pgwolv
Puritan Board Freshman
In my thread on the personal nature of God in Calvinism, several of you mentioned that Provisionism seems to be a new form of semi-Pelagianism. I had mentioned this to the other party before. His response was as follows:
I don't have enough knowledge on the subject to know what the evidence for his claims are. Can any of you give me pointers, or should I ask him directly? It's been months since we've had this conversation, so I would rather not discuss it with him now; rather, I want to know if any of you have come across this stance.Semi-pelagianism is construct made up by Beza to boogieman his opponents. It is a figment of his imagination. Beza called his opponents Semi-pelagians in order to boogieman them by comparing them to some Fransican Monks that argued with Augustine. The specific monks that he called semi-pelagian were embraced as brothers by Augustine, while he challenged their spiritual doctrine, so not even Augustine would have called them heretics. There is no such thing as a pelagian or semi-pelagian. I have spent many hours trying to find a single one and have totally failed. Even Pelagius was not pelagian by his own denial of the 14 points of that Augustine accused him with, and I have yet to see a single one of those points in Pelagius' writings. He called the 14 points that Augustine accused him with anathema and was cleared by 3 separate church councils before he was finally condemned as a heretic by a 4th council who tried him in absentia.
Pelagianism, and subsequently semi-pelagianism, has no school of thought espoused by a teacher and followed by students. Scholars are unable to agree on a definition of 'Pelagianism' or on criteria by which to classify texts as 'Pelagian' (or not). The history of scholarship on 'Pelagianism' shows that, when examined, the concept did not stand up to scrutiny; it cannot be defined, nor are there criteria by which a text can be classified as 'Pelagian'. There is also plenty of evidence to show that Augustine simply wanted to establish his theology as an argument against Pelagius, whether or not Pelagius believed it. His motivation was about fighting against this imaginary argument which Pelagius never presented and history has always been on the side of the winner. I agree with Pelagius that Augustine's 14 points against "pelagianism" are anathema and heresey. The problem is that no one actually ever taught it. It is the most influential strawman in all of church history and Augustine annihilated that strawman. Much of Calvinism and Reformed theology points at that strawman and throws anyone who says that they can respond positively to the work of the Holy Spirit into the heretic Pelagius' camp when no one argues the strawman."