Actually, I was seeking to attract Calvinists for a discussion about grace alone; pelagianism has been in years past a YUGE topic in Calvinist threads, but there was a false notion that this was a point of departure between Calvinism and Catholic theology.
Actually, I was seeking to attract Calvinists for a discussion about grace alone; pelagianism has been in years past a YUGE topic in Calvinist threads, but there was a false notion that this was a point of departure between Calvinism and Catholic theology.
Have fun.
It still is. In Catholicism, while grace can't be earned, once bestowed it enables one to deserve Heaven. In Fundamentalist Protestantism (at least as I always understood it), it isn't grace but salvation that is freely bestowed. There's a world of difference there. Naturally to anyone of this latter view, the former is going to seem Pelagian.
Fundamentalist Protestants can't really see G-d as capable of creating anything less perfect than He is (an error since by definition anything other than G-d is less perfect than G-d). "Heaven" is simply the world as it was originally created. There was no "test," no provisional period between this world and the next. G-d simply created absolute perfection, and "salvation" is the restoration of this original perfection. In this view it is literally impossible to "merit salvation" any more than one can merit being created in the first place. Thus all human action becomes superfluous.
It was a long time until I could see the flaws in this worldview. For one, as mentioned above, anything G-d created is going to be other than Him and therefore less perfect than He is, however sinless it is. Second, G-d obviously gave Adam and Eve a test when he commanded them not to eat of the fruit (if the world really had been merely created to be Heaven, such a commandment would not have been given). And third, the first sin was not committed by a "fallen" man but by the perfect man. Then you have the Jewish exegesis that when G-d commanded Adam to "guard" and to "keep" the Garden of Eden, the former referred to negative commandments and the latter positive commandments. If the world had been created to be Heaven, no such commandments would have been given.
I suppose all this makes Fundamentalist Protestants look bad to some people, but there is a consistency in their worldview lacking in historical chrstianity. Traditionally, Paul's "antinomian" teachings have been applied only to the Torah, leaving human effort (and even post-Biblical ritual and ceremonial) untouched. There is an inconsistency here. If Biblical rituals and ceremonies commanded directly from the Mouth of G-d are of no use, then how much the more so ('al 'achat kammah vekhammah) are post-Biblical rituals and ceremonies which developed slowly over hundreds of years of no account? Once one begins doing away with rituals and ceremonies, 'im ken, 'ein ladavar sof (if that were so, there would be no end to the matter). This is an inconsistency that all the history and all the authenticity in the world cannot solve. Thus the ultimate end result of the rejection of Protestant "antinomianism" is Judaism, since both Catholicism and Orthodoxy simply go in that direction. Why stop half or two thirds of the way?