OK, but let's be clear about what the bondage of the will teaches. No matter what a man does, even if he genuinely aspires to the good, is sin. He can't even want to do good without grace. This means, effectively, he has no choice but to sin, because he can choose nothing other than sin. Sin has completely and wholly triumphed over Man's created nature, that he can no longer even begin to want to do what he was created to do. This isn't freedom, because freedom implies a certain open possibility of outcomes. You've restricted it to picking which type of sin to partake of. Drawing a distinction between that and the heresy of Simon as detailed by St Vincent is picking at nits: if our will can do nothing else but sin, our nature has been wholly corrupted to the loss of free agency. The Devil has complete sway over our will.
This is not what we believe and never has been. St Athanasisus didn't say that man was perished completely but that he was perishing. He didn't say that the rational man made in God's image had disappeared, but that it was disappearing. He didn't say that the handiwork of god was gone, but that it was in the process of dissolution.
Man longs for God, is incomplete without God. Our humor, in any culture, reflects this. We are perplexed by bodily functions, by death - these are always the root of humor, it is our eternal side being confounded by our tepmoral. This, at least, evangelicals get right - man is created with "a God shaped hole in his heart". Man is created for the eternal things, and temporal things give no satisfaction. Every single pagan philosopher attests to this, as does Solomon. It's all meaningless without God. If what you were saying is true, pagan philosophy would not seek the Good but pleasure. Even the hedonists, who sought to maximize pleasure, found that the maximizing of pleasure was to minimize enticement to what we lacked, or that ultimately maximizing pleasure IS maximizing the Good (as says Plato). Man longs for God, needs God, always yearns for God, even unconsciously.
The unregenerate man can choose to follow God, and God in His Mercy constantly seeks after and calls him to Himself. This is why no one has an excuse. The first choice to follow God is truly our own, even if the idea or inclination is from Him. We must choose Him; He does not force us against our will, even in that first step. Even if he arranges the circumstance, entraps us with His love, it is OUR choice to accept. God calls: we choose. Nothing is done without His grace, nothing is done without our consent. This is always the teaching of the Church.
He doesn't change our wills against our nature! Of course! Don't you see that being created by Him our nature is fundamentally good? Our "new" isn't new but old, it is a resoration to the original state. We didn't lose it completely, it was only darkened by passions, tarnished by sin. But not gone, never gone, or else there would be nothing left to regenerate. The man that is wholly lost to sin no longer has a tarnished image of God, but no image of God. Free will, the rational intellect, is that image. If it is gone, we are no longer Man but an animal. Christ isn't something novel but ancient; the New Adam, the original design made perfect. And we become the same, gods by grace what He is by nature, not shedding our nature but restoring and perfecting it.
As for your quote - how can you skip over the conscious choice to "present yourselves as slaves"? Obeying is not compulsion, there is choice inherent in the word! You either obey sin to death, or obey God to righteousness. We are slaves to God by choice, not by compulsion!
Again, if a man has a free will but the free will is limited in scope to sin, the will is not free at all. You're playing logic and rhetoric games with ontological realities.
Man can do good in the eyes of God. He encourages us, pursues us, loves us. Even our feeble attempts He accepts, continously showing mercy at all times to our infirmities, even to death on the cross. The fathers say His pursuit of us is like that of a lover. Do you have a kid? Don't you credit even the smallest attempt by him with joy and congratulations? Don't you see even the slightest good act and reward it? I do, and I know my love is a horrible portion of God's love as Father for us. How I love my sons is nothing compared to His love for us. You can't arbitrarily define sin as any action performed by an unbeliever, and then tautologially say that an unbeliever's action is sin.
Again you bring up 1 Corinthians 2:14. Remember St John's words, we don't have understanding that leads to faith, but faith that leads to understanding. Read the paragraph above. St Paul is referring to the Gospel, his "message and preaching" that wasn't of "persuasive words of wisdom but demonstration of Spirit and power". He says that wisdom is not of the world, but the hidden wisdom of God, foreordained before the world, which no one of the world understands - and the understanding of the Gospel comes from the Spirit, and the knowledge of God comes from God. The natural man doesn't understand or accept this knowledge, because it is foolishness to him. What on earth does this have to do with the bondage of the will? Again, nothing whatsoever. Faith produces understanding. The choice to believe is well before aspiring to spiritual knowledge and understanding that comes with faith. This quote is wholly irrelevant to free will.
Find me the scripture that says faith is the prerequisite for good. You're begging the question.
The whole premise of "even the kindest act imaginable is sin because it's not done to God's glory" is utterly ridiculous. You make every prophet, every OT saint a grave sinner. None of them had the mind of Christ, none of them attained to the glory promised us, none of them enjoyed communion with the Holy Spirit or the adoption of Sons. You make a mockery of the Law, not that the Law exposed sin, but that the Law CAUSED sin because even in attempting to follow the Law, sin was caused.
I've done my best to show you that this is a novel teaching outside of the patristic consensus. You seem to be choosing to embrace this heresy, the novel teaching some 16 centuries removed from Christ. You complain about my saying that you are not in the same Church as me, but given the chance you separate yourself from us willingly. St Paul's words are true: "Reject a divisive man after a first and second admonition, knowing that such a man is corrupt and sinful; he is self-condemned." Because the root word of heresy is choice - if you freely choose to believe this heresy, knowing it puts you outside of the faith of the Fathers, as admitted by Calvin, you're putting yourself out of the Church. It's ironic that even in this, we see the freedom of choice - "self-condemned" and not by any other.
St Vincent of Lerins is often quoted about the rule of faith, but his writing tells us more:
Quote:
To preach any doctrine therefore to Catholic Christians other than what they have received never was lawful, never is lawful, never will be lawful: and to anathematize those who preach anything other than what has once been received, always was a duty, always is a duty, always will be a duty.
Which being the case, is there any one either so audacious as to preach any other doctrine than that which the Church preaches, or so inconstant as to receive any other doctrine than that which he has received from the Church?
That elect vessel, that teacher of the Gentiles, that trumpet of the apostles, that preacher whose commission was to the whole earth, that man who was caught up to heaven, cries and cries again in his Epistles to all, always, in all places, "If any man preach any new doctrine, let him be accursed."
On the other hand, an ephemeral, moribund set of frogs, fleas, and flies, such as the Pelagians, call out in opposition, and that to Catholics, Take our word, follow our lead, accept our exposition, condemn what you used to hold, hold what you used to condemn, cast aside the ancient faith, the institutes of your fathers, the trusts left for you by your ancestors and receive instead what? I tremble to utter it: for it is so full of arrogance and self-conceit, that it seems to me that not only to affirm it, but even to refute it, cannot be done without guilt in some sort.
