“Salvation is variously expressed, sometimes as ‘justification by faith’, in which case it means that the just person has accepted the offer of a covenantal relationship, and lives according to that covenant.” (Mennonite)
“all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.” CCC 2068 (Roman Catholic)
[These three statements are ranked in descending order from most to least Pelagian. The Roman Catechism at least uses a monergistic tone to describe their doctrine of justification by interior renewal. Nonetheless in condemning the Jansenists the Papacy sided with the Semi-Pelagians once and for all against Augustine.]
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For each group Salvation is a gift given as a potential. Justification in this schema functions like free IKEA furniture, it was gracious of them to give it to you, but there’s a lot of assembly required. Ultimately at the end of the day giving a paralytic or mentally handicapped person IKEA furniture isn’t going to do anything for them. They won’t have a chair to sit in or a bed to lay in, they’ll just have useless boxes they can’t seem to do anything with. This is why each of these groups rejects the effects of Original Sin. Only someone capable of doing a lot themselves, can help build their own furniture / salvation. Each group portrays the constructor, gradually increasing in ability to work with the gifts, and make an active participation. Since the Papists are fond of Aristotle lets use one of his distinctions here.
In the schema of these three systems God provides the material: grace, and man forms it into salvation. This would mean salvation is materially God’s work, but formally (and more fully) man’s work. RCism tries to get around this by saying the work is moved by grace, however when you ask does this grace require free cooperation, they say yes, which means it isn’t done by grace, it’s done by human work / willing. In the end, one must ask the question, if man is capable of doing so much on his own, why can’t he do it without God’s material?
The Second Vatican Council asked this exactly, and came to an interesting conclusion, that basically, since man just needs to make the right decisions and work hard enough, it doesn’t matter so much whether his faith is in Shiva or Christ or Allah, since he’s doing good works, he’s trying his hardest with the materials he’s been given. To use our metaphor: if in the end, he makes a table out of wood or aluminum, does it really matter?
Most people like the IKEA Gospel, it seems fair to them. Very American and Capitalistic. Pull oneself up by their own bootstraps. Barrack Obama implictly endorsed it when he said a poor Indian who’s never heard of Christ couldn’t be judged by a just God and sent to Hell. And again, it all rests on the foundational question of what is man?
The IKEA Gospel loves to talk about man being made in the Image of God, but doesn’t like to talk about the Fall of Man, where humanity placed their trust in the promises of Satan rather than the promises of God. The IKEA Gospel likes to talk about the Incarnation and the moral teachings of Christ, but not about why such a good or at least benign humanity managed to kill the author of Life on the wood of the cross.
In the IKEA Gospel, man is his own Lord and Saviour, since Christ doesn’t want to interfere (since that’d be unfair), and man can handle it anyway.
Glorious