Hi Dave,
Thank you very much for your kind words 
Peace,
RdP
Will our theological opponents ever get this?
Perhaps it will be helpful to distinguish between certain "theological opponents" and actual theologians. I can scarcely think of a credible Protestant theologian who is not familiar with the RC rejection of Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian construals of grace and nature. In other words, we do "get it." Nonetheless, we do still have our objections to the sort of systematizing of grace in the Catholic sacerdotal-sacramental system and canon law -- this is where the legitimate debating points need to be had.
Hi Kevin,
I, for one, appreciate the distinction that you suggest, but there is at least one gentleman who holds himself out to be Protestant theologian of sorts that clings to the notion that the Catholic Church is semi-Pelagian. A perusal of Mr. White's website suggests that he believes the the Catholic Church holds to a form of semi-Pelagian thought:
"What I recall saying is that satispassio is borne solely by the believer: it is not an application of the merits of Jesus Christ. Would Mr. Scott like to show me where Rome has defined satispassio as the application of the grace or merits of Jesus Christ? Or will he instead seek the "easy way out" and offer the lame excuse that, "Well, anything related to salvation is ours by grace, so, even the opportunity to undergo the suffering of atonement in purgatory is, ultimately, due to Christ's grace," an absurdity that would only prove my point to the fullest? I invite Mr. Scott to give us a call today on the DL and explain to everyone how suffering in purgatory for the temporal punishments of your sins is consistent with the New Testament's teaching about the atoning work of Christ and the nature of grace. That alone should be enough to establish the semi-Pelagian nature of modern Rome's doctrine of grace. The number is 877-753-3341. "
Found here: http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/inde...2005-01&
catid=7
Now whether James White is merely a "theological opponent" or an actual "credible" Protestant theologian, I will leave that to your capable judgment.
Paul,
Yeah, I would have to disagree with James White here. I guess we could get into what exactly semi-Pelagianism is, but, as I interpret it, Catholic thought on Purgatory is safely outside the bounds. I basically define semi-Pelagianism as attempting at any point in one's relationship with God to establish a claim or right before God to certain effects (blessings, salvation) even if the preliminary mode of operation is one of prevenient grace (ergo, not strict Pelagianism). If someone is going to argue for semi-Pelagianism in RC thought, it would be in the doctrine of merits, but a sophisticated account of it (e.g., St. Thomas) rules out semi-Pelagianism. I think James (and myself) fears that the practical playing out of such doctrines results in a mentality of an "earned" standing before God; anyone with some understanding of Reformed thought knows how serious this is to Reformed theologians (including neo-orthodox Reformed thinkers like myself).
As for James White being an "actual theologian," I would have to say no, since I'm thinking of someone who is in an academic setting, developing his or her thought according to the standard of "peer review" (whether through periodicals, societies, conferences, seminars, etc.). This is not to say that "academic" theology does not have its problems or that it is an unimpeachable standard, but for someone outside this system, they would have to do some pretty impressive work to establish their claim to equal consideration (Christopher Dawson would be a good example of an independent scholar, doing impressive work outside of the academy, eventually earning his right to the first chair of Catholic studies at Harvard Divinity School).
I wonder if Mr. White would agree with the following statements by Augustine. Notice that, for Augustine, grace is for the purpose of helping or assisting our weak nature so that we may overcome our sinfulness and become righteous, and thus become worthy to inherit eternal life. It is never for the purpose of something as crass and vulgar as bestowing on us "guaranteed salvation!"
“For by their damnable arguments these heretics [the Pelagians] strive, not by defending free choice but rather by extolling it in sacrilegious pride, to leave no room for the grace of God by which we are Christians – the grace by which the very choice of our will becomes truly free when it is set free from the dominion of carnal desires. For the Lord says, If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free (Jn 8:36). Faith in Jesus Christ our Lord obtains this help. But these heretics claim, as we have learned from some brothers who have also read their books, that the grace of God should be regarded as the way in which God established and created the nature of man such that it can by its own will fulfill the law of God, whether it be the law written by nature in the heart of the law given in writing. They hold that this same law also pertains to the grace of God because God gave it to human beings as a help. (Note 4: see Is 8:20 LXX).” Augustine, letter175:2, Works, p. 135
“The do not want to acknowledge that grace by which, as was said, we are Christians. The apostle preached that grace when he said, For I take delight in the law of God in terms of my inner self, but I see another law in my members that resists the law of my mind and that holds me captive under the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. ( Rom 7:22-25). But they dare not attack it openly.” Letter 175:3, p. 135.
“For, whether he says that grace is free choice or that grace is the forgiveness of sins or that grace is the commandment of the law, he mentions none of those things that pertain to the conquest of concupiscence and of temptations by the aid of the Holy Spirit.” Letter 177:4, p143.
Augustine to Pope Innocent, A.D. 416:
“[Pelagius] should either be summoned to Rome by Your Reverence and carefully questioned about what he means by the grace by which he admits, if he really does admit it now, that human beings are helped to avoid sin and to live righteously, or you should handle this with him be letter.” Letter 177:3, p. 143
And Augustine, although critical of Pelagius, nevertheless continues to love him as a brother. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers...ers/
1102146.htm
Similarly, from The Deeds of Pelagius, Augustine writes:
“This is everything that my short letter contains, and that was the intention with which I dictated it.”
"To Pelagius, my beloved lord and brother for whom I long very much, Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. I am very grateful that you were so kind as to bring me joy by your letter and assure me of your good health. May the Lord reward you, my beloved lord and brother for whom I long very much, with the good things by which you may be good forever and live eternally with the eternal God. Though I do not find in myself the grounds for that praise for me which your kind letter contains, I cannot fail to be grateful for your good will toward the slight goodness I have. At the same time I admonish you rather to pray for me so that the Lord might make me the sort of person you think me already to be." And in another hand it says, "While keeping us in mind and enjoying good health, may you be pleasing to the Lord, my dear lord and brother for whom I long very much."
Augustine then comments on this letter:
"By my prayer in the closing line, namely, that he might be pleasing to the Lord, I indicated that this lies in God's grace rather than in the human will alone, since I did not exhort or command or teach him this, but uttered a prayer. If I were to exhort or command or teach him, I would show that it is also a matter of free choice, though I would not take anything away from God's grace. So too, by uttering a prayer, I certainly called attention to God's grace, though I did not destroy the choice of the will."
Works of Saint Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians, 1997, part 1, vol. 23, pp. 368-369
Finally, Augustine concludes this important work by mentioning some of the wicked deeds committed by certain followers of Pelagius
“Some crimes are reported to have been perpetrated there with incredible boldness after this trial by a band of depraved persons who are reputed to side with Pelagius in this evil. For instance, women and men servants of God under the care of the holy priest, Jerome, were criminally slaughtered, a deacon was killed, and their monastic buildings were burned. By God's mercy, a better fortified tower was just able to protect Jerome himself from the attack and assault of these godless persons. Concerning these matters, I see that we should rather hold our silence and await the course of action that our brother bishops think they should take with regard to such great evils. Who, after all, would believe that they could simply ignore them? “
“The wicked doctrines of this sort of people should be refuted by all Catholics, even by those who live far from those lands, so that they may not be able to do harm in any place to which they might come. But the wicked deeds, whose repression is matter for the discipline of the bishops where they are committed, should be punished there with pastoral care and pious severity by bishops who are in that place or are located nearby. We then who are located at such a distance ought to pray that these cases are there brought to such an outcome that it will not be necessary to pass further judgment on them elsewhere. Rather, it will be proper for us to make that outcome known so that the minds of all who have been seriously wounded by the rumor of the crimes spreading everywhere might be healed by God’s mercy in the future.” Ibid, Deeds of Pelagius, 66, p. 378
http://books.google.com/books?id...=1565480929&
lr=
And I would be remiss if I failed to mention Augustine’s comments regarding those splendid followers of Donatist.
“I have learned that the Circumcelliones and clergy of the Donatist faction belonging to the district of Hippo, whom the guardians of public order had brought to trial for their deeds, have been examined by your Excellency, and that the most of them have confessed their share in the violent death which the presbyter Restitutus suffered at their hands, and in the beating of Innocentius, another Catholic presbyter, as well as in digging out the eye and cutting off the finger of the said Innocentius. – Augustine, Letter 133 http://www.newadvent.org/fathers...ers/
1102133.htm
How similar the behavior of these ancient heretics to that of the mad followers of Luther and Calvin! Sadly it seems, hatred of the Catholic peace is nothing new. Alas.
The funny thing about Protestants accusing us of being Pelagian is that Catholics uphold the council of Orange more than Protestants do.
Dave and others,
I wouldn't consider Eoxy/RCism semi-pelagian and it's silly to damn people who believe they are cooperating with God but also ascribe everything to grace (Therese's quote in the catechism is often completely ignored) - I think most Arminians are Calvinists when it comes to their heart, just not their head. (However, there is a problem when you ask RCs or even Protestants about salvation and you get "I'm basically a good person, I try my best" type response). Anyways, why is it that you believe and your atheist neighbor doesn't? You both were given sufficient prevenient grace yes? Yet one rejected and one accepted. How is one said to cooperate in this transaction without ascribing some of it to his own effort then? Were you just better at lowering your defenses than the atheist? I believe many might just reply with "mystery", but Scripture seems to always point to God's sole initiative as well as completion in converting the will so that it desires Him.
Interlocutor:
I'll add something to your post: I don't think many of us are in the mutually exclusive positions of either 'believing, or not believing'. '
Many of us - myself more so over time - tend to be caught between two worlds: One of acceptance, and one of rejection. This world is called 'doubt.' I'm wracked with it of late, but that is a separate issue.
I pray to believe, and doubt a great deal, often heavily, with swings between flat-out rejection on one end, and skeptical belief on the other.
This does not fit into the category of Calvinism, nor strict Thomism either. Hence the theory of predestination ala Calvinism does not apply, unless this simply means I am one of the damned, non-elect.
However, in my mind, as I read Jesus as quoted in scriptures, I come out with a different theory: I have the original sin, and God gives me the grace to overcome it. For whatever reason through (weakening of the will and intellect, or the stain of O.S.), but God gives me the opportunity to do those oft-impugned (by various forms of Protestantism) works. Sometimes these help to get me through the chasms of belief and unbelief.
Odd.
I know many are in my boat, but many have a tough time admitting it to themselves, much less publicly.
Anyhow, I just thought I'd thow in my monkey wrench, as my experience does not fit the predestination template in the Calvinist sense at all.
My remark perhaps should be relegated to a different post, but does in it's original sense relate to the issue at hand.
My perspective is neither Pelagian nor is it semi. It is pretty-much within the spectrum of Catholic teaching, as I understand it.
I suspect I am a Mollinist.
Pardon my misspelling: Molinist.
Z,
Many of us - myself more so over time - tend to be caught between two worlds: One of acceptance, and one of rejection. This world is called 'doubt.' I'm wracked with it of late, but that is a separate issue.
But don’t be discouraged. I think many of us have felt, to a greater or lesser degree, and at various times, exactly as you, no matter how strong our faith. But take heart! The saintly Bishop Sheen (1895-1979) once said there were actually two kinds of grace: white grace and black grace.
“What form does this divine invasion take? It is an infection that gets into the soul. It is a grace, but up to this point we do not know the meaning of “grace”. There are two kinds of grace: white grace, which makes us pleasing to God, and black grace in which we fell his absence. Most people in the world today feel his absence – really feel it, even the atheists. It is not man who is on the quest for God. It is God who is on the quest for man. He leaves us restless. The first question in scripture is: “Man, where art thou?”
From Through the Year with Fulton Sheen, 1985, p. 22.
http://books.google.com/books?id...Cfn7nmJmY&
hl=en
And even the great saints have felt -sometimes very acutely - the Good God’s absence.
“Both St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Teresa of Avila spoke of a ‘game of love,’ in which God seems, by turns, to hide and then to return to the soul.”
http://books.google.com/books?
id...BJ3VSJd_ZpgkU_g
As for me, the “dingiest clot,” I can trace the outlines of my own complicated and ongoing spiritual journey in the words of the poet:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him…
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke…
And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
WHOM WILT THOU FIND TO LOVE IGNOBLE THEE,
Save Me, SAVE ONLY ME?…
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
RISE. CLASP MY HAND, AND COME.
http://www.umilta.net/hound.html
Ben, very good and thank you very much. All good stuff, and true, to-boot.
It would still be interesting though to see how a Calvinist wold 'splain my dilemma.
I 'spect it would fall under the rubric of 'P' for 'Perseverence of the Saints'...but since I am a Catholic and trust in Jesus Christ and his Church, I am not considered by a Calvinist as one of the 'elect' in the first place.
Mr. Temple...thoughts?
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