Grace in Christianity

• 1. Introduction

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  Grace in Christianity is described in one definition as God's favor, a "share in the divine life of God", and a gift that is "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved". It is the kind of thing, theologians insist, that cannot be earned. The whole drama hangs on a single question. If salvation comes from God's favor alone, then how much, if anything, does a human being contribute to it? That question has split churches and ignited centuries of argument. One scholar even called the means of grace "the watershed that divides Catholicism from Protestantism, Calvinism from Arminianism, modern theological liberalism from theological conservatism". A monk in the fifth century, a friar nailing theses to a church door, a Dutch theologian breaking with Calvin, all of them were wrestling with the same problem. The word itself comes from the Greek charis, meaning "that which brings delight, joy, happiness, or good fortune."

• 2. A Word From Noah To The Psalms

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  Genesis 6:8 explains why God saved Noah from the flood, and the Septuagint rendered the reason with the Greek charis, translating the Hebrew chen. The Old Testament use of the word carries the idea that those who show favor perform gracious deeds. These are acts of grace such as being kind to the poor and showing generosity. Deuteronomy 7:8 and Numbers 6:24 to 27 offer descriptions of God's graciousness within the Torah. The Psalms give their own catalogue of grace, including the teaching of the Law in Psalm 119:29 and the answering of prayers in Psalm 27:7. Psalm 85 stands out as a prayer for restoration, forgiveness, and the mercy of God to bring about new life after the Babylonian Exile. By the time of the New Testament, the same idea finds a famous summary in Ephesians 2:8: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God."

• 3. How Grace Reaches People

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  The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grace as "favour, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life". In this view grace is poured unearned into human beings, healing them of sin and sanctifying them. The means by which God grants this grace are many, including revealed truth, the sacraments, and the hierarchical ministry. In a Christian marriage, the Catechism teaches, "husbands and wives are cooperators in grace and witnesses of faith for each other, their children, and all others in their household". The sacraments themselves, especially the Eucharist, count among the principal means of grace, along with prayers and good works. Lutherans hold that the means of grace are "the gospel in Word and sacraments". John Wesley described the Eucharist as "the grand channel whereby the grace of his Spirit was conveyed to the souls of all the children of God". The Catholic teaching adds a sharp condition: the sacraments work through the power of Christ and his Spirit, independently of the personal holiness of the minister, yet their fruits still depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.

• 4. Sanctifying And Actual Grace

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  St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, drew a distinction that the Catholic Church still uses. Grace can be given to make the person receiving it pleasing to God, called gratia gratum faciens, or it can be given to help the receiver lead someone else to God, called gratia gratis data. Within the first category lies sanctifying grace, also named habitual grace, which infuses the divine life into a person's soul once they are justified. Actual grace describes instead those punctual helps aimed at producing sanctifying grace or maintaining and increasing it. The Catechism calls sanctifying grace "a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love". This infusion, the Church says, transforms a sinner into a holy child of God, sharing in the Divine Sonship of Jesus Christ and receiving the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For that reason it is also called deifying grace, and sanctification is called deification. Mortal sin severs this friendship with God, while venial sin offends and wounds charity without destroying it. Sanctifying grace can always be restored to the penitent heart, normally through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

• 5. Augustine Versus Pelagius

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  Pelagius, an ascetic said to have come from Britain, was alarmed in the early fifth century by the moral laxity he witnessed in Rome. He blamed that laxity on the theology of divine grace preached by Augustine of Hippo, among others, and insisted that humans had free will and could choose good as well as evil. Augustine, drawing on the exaggerated statements of Pelagius' followers rather than the man's own writings, opened a debate with long-reaching effects on the doctrine in Western Christianity. The Council of Carthage repudiated Pelagianism in 418, largely at Augustine's insistence. What Pelagius actually taught, the source notes, was likely what came to be called semi-Pelagianism. In that view, both God and the human person always take part in the salvation process, with humans making free choices that God aids. John Cassian, born around 360 and writing in continuity with patristic doctrine, taught that grace is required at the beginning yet there is no such thing as total depravity. This synergism, the cooperation of the human will with divine grace, is the position held by the Eastern Orthodox Church and by many Reformed Protestants, and within Catholicism it has been especially associated with the Society of Jesus.

• 6. The Monk Who Held Both

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  Conference XIII in the works of John Cassian recounts the puzzlement caused by the wise monk Chaeremon. Chaeremon had said that a man "even though he strive with all his might for a good result, yet cannot become master of what is good unless he has acquired it simply by the gift of Divine bounty and not by the efforts of his own toil". To make his point, Chaeremon set the case of "Paul the persecutor" and "Matthew the publican" against those who claim "the beginning of free will is in our own power". He then set the cases of Zaccheus and the good thief on the cross against those who say free will always begins with the grace of God. His conclusion holds the two together: "These two then; viz., the grace of God and free will seem opposed to each other, but really are in harmony." Cassian did not accept total depravity, the idea on which Martin Luther would later insist. Augustine Casiday observes that Cassian nonetheless "baldly asserts that God's grace, not human free will, is responsible for 'everything that pertains to salvation' - even faith". Lauren Pristas reads him plainly: "for Cassian, salvation is, from beginning to end, the effect of God's grace."

• 7. The Theses And The Treasury

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  Johann Tetzel arrived authorized by the Vatican to sell indulgences, and his arrival precipitated one of the sharpest turns in the history of grace. Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, a direct consequence of the perfunctory sacramentalism and treasury doctrines of the medieval church. The indulgences depended on the doctrine of the treasury of grace proclaimed by Pope Clement VI. The theory ran that merit earned by acts of piety could augment a believer's store of sanctifying grace, and that the Church held a surplus it would part with in exchange for earthly gold. Luther taught instead that men were helpless and without a plea before God's justice, their acts of piety utterly inadequate before his infinite holiness. He held that it is by faith alone, sola fide, and by grace alone, sola gratia, that men are saved. In Lutheranism salvation becomes "a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy", in which penitents acknowledge the inadequacy of their own resources. Believers are not so much made righteous as considered covered by Christ's righteousness, since Jesus has already paid the penalty for their sins with his blood.

• 8. Election, Free Will, And The Church

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  John Calvin systematized Augustinian soteriology in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, published in 1536, and built a theology of salvation characterized by divine monergism. In this view God alone is the author of every stage of salvation, working entirely through his grace without human participation. Calvinism rests on theological determinism and teaches double-predestination, that God has foreordained both those who will be saved and those who will be damned. It distinguishes common grace, which restrains sin and bestows temporal blessings on all people without saving them, from the grace reserved for the elect through effectual calling and irresistible grace. Jacobus Arminius, the Dutch theologian writing in the early seventeenth century, departed from Calvin on election and predestination, grounding predestination in divine foreknowledge rather than determinism. Arminianism teaches that grace comes to all people through prevenient grace, which can be both freely accepted and freely denied. John Wesley later rejected Calvinist predestination and distinguished three kinds of grace: prevenient grace that precedes regeneration, justifying grace that is resistible, and sustaining grace that helps a person reach final salvation. The doctrine of prevenient grace remains one of Methodism's most important teachings, the standard doctrine of Methodist churches today.

  In the Eastern Orthodox Church, grace is identified with the uncreated Energies of God, not a created substance that can be treated like a commodity. Among Eastern Christians grace is the partaking of the Divine Nature described in 2 Peter 1:4, and the Holy Mysteries serve as a means of partaking because God works through his Church. Orthodox theologians reject Augustine's formulation of original sin and oppose Calvin's conceptions of total depravity and irresistible grace, as well as the scholastic theology that became Roman Catholic pedagogy until the Second Vatican Council. They teach that the human will must cooperate with divine grace through synergism, so that humans may become deified in a process called theosis by merging with the uncreated Energies, revealed as the Tabor Light of transfiguration through a method of prayer called hesychasm. Far to the west, a different fate befell the sacraments under the influence of the Anabaptists, ideas also seen in the Donatists in North Africa in 311 AD. Where the sacraments are de-emphasized they become "ordinances", acts of worship required by Scripture whose effect is limited to the worshipper's soul. This belief finds expression in believer's baptism, given not to infants but to adult believers after they have reached the age of reason and professed their faith.