Herman Hoeksema: What Is Pelagianism?

[The following is an excerpt from Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1, by Herman Hoeksema.  Hoeksema was one of the ministers who was defrocked by the Christian Reformed Church for refusing to accept the doctrine of the Three Points of Common Grace.  It is well that the ministers and churches of the Protestant Reformed Church in America stood their ground.  Currently the Christian Reformed Church is a mix of Amyraldianism and broad Evangelicalism at best and outright theological liberalism and modernism at worst.  The problem of pelagianism has troubled the American Evangelical movement since the revivalism of Charles Finney in the 19th century.  But exactly what is pelagianism?  I found the following explanation by the late Professor Herman Hoeksema to be a succinct and perspicuous accounting of pelagianism.  I hope you will agree.  Charlie.]

"The fundamental error of Pelagianism in all its forms is always that it denies any other righteousness and holiness than that which is the result of the choice and act of the will of man."  Herman Hoeksema.

By these three spiritual virtues that originally adorned the nature of man, the rectitude of his whole being in relation to God and all things is denoted.  By holiness is  meant not any acquired purity, but that original rectitude of his nature according to which he was consecrated to God in love with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength.  Adam's whole soul yearned after the living God and had its delight in his favor and fellowship.  Man's righteousness was not an imputed righteousness, nor was it acquired.  Rather,  man's righteousness was the virtue of his whole nature by which, according to the judgment of God, he was wholly in harmony with the will of God; he was fully capable of doing the will of God, and doing God's will was his delight.  Man's knowledge of God was not a mere intellectual or natural knowledge of the Most High so that he knew who and what God is, nor was it a ready-made system of theology or dogmatics with which Adam was endowed from the beginning.  Instead, man's knowledge of God was that original rectitude of his mind by virtue of which he immediately and spontaneously knew God, both through the revelation of all the works of God round about him and through the direct word of God addressed to him in paradise.  Through this positive knowledge of God, Adam had a living contact with the Most High, the fellowship of friendship that was his life.

In one word, Adam was good.  He was so made that he was quite capable of serving the Lord his creator, of being his representative in all the world--his prophet, to know and to glorify him; his priest, to consecrate himself in all things unto him; his servant-king, to rule in righteousness over the works of God's hand--and of living in perfect fellowship with the Most High.

In this respect the truth differs radically from the Pelagian error.  According to the Canons of Dordt, the Pelagians teach:

. . . that the spiritual gifts, or the good qualities and virtues such as goodness, holiness, righteousness, could not belong to the will of man when he was first created, and that these, therefore, could not have been separated therefrom in the fall.
. . . that in spiritual death the spiritual gifts are not separate from the will of man, since the will in itself has never been corrupted, but only hindered through the darkness of the understanding and the irregularity of the affections; and that, these hindrances having been removed, the will can then bring into operation its native powers, that is, that the will is itself able to will and to choose, or not to will and not to choose, all manner of good which may be presented to it.(8)

The fundamental error of Pelagianism in all its forms is always that it denies any other righteousness and holiness than that which is the result of the choice and act of the will of man.  Hence righteousness and holiness cannot be virtues with which the nature of man was originally endowed.  Man could be either righteous or unrighteous, holy or unholy, according as he chose to be.  Only the deed of righteousness makes a man righteous.  According to the same fundamental principle, man could never become corrupt in nature.  It may have become more difficult for him to choose for righteousness and holiness because of the fall; but essentially he is the same as he was before the fall, a beingg who can either be righteous or unrighteous by the choice of his own free will.  Grace may "give him a lift" in his efforts to be righteous after the fall, but never is it a radical change of his nature.  Over and against this Pelagian corruption, which is as superficial as it is pernicious, stands the plain truth of the word of God that God created man after his own image, in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.

[From Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1, 2nd Edition, by Herman Hoeksema.  (Grandville:  Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2004), pp. 298-300. For more information about the doctrine of common grace see, The Myth of Common Grace, by Garrett P. Johnson.]

8.  Canons of Dordt, 3 & 4, Rejection of Errors, 2, 3 in The Psalter with Doctrinal Standards, Liturgy, Church Order, and added Chorale Section, Reprinted and revised edition of the 1912 United Presbyterian Psalter (PRC) (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1995), 70.

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Reasonable Christian Blog Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost; Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen. 1662 Book of Common Prayer

Clark on the Divine Image in Man: Jesus is the Logos

The following is taken from an article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, "The Image of God in Man", by Gordon H. Clark, which someone linked to on the Facebook page dedicated to Gordon H. Clark. It is my contention that a man's life's work must be taken together as a whole, especially when judging the last book he wrote on the incarnation of Christ. I will be further reviewing Clark's books on the trinity and the incarnation in the upcoming week. But for now let Clark speak for himself:

Yes, the image is still there. Paradoxical though it may seem, man could not be the sinner he is, if he were not still in God's image. Sinning presupposes rationality and voluntary decision. Animals cannot sin. Sin therefore requires God's image because man is responsible for his sins. If there were no responsibility, there could be nothing properly called sin. Sin is an offense against God, and God calls us to account. If we were not answerable to God, repentance would be useless and even nonsense. Reprobation and hell would also be impossible.

But if we say all this, have we not tied ourselves in theological knots? If we acknowledge that we are dead in sin, must we not affirm either that the image has been lost altogether (and then we would no longer be able to sin) or that the image has parts and that most of its parts, or at least the most important parts have been lost (thus destroying the unity of the person), or finally should we retract the doctrine of total depravity and minimize sin?

The solution of this paradox is very easy and very clear. We note for one thing that Christ is the image of God (Hebrews 1:3), and that he is the Logos and Wisdom of God. We note too that Adam was given dominion over nature. These two points, seemingly unrelated, suggest that the image of God is Logic or rationality. Adam was superior to the animals because he was a rational and not merely a sensory creation. The image of God therefore is reason.

The image must be reason because God is truth, and fellowship with him--a most important purpose in creation--requires thinking and understanding. Without reason man would doubtless glorify God as do the stars, stones, and animals, but he could not enjoy him forever. Even if in God's animals survive death and adorn the future world, they cannot have what the Scripture calls eternal life because eternal life is to know the only true God, and knowledge is an exercise of the mind or reason. Without reason there can be no morality or righteousness: these too require thought. Lacking these, animals are neither righteous nor sinful.

The identification of the image as reason explains or is supported by a puzzling remark in John 1:9, "I was the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." How can Christ, in whom is the life that is the light of men, be the light of every man, when the Scriptures teach that some men are lost in eternal darkness? This puzzle arises from interpreting light in exclusively redemptive terms. If one think also in terms of creation, the Logos or Rationality of God, who just above was said to have created all things without a single exception, can be seen as having created man with the light of logic as his distinctive human characteristic.

[Charlie's closing comment: It seems to me in light of Clark's above remarks that the divine image is rationality and that the Logos is pure reason as well as a person; the union of the divine image with the human image which is created in God's image and likeness is therefore more plausible because it is in fact a spiritual union and not a physical union, which would imply some change in God's absolute nature with all of His incommunicable attributes. I will make further comments after reading Clark's view of the trinity and the incarnation.]

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost;
Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.

http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/

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