But that’s where I get confused because a functional Pelagian sounds a whole lot like a person dealing with ethics (I know stealing is wrong, I understand the law but I don’t do it when it’s tax time because, you know: no one is perfect.) Pelagianism seems to allow an ultimate salvation with or without help from a god–and I’m not sure anyone would go there.

But I gotta’ read your link to see if it addresses all this anyway.

The traditional Church of Christ that I grew up in was functionally Pelagian – although they would never use that term and have probably never even heard of it. We believed that anyone(Christian or not) was capable of reading the Bible and understanding it. We also believed that everyone had the moral wherewithal to be capable of keeping the commands found in scripture.

So, the issue was never so much ability as it was accurate knowledge. If you could know the right thing to do then you could(and should) do it. Now, that’s not to say we thought we could be perfect. We did believe in forgiveness and frequently asked God to forgive us of any sin that we knowingly – and unknowingly – committed. This was to cover all the bases, so to speak.

We were very interested in patterns and were convinced that we alone knew God’s approved pattern for New Testament worship. This kind of stuff was important because we needed accurate knowledge. Once we had the knowledge the doing was up to us in order to keep our salvation. And once you stopped doing the right things(e.g. going to church with the piano-loving Baptists down the way) then your salvation was in question.

I could go on but maybe this helps paint the picture. You might be interested in this web site :

http://www.cofcdilemma.org/