According to Semi-Pelagianism, human beings are affected by sin but can still choose the good and, in the common formulation of the medieval period, "God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within them" (repeated substantially in Benjamin Franklin's famous adage, "God helps those who help themselves."
- Michael Horton The Christian Faith, pg. 561 Arminianism & Semi-Pelagianism: While distinct, what these two views hold in common is that they both are synergistic soteriological constructs. These heterodox belief systems about grace are plaguing the church of the 21st century. In all synergistic theology, sola fide cooperates with God's grace as the human fulfillment of a condition for the actualization of a saving possibility (a mere possibility) that God universally offers. Such a faith-contribution is itself a principle standing ultimately independent of God's action of grace; it owes exclusively to man's natural endowment with a free will and thus arises out of an inherent capacity of the natural man. Because election is God's response to foreseen faith (a non sequitur), faith becomes to some extent the cause or sine qua non of salvation, and we again have justification because of "conditioned" faith, with Grace merely perfecting Nature. Arminianism thus reintroduced the dialectics of Nature and Grace by setting faith over against grace as an independent, autonomous, (ultimate, not penultimate) principle.
Monergism.com
- Michael Horton The Christian Faith, pg. 561 Arminianism & Semi-Pelagianism: While distinct, what these two views hold in common is that they both are synergistic soteriological constructs. These heterodox belief systems about grace are plaguing the church of the 21st century. In all synergistic theology, sola fide cooperates with God's grace as the human fulfillment of a condition for the actualization of a saving possibility (a mere possibility) that God universally offers. Such a faith-contribution is itself a principle standing ultimately independent of God's action of grace; it owes exclusively to man's natural endowment with a free will and thus arises out of an inherent capacity of the natural man. Because election is God's response to foreseen faith (a non sequitur), faith becomes to some extent the cause or sine qua non of salvation, and we again have justification because of "conditioned" faith, with Grace merely perfecting Nature. Arminianism thus reintroduced the dialectics of Nature and Grace by setting faith over against grace as an independent, autonomous, (ultimate, not penultimate) principle.
Monergism.com
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