SEMESTER 4
155 – Terminology – Part 5
BIBLE INSTITUTE OF CORRESPONDENCE
COURSE: THEOLOGY IV LESSON # 55
WORDS AND TERMS DESCRIBING THE SAVING ACTIVITIES OF GOD
HAMARTILOOGY:
The study of the doctrine of sin (I John 3:4
; 5:17). This study is foundational to all soteriological truth for the doctrine of salvation is based upon the need of salvation which necessarily rises out of the fact and effect of sin.
SOTERIOLOGY:
Soter (health) ology (science). When used theologically, soteriology deals with the biblical doctrines of salvation. Under this heading, rightly fall all of the issues which both demand and declare God’s saving grace for His people.
AUTOSOTERISM:
The religious philosophy of self-salvation as promoted by Pelagius and his followers, both declared and undeclared.
SYNERGISM:
Greek synergos (working together). It is the doctrine held chiefly by Arminianism, which believes and propagates the philosophy of a cooperative effort between God and man in man’s salvation.
MONERGISM:
From Greek Mono (one or alone). Theologically, it is the philosophy or faith that God saves alone and completely apart from any cooperative human effort. Not denying human submission or obedience, but asserting that those functions are effects of grace, and never causes.
MONERGISTIC:
The form of doctrine, or the soteriological view, that embraces monergism or monerism. It holds to the doctrine that God works alone in regenerating lost men. It is not a denial of His use of His word, or of Gospel preaching in imparting and directing faith and repentance through regeneration. It is simply a belief that He acts alone in imparting life (regeneration) to the dead sinner.
ORIGINAL SIN:
The inherent corruption into which all men since the fall of Adam are born. It involves (1. universal guilt of that first sin, (2. the loss of original righteousness (3. the corruption of our whole nature. Original sin is truly the nature of sin, it flows from our first parents as the originators of sin, and it is, in it’s nature, distinguished from actual sins.
IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION:
That, in virtue of the union, federal and natural, between Adam and his posterity, Adam’s sin, although not their act, is so imputed to them that it is the judicial ground by which the penalty threatened against Adam comes also upon them. This doctrine is held to be true by most reformed, as well as essentially all Baptist, Theologians.
MEDIATE IMPUTATION:
That the offspring of Adam derived a corrupt nature from him, and that it is that corrupt nature, and not Adam’s act of sin, which is the ground of the condemnation which is passed upon all men. This poor theory does not deny the imputation to us of Adam’s first sin, but makes that imputation dependent upon our personal participation in Adam’s corrupt nature. The teachers of this doctrine deny that there is any direct or immediate imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity, but only an indirect mediate imputation, and that founded only upon the fact that we share his moral character.
DEPRAVITY:
The inherent condition of all Adam’s fallen race, in which every part and attribute of man’s being is deprived of the glorious state in which Adam was created. This depravity is total, not in its intensity, but in its extent.