Paul, Augustine, Pelagius, and Orange

[Guest]

He negelected to give the Conclusion to the Council of Orange's document:

"According to the catholic faith we also believe that after grace has been received through baptism, all baptized persons have the ability and responsibility, if they desire to labor faithfully, to perform with the aid and cooperation of Christ what is of essential importance in regard to the salvation of their soul. We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema. We also believe and confess to our benefit that in every good work it is not we who take the initiative and are then assisted through the mercy of God, but God himself first inspires in us both faith in him and love for him without any previous good works of our own that deserve reward, so that we may both faithfully seek the sacrament of baptism, and after baptism be able by his help to do what is pleasing to him. We must therefore most evidently believe that the praiseworthy faith of the thief whom the Lord called to his home in paradise, and of Cornelius the centurion, to whom the angel of the Lord was sent, and of Zacchaeus, who was worthy to receive the Lord himself, was not a natural endowment but a gift of God's kindness."



Two things are affirmed here:


1) Double predestination is heresy.


2) Synergism (co-operative grace) is Biblical.



Thomas C. Oden, in "The Transforming Power of Grace" (p.120) notes:


"In answering semi-Pelagianism, Rome. . . largely took the Augustinian position, but carefully avoided commitment to the extreme aspects of Augustine, such as absolute double-predestination."