9696	Forums / Theology Forum / The Bible Driven Church	on: January 29, 2006, 06:13:09 AM
I am not disagreeing with you. I am giving you the confession as well. I agree that we must work toward being sanctified. As i stated we are given the means of grace in order to be sanctified. What do you mean that i am trying to cut sanctification out all together? My problem with what you said above is that you left out the details of the doctrine of justification and our corruption and good works. Do you believe that good works are only acceptable because of Christ righteousness? First you are mixing pelaginism with semi pelaginism in your description of the other side. I was not saying that the semi pelaginist believed that we must work to be saved. That is the Roman error-pelaginism-. Semi plagenist believe that we are saved by grace through faith but they have a kink in their system of doctrine when they say that the will is not corrupted.Which has a profound effect on how they view justification by faith. Now they say that a person must exercise faith in order to be regenerated. We believe that we are dead in sins and are unable to come to God until He regenerates us. They believe in a different grace than we do. They believe that grace can be resisted, we believe that grace is irresistible. Now if i believed that grace can be resisted dont you think that i would approach these practical out-workings in a much different way than a Calvinist? If i thought that i was able to choose salvation of my own free will ,dont you think that i would live my christian life with that view in my works? I would try to hold onto my salvation by working to keep it even tho i acknowledge that salvation was by grace. I believe that words mean things, we create propositions with them that bring about a world view that effect how a person lives. We do not think in a divided way about doctrine and the practical. We are not saying \" Now that we know the doctrine lets get to the practical\" which would be like saying \"now that we are saved lets put our bibles on the shelf and create a system of philosophy for behavior. \" Which simplified is \"God will do when you do \"We believe doctrine makes the practice correct. \"Sanctify them by thy truth thy word is truth.\" The word is the chief means to effect the proper practical outworking. A semi pelagenist represents the will as being in-between two equal forces ,the good and the bad. This makes the will powerless, which puts the force on the object of choice. This is pragmatism. This thinking elevates philosophy to an equal level of scripture. Scripture must stand alone as the absolute authority. This thinking has a great effect on the practical out-workings of individuals and church societies. We need to be very detailed as to what we believe in order for us to logically think through the doctrine of sanctification because we are either too self righteous or we are always disobedient. Both extremes are sin.