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He is the one who brings the work to fruition in us.
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And he is the one who is completing the work in us.
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God is salvation.
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And in him alone is salvation found.
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It is the Lord is my salvation.
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The Lord has done it all.
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And that is the dividing line in the modern church.
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It has been a dividing line for over a thousand years.
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We stand on the monergism side because it is the biblical side.
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Synergism is very popular because it answers the man's desire to have a participation in his own salvation, albeit a small participation.
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But it answers the desire of man to have part in what only God can do.
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All right.
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Now, all that being said, now we get to the Council of Orange.
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All that was the setup because the Council of Orange, as we said, is the second council.
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The first council was convened to deal with disciplinary matters.
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It really was not hugely important.
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But the second council, and by everyone's estimation, the most important of the two councils was held in 529.
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The second Council of Orange was meant not to deal with Pelagianism because, remember, Pelagianism had already been condemned at Carthage.
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This was out.
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But there had cropped up in the church semi Pelagianism.
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This is what the council is dealing with.
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Those who have tried to strike the middle road, those who have tried to find the middle ground, the council established, and this is in your notes, the council establishes 25 canons in regard to the will of man.
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Now, I want to go ahead and tell you that we would not agree with everything the council decided.
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We will see as we read some of the canons that there is already in the church beginning to have the early stages of what would become the false teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, things like baptismal regeneration and things like that are seen in here.
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But what we do see is they maintain a solid understanding of the Augustinian view of man, which, again, is the biblical view of man.
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So that's what we're going to look at.
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I don't have time to read all 25 canons tonight because they're actually quite long, but I have brought quite a few of them for us to look at on the screen.
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You may not be able to read them.
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The text is a little small, but I'm going to put them up here.
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I couldn't print them because, again, there would just be too much paper.
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But if you want them, Google the council, Second Council of Orange, and you can download the 25 canons.
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Yes, it was dealing with disciplinary matters.
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It was like I said, it was there wasn't a whole lot of importance in that particular council.
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These are local councils, by the way.
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The great ecumenical councils had by this time ceased and there was more division.
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But here is the canons that I want to share with you.
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I'll read them to you.
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So if you can't quite read them on the screen, you can hear you can hear me read them.
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The first one is canon one.
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If anyone denies that it is the whole man that is both body and soul that was changed for the worse through the offense of Adam's sin, but believes that the freedom of the soul remains unimpaired and that only the body is subject to corruption, he is deceived by the error of Pelagius and contradicts the scripture, which says the soul that sins shall die.
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And do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one of whom you obey? And for whatever overcomes a man to that he is enslaved.
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Notice in this, they add the scriptural texts.
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That's one thing I really appreciate about the council at Orange is they actually add in the scripture.
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If you believe this, you're denying this.
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That's a pretty powerful way of putting it.
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If you believe this, you are in error because this is what the Bible says.
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All right.
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And this one again, Canon one basically says, if you deny that the whole man has been affected by Adam's sin, then you're denying scripture.
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Canon two, if anyone asserts that Adam's sin affected him alone and not his descendants also, or at least if he declares that it is only the death of the body, which is the punishment for sin and not also that sin, which is the death of the soul passed through one man to the whole human race, he does injustice to God and contradicts the apostle who says, therefore, as sin came into the world through one man and death or sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.
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Now, we already talked about that verse earlier, and again, they're affirming the view that Adam's sin has affected all men.
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Canon three.
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I told you we're not going to do all 25, but the first couple I do do in order here.
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Canon three, if anyone says that the grace of God can be conferred as a result of human prayer, but that it is not grace itself, which makes us pray to God, he contradicts the prophet Isaiah or the apostle who says the same thing.
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I have been found by those who did not seek me.
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I have been shown or I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.
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And he quotes Romans 10 and Isaiah 65.
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That's a powerful statement.
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If you say that your prayers get you the grace of God, but your prayers were not inspired by the grace of God, then you're wrong.
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Canon four, if anyone maintains that God awaits our will to be cleansed from sin, but does not confess that even our will to be cleansed comes to us through the infusion and working of the Holy Spirit, he resists the Holy Spirit himself, who says to Solomon, the will is prepared by the Lord and the salutatory word of the apostle.
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For God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
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It's amazing that these same passages that they're quoting are passages that I would use in the defense of the doctrine of original sin.
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Even today, I love that passage in Philippians where it says, for God is at work in you both to will and to do his good pleasure.
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That means the will to do it came from God, not just doing it, but the will to do it.
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That's powerful stuff.
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And I just can't I, I just can't see the I understand where blinders are and I understand it's God who opens the eyes.
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So I guess I do understand.
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But it's hard sometimes to see how so many can deny such obvious things within the text.
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But we know it is God who is sovereign.
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So we will leave that as it is.
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I want to share with you Canon five, but I want to mention this one is this one has some things in it that I wouldn't necessarily agree with because it deals again.
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Baptismal regeneration was the Catholic answer to the Augustinian problem.
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The Augustinian problem is man cannot do good towards God unless he's regenerated.
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So what do they do? They create baptismal regeneration.
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When a child is baptized, they are regenerated.
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Now they have the power to do good towards God.
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Original sin is washed away in baptism, which is why they baptize the infants.
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Now, that is not what is believed in Presbyterianism.
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It's not what is believed in Lutheranism, but it is what is believed in Roman Catholic Church.
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So I want to make that distinction as well, that they believe that the reason for the baptism of the child at infancy is to wash away the taint of original sin and empower them to then be able to do good towards God.
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So they still hold to the Augustinian position.
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They just got a wrong way of dealing with it.
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But they don't deny it.
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Interestingly enough.
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So anyhow, Canon five includes this and this one's you all won't be able to read that.
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Let me read it to you.
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If anyone says that not only the increase of faith, but also its beginning and the very desire for faith by which we believe in him who justifies the ungodly and comes to the regeneration of holy baptism, that's the word baptism.
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If anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will love that we're amending our will.
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I just think on that to change our way to talk about an amendment to the Constitution to make it do something else that God amends our will and turning it from unbelief to faith, from godlessness to godliness.
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It is proof that he is opposing the teaching of the apostle for blessed Paul says, and I am sure that he who began a good work and you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
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And again, for by grace you have been saved through faith.
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And this is not your own doing.
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It is the gift of God for those who state that the faith by which we believe in God is natural, make all who are separated from the Church of Christ by definition and some measure believers.
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That's heavy.
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As I said, the one thing I would I would take issue with is how they say regeneration and baptism are inextricably linked.
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And that I would have issue with that.
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But primarily the canon stands.
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And it is good, I want to jump past number five, number eight, and that's the last one I'll have for you.
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Canon number eight.
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If anyone maintains that some are able to come to the grace of baptism by mercy, but others through free will, which has manifestly been corrupted in all those who have been born after the transgression of the first man, it is proof that he has no place in the true faith.
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That's that's heavy for he denies that the free will of all men has been weakened through the sin of the first man, or at least holds that it has some effect.
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It has been affected in such a way that they still have the ability to seek the mystery of eternal salvation by themselves without the revelation of God.
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The Lord himself shows how contradictory this is by declaring that no one is able to come to him unless the father who sent him draws him.
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As he also says to Peter, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven and as of the apostle says, no one can say that Jesus is Lord except it be given to him by the Holy Spirit.
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Beloved, this is on your sheet.
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This document is admittedly not perfect.
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And you can we've said from the beginning, no creed is perfect.
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The Scripture is perfect.
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This is not perfect, but we can see how important it was in establishing the teachings of Augustine over and above those of Pelagius and the semi Pelagian is Pelagius.
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Now, I want to conclude with a thought.
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Often it is accused of people who teach reformed theology that we have an unbalanced fascination with the sovereignty of God.
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But the reality is most people who oppose reformed theology have an unbalanced fascination with the free will of man.
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They hold human freedom to be the absolute bastion of truth against what against which all other things must be measured.
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What about free will is a common objection that I often hear when I am discussing with people about theology.
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The absolute adherence to the belief in autonomous libertarian free will is a falsehood which has been denounced since the time of the ancient church and should continue to be denounced today.
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When we believe that man can contribute anything to his salvation, even one percent to his relationship with God, we have ultimately denied the scripture which says the flesh profits nothing.
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John six sixty three.
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Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul said this.
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We have not broken free from the Pelagian captivity of the church.
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As long as men want to believe that they are in some way contributing to their salvation, they will remain in that captivity.
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Until we realize that even the very desire to trust in God comes from God himself, we will never understand what is so amazing about grace.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this time that we've had to study together.
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Thank you for your word.
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Thank you for this this.
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Creed father, this this council which came together and created this confession so as to stand against error and stand for truth.
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May it be, oh God, that we as a church continue to stand on these truths, that we do not shift with the winds of change and the philosophies of men, but that we would hold firm to the word of God and the truth that you have entrusted to us, your church.
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I pray that as we move forward as a church, we will continue always to be reforming, to always be looking back to the word of God and looking at what we teach and comparing it thereto so that we can truly say we are a biblically functioning church.
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In Christ's name, we pray and for his sake, amen.