Today we will continue reading the Reverend Louis DeBoer's book, God's Great Salvation, Chapter 13, Moral Ability and Accountability. Arminians have long argued against the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity on the basis that it is contrary to any just and fair concept of moral accountability. They argue that moral accountability has to be limited by moral ability. They believe that God cannot require of man anything that man is unable to perform. Therefore man is not accountable to keep God's law and obey His commandments unless he has the ability to do so. Since the Bible commands men to repent, therefore men must have the moral ability to repent. Similarly, since the Bible commands men to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore men must have the ability to believe. They must be able, by their own powers, to have faith in Christ. Therefore men must be capable of responding to the gospel and turning to God while yet in their natural and unregenerate state. However, as we have already noted, the logical conclusions of Arminian thought can be disastrous. In this particular case it has led to such heresies as Finney's perfectionism. It was a perfectly logical development and a smooth transition from one to the other. Earlier the Wesleyans had developed their own doctrine of perfectionism. They had taught that God had graciously relaxed the requirements of his law to accommodate the capacities of sinful men. They held that God no longer required full legal obedience to his law, but that he would accept an evangelical obedience that was sincerely required as the best that man could do. Finney and the other Oberlin men scorned to take such a position, but arrived at the very same end point nonetheless. They argue that God had not relaxed his standards at all. However, God's law only requires men to do what they have the moral ability to do. From that position, a position held by many modern Arminians, it was a straight shot to perfectionism. If man's accountability is limited by his moral ability, then all he needs to do to be sinless is to cease from those particular sins that he had the power and ability to overcome. To be sinless no longer requires a perfect and full obedience to all of God's precepts. It only requires him to do all that he is capable of doing in conforming to them. And if he does that, then he is sinless, then he is perfect, Perfection becomes not only attainable by man's own efforts, it clearly becomes a realistic duty to attain unto it. That perfectionism is entirely unscriptural is evidenced by such biblical statements as the following one by David, I have seen an end of all perfection, but thy commandment is exceeding broad. Psalm 119 verse 96. David is saying that there is no sinless perfection in this life. He is stating that God's commandments are so comprehensive covering all aspects of our lives that it is impossible for men to satisfy the law and fulfill all its obligations. Only one man in history has been able to do so and that was Jesus Christ the second Adam. whose human nature was filled with the Holy Spirit beyond measure so that he could not and did not sin. Warfield, in his excellent book on the subject, Perfectionism, reviews and analyzes this doctrine succinctly and accurately. His comments are extremely insightful. Quote, To be perfect he does not require to love as God loves. in whose love all righteousness is embraced, or as the angels love, or as Adam loved, or even as any better man than he loves. He only requires to love as he himself, being what he is, and in the condition in which he finds himself, can love. If he loves all he can love in his present condition he is perfect. No matter how he came into his present condition, suppose, if you will, that he came into it by a long course of vice, or by some supreme act of vice. It makes no difference. His obligation is limited by his ability. We cannot say he ought to do more than he can do. If he does all that he can do, he has no further obligation. He is perfect. The moral idiot, Finney does not hesitate to say it, is as perfect as God is. Being a moral idiot, he has no moral obligation. When he has done nothing at all, he has done all that he ought to do, he is perfect. God himself cannot do more than all he ought to do, and when he has done all he ought to do, he is no more perfect than the moral idiot is, although what he has done is to fulfill all that is ideally righteous, and the moral idiot has done nothing. In this conception, the law of God, complete obedience to which is perfection, is made a sliding scale. Obligation here is interpreted in terms of ability. with the result that each man becomes a law to himself, creating his own law, while the objective law of God, the standard of holiness in all, is annulled, and there are as many laws, as many standards of holiness, as there are moral beings. Not content with this general adjustment of the requirements of the law to the moral capacity of sinful men, He pushes the principle to such an extreme as to adjust them in detail to the moral capacity of each individual sinner, all the way down to moral idiocy, with the effect of making our sin the excuse for our sin, until we may cease to be sinners altogether by simply becoming sinful enough the acquisition of unconquerable habits of evil by progressively destroying obligation renders perfection ever easier of acquisition by constantly reducing the content of the perfection to be acquired, and that one of the surest roads to salvation is therefore to become incurably wicked." And continuing with Warfield, To these propositions, little more than hinted at by Cowles, Finney gives the definiteness of dogmatic statement. When he comes, in his views of sanctification, to the point where he discusses the attainableness of entire sanctification, he lays down the fundamental proposition that entire and permanent sanctification is attainable in this life. This he at once pronounces self-evident on the grounds of natural ability. To deny this, he affirms, is to deny that a man is able to do as well as he can. And he declares, the very language of the law bears out the assertion, because in requiring us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and the rest it levels its claims to the capacity of the subject, however great or small. If there were a moral pygmy, he would be required to love God up to his pygmy strength. If we morally mutilate ourselves, we may no doubt be answerable for doing it, but having thus reduced our powers, we would have lessened our responsibility to the law and could be entirely sanctified on this lower ground. An angel is bound to exercise an angel's strength. a man the strength of a man, and a child the strength of a child. Now, he sums up, as entire sanctification consists in perfect obedience to the law of God, and as the law requires nothing more than the right use of whatever strength we have, it is of course forever settled that a state of entire and permanent sanctification is attainable in this life on the ground of natural ability. This, he says, is new school doctrine, and necessarily new school doctrine. Ability limits obligation. Hence there is no obligation where there is no ability. Hence it is but an identical proposition. It is possible for every man to do all that is required of him, not all that may be required of another man, and that is to be perfect." The Arminian argument is that God cannot require anything that man has no natural ability to perform. Yet, as we can clearly see from all the above, that lays a solid and logical foundation for the heresy of perfectionism. Grant the former, and logically it will be hard to refrain from granting the latter That most modern Arminians do not hold to perfectionism is again due to a happy inconsistency, a lack of rigorous application of their principles. That Arminians for the most part are far better than the tendencies of their theology does not diminish the dangers inherent in their errors. For by their theory that moral ability limits accountability The drunkard, before he was a drunkard, had a moral obligation to control his drinking. However, now that he is a drunkard, now that he is addicted, now that he cannot control himself, he has no obligation to stop being a drunkard. His sin has become the excuse for his sin. His wickedness and corruptions have now excused him from the obligation to cease therefrom. The same would hold true for being a drug addict, or even a serial adulterer or fornicator. Their addiction to sin becomes the excuse for their sin. This is the doctrine of the world of unbelieving men. But is it the doctrine of the Scripture? I think not. The Scriptures repeatedly condemn both drunkenness and drug usage. In the book of Revelation there are a number of references to sorceries. The Greek word is pharmakia from which we obtain our modern English word pharmacy, pharmaceuticals, etc. The Greek word is basically referring to drug usage. Young translates it as enchantment with drugs. Now how does God treat drunkenness? How does he react to such violations of his law? Does God allow for men's moral incapacities as He deals with this particular sin? The testimony of Scripture is clear that He uncompromisingly condemns it. He declares through His High Priest, How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee, 1 Samuel 1 14. He commands that it be punished by death under the Old Covenant, commanding and they shall say unto the rulers of his city this our son is stubborn and rebellious he will not obey our voice he is a glutton and a drunkard and all the men of the city shall stone him with stones that he die so shall thou put evil away from among you and all Israel shall hear and fear Deuteronomy 21 verses 20 and 21 He requires believers to separate from a professing believer who is a drunkard, commanding through the Apostle. In 1 Corinthians 5 verse 11, But now have I written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or a covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such in one know not to eat. And God makes it clear that such that are drunkards will be finally and eternally rejected by him, saying, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. There is certainly no hint here that God accommodates His judgments on such addicting vices according to the moral abilities of the sinner. And sorcery or drug usage fares little better. As God rains down His plagues on those who commit such sins, it is plain that He expects them, without exception, to repent, as He complains Revelation 9.21, neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. He intends to exclude all such from the kingdom of God from the New Jerusalem, saying, for without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. Revelation 22 15, and to cast them into the lake of fire as he threatened saying but the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death. Revelation 21 verse 8 In none of these passages is there any hint that God judges sinners on a sliding scale and calibrates his judgments according to their moral abilities. When they are not logically defending their theology, Arminians recognize the truth of all this. When they confront drunkards and drug addicts who are hopelessly enslaved to their vices, they tell them that they need to repent and reform. and that only the power of God can deliver them. Even Finney, in his writings, makes statements to that effect. However, that becomes inconsistent nonsense. Having made it a cardinal point of doctrine that man has the natural ability to do all that God requires of him, it is fatuous window dressing to then sanctimoniously preach on about the necessity of divine grace and the power of the Spirit in overcoming sin. After all, by his definition, if it can't be overcome by one's own natural ability, it isn't sin. Finney presses his case for perfectionism and his definition of man's accountability even further. Again, as Warfield sums up, Finney tells us that entire sanctification does not imply the same degree of faith in everybody. It does not, for example, imply the same degree of faith in us sinners that might have been exercised but for our ignorance and past sin. It requires a lower degree of faith to make a sinner perfectly holy than is required to make a saint perfectly holy. and the worse sinners we are, the lower the degree of faith that is required to make us perfectly holy. It does not resolve this paradox to observe that Finney is obviously confusing here the degree of faith exercised and the amount of knowledge which is possessed of the object on which faith rests. What he means to say, however, is that the less knowledge we have of God and divine things, the less faith is required of us that we may be perfect. The proposition on which he relies for support runs, We cannot believe anything about God of which we have no evidence or knowledge, and therefore entire sanctification implies nothing more than the heart's faith or confidence in all the truth that is perceived by the intellect. The deflecting influence here is derived from his doctrine that as obligation is limited by ability, he who does all he can, being what he is, is as perfect as God himself. On this ground he declares that perfection in a heathen would imply much less faith than in a Christian. Perfection in an adult would imply much more and greater faith than in an infant, and perfection in an angel would imply much greater faith than in man, just in proportion as he knows more of God than man. Our attention is attracted for the moment by the suggestion that perfection is conceivable in a heathen. This is not a slip. Finney Fully means it. The heathen, he exclaims, are not under obligation to believe in Christ and thousands of other things of which they have no knowledge. Not being under obligation to believe in Christ, of course, they can be perfect without believing in Him. If they have heart-faith or confidence in all the truth that is perceived by the intellect, they will not be kept from being perfect by lack of faith in Christ, of whom they have no knowledge. Perfection clearly is not conceived as the product of Christ in the heart and life of him who believes in him. It is not Christ, but faith that makes us perfect, and it apparently does not much matter what the object is on which that faith rests. The faith of a fetish worshipper, provided it embraces all he knows, is as efficacious to produce perfection in him as the faith of a John or a Paul." Here Finney goes on to state, not only that accountability is limited by ability, but that ability is limited by knowledge. Hence, of course, one's moral accountability is limited by one's knowledge. This establishes that which modern jurisprudence has never allowed, that ignorance of the law is an excuse. This is also contravened by the clear teaching of scripture. The scriptures teach that there are varying degrees of sin. In the first degree of sin, sins are characterized as sins of ignorance. Sins of ignorance are sins that are committed inadvertently. They are thus distinguished from sins that are committed deliberately. The latter are committed willfully and knowingly. The former are committed because a person didn't know any better. David speaks of this in his prayers to the Lord when he seeks to be kept from sin. Psalm 19 verses 12 and 13. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins, let them not have dominion over me, then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression." David acknowledges the deceitfulness of sin, he admits that he does not know his sins, he does not understand them, he prays to be cleansed of secret faults, to be forgiven of those things he has done in sinful ignorance. The word for secret in the Hebrew is Ketar, with a root meaning of to hide or to cover. David seeks pardon of those sins that he has committed which are hidden from him, those sins of which he has no knowledge. David confesses his sins of ignorance. He confesses that this is a universal problem and that no man can know all his sins, and David beseeches the Lord to cleanse him from the stilt of those things he neither knows nor understands. What a lesson for those who bask in their own self-righteousness and imagine that they have pleased God in all their ways, and what a rebuke to those who imagine that their secret sins, their sins of ignorance, are no sins at all. David was but echoing Moses who taught in the law in Leviticus 27 to 31. If any one of the common people sin through ignorance, then he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for his sin which he hath sinned. And the priest shall burn it upon the altar for a sweet savor unto the Lord. And the priest shall make an atonement for him and it shall be forgiven him." It is clear from all this that sins of ignorance are still sins, and that God holds men accountable for them. God required a typical sacrifice for them. He required an atonement before they could be forgiven. Yet the whole thrust of limiting moral accountability by moral ability is that God cannot hold men accountable for things that they do not even know He is requiring of them. That position is a fallacy, a pipe dream of sinful men. God's ways are not our ways, and God holds men accountable for full and complete conformity to His holy law. That is why the Apostle John taught, sin is the transgression of the law. The Apostle introduces no qualifiers for this statement. We are accountable for keeping God's law in its entirety for our entire lives. If we have not done so, and who has, our only hope is the righteousness of another, the righteousness of Jesus Christ received by faith alone. Paul was at one time a great persecutor of the church. He later states that he did it in ignorance and unbelief yet he never hints that it was not sin and that God would not hold him accountable for it just because he sincerely thought he was doing right. Repeatedly in the scriptures he confesses it is a great fault and states that he was not worthy to be an apostle on that account. He says he obtained mercy Yet if it was not sin, then no mercy would have been required. Paul did not submit any excuses, nor judge himself by a sliding scale. He held himself strictly to the requirements of God's law and rejoiced in God's mercy, not in legal loopholes. Let me add to the warning that the Reverend Louis de Boer gave concerning Charles Finney. because many evangelicals think that Charles Finney was a gospel preacher. As Reverend DeBoer has shown, he was a heretic. In Finney's Systematic Theology, he states with regard to justification under three conditions of justification on page 398, quote, as has been already said, there can be no justification in a legal or forensic sense but upon the ground of universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to law. This is of course denied by those who hold that gospel justification, or the justification of penitent sinners, is of the nature of a forensic or judicial justification. They hold to the legal maximum that what a man does by another he does by himself. and therefore the law regards Christ's obedience as ours on the ground that he obeyed for us. And then he continues on the same page under 2. The doctrine of an imputed righteousness or that Christ's obedience to the law was accounted as our obedience is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption to wit that Christ owed no obedience to the law in his own person, and that therefore his obedience was altogether a work of supererogation, and might be made a substitute for our own obedience, that it might be set down to our credit, because he did not need to obey for himself." These quotes were taken from the online site www.ccel.org slash ccel slash phinney slash theology dot pdf. You can also get it by just googling Charles Phinney's systematic theology and you'll find it. May the Lord give us wisdom in following him. Amen.