The difference between knowledge and love
Now even Pelagius should frankly confess that this grace is plainly set forth in the inspired Scriptures. He should not, with shameless insolence, hide the fact that he has too long opposed it. Let him admit it with healthy regret, so that the holy Church may cease to be troubled by his stubborn persistence, and rejoice instead in his sincere conversion. Let him distinguish between knowledge and love, as they ought to be distinguished. For ‘knowledge puffs up, but love builds up’ (1 Cor.8:1). Knowledge no longer puffs up when love builds up. And since each is the gift of God (although one is less, and the other greater), Pelagius must not extol our righteousness above the praise which is due to God Who justifies us. Yet this is what he does, when he says that the lesser of these two gifts (knowledge) is assisted by divine grace, and claims that the greater gift (love) comes from the human will.
But if Pelagius agrees that we receive love from the grace of God, he must not think that any virtues of our own preceded our reception of the gift. For what virtues could we possibly have had, at the time when we did not love God? Indeed, so that we might receive the love that enables us to love, God loved us while as yet we had no love ourselves. This the apostle John most expressly declares: ‘Not that we loved God,’ says he, ‘but that He loved us’ (1 Jn.4:10). And again, ‘We love Him, because He first loved us’ (1 Jn.4:19). Most excellently and truly spoken! For we could not have any power to love Him, unless we received it from Him in His first loving us. And what good could we possibly do if we possessed no love? But how could we help doing good if we have love? God’s command may appear sometimes to be kept by those who do not love Him, but only fear Him; but where there is no love, God does not reckon any work as good, nor is there any ‘good work’ rightly so called. For ‘whatever is not from faith is sin’ (Rom.14:23) and ‘faith works by love’ (Gal.5:6).
On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin, 1:27
"Now even Pelagius should frankly confess that this grace is plainly set forth in the inspired Scriptures."
ReplyDeleteThe Pelagius of old mayhaps did accept Paul's writings as scripture, but how would you convince a Pelagian who rejects Paul as a false apostle and his twistings of the Old Testament as demonic spew?
By twistings of the Old Testament, I refer to such passages as Romans 4:5-8 where Paul claims "David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputes righteousness without works" -- yet David describes no such thing, not in Psalm 32 (the place Paul claims it is) nor anywhere else. Anyone literate in the Psalms knows Paul is lying through his teeth.
But Pelagius was given to the same sort of wishful thinking as Augustine, namely the wish that Paul's epistles were inspired and that Paul were an apostle in truth. But Paul is not and his epistles are not. And many such twistings of the Old Testament found in Paul prove it well.
To then, the new Pelagian, how do you argue? Can you show the imaginary Pauline grace in the Old Testament without twisting it as your apostle of the heretics (one of Tertullian's titles for Paul) did?