Horton's book Christless Christianity

I'm reading - actually studying - Michael Horton's excellent book, Christless Christianity. The book delves into some of the basic problems Horton believes inflict the "American" Church today.

Much, if not most, of what he says I agree with. In a nut shell I get from the book that, we in the American Church, have shifted from a theology of what God has done for humanity to one that is Pelagian, or semi-Pelagian in that we direct our own lives through a "free will" that was not affected by the fall.

What this shift has done is given us a theology wherein we are led to believe we are not truly fallen creatures, dead in our sins, but merely sick ones who through our "free will" and self-directed personal efforts, are able to live our lives in a Christian manner - or not. Pelagius gave us license to teach and preach a moralistic, self-directed Gospel through which, if we follow all the moralistic directions, we will get to heaven.

Horton describes it this way: "...grace is primarily seen by evangelicals as much as by the medieval church as divine assistance for the process of moral transformation rather than a one-sided divine rescue." (pp 61)

What comes across in our preaching is this:

If we are merely wayward, we only need direction; merely sick, we need medicine; merely weak, we need strength. (pp 61).

The Bible is very pointed in the fact that men can do nothing to save themselves. We were not sick, or weak, we were dead in our sins. Grace is an effective gift whereby our Creator changes us for His purposes according to His will. We however, refuse to believe that God would do this to us - change our nature without our permission - so we want to believe His effect (result) is nothing but an affect (emotional, or mental) which we can accept or refuse according to our "free will."

The unintended consequence of this kind of sinful idea, is that God is impotent in the face of our free will, therefore He must stand around and wait for us to decide to "accept" His offer of grace and faith. We change the image of the omnipotent God into a mirror image of ourselves struggling to rescue us.

Earlier preaching - before "revialism" became the sine qua non of so much that is American religion -

...identified self-love as the root of original sin, revivalists appealed to it as a motivation for conversion. With rising confidence in human ability more generally and "an emphasis in Arminian doctrines of free will," sin became transformed "into notions of sin as mistakes in behavior, amenable to correction by appropriate moral education." Like all behaviors, sin could be managed according to predictable principles. (pp 58).

The book does not end with a happy, all is well, scenario. Horton says,

The church desperately needs a second Reformation, to be sure, but one that - like the first one - returns the church's focus to Christ and His work. (pp 216)

I couldn't agree more. We really do need a second Reformation.