Grace

Robert Preus has a refreshingly unreconstructed chapter on divergent views on grace in his 1997 Justification and Rome . He asks why recent Catholic-Protestant dialogues have not addressed the issue of grace more directly, and claims that the affirmation that “justification is by grace” has quite a different meaning in Lutheran as opposed to Catholic contexts. Here are some of the specifics of his discussion:

1) He argues that medieval scholastics erred in treating the doctrine of grace after their discussions of Christology: “The result was that the doctrine of grace came to be dissociated from Christ’s great acts of redemption and reconciliation and became related to the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s sanctification, that is to say, the theology of the Third Article. The atoning work of Christ became a meritorious cause of grace which made grace possible. The relationship between the work of Christ and the grace of God remained pretty much separated.”

2) “Graces” was defined by the scholastics as “actual existing realities, divided into actual grace and habitual grace. “Habitual grace can be defined as the indwelling of the Spirit and the Trinity accompanied by the gift of a supernational quality by which we are made partakers of the divine nature, what the new Catechism of the Catholic Church . . . calls ‘sanctifying and deifying grace.’” More precisely, habitual grace consists of three features: a) a habitusor disposition that is “permanently inherent in the soul, which enables the soul “to act divinely.” b) Infused virtues such as faith, hope, love and so on. c) Gifts of the Spirit such as wisdom, knowledge, courage, and fear of God.

Actual grace, by contrast, is a “passing, supernatural help, or intervention, of God over against the intellect and will of man, enlightening the intellect and empowering the will.” Various distinctions are made within this category: between operating and cooperating grace; between prevenient and consequent grace; between the gratia excitans that motivates one to do good and the gratia adjuvans that helps a person do good; between medicinal grace and gratia elevans that “bestows power.”

It is striking, and odd, that such fine distinctions in types and forms of grace sometimes make their appearance in Reformed theologians, who speak of the sacraments as providing “sanctificational” grace as opposed to some other form of grace. It is more than odd that these fine, and finely medieval, distinctions are then proffered as the essence of the Reformed position on grace and the sacraments.

3) Luther rejected to the whole scheme, and to the metaphors that were used to explain and develop it. Luther recognized that Scripture sometimes used the metaphor of out-pouring or infusion, but he took this as merely another way of saying “give.” Besides, for Luther, “the metaphors have to do with theological and spiritual realities and divine actions, not with philosophical, metaphysical, or physical referents.” I would say, instead, that Luther rejected the use of the metaphors that turned grace into some impersonal thing, a substance. So long as what is infused is Christ Himself or the Spirit, the metaphor is perfectly legitimate. This seems to be supported by Preus’ further comment that Luther and Melanchthon objected even more to the idea of grace as a “quality” than to the idea of infusion: “Luther objected more to the non-metaphorical term ‘qualitas’ than to the metaphorical term ‘infusio’ used by the papists in a non-metaphorical sense, namely, as an actus physicus . Luther describes disdainfully the Roman doctrine of grace: ‘The Sophists . . . teach that grace is a quality which is hidden in the heart. Now if someone has this enclosed in his heart like a jewel, then God will look favorably on him, if he will cooperate with his gree will.’ Luther maintains that the papists distort the biblical and evangelical doctrine of grace when they treat the grace of God, which can only be predicated of God, as a quality among other qualities, human affects and dispositions . . . . One can refer with good theological and biblical warrant to a believer’s faith, hope, and love . . . , but not to a believer’s grace. Luther maintains that by teaching that grace is a spiritual quality in man the papists have imposed an alien metaphysics upon the scriptural doctrine of grace, thus resulting in unbearable confusion.”

This is a crucial point, for it clarifies the boundaries of the Protestant opposition to Rome, and helps to explain how Luther’s alarming descriptions of justification can still fit within a Protestant frame. In the Freedom of the Christian Man , Luther compares the human soul’s reception of righteousness to an iron being filled with heat from a fire: Just as an iron takes on the quality of heat from the fire when placed in the fire, so the soul takes on the quality of righteousness when the living Word dwells in the soul (through the preached Word). And this righteousness is the ground for our justification, Luther claims. This sounds for all the world like a Catholic infusionism, until we realize that the “grace” poured into the soul is Christ Himself, not a qualitas nor a habitus . It seems that for Luther the line was not so much between infusion and imputation; rather, the line was between grace conceived metaphysically as a quality/ habitus v. grace as the presence of Christ in the believer. And this latter opposition is just another way of maintaining the distinction between alien righteousness and righteousness that is “inherent” to the regenerate, for the righteousness radiated to the soul indwelt by the living Word is clearly an alien righteousness.

4) Positively, for Luther and Lutheran theology, grace is “God’s favor – His benevolent and good disposition and intention toward fallen mankind.” This gracious disposition is “active; it is in action as God demonstrates love and grace in sending His Son . . . to save sinners . . . to justify them . . . to call, enlighten, convert, and sanctify His children . . . and thus create and sustain Christ’s Church with gifts of grace” (the elipses mark where Scripture references have been deleted). Preus acknowledges (following Chemnitz) that “grace” might mean “a gift conferred by grace,” but also insists (like Chemnitz) that within the “article of justification” grace means God’s favorable disposition and nothing more. Thus sinners are justified “by grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24), and this “by grace” means that God redeemed sinners in Christ out of active love and mercy. Grace within the article of justification does not refer to any gifts that God might bestow. Chemnitz insisted on this distinction out of concern to protect the sola gratia and sola fide of justification: If “by grace” in “justified by grace” means “through the gifts that we have been given, such as love and good works” we are back to Rome, where justification is based on the grace-induced works of the regenerate.

Several lines of response: First, unless we take Rom 2:13 as hypothetical (hich I do not), we do have a Scriptural warrant for saying that we are justified at the last day as “doers of the law.” Of course, that doing is a gift of the Spirit (Rom 8:1-4), and that justification is still according to God’s mercy because our doing of the law is never complete. And we can still say that final justification is also in Christ, since our incomplete obedience is

finally acceptable through propter Christum, because of His complete obedience. Yet, there is a final justification in which judgment is according to (Spirit-given) works.

Second, is it correct to say that “grace” simply means “favor” and not “gift” in the doctrine of justification? (I wonder if it is even coherent to say “favor” without immediately also saying “gift.” If grace/favor is active, is it not active in giving graces/gifts?) What of Rom 5:15-16, where the “free gift” (DOREA) or “gift” (DOREMA) seems to be equivalent to “justification” (DIKAIOMA). Verse 17 makes the point explicit, where Paul writes of the “gift of righteousness” (TES DOREAS TES DIKAIOSUNES). So, in justification, God’s grace/favor is expressed in a gift, the gift of righteousness. We are justified by God’s favor, and we are justified because of the grace-gift of righteousness. This is Christ’s righteousness, in which we come to share, not the righteousness that we perform through the work of the Spirit. But it is a gift given to the believer. With Luther’s image of the iron in the fire in mind, we might say that in justification God the Father out of sheer mercy and undeserved favor gives us Christ through the Spirit, the Christ who is our righteousness.

Third, what does all this look like if we take “justification” as a “deliverdict”? God the Father, out of sheer mercy and undeserved favor for depraved sinners, vindicates/justifies us, as He did His Son, in the Spirit (1 Tim 3:16), by delivering us from the tyranny of Death and Sin. There is grace as favor expressed in gifts of grace, the gift of the Spirit. We receive the Spirit in faith (itself a gift). Justification in this scenario is not a declaration based on what we have done (whether in “our own” power or by the Spirit), because the declaration is promulgated in the gift of the Spirit.

N.B. These are ponderings, not final conclusions.