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Sovereign GraceIs Reformed Theology Obsolete?BRIANA.GERRISH
JohnNuveenProfessorEmeritus
TheUniversityof Chicago
The Reformed witness to grace may be even more needed today
than it was in the sixteenth century, since now Pelagianism
seems comfortably at home in the Reformed churches. But the
question is whether "sovereign grace" requires the predestinari-
anism that the Reformers took over from Augustine.
At Miletus, we are told, the Apostle Paul sent for the elders of the church atEphesus and in his farewell address gave a memorable profession of his calling: "I do not count my life of any value tomyself,if only I may finish mycourse and the ministry that I received from theLORDJesus, to testify to the good news of
God's grace" (Acts 20:24). It is thegospelof grace to which Paul bears witness as a servant of
Jesus Christ: theideaof grace, as the undeserved favor of God, is attested in many religions,
some of which have had debates about grace that strikingly parallel the controversies inWestern Christianity. In Hinduism, for instance, a grace tradition goes back to the pre-
Christian scriptures of theBhagavad-gita,which knows of a way of salvation not by works
but by the heart's devotion to a saving, gracious deity. The followers of Ramanuja (d. 1137),
one of the greatest interpreters of fr/zate'-Hinduism, debated which was the better image of
the person under grace: the baby monkey that must at least cling to its mother, or the kitten
that is wholly passive as the mother cat carries it in her mouth.1Hinduism has also its spe
cial manifestations {avataras)of gracious divinities. For Paul, however, the concept of grace
is tied to the good news of the unique manifestation of God in Jesus Christ. "Grace," forhim, means more than a divine attribute: it refers to something that has happened, entered
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(egeneto)through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17; cf. 2 Tim 1:9-10).The profound sense that
"grace" does not simply describe deity but names anevent,both past and continually re-present
ed, is fundamental to the controversies on grace in the Western church. But why say only
"theWesternchurch"?
GRACE AND THE CATHOLIC TRADITION
In his fascinating comparison of Hindu and Christian religions ofgrace,Rudolf Otto
(1869-1937), the distinguished philosopher and historian of religion, documents some
remarkable parallels but ends with a contrast: for the Christian, salvation means deliverance
from sin, guilt, and the terrors of conscience before the holiness of God. For the Hindu, it
means chiefly release from the cycle of rebirth and the misery of this vagrant life. The con
trast is carefully qualified. Otto speaks only of the respectivecentersof the two religious tra
ditions: it is not as though each wholly lacked what the other took to be the main thing.
And he grants that there have been times within Christianity itself when the axis appears to
have shifted from guilt and the troubled conscience to corruption and the yearning for
immortality.2This, however, seems to take for granted that Western theology is the main
line, occasionally interrupted by a diversion. It would be truer to say that Western theology
has always had its counterpart in another, self-consciously rival tradition: Eastern
Orthodoxy.
The ideas of sin and grace have never played the pivotal role in the theology of the
Orthodox churches, in which salvation centers more on life-giving participation in the
divine nature (cf. 2 Pet 1:4) and its grounding in the Incarnation of the Word. A recent dic
tionary of Orthodox Christianity describes "deification," or participation in Christ's divini
ty, as a gift of grace, but it has no independent entry on grace, and none on sin. The entry
on Adam and Eve affirms the damage inflicted on creation by the primal sin, including loss
of the immortality originally conferred on the first human pair, but disavows the
Augustinian doctrine "that we inherit Adam's guilt and are born damned."3Similarly, one of
the foremost spokesmen for Orthodoxy in the English-speaking world, Timothy Ware,
asserts the need for cooperation (synergeia)with God, and he notes the suspicion with
which the Orthodox idea of "synergy" is viewed by many brought up in the Augustinian
tradition, particularly Calvinists. Indeed, most Orthodox theologians, he points out, reject
the entire Augustinian idea of original sin, which is "still accepted (albeit in a mitigated
form) by the Roman Catholic Church." Humans inherit Adam's corruption and mortality,
not his guilt: "they are only guilty in so far as by their own free choice they imitate Adam."4
Where the Calvinists, then, saysola gratiasavedby grace alonethe Orthodox insist that
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GRACE Interpretation 47
"we humans as well as God must make our contribution to the common work."5
The entire history of theology in the WesternLatin or Catholictradition is so dom
inated by the concept of grace that one could reasonably tell it as the story of theological
reflection on grace and the means ofgrace.My purpose is to offer an interpretation of onlyone or two high points in the story and to move the interpretation toward a constructive
conclusion for our present time.6But I wish to make it plain, at the outset, that I do not
equate Christian theology with the Augustinian tradition. Augustine focused sharply on one
kind of human predicament. This enabled him to plumb the depths of human bondage to
sin more powerfully than any of the Christian Fathers before him, but it also moved from
the center theological insights on which the Greek Fathers have much to teach us.
My argument, inbrief,is that Luther and Calvin not only reaffirmed the absolute pri
ority of grace in the Catholic tradition, against late medieval compromising ofgrace,but
also transformed the medieval understanding of grace by their belief that the actualmeans
of grace is the Word. But by tying sovereign grace to predestination, as Augustine had done,
they made it only too easy for the present-day Reformed church to lose theirwitnessto
grace in abandoning their theologyofgrace.Reformed theology may stand in need of cor
rection, but the Reformed witness to the gospel of the grace and glory of God may be even
more needful today than it was in the sixteenth century, since now, it seems, Pelagianism
has found a home in the Reformed churchitself.
WHAT DO YOU HAVE THAT YOU DID NOT RECEIVE?
The understanding of grace in the Catholic tradition was decisively shaped by
Augustine's (354-430 CE.) controversy with the Pelagians. The fifteen anti-Pelagian treatis
es,all occasional rather than systematic in character, deal with grace in connection with
questions about a host of other Christian doctrines, including original sin, the origin of the
human soul, the possibility of sinlessness, infant baptism, the purpose of the law, faith, freewill, justification, and predestination.7Augustine tells us that a crucial change of mind
about grace came to him even before the controversy, and it led to an implicit refutation of
the Pelagian heresy in advance of its appearance. Soon after he became coadjutor bishop of
Hippo (395), he found himself pondering a question about Rom9:10-29put to him by
Simplician (d. 400), who was shortly to succeed Ambrose as bishop of Milan (397).A single
verse from another Pauline letter brought him sudden illumination: "What do you have
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that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?" (
Cor 4:7). Augustine had tried hard, he says, to affirm the free choice of the human will, bu
the grace of God prevailed.8"If those things delight us which serve our advancement
towards God, that is due not to our own whim or industry or meritorious works, but to thinspiration of God and to the grace which he bestows." Augustine's discovery was that the
God "who commands us to ask, seek and knock, himself gives us the will to obey."9Even
before the battle commenced, he had discovered the weapon with which to vanquish the
Pelagians: unawares, he was "cutting down a future Pelagian heresy."10For what do any of
have that we did not receive as a gift from God?
Pelagianism is commonly simplified as the belief that salvation is by"works."It is true
that the Pelagians held a more generous view of human abilities than Augustine, and they
rejected his understanding of the original sin by which Adam supposedly ensnared hisdescendants in guilt and servitude. Their mistake, however, in Augustine's eyes, was not th
they doubted the need for grace, but that they misunderstood the nature ofgrace.The
Pelagians were not all of one mind. But when they spoke of"grace,"they generally meant
God's gifts of free will, the law, the teaching and example of Christ, and the remission of
sins in baptism.11Augustine meant something more. He saw the human predicament in th
disease that infects everyone's will since the fall, and he argued, with Paul, that the law doe
not strengthen a weakness but uncovers a sickness. "For through the law comes the knowl
edge of sin" (Rom 3:20). The need for grace is the need for healingnot just a need forhelp in achieving what one should, in principle, be able to achieve by free will even withou
further assistance.
This is the argument Augustine develops in connection with the Pauline doctrine of
justification in his second anti-Pelagian treatise,On the Spirit and the Letter(412). He find
the meaning of grace in Romans 5:5, which he understands to say that "love for God [not,
as in the NRSV, "God's love"] has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has
been given tous."12His interpretation of Paul in this verse may need revision. But in gener
he gives a powerful reaffirmation of the Pauline gospel, summing up the proper order of
law and grace in the memorable epigram, "The law was given that grace might be sought;
grace was given that the law might be fulfilled" (chap. 34[xix];cf. Rom 8:3-4). And, as
Augustine,On thePredestinationof the Saints(428/429) chap. 8[iv];NPNF, 5:502. The chapter is in part a
quotation from his review of the reply to Simphcian in his Retractationes ("Reconsiderations" [426/427]).9Augustine,ToSimphcianOnVarious Questions(396/398), book 1, q. 2, sec.21,inAugustine EarlierWrititrans,and ed. J. H. S. Burleigh,LCC, vol.6 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953)405.Actually, Simpliciano "question
t f A ti t i i f th ti diffi lt G d' i ht t h d
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GRACE Interpretation 49
always,theheartofthe matterisfound inPaul's searching questionin1Cor4:7, "Whatdo
you have that youdid notreceive?And ifyou receivedit,whydo youboastas if itwerenot
a gift?" (quoted, likearefrain, inchaps.15[ix],50[xxix],54[xxxi],57[xxxiii],and 60
[xxxiv]). For Augustine,thegrace that comes from Christ brings aboutaconversion,aradi
cal reorientationoftheself,which
turnsapersonbythe infusionof
love(caritas) in a newdirection: I T h e spiritualityofthanksgivingis in
away fromthefaultofseeking lifein dangerofbeing silenced in the
one'sown self,towardthetrue acrimonious de bate s that have haunted
FountainofLife, from whose full- | theAugustinian heritage ever since.
ness we haveallreceived (chap.11
[vii];John1:16).Thesymptomofthe old, sick life is "boasting":the
expressionofthe new, cured lifeisgratitude.Theungodly, though they have some knowl
edgeofGod,do not"honorhim as God orgive thankstohim"(Rom1:21):thetrue reli
gionoffaithisthankfulness to God for ourjustification (sees.18-19[xi-xii]). And by "the
faithofJesus Christ"in Rom3:22, Paul must meanthefaith that Jesus Christbestowson us
by his bounty (sec.15[ix]).
So relentlessly has Augustine pursuedhisencomiumofdivine grace that towardthe
endofthe treatisehemust entertaintheobjection, "Do we thenbygrace make void freewill?" He replies withanindignant "God forbid!"butthen embarkson asubtle courseof
argument that endsinuncertainty (sees. 52-60 [xxx-xxxiv]). Essentially,theargument goes
like this:Inactual fact,farfrom annullingfreedom, graceeffectsfreedom (John 8:36;2 Cor
3:17).Butwhat abouttheinitialact offaith that seemsto be thefirst steptosalvation?Is
faith"in ourpower"? Well, we needtodefinetheterm "power," distinguishingthewillto act
from theabilitytoact. The payoffofthe acute analysis that followsisthat, actually,in the
actofbelieving thereis nogap between willandability, sincethe act ofbelievingisan act
of the will.No one hasfaith without willing it;and ifone willsit, one has it.Faith, therefore,is in ourpoweritisvoluntaryby definition. Obviously, this powerisgivenus by
God, otherwiseitwouldnot betrue that everything we haveisreceivedas agift.Butthen
we must ask,Whydoesaperson willtobelieve?Andwhy don'taliiAnswer:Therational
soul hasanatural freedomofchoice, givenbythe Creator:we canchoosetobelieveor not
to believe,and it isprecisely byourchoice that we willoneday be judged.Ofcourse,our
choiceisalwaysinresponsenotonlyto thepreachingofthe gospelbutalsoto theinner
persuasionofGod, whose mercy anticipates us.But toyieldtoGod's call,or torefuseit,
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fied by it.17
In an elegant piece of conceptual analysis, which doesn't go quite so well in English as
in Latin, Thomas points out that in ordinary usage "grace"sometimes meansfavor,as when
we speak of being in someone's "good graces"; sometimes agiftfreely given, as when we say,
Til do you a favor"; and sometimesthanL,as when we "say grace" (q. 110, art. 1). His
main interest is in the second sense of "grace"; but he insists that it depends entirely on the
first because, unlike human love,
which is moved by something
appealing in its object, the love or
was,n Luther's eyes, ruinous pastoral
psychology because what Is in them
is the sickness of self-will, which
shows Itself either in presumption or
in discouragement.
To urge sinners to "do what Is in them"
favor of Godcausesgood in the per
son loved.18In this sense, then, grace
"denotes something in the soul": the
creative, transforming gift given by
God'slove."To say that a man has
the grace of God is to say that there
is within him an effect of God's gra
cious will" (ibid., art. 2). Taking a
term from Aristotle'sEthics,Thomas calls this gift a "habit" (Greekhexis),that is, a new dis
position.19In essence, if not in terminology, we can say that he is being faithful to
Augustine's view. But as we will see, the notion of "habitual grace" was one aspect of thescholastic heritage that Luther, for his part, vehemently rejected. Another was the notion of
"merit."
Augustine had not disallowed the concept of merit, only the erroneous Pelagian view
that the "grace" of eternal life is acquired by meritorious actions. That would not be mistak
en, according to Augustine, if the Pelagians had added that it is grace that makes meritori
ous actions possible. Rightly understood, even our merits are gifts of God (1 Cor 4:7!); and
at the end, when God grants us eternal life, he crowns his own gifts.20God "operates, there
fore, without us, in order that we may will; but when we will, and so will that we may act,
He co-operates with us" (Phil 2:13).21Thomas takes over these sentiments from Augustine,
whom he frequently quotes as his authority. Since scripture promises eternal life as a reward
(Matt 5:12; 19:17), there must be merits; but there cannot be merits without the gift of
habitual grace (q. 109, art 5; q. 114, arts. 1-3), and the initial gift of grace cannot be merited
17Q. 109 argues that the need for grace is fourfold: to initiate action or movement, to provide the form by
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(q. 112, art. 2; q. 114, art. 5). For Luther, by contrast, there could be no smuggling in of
merit even at the later step. Moreover, the Nominalist theologians whom Luther knew best
tried to get merit in sooner. They argued that, although grace is necessary for justification,
God gives his grace to those who do the best they can without itan opinion that Thomasonce held but abandoned by the time he wrote theSummaTheologiae.
The Nominalist understanding of grace and merit is sometimes described as "semi-
Pelagianism." Against the Pelagians, the Nominalists took "grace" in the Augustinian sense
as the infused gift ofcaritas(love for God), but, unlike Augustine and Thomas, they
thought one must prepare for the reception of grace by doing as much as one could with
one's natural abilities. Such preparation, to be sure, is not strictly or "condignly" meritori
ous (de condigno),since strict merit is the gift of grace alone. But it may be judged "fitting
ly" meritorious (decongruo)because God has graciously covenanted to reward it. As the
favorite Nominalist watchword put it, "God does not deny grace to those who do what is in
them"that is, those who do their best. This ingenious scheme actually enabled a theolo
gian such as Gabriel Biel (d. 1495) to sound the authentic Augustinian note. In a charming
sermon preached in Mainz Cathedral (about 1460), for example, he confesses the marvel of
grace and draws the inference that the heart of Christian piety is thankfulness. Grace is like
a precious ring, given by a king to his subjectsa golden ring, studded with diamonds.
"How could one ever praise highly enough the clemency and the preciousness of the gifts o
such a king? Behold, such is our King and Savior! The gift is grace, which is bestowed abundantly onus."22If Biel knows exactly who will receive the gift of gracethat is,whoever
does the best he or she can without itthe motive is no doubt, at least in part, pastoral: he
wants, like Pelagius (whom he nevertheless rejects), to encourage effort, not complacency.
But it didn't work for Luther.
THE TRUE TREASURE OF THE CHURCH
Martin Luther (1483-1546) tells us in a famous phrase that he fled to the monastery of
the Augustinian Eremites in Erfurt "to get a gracious God." The story of his spiritual pil
grimage and intellectual development has been told many times, and it has given rise to
endless scholarly disagreement. But there is no doubt that, on the theological side, his
struggle came to a focus on the Nominalist watchword, "God does not deny grace to those
who do what is in them"their best. For how do we know when we have done the best we
can? And what isour best? Do we have a natural ability, as the Nominalists taught, to love
God above all else? A scrupulous conscience tormented Luther with uncertainty whether he
had in fact done all he could, or had loved God bestuntil he decided that the Nominalists
were fools and "pig theologians " crypto-Pelagians who had subverted nearly the entire
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GRACE Interpretation 53
church with their obnoxious formula.23
From all that we have said so far, we can surely conclude that the discovery of
Nominalist "stupidity" did not put Luther at odds with the Catholic tradition of Augustine
and Thomas, and many historians and ecumenical theologians these days, both RomanCatholic and Protestant, think that he was actually a champion of the Catholic understand
ing of grace against a semi-Pelagian deviation from it. The conflict with the Roman Church
first arose not from Luther's rejection of Nominalist theology, but from his critique of an
ecclesiastical practice that had been scandalously abused, as everyone admits: the traffic in
indulgences. There was certainly a straight line from Luther's discovery of grace to his
attack on indulgences. The church taught that a treasury of merits had accumulated from
the good works of the saints, who did more than was required of them, and was available to
reduce the satisfactions demanded of those who had done less. Luther's sixty-second thesison indulgences (1517) protested that "thetruetreasure of the church is the most holy
gospel of the glory and grace of God" (LW,31:31;my emphasis). But, at this time, he called
only for the reform of an abuse. And the same year, in hisDisputationagainst Scholastic
Theology,it was the strict Augustinian opinion he endorsed when he announced that "the
best and infallible preparation for grace and the sole means of obtaining grace is the eternal
election and predestination of God" (thesis 29; LW, 31:11).
It must be granted that if the Nominalists had pastoral motives at heart for teaching
that grace goes to those who do what they can, Luther had pastoral motives for opposing
them. The conflict was not, for him, a merely doctrinaire matter but reflected the depths of
his own experience of God, which drove him to bring the same gospel of grace to others.
The crucial question is this: Whoarethe ones who are touched by grace? Is it those who,
because their resources are limited, can climb no higher but may count on the assistance of
grace because they have done all they can? Or is it those who can slip no lower because they
have hit the bottom of frustration and despair and expect only condemnation? Is grace aid
for the weak, or is it the promise of new life for the dead? To urge sinners to "do what is in
them"was,in Luther's eyes, ruinous pastoral psychology because what is in them is the
sickness of self-will, which shows itself either in presumption or in discouragement. Any
newdemand,even the modest demand to do their best, can only move them to further out
ward expressions of their inner self-love. Hence the healing Word of God must be hidden
under a diagnosticjudgment,which breaks down overconfidence and makes despair the
first step to salvation. The Word of God comes, whenever it comes, in a manner contrary to
our expectations, announcing life hidden under death, salvation under condemnation,
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heaven under hell.24
There is perhaps a difference of tone from Augustine, and certainly from Thomas, in
Luther's tirade against the obnoxious formula of the Nominalists, but in substance it
remains faithful to the mainline Catholic tradition.25This is not at all to conclude that
Luther and those whom Calvin calls "the sounder Schoolmen" really had nothing to quarrel
about on the question of grace. True
Augustine, Thomas, and Luther were
Thiswitness to grace , not the of one mind in asserting the
predestinaran theology of grace, is absolute priority of divine grace over
where the preachers of the Reformed human merit. That was the issue
church must take their stand. w i t h t h e P e I a 8 i a n s a n d s e m i
Pelagians. But there were at least two
points, already mentioned in pass
ing, on which Luther did not merely
repeat the Catholic tradition on grace. First, he left no room at all for the notion ofmerit,
which Augustine and Thomas postponed (and carefully qualified) but did not exclude.
Luther judged grace and merit to be simply incompatible, mutually exclusive concepts, and
he took Paul to say in Rom 3:24("theyare now justified by his grace as a gift") that "there is
no such thing as merit"26Second, Luther rejected the notion of grace as ahabit.And this
now calls for a closer look, since it is the very definition of Lutheran grace that is at stake.
In his refutation of Latomus (Jacques Masson), a Roman Catholic theologian at the
University of Louvain, Luther infers from Rom 5:15 that we are to distinguish God's "grace
(charts)"from God's "gift in grace(dreaen chariti)?Graceis the favor or good will of God
that accepts the sinner; thegiftis the healing that comes from faith. "Here, as ought to be
done, I take grace in the proper sense of the favor of Godnot a quality of the soul [i.e., a
habit],as is taught by our more recent writers." But there is also the gift, which works to
purge away the sin of the person who is forgiven. There are thus two benefits of the gospel,
one the opposite of wrath, the other the opposite of corruption; the first total, the second
partial. "Everything is forgiven through grace, but as yet not everything is healed through
the gift"Luther concludes that he only wants to speak in the simple, Pauline way, without
any difficulty.27 The present-day reader may wonder where exactly this differs in substance
24I am summarizing the theme as it is powerfullyand provocativelydeveloped in Luther'sLecturesonRomans,partly under the influence of the mystics (see especiallyLW,25:382-83,438-39). His description of thesinner as "bent in on himself" probably came to him from the fourteenth-century mystical treatise that he himself
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GRACE interpretation 55
from the more technical Thomist way, with its careful distinction between the first and sec
ond meanings of the word "grace." The answer is, in part, that the grace of God, as Luther
puts it in the passage cited, is anoutwardgood: the divine acceptance never depends on the
healing that is going on inus, otherwise it would not be grace.28But behind this answer lies
a fundamental, if not irreconcilable, difference on the means of grace: whereas Thomistic
grace is sacramental, Lutheran grace comes as a word, a proclamation, good news. "If you
want to obtain grace, then see to it that you hear the Word of God attentively or meditate
on it diligently. The Word, I say, and only the Word, is the vehicle of God's grace."29In
short, the true treasure of the church is the gospel.
There remains the problem of predestination! It has seldom been a divisive matter
between Roman Catholics and Protestants: rather, it has occasioned party divisions within
each of the two communions. Luther's cheerful truculence and fondness for overstatementmay haveappeared to make predestination a bone of contention between Rome and Wittenberg.
(Erasmus suggested that Luther's honorific title should beDoctor hyperbolicus.)It was surely
unwise of Luther to argue for the bondage of the will by embracing one of John Wycliffe's
(ca. 1325-84) assertions condemned at the Council of Constance (1414-18): "Everything
happens by absolute necessity." It is one thing to say that by its own efforts the fallen will is
unable to extricate itself from bondage, quite another to say that to purpose anything either
evil or good is in no one's control because everything is predetermined.30The sickness of
self-will, bent in upon itself,is not the same as the determination of the will by divinenecessity. But it was absolute necessity that Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1469-1536) took to be
theLutheran dogma, and Luther commended him for perceiving the central issue.
Nevertheless, the discussion of election and predestination in his reply to Erasmus, The
Bondageof theWill,moved within the lines of the Augustinian heritage: it was not, as such,
"heretical." In some ways, John Calvin (1509-64) was more cautious than Luther on predes
tination and the bondage of the will. But whereas, after Luther, the Lutherans said as little
as possible about predestination, the later Calvinists became obsessed with it. The Calvinists
even claimed that they were the real Lutherans because they were unembarrassed byLuther's predestinarianism. They made the doctrinetheirs,though they could find little or
nothing new to say about it. Calvin's own verdict remained axiomatic: "We shall never be
clearly persuaded, as we ought to be, that our salvation flows from the wellspring of God's
free mercy until we come to know his eternal election, which illumines God's grace by this
contrast: that he does not indiscriminately adopt all into the hope of salvation but gives to
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some what he denies to others.'
SOVEREIGN GRACE TODAY
Manya wellintentioned Reformation Day preacher has sought to explain how Luther
andCalvin replaced Roman Catholicism's salvation byworkswith the Protestant message o
grace alone. Thetruth,asalwaysin theology, is more complicated. The Reformers in actual
fact recovered Catholic teaching on theprimacyof grace but modified the receivedconcept
of grace by their insistence that grace is the favor or goodwillofGodproclaimed in the
gospel.32
Reformation Day sermons might better call on Protestants to ask if they them-
selvesstill affirm the witness of theReformers to the gospel of grace. It is sobering to recall
thatso eminent a Roman Catholic theologian as Louis Bouyer, who was brought up as aFrenchProtestant,converted to Rome because onlythere,he decided, couldsola gratiafind
asecure home. Though he noted the evidence of occasionalrevivalsof the Reformation
principles in Protestantism, the strange paradox, in his eyes, was that "the Reformation,
begun to extol the work ofgrace,arrived at a Pelagianism never equalled before."33
Nodoubt, "Pelagianism" herelosessomething of its specific historical profile. It comes
tomean any religious outlook that is chiefly preoccupied with human needs, goals, and
activity. For Bouyer, the term covered a large assortment ofRomanCatholicbogeys:mod-
ernsubjectivism, individualism, pragmatism, moralism, and so onall of which supposed
ly took advantage of a crackleftopen in Protestantism's doorway. (Bouyer recognized that
Calvin, at least, tried to provide an antidote by adding tosola gratiathe principleSoli Deo
gloria,but without much success.) We shall have toleaveit to the historians and the sociol
ogiststo explain the nature and sources of what we have come to call our "narcissistic age."
But we can surely recognize somethinglikea homespun Pelagianism in thesurvey What
AmericansBelieve.Eightytwo percent of therespondents believed that "God helps those
who help themselves";fiftysixpercent believed this to be a quotation from the Bible.34
Othersymptoms of Pelagianism, broadly conceived, appear wherever the church offers
reassurance without judgment, Christian education without the call for conversion; orseek
torally the resources within us rather than pointing us to the resources outside us; or mis-
construes the resourcesas though they lay only in Christ's teaching and example, not in
his victory over sin and death and his power to heal our sickness. The symptoms appear
31Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion ed J T McNeill trans F L Battles 2 vols LCC vols 20 21
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GRACE Interpretation 57
when I would sooner tellmystory than the story of redemption; when I am more eager to
insist onmyfreedom than the freedom of God; or when I imagine that I can use God to
promotemyhappiness or success instead of acknowledging that I exist for God, not God
forme.
Pelagius can hardly be blamed for all of our "unequaled Pelagianism," nor, I think, can
some flaw in the Protestantism of Luther and Calvin. Their witness to the gospel of grace
holds out the best hope of a remedy, since it offers the possibility of self-transcendence.
Perhaps the most apt definition of their faith is given in their fondness for the expression
intuitusChristi,undivided attention to the Christ who is presented in the Word of the
gospel.35As Luther said in a memorable claim: "This is the reason why our theology is cer
tain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves."36Or, as Calvin asks
rhetorically: "Ought we not to think early and late, and day and night, upon the grace
granted us in our Lord Jesus Christ?"37Thiswitnessto grace, not the predestinarantheology
ofgrace,is where the preachers of the Reformed church must take their stand. Not that the
doctrine of predestination is plainly false: the exegetical arguments of the Reformers cannot
be dismissed out of hand merely because we find determinism distasteful and would like
our wills to be free. The point rather is that it remains a controversial doctrine, and the
proclamation of the gospel cannot wait until it is settled. In a fascinating encounter, Charles
Simeon (1759-1836), the Calvinist leader of the Anglican Evangelicals, put to John Wesley
(1703-91), an avowed adversary of Calvinism, a series of leading questions: whether hebelieved he would never have thought of turning to God had God not first put it into his
mind, whether he looked for salvation solely through Christ, and so on. The anticipated
affirmative answers being duly given, Simeon concluded: "Then, Sir, with your leave I will
put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism [W]e will cordially unite in those
things wherein we agree."38
They agreed on sovereign grace! But is that what the Reformed
and Presbyterian churches agree on today?
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