From their book “All Things New” Fiona and Terryl Givens:
. . . . Throughout the Middle Ages. . . the lamentable legacy of creeds triumphed over a parental, feeling God. Thomas Aquinas, the second most influential voice in the shaping of Christianity affirmed,“To sorrow . . . over the misery of others belongs not to God.”15 This state of affairs, espoused by numerous theologians and prominent Christian authorities, was lamented by twentieth century theologian Nicolas Berdyaev: “The God whom official theology tends to construct has no profound relationship with men; he is turned to stone.16 The departure from original Christian vision is plain: our origin as children of compassionate Heavenly Parents has been nullified.
Other fatal developments had unfolded in the late fourth century, when the focus of debate in the Christian church shifted from the Trinity to the role of human will and of God’s grace in our salvation. Augustine’s contemporary, Pelagius, a British monk intent on reforming the moral laxity of the church in Rome had stirred up controversy by his spirited attack on the doctrine of original sin—a doctrine championed by Augustine. An inspired Pelagius denied human depravity and argued that salvation depended in large degree on our freedom to choose between good and evil. He taught that “God, in making man in His own likeness, did not leave him ’naked and defenseless’ in the face of his desires but provided the armaments of reason and wisdom, so that he could choose to act virtuously.”17
. . . .In other words, “ Pelagius and his followers were moral optimists, They propound that all human beings were born innocent. Infants do not enter the world with a special endowment of virtue, but neither do they carry the innate stain of vice. We possess in ourselves the possibility of choosing good over evil.” But common observation shows that evil is pervasive. How to explain this? For Pelagius, evil “was essentially social: we become whoever we are largely through imitation.”18 The idea that humans have the ability to choose good over evil turns out to be precisely what King Benjamin and Paul taught, though their language has frequently confused Latter-day Saints and Christians of other denominations alike.“Yes, the natural man is an enemy to God and will be forever and ever, unless . . . he putteth off the natural man” (Mosiah 3:19). However moments before he spoke those words, King Benjamin had affirmed the automatic salvation of children and in the next breath he insists it is to the state of the child (i.e., a pre-social being) that the natural man must to return to become “a saint.” Given the Augustinian view of a child as the clearest evidence of the corrupt Adamic inheritance, the difference between King Benjamin’s view and Augustine’s position could hardly be starker. Benjamin and Paul both teach that the state in which humans begin life is one of innocence, blamelessness. In any case, the expression natural man is Pauline. As Paul employs the term it has reference to an acquired worldliness (one we can “put off”; it is not a statement about human ontology, inherited nature, or innate attributes. In this triple parallelism, the Apostle contrasts “spirit of the world” with the spirit that is “of God,” what “man’s wisdom teacheth” with what “the Holy Ghost teacheth” and “the natural man” with “he that is spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:12-14). Natural is in this formulaiton clearly a worldly acquisition that comes from worldly wisdom and human teachings. The poet Christian Wiman put the case in words that defy the traditional Christian view but echo Restoration understanding: “Our natures—and nature itself—are not corrupt . . . but unfinished,”19 Destroying the influence of Pelagius, however, became the central preoccupation of ultimately victorious Augustine. ~ Fiona and Terryl Givens, All Things New, Rethinking Sin, Salvation and Everything in Between (Meridian, ID: Faith Matter Publishing, 2020). 37-39
