Greg Allison, PhD: "Historical Theology:" Ch. 16--Sin in the Modern Peri...

In the modern period, one reads of Wesley’s infusion of prevenient grace that Pelagianizes and enables all to merit their own salvation, Immanuel Kant, Freddie Schleiermacher, Sorry Kierkegarrd, non-Paul Tillach, and Jerk Moltmann essentially eliminated the topic or revised it according to their good pleasures. Fred reconfigured sin to be absence of God-consciousness. Kierkegaard felt sin was self-despair. Tillach double-talked with existentialism while Jerk believed sin was hopelessness. Wally Rauschenbush turned to sociology disdaining the fall, Jesus and biblical writers and wanting a social consciousness—fixing sin “as selfishness” Charles Hodge and Bavinck, the better trained men, retained the historic, exegetical and confessional posture. Millie Erickson, the Baptist from Minnesota, fell off the bandwagon and mortally hit his head on the pavement. We will not bother Millie. Cornelius Platinga gave way to profuse metaphors to explain sin as an affront to God. Wesley, sounding positively Reformed (for the present). “The state of all mankind so completely depended on Adam that, by his fall, they all fell into sorrow, pain and death—spiritual and temporal.” Doctrine of Original Sin in Burtner’s A Compend of Welsey’s Theology, 116. Wesley, sounding positively Reformed (for the present). “(1) Our bodies then became mortal. (2) Our souls died; that is, were disunited from God. Thus, (3) we are all born with a sinful, devilish nature. By reason of this, (4) we are children of wrath, liable to eternal death (Rom.5.18; Eph.2.3).” Doctrine of Original Sin in Burtner’s A Compend of Welsey’s Theology, 117. Wesley, sounding positively Reformed (for the present). “Know that you are corrupted in every power, in every faculty of your soul, that you are totally corrupted in every one of these, all the foundations being out of joint. The eyes of your understanding are darkened, so that they cannot discern God or the things of God. The clouds of ignorance and error rest upon you with the shadow of death. You know nothing yet as you should know—neither God, nor the world, nor yourself. Your will is no longer the will of God but is completely perverse and distorted, hateful of all good, of all which God loves, and prone to all evil, to every abomination that God hates. Your affections are alienated from God and scattered abroad over all the earth. All your passions—both your desires and hates, your joys and sorrows, your hopes and fears—are out of joint. They are either wrong in degree or directed at wrong objects. So there is no soundness in your soul; rather, ‘from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot’ (to use the strong expression of the prophet) there are only ‘wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores’ (Is.1.6).” Way to the Kingdom in Burtner’s A Compend of Welsey’s Theology, 121. Wesley, reducing the incapacitations of original sin, injects his double-talking, Pelagianizing theme, one that will lead to his claim to sinless perfection. Commenting on Philippians 2.12-13: “Given that God works in you, your are now able to work out your own salvation. Because he works in you of his own good pleasure, without any merits of yours, both to will and to do, it is possible for you to fulfill all righteousness.” ).” On Working out our Salvation in Burtner’s A Compend of Welsey’s Theology, 121. This was not the finest hour for Dr. Allison with a weak finish.