On Theological illiteracy

"Our theological currency has been debased.  Our minds have been conditioned to think of the Cross as a redemption which does less than redeem, and of Christ as a Saviour who does less than save, and of God's love as a weak affection which cannot keep anyone from hell without help, and of faith as the human help which God needs for this purpose.  As a result, we are no longer free either to believe the biblical gospel or to preach it.  We cannot believe it, because our thoughts are caught in the toils of synergism.  We are haunted by the Arminian idea that if faith and unbelief are to be responsible acts, they must be independent acts; hence we are not free to believe that we are saved entirely by divine grace through a faith which is itself God's gift and flows to us from Calvary.  Instead, we involve ourselves in a bewildering kind of double-think about salvation, telling ourselves one moment that it all depends on god and next moment that it all depends on us.  the resultant mental muddle deprives God of much of the glory that we should give Him as author and finisher of salvation, and ourselves of much of the comfort we might draw from knowing that God is for us."

John Owen has a wonderful way of presenting things clearly.  And this was written in the 1700's.
From The Death of Death, pg. 13-14.