Hi Wordkeeper, yes, St. Paul refers to the "men of flesh", spoken of in 1 Corinthians 3:1 as "brethren" and "infants in Christ", and as those who are able to receive the word of God (which contrasts sharply with his description of the "natural man" in 1 Corinthians 2:14). The men described in 1 Corinthians 3 were Christians, the "natural man", described in v2:14, is not.
1 Corinthians 3 does not teach us that the men here described, "had not produced good fruit", just that they were more 'immature' in the faith than St. Paul felt they should be. Remind me how we got started with this "fruit" analogy again .. The "good fruit"/"bad fruit" thing is from the Gospels, it's not used in Paul's Epistles (and, quite frankly, it introduces an analytical tool which is confusing here). I suppose it could work in chapter 2 where St. Paul contrasts Christians with non-Christians, but it doesn't work in chapter 3 because there he is talking to and about Christians ONLY. IOW, the contrast is between the "mature" and the "immature", but all are "in Christ".
Bottomline:
Natural man > unable to receive the word of God
Men of flesh > unable to receive solid food
The end result:
Both natural men and men of flesh cannot be sanctified, cannot see God:
Romans 8:13for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Galatians 3:3Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?
Matthew 5:8Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Revelation 22:4They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
And I showed you 'what' the EO teach about his works and 'why' they teach that his writings are heretical. I'm not EO, I can only tell you what they told me, that their church holds Pelagius' writings and beliefs to be in opposition to the truth that they teach.
If you'd like to discuss this further, go talk to the EO here at CF and they will clear the problem up for you (but only if you are willing to listen and accept what they have to say about their own faith .. ).
I reiterate that Pelagius’ error was minor in comparison to Augustine’s and if you study the real situation of Man, with respect to what Scripture has to say about him as well as what is observable, Pelagius was not far from the truth if you expand on the terms he uses to describe that situation.
Again, this is not a proper analogy for 1 Corinthians 3. St. Paul was speaking to a Christians only group and his admonishment was a call to "maturity", IOW, for "believers" to grow in Christ, not to become something they 'already' were .. "BRETHREN"/"Infants IN CHRIST/able to receive the Word of God".
Yours and His,
David
Unspiritual men were carnal.
Immature believers were carnal.
Net effect: the same.
To expand on Augustine's error, his use of "in Adam" instead of "because of Adam" skews the situation of Man with regard to sin.
If I were working as an expat in Monaco, I would enjoy freedom from income tax. Now, if my father committed a crime that required his entire family to leave Monaco, then when I am returned to the United States, I would be required to pay tax on any income I generate! I have lost immunity from the laws regarding paying tax on income generated. I am now under the jurisdiction of income tax laws!
This is exactly what my father Adam did! His crime caused me to lose immunity from Law! I was deported from a law free zone to a situation where I have come under the jurisdiction of the law!
A similar loss of immunity can happen if a government decides that majority (maturity) is reached at the age of 16 instead of 18. Instantaneously those who are between 16 and 18 have lost immunity!
Of course the decision could be considered unfair if it is established that 16 year olds have undeveloped regions of the brain that decide morality and therefore can adversely affect making moral choices. So was God unfair to allow Adam to have free will, with the power to decide the fate of all his descendants when he exercised that free will? Well, they call God the greatest turn around artist. What men meant for evil, He can mean it for good! What Adam did selfishly God can and DID use to manifest the greatest act of unselfishness.
To understand what Pelagius was up against, what he found objectionable, you have to know what Augustine taught, it's wrong basis, and what it resulted in. You could say that his error was one of the most disastrous misunderstanding in the field of theology, with far reaching implications:
The Most Disastrous Preposition in History
Augustine's mistake about original sin - Gentle Wisdom
Quote
Doug Chaplin has recently explained how in Romans 5:12 Augustine took Paul’s phrase “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” following the Vulgate “in quo omnes peccaverunt” to be “in whom [Adam] all sinned”.
(The Greek can be transliterated ef’ ho pantes hemarton.) Well, Augustine didn’t actually use the Vulgate, which was being translated during his lifetime, but the sometimes not very accurate Old Latin translations. But his Latin version seems to have been similar to the Vulgate here. Doug continues:
the Augustinian interpretation of Paul’s “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” as meaning “in whom all sinned” makes it the most disastrous preposition in history. All modern translations agree that its proper meaning is “because.”
More precisely, “the most disastrous preposition” is ἐφ᾽ ef’, a contracted form of epi meaning “on”. The Greek phrase ἐφ᾽ ᾧ ef’ ho literally means “on which”, or possibly “on whom”, but is commonly used to mean “because”, or perhaps “in that”. The problem is that the Latin rendering of ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in quo, is ambiguous between “in which” and “in whom” (I’m not sure if it can also mean simply “because” or “in that”, and Augustine understood it as meaning “in whom”, i.e. “in Adam”.
So, according to Augustine all sinned “in Adam”, which he understood as meaning that because Adam sinned every other human being, each of his descendants, is counted as a sinner. This is his doctrine of “original sin”, that every human is born a sinner and deserves death because of it. He may have taken up this idea because it agreed with his former Manichaean theology. This teaching is fundamental to most Protestant as well as Roman Catholic teaching today. For example, it underlies the Protestant (not just Calvinist) teaching of total depravity, that the unsaved person can do nothing good, a teaching for which there is little biblical basis apart from Augustine’s misunderstanding which was followed by Calvin.