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7
AUTOSOTERISM
It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy.—Rom. 9 : 16.
II AUTOSOTERISM
There are fundamentally only two doctrines of sal- vation': that salvation is from God, and that sal- vation is from ourselves. The former is the doctrine of common Christianity; the latter is the doctrine of universal heathenism. “Тһе principle of heathen- ism," remarks Dr. Herman Bavinck,’ “is, negatively, the denial of the true God, and of the gift of his grace; and, positively, the notion that salvation can be secured by man’s own power and wisdom. ‘Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name.’ Gen. 11:4. Whether the works through which heathenism seeks the way of salvation bear a more ritual or a more ethical character, whether they are of a more positive or of a more negative nature, in any case man remains his own saviour; all religions except the Christian are autosoteric. . . . And philosophy has made no advance upon this: even Kant and Schopenhauer, who, with their eye on the inborn sin- fulness of man recognize the necessity of a regenera- tion, come in the end to an appeal to the will, the wisdom, and the power of man.”
It was quite apposite, therefore, when Jerome pro- nounced Pelagianism, the first organized system of
[37]
THE PLAN OF SALVATION
self-salvation taught in the Church, the “heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno. It was in effect the crystalli- zation in Christian forms of the widely diffused Stoic ethics, by which the thought of men had been governed through the whole preceding history of the Church.* Around the central principle of the plenary ability of the human will, held with complete confidence and proclaimed, not in the weak negative form that obliga- tion is limited by ability, but in the exultant positive form that ability is fully competent to all obligation, Pelagius, no mean systematizer, built up a complete autosoteric system.” On the one side this system was protected by the denial of any “fall” suffered by man- kind in its first head, and accordingly of any entail of evil, whether of sin or mere weakness, derived from its past history. Every man is born in the same con- dition in which Adam was created; and every man continues throughout life in the same condition in which he is born. By his fall Adam at most has set us a bad example, which, however, we need not follow unless we choose; and our own past sins, while, of course, we may be called to account for them and must endure righteous punishment on their account, cannot in any way abridge or contract our inherent power of doing what is right. “I say," declared Pelagius “that man is able to be without sin, and that he is able to keep the commandments of God." And this ability remains intact after not only Adam's sin but any and every sin of our own. It is, says Julian of Eclanum, “just as complete after sins as it was before [38]
AUTOSOTERISM
sins.”’ At any moment he chooses, therefore, any
man can cease all sinning and from that instant on- ward be and continue perfect. On the other hand, this round assertion of entire ability to fulfill every righteousness is protected by the denial of all “grace,” in the sense of inward help from God. As such help from God is not needed, neither is it given; every man in the most absolute sense works out his own salvation: whether with fear and trembling or not, will depend solely on his particular temperament. To be sure the term “grace” is too deeply imbedded in the Scriptural representations to be altogether discarded. The Pelagians therefore continued to employ it, but they explained it after a fashion which voided it of its Scriptural pregnancy. By “grace” they meant the fundamental endowment of man with his in- alienable freedom of will, and along with that, the inducements which God has brought to bear on him to use his freedom for good.