Does Adventism today lean more towards Pelagianism or Augustinianism? Are there differences between theoretical adventism and folk adventism in this regard? Replies asked from those members who know the difference between Pelagianism and Augustinianism.

/Thomas

Perhaps we need to be agreed in what Adventism today believes. Shall we go by the official belief of the SDA church as given in the 28 FB. as the official belief of Adventism today on nature of man?


västergötland, why don't you furnish us with what Pelagius and Augustine of Hippo, each taught and believed. It is always good to state the issues up front before a discussion.

Yes, let's start with standard definitions of Pelagianism and Augustinianism, and see how they compare to the 28 Fundamentals.

Somebody once asked me whether I was a Pelagianist. It appears he thought my ideas resembled his. I had to assure him that I had never heard of the guy. (They are always guys, aren't they?).

Yeah. It seems nobody bothered to write down what the gals said.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagianism comes the following:

I can't seem to find anything on Augustinianism there.

You might look under Augustine of Hippo, down the page.

Crater,

I would love to provide such a definition if I thought myself qualified to do so. However, the truth is that two weeks ago I didnt know enough about these two church thinkers to ask the question in the OP, and today I know only enough to ask it. However, the presence of individuals on this board who have studied church history and theology encourages me that competent and informative definitions and perhaps also an analysis may come.

Thomas

In talking to adherents of certain independent ministries some years back I got the impression they endorsed the views of Pelagius. One of these men stated, Give me a newborn baby and I will bring it up to use its own will right and never sin. He claimed the rest of us had our thinking tainted with the views of Augustine on Original Sin, and therefore we believed it was impossible for humans to live without sinning. Those people were constantly telling us regular Adventists that our teachings were heretical because we believed in the Original Sin of Augustine.

My reply was that we believed in Original Sin, but not the way Augustine taught it. But their argument was that it was impossible to believe in Original Sin without it being as Augustine taught it.

I was tempted to ask him why he had not brought up his own children in perfection.

If you want me to I'll give you the gist of what Augustine taught on Original Sin.

I better tell you what Augustine taught, although I am not prepared to give you the references, because they would have to be gathered far and wide from his writings.

Augustine was a great systematic theologian. We have often heard the story of his praying mother, Monica, who prayed he would become a Christian. When he finally did accept Christianity he was a professor of speech at the University in Milan. From then on he worked thoroughly finding theological reason for all the doctrines of the church. He became so good at it that no theologian during the middle ages would qualify unless at least 75% of his writings or sayings consisted of quotations from Augustine. So you see his writings became more important than the Bible.

Augustine found two practices for which the church had no theological explanations, so in stead of discarding them he sat down and wrote a theology to justify then. These two were the celibacy of the clergy, monks and nuns, and infant baptism. In order to justify these he had to make a definition of sin and how it is transmitted from father to son.

Psalm 51 was one of the texts he used to "discovered" how this transmission took place. So in at least one of his sermons that I have read he preached that sin is found between the legs in human beings. In his writings he makes it clear that sin is therefore transmitted through sex from parents to their offspring.

Because children are born in sin it is essential that they be cleansed from this original sin. That is done by infant baptism, and the child has no possibility of being saved without this ritual. If the child is deadly sick then anyone can perform the needed baptism before it dies.

Sex has become essential to perpetuate humanity. It seems to me that Augustine indicates it becomes less sinful if you learn how to do it without any kind of sinful enjoyment, but anyhow infant baptism is essential.

Not all should indulge in this sinful act, so it is important that priests refrain from marriage. Also monks and nuns do their part in avoiding too much sin in the church.

This is how Augustine developed his doctrine of original sin to explain infant baptism and celibacy.

In my younger days I took an oral exam in Augustine at a University in Sweden. When my Lutheran professor wanted me to define his teachings on original sin, I said he might think I was biased in my reading of Augustine because of my Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, and that I might seem to attack his belief in infant baptism. After I gave this account he stated that I had understood the core of the teachings of Augustine, and my exam was fully accepted.