by Dr. Kim Riddlebarger
There is no teaching in Christian theology that offends our contemporaries (especially our Christian friends and family), any more then the teaching of sola gratia. Americans hate to be told "no," that they are helpless. Surprisingly, the greatest opposition to the biblical teaching on this point comes not from a secular culture, but from household-name leaders in the American Church. From contemporary figures such as Chuck Smith at Calvary Chapel to Bill Bright and Campus Crusade, to virtually all forms of revivalism and Pentecostalism which spring from the loins of one Charles Grandison Finney ... to Alexander Campbell and the Restorationist movement, to Joseph Smith and what later on became the cult known as Mormonism, to William Miller and the Adventist movement, and we can go on and on; all of these movements are based, at least in part, upon a denial of sola gratia, in direct opposition to Reformation theology, and the biblical teaching on this point. Americans hate to be told that God does not depend upon them and a decision that they make. And it is here, then, that we as Reformation Christians and historic Protestants run smack dab into our culture and to much of American Christianity. This is why our friends and families look at us like we have three heads when we speak of these doctrines. But this is the historic Protestant position, and the wholesale rejection of sola gratia demonstrates how far the "evangelical movement" has departed from the historic and biblical Evangelical faith.
This rejection of sola gratia is not new, in fact, it is an ancient heresy known as Pelagianism. Named for the monk Pelagius (who lived in the fourth century) and who was the arch-foe of St. Augustine, Pelagianism is that teaching which emphasizes the human freedom, sees original sin not as corruption and guilt inherited from our first father but simply the bad example introduced by into the world by Adam. Pelagianism sees grace as simply an influence enticing us to act upon proper information. And it is only natural that rugged, self-made, independent, frontier Americans would naturally gravitate to a theology that emphasized human ability and natural freedom to act. It is from Pelagius and not Holy Scripture that we derive the idea that children are born innocent, not sinful, and it is from Pelagius that we learn that sin is simply that which we do, not what we are. In the words of one historian, "America is very much in favor of this Pelagian idea that every individual can always make a new beginning, that he is able by his individual freedom to make decisions for or against the divine."
As American Christians moved to the frontier away from the established communities along the eastern seaboard, they also moved away from their Puritan and Calvinistic assessment of human nature. If we could conquer the west, build cities where there had been only wilderness, and if this was the fruit of our manifest destiny and our democratic ideal, then the "terrible honesty" of Calvinistic convictions, to use Ann Douglas' phrase, made little sense. In this context, Americans are rugged, capable and basically good people. And so, Pelagius became our patron saint and Charles Finney his main spokesman.
It is no accident that most of the Pelagianizing movements just mentioned, sprang up on the American frontier in a region in upper state New York, known to historians as the "burned over district," a region which produced millennialism and Millerites, Joseph Smith and Mormonism, Alexander Campbell and the Restoration movement, the Shakers and a host of others, all which grew up in the Wake of Charles Finney and his new measures. From a Reformed perspective, the "burned over district" is a kind of a theological Bermuda Triangle.
- Dr. Kim Riddlebarger, from his article "Grace Alone, an Evangelical Problem"