Grace 1. General meaning and presuppositions
(a) Divine prevenience and generosity .-Grace is a theistic idea. It emerges inevitably in the progress of religious thought and practice with the idea of God’s separateness from man (cf. in India, Brahmanism; in Greece, Orphism). It deepens in character and content in the growing sense of separateness, with the concurrent conviction, ever deepening in intensity, of the Divine goodness in sustaining fellowship with man (cf. in Israel, Hebraism, Judaism). It attains perfect form in Christianity, whose Founder exhibits a personal life so dependent on and penetrated by God as to reach absolute maturity simply through the Divine power immanent within it-the ceaseless sense, possession, and operation of the Divine Spirit. Irresistibly the soul’s interior experience of that fellowship postulates a realm of Divine prevenience and generosity. Generally the postulate embraces three features: the priority of God, His self-donation to man, His regard and care for man’s salvation-all making emphatic the givenness of man’s best life, the Divine action inviting his. Grace is thus a purely religious affirmation expressing the soul’s assurance that God’s goodness is the beginning, medium, and end of its life. Here God is not simply a great First Cause: first in time, foremost in space; He is rather the background and dynamic force of man’s inner being, and, for its sake, of all created being; enfolding and comprehending it, giving it its origin, reason of existence, unity, completeness, final end; the envelope of the whole by which the parts do their best and issue in their most fruitful results, so that the soul is a harmony of linked forces,* [Note: Cf. Tennyson’s picture of ‘the awful rose of dawn’ in the Vision of Sin.] Divine and human. Here, too, the soul’s blessedness is not simply the gift of God. The soul’s life is through Himself-‘His very self and essence all-Divine.’† [Note: Cf. Newman’s hymn: ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height.’] Its various stages, the growing process of His grace, do not depend, nay, disappear when made to depend, on merely mental reference to His acts, or on merely self-originating impulses. Such attachment of the human to the Divine is too superficial. The inadequacy of man’s spirit to work out its own perfection is irremediable. Salvation is only secure in utter and entire dependence on the Divine Life, distinct from man’s, the life which precedes and from which proceeds all his capacity for good: in which, truly, ‘we live and move and have our being.’
(b) The Christian experience .-The apostolic doctrine of grace presupposes the distinctive Christian experience. The NT teaching falls into three groups: Synoptic, Pauline, Johannine. The first reproduces the most immediately and literally faithful picture of Christ’s sayings; the second and third present the earliest impressive developments of His sayings in individual realization, and are rich in exposition and explanation of the subjective apprehension and appropriation of Divine grace. It is the process in man’s activity that is detailed more than the analysis of the attribute in God. Between the two types we are conscious of marked contrasts, not only in their form but in the substance and mode. Along with a deep underlying unity of fundamental thought, it is true to say that the consciousness of the apostles is not identical with the consciousness of Christ. Christ is not repeated in them.‡ [Note: Cf., for an admirable discussion of this point, P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 1909.] The teaching of both is the direct transcript of their spiritual history; but their spiritual constitution is so radically different that their teaching is bound to have radical differences. ‘He spoke as the sinless Son of God; they wrote from the standpoint of regenerated men.’§ [Note: W. P. Paterson, The Apostles’ Teaching, pt. i.: ‘The Pauline Theology,’ 1903, p. 5.] The principle of sin alters the whole position. The view-points for estimating grace increase. Thus it is that while Christ speaks little, if at all, of grace, it is a central conception of the apostles. Therefore also, while grace is in both, it is ‘in Christ’ in a vitally intimate way such as cannot be predicated of the apostles except ‘through Christ.’ It is ‘the grace of Christ,’ as ‘of God’; not the grace of the apostles, whose it is only ‘by his grace.’
Again we have to note in Christ’s case no trace of that separateness of the human from the Divine Spirit in their communion and inter-operation in the relationship of grace, which is so clear in the case of the apostles, a distinction of which they are so confident that they claim a special illumination and infusion of supernatural light and energy in this experience. Christ’s mediation of grace to them is basic. It differentiates their doctrine not only from Christ’s, but from all ethnic and prophetic ideas. The apostles are neither mere seekers after God, nor simply seers or servants or interpreters of God: they are sons, the bearers of Himself;| [Note: Cf. the early Christian term for believers-Χριστοφόροι.] and the immensely richer experience is reflected in the ampler refinement of their idea of grace and its more commanding place in their system. Nor should we fail to observe that the term ‘grace’ denotes a new economy in human history. Primarily it signifies a fresh advance of the human spirit under the impetus of new Divine redemptive force. That fact implies a fresh out-flow of energy from God and a fresh uplift of the world’s life; man is ‘a new creation,’* [Note: 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15 .] the world ‘a new earth’;† [Note: Revelation 21:1 .] there is revealed a new stage in the fulfilment of the eternal purpose. Grace here has cosmic significance. Sin is over-ruled for good in the whole world-order as it is in the individual Christian heart. History, like the soul, is transformed through Christ. The initial and controlling causes of that whole vast change are discovered to the primitive Christian perception in a great surprise of God’s forgiveness, pronounced and imparted by Christ, and made effective for regeneration by a force none other than, not inferior to, His Holy Spirit. Thereby a new era is inaugurated-the dispensation of ‘the gospel of the grace of God.’‡ [Note: Acts 20:24 .] Grace, then, comprises three specific moments: a supernatural energy of God, a mystical and moral actuation of man, an immanent economy of Spirit.
(c) Essential characteristics .-Grace, accordingly, is erroneously regarded when defined as a substance or force or any sort of static and uniform quantum. It is ‘spirit and life,’ and as such its characteristics are personality, mutuality, individuality . The experience of grace is that of ‘a gracious relationship’§ [Note: Cf. art. ‘Personality and Grace,’ v., by J. Oman in Expositor, 8th ser. iii. [1912] 468 ff.] between two persons, in which the proper nature of either in its integrity and autonomy is never at all invaded. The mode is not impersonal or mechanical. The blessing is not an influx so much as response to an influence; a gift yet a task; a mysterious might overpowering, but not with power, rather with persuasion; the renewal of the entire disposition through implicit trust in God’s goodness and by the diligent exercise of the powers of Spirit, ever latent and now let loose, with which He enables and quickens. It is not only an awakening of the moral self into more active freedom: it is first the conscious springing up and growth of a new life, sudden or gradual and wondrous, from immersion in the mystic bath,|| [Note: | Cf. St. Paul’s ‘baptism with Christ’ (Romans 6:4, Colossians 2:12). Cf. for the idea, art. ‘St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions,’ III., by H. A. A. Kennedy, in Expositor, 8th ser. iv. [1912] 60 ff.] fed by the heavenly streams, whose cleansing power, if before unknown, is not alien, and invests the finite life with the sense of infinite worth and imperishable interest-a sense welcomed as native and as needful for the life’s predestined end. The process is easily intelligible, yet readily liable to misunderstanding. The traditional doctrine, Catholic and Protestant, in its anxiety to safeguard both the mystical and moral constituents of the experience, has tended towards two grave defects-the separation of the two which in reality are one, and the confusion of the mystical with the magical.¶ [Note: This criticism does not apply to mystical piety or evangelical.] Grace then becomes a material quantity, instead of spiritual quality. Psychologically a person is only insomuch as he is living, growing. Man is, as he lives in God; and his capture** [Note: * It is a seizing by God as well as a yielding by man, ‘apprehension’ on both sides (Philippians 3:12).] and surrender are achieved not in a thing but in a person, and not to a thing but to the One Person, whose right to claim him and renew his life consists precisely in this, that He is Himself absolutely, infinitely, and actually what man is derivatively, finitely, and potentially. Thus the act which binds man to God does so for growth and enhancement of life. All that comes from the living God is worked out by living souls, and is ever living and enlivening; it is as varied and individual as the variety of individuals concerned.
The apostles were Hebraic, and no true Hebrew could misinterpret this. To the Fathers it was so familiar. The covenant-relation was the central truth of their religion. Its very essence was this mutualness of religious communion. Vital godliness hinged on two realities-the Divine Being willing to be gracious, and the no less ready response man must make to Him. For God and man to come together, both must be individually active. To God’s willingness to help, man comes with his willingness to be helped. To God’s desire to forgive, man comes with a penitent mind. by mutual love, the love of God to man meeting the love of man to God, the two are reconciled. Complete surrender (religion) brings with it growing individuality and independence (morality). Herein, further, let us note, rests the explanation of two conspicuous facts in the life of grace-the fact, viz., that the inspiration of grace is neither infallible nor irresistible ;* [Note: See art. Perseverance.] and the fact of the splendid out-burst of fresh forms of goodness . The Church in her materialistic moods has been prone to forget both. The Apostolic Age is so rich spiritually just because so sensible of both. ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels’ is the precise counterpart of the psalmist’s ‘the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.’ It is never forgotten that while the Divine Life is the milieu of the human, the human is the medium of the Divine, its assimilative capacity adequate only to the present need, not to the ultimate reality;† [Note: Cf. a sermon by Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord’ (The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons, 1881).] while its readiness to receive is never in vain in any event or circumstance or relation of life. The human spirit may appropriate only within limits; but the indefinite variety of limits alone bounds the operation of grace. Grace is all-sufficient; the ‘fruits of the Spirit’ correspond to its plenitude.
2. Specific redemptive content .-In seeking to analyze the contents of grace, we have no lack of material. What grace is to be seen in the spiritual personality it produces. The Apostolic Letters furnish a complete, typical description, of rare intensity and lucidity, of two such personalities of the loftiest order-St. Paul and St. John, and we possess abundant parallel records of Christian sanctity of every later age, to verify our conclusions. The letters are not so much doctrinal systems as a sort of journal intime of soaring, searching spirits: autobiographies of spirit, ‘confessions’ of what the writers saw and heard and knew of ‘the mystery of Christ.’‡ [Note: The recent extensive literature devoted to the study of the apostles’ teaching has for main result to cast into bolder relief the splendid spiritual stature of, next to Christ, the two great figures, St. Paul and St. John.] As Christ ‘witnessed’ of Himself, the apostles ‘witness’ of Christ. Their witness is offered in two distinct types-the predominantly ethical and the predominantly contemplative-neither of which has ever failed to recur constantly in subsequent history. It may therefore be taken as comprehensive and normative. It is, moreover, offered with a minimum reference to the material through which it has operated-the psycho-physical organism and temperament in which the gracious working has developed itself.§ [Note: Hints occur in St. Paul’s writings (Romans 7:24, 1 Corinthians 9:27, 2 Corinthians 13:7).] The scaffolding has been taken down, and the building is disclosed unencumbered with immaterial detail. From that fact we may trust in the apostles,’ balance of mind and credibility, since the very richness of their spiritual vision points to an unusually large Subconscious life of ‘the natural man’ and its insurgent impulses, not easy to subdue, yet which, instead of dominating, is so exquisitely kept in place as to become a chief instrument and material of their life’s worth and works. Regarding our data in this light, what do we find?-At once a continuity of experience and an identity of essential fact.
(a) Supernatural principle of life .-To begin with, we find the life of grace to be constituted by the supernatural principle, and to be an indivisible entity. The life of the believer is by a new birth from above,* [Note: Cf. John 1:13, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15, James 1:18 P 1:23, 1 John 3:9 .] translating men into a new position before God and a new disposition to sustain it.† [Note: Cf. John 14:6, Romans 5:2, Ephesians 2:5, Philippians 3:20, Titus 3:5-6, Hebrews 7:19 .] That is the consentient testimony of the apostles, as of the saints, of the first and of every age.‡ [Note: Cf. for the typical instance mediAEval piety-St. Catherine of Genoa-the remarkable delineation in F. von Hügel’s Mystical Element of Religion, 1908: also Luther, Bunyan, etc.; and for Reformation examples, the life story of Luther. See also ‘Studies in Conversion’, by J, Stalker, in Expositor. 7th ser. vii. [1909] 118, 322, 521.] Grace is initially regeneration, the work of God’s Spirit, ‘whereby we are renewed in the whole man and are enabled more and more to die daily unto sin and to live unto righteousness.’§ [Note: Shorter Catechism; cf. Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Ephesians 4:23, Colossians 3:10 .] Apostolic and saintly biography shows that this condition may have different levels and values in different natures, and even in the same nature at different times. It shows also that the maintenance of that condition means a constant and immense effort, a practically unbroken grace-getting and ever-growing purity in conflict with the insistent lower self. but the characteristic general fact of renewal remains, as something constant and inalienable-in its inferior planes as a fight against the devil; in its higher, a struggle with lower self, stimulated and impelled by God’s illumination working in and upon the soul: constant and inalienable so long as the soul keeps turning towards the Light. For the grace of conversion|| [Note: | It belongs to the life of ‘perseverance.’] is the concomitant of regeneration. Conversion is an act of the soul made possible by the Spirit, and should be as continuous as an act as regeneration is as a work.¶ [Note: Cf. John 6:44, Acts 2:38, 1 Thessalonians 1:9, James 4:3 .] This experience, which on one side is regeneration and on the other is conversion, is one which leaves the soul different for ever from what it was before; yet not in such wise as to prevent the soul itself living on, or as to raise the soul above its limitations and failings, so that it will not fall from grace, and will be kept from sin. but the endeavour to keep from fall and lapse is now on a larger and deeper scale, on a higher plane, on a new vantage-ground. It is always attended by the clear consciousness of the effort being ‘in God,’ ‘in Christ,’ and as wholly their work as the soul’s.
This double consciousness of Divine and human action, nevertheless, does not divide the soul. On the contrary, the more deeply it proceeds, the more does the soul wake up and fuse itself into single vital volition to cast off what is inconsistent with its growing self and to mould what remains into better consistency. The soul as the subject of grace is not an automaton but a person, and the two actions are but two moments of one motion whose activities are not juxtaposed but interpenetrate in an organic unity.** [Note: * Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:10, 2 Corinthians 3:5, Ephesians 3:7, Philippians 2:12, Philippians 2:13 .] Spirit and spirit can be each within the other†† [Note: † Cf. Romans 8:9 .] -a favourite idea of the apostles.‡‡ [Note: ‡ Cf. Romans 6:3, 1 Corinthians 10:3-4, 2 Corinthians 4:10-11; Galatians 3:27, Philippians 1:21 .] In St. John the same thought is ever present under the categories of life, light, knowledge, love.§§ [Note: § John 4:14, 1 John 4:10 .] All here comes from, and leads to, a life lived within the conditions of our own existence in willed touch and deliberate union with God.
(b) Blessings of Christ’s work and Person .-Next we find the life of grace to be a progressive process of moral purification and mental enlightenment in mystical union with Christ. It is a growth in grace and in the knowledge of Christ,* [Note: 2 P 3:18.] in the grace and truth’ that are come by Jesus Christ.† [Note: John 1:17 .] St. Paul dwells on this grace as ‘righteousness,’‡ [Note: 1 Corinthians 15:47 .] St. John dwells on it as ‘truth’ (light, knowledge);§ [Note: Cf. John 1:9; 1 John 1:5, Revelation 22:5, etc.] never, however, in either case on the one as exclusive or separate from the other. To St. Paul Christ is wisdom as well as righteousness; to St. John He is righteousness as well as truth, although in the former instance the point of emphasis is on righteousness, in the latter on light. For this reason, in the Pauline doctrine the description of the source, sphere, and effects of grace is mainly in juridical terms; in the Johannine, in abstract terms-true to the intellectual influences to which they were subject.|| [Note: | We take St. Paul’s mind to be little influenced, the Johannine writings to be much influenced, by Greek thought.] The two accounts necessarily differ, and in important details. The fundamental conceptions are identical. A broad statement of their unity may well precede the elucidation of their divergences. To both types of idea: (1) Christ is not ‘after the flesh,’ but is Spirit or Life.¶ [Note: John 14:6, 1 Corinthians 15:45, 2 Corinthians 3:17, 1 John 1:1-3 .] i.e. the Risen and Glorified Christ who had met St. Paul on the way to Damascus, converting him; whom St. John saw in the Vision of Patmos for his comfort; ‘the second Adam,’** [Note: * 1 Corinthians 15:45 .] ‘the Man, the Lord†† [Note: † Romans 1:17, 1 Corinthians 1:30, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Philippians 3:9, etc.] from heaven’; ‘the Lord of glory.’‡‡ [Note: ‡ 1 Corinthians 2:8, James 2:1 .] (2) Righteousness and truth are objective realities as well as subjective qualities, powers of God and qualities in man; the righteousness of God and the sanctity of man-the first creative of the second through faith.§§ [Note: § Acts 3:16 .] (3) Christ is the Mediator of righteousness and truth, both of which He is Himself;|| || [Note: | || Romans 5:18, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Philippians 1:11, Philippians 1:2 P 1:1, 1 John 2:27 .] in virtue of which it is said that ‘the grace of God’ is the ‘grace of Christ,’¶¶ [Note: ¶ Christ is its bearer and bringer, having the pleroma; See esp. Colossians 1 .] and the life of grace is ‘life in him’ or ‘life in the Spirit.’*** [Note: ** The Spirit of grace.] (4) This Spirit creates or awakes Spirit (πνε ῦ μα) in man through the infus ion of its supernatural principle in the gift of righteousness and knowledge (= Spirit), so that men are partakers of these as they are in God, in the measure of men.††† [Note: †† John 3:7; Romans 1:17, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Philippians 3:9 .] The Apostle finds the possibility, on man’s side, of this infusion, in the nature of the human πνε ῦ μα,‡‡‡ [Note: ‡‡ the Pauline anthropology is an intricate subject. For a remarkably interesting and clear statement See H. Wheeler Robinson, Christian Doctrine of Man, 1911, pp. 104-138, St. Paul teaches that in the natural πνε ῦ μα of man lies the ground of affinity with the Divine πνε ῦ μα.] which then becomes the temple of the indwelling Divine πνε ῦ μα, and from which as basis proceeds the sanctification of the whole nature. (5) T he righteousness and truth (which are Spirit, and Christ), mediated to faith, are mediated by the human life and historic work of Christ: in the Pauline statement, with special relation to His Death and Resurrection; in the Johannine, with reference to the issues for character which His Coming reveals and makes acute. According to the former, the sacrifice of Christ is deliverance from the curse that rests on sin and the alienation from God. by His Resurrection Christ so completely takes possession of the believer’s heart that he feels his life is not so much his own as that of Christ in him-the indwelling Spirit. According to the latter, the eternal life of the pre-existent Logos, manifested in Christ’s historical Person, is in believing experience incorporated through the mystical fellowship* [Note: Cf. the discourses in the Upper Room, Parable of the Vine, etc.] of believers with Christ, who are translated from darkness into light, from death to life, from sin and unrighteousness to love.† [Note: St. John’s three great antitheses.] (6) In the Epistle to the Hebrews (of the Pauline type) the life of grace is seen at work in Christ’s Personal Life, making it clear that the faith in Him that is receptive of grace is the faith of Him; so that what He did and won for men He did and won for Himself as a work of spiritual and moral power exerted in Him, and not simply upon Him. ‘The grace-enabling faith and the faith enabled by grace to overcome sin and destroy death, the Divine and human conspiring to produce and constitute the new righteousness of God in man and man in God, were so met in Jesus that He Himself was the revelation because He was the thing revealed.’‡ [Note: W. P. DuBose, The Gospel according to Saint Paul, 1907, pp. 85-86.] (7) The appearance of this Life and its blessings of grace are traced to the spontaneous and unmerited beneficence and initiative of God,§ [Note: John 1:12; Romans 5:8, Ephesians 1:4, Colossians 1:6, 1 John 3:16 .] who in Christ deals with sinful mankind not on the ground of merit or after the mode of Law, as though they were servants or subjects, but solely from His own natural instinct of Holy Love, as a father towards his sons. Hence the gracious will of God is distinctive in the incomparable fullness and excellency of the motives which it comprehends.|| [Note: | 2 Corinthians 9:8, Philippians 4:19, Philippians 4:1 P 4:10, 1 John 3:1 .] (8) Divine grace consequently underlies every part of the redemptive process, in an imposing array of objective forces.¶ [Note: Romans 8:30 .] What are its parts? Here the schemes of saving grace in the two types widely diverge in their most conspicuous features. St. Paul conceives of the subject of grace thus-the sinner is a criminal whom the Righteous Judge will of His clemency save; and his thought moves in a circle of juristic terms, St. John’s conception, on the other hand, is of the world (=human life) as marred by sin in opposition to God, and his notion moves in a series of antitheses reconciled finally by the manifestation of that pre-existent Logos who is the world’s fundamental principle. Under these leading concepts let us classify the respective terms.
(α) The Pauline scheme .-‘Justification’ is the point of stress in the Pauline list, and with it go ‘redemption’ and ‘righteousness’; ‘adoption’ and ‘reconciliation’ go together; sanctification is their result. The source of the whole is in the Divine predestination, and the goal is man’s glorification. The briefest definitions must suffice. Predestination determines on God’s part His purpose of grace. Election expresses the soul’s experience and certainty of saving grace. Justification is the grace which acquits and accepts the sinner as righteous. by justification the redemption purchased by Christ is made effective. Adoption is the grace that removes the obstacles debarring the sinner from fellowship with God, and inspires him with filial trust, freedom, and inheritance. by adoption reconciliation with God is made effective. Sanctification is the issue of these already mentioned in the renewal of the whole man-spirit, soul, body-a renewal leading eventually to resurrection, life, glory. Though the parts may thus be separated in thought, it is to be remembered that they are inseparable in the actual process. The prescience and prevenience of God are not otiose; they are the active origin and basal ground of man’s salvation. Justification in its attitude of faith implies the implicit energy of sanctification. Sanctification is but a ‘continuous justification.’* [Note: The phrase is Flint’s, in Sermons and Addresses. 1899, p. 230-Christ our Righteousness. It is a merit of Ritschl to have broken down the distinction between justification and sanctification. Cf. his chief work, Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung4, 1900.] Imputed righteousness is vital and is imparted. The ‘peace with God’ which these secure is, through a real remission of sins and rescue from God’s wrath, fitted to partake in the ineffable nature of the Spirit of righteousness and truth, who effects salvation, and the bliss of the Eternal Life, of which it is the foretaste and first-fruit.† [Note: Romans 5:1 .]
St. Paul gives two ‘sums’ of grace, the one in 1 Corinthians 1:30, the other in Romans 8:30, to which elsewhere are added ‘adoption’ and ‘reconciliation’ (Galatians 4:5, Galatians 4:7, Romans 5:11, 2 Corinthians 5:19). We may tabulate thus:
A. Predestination and Election. Justification Adoption Sanctification B. and and and Redemption. Reconciliation. Righteousness. C. Resurrection and Glory. (β) The Johannine scheme .-Eternal Life is the point of stress in the Johannine scheme. It works itself out in a series of three antitheses subsumed under the general and inclusive one of God versus the world, viz. light v . darkness, life v . death, love v . sin=unrighteousness. God and Christ, working in the Pauline scheme as righteousness and wisdom, work here as light, life, love, driving away darkness, death, sin; restoring life to its full completion by this self-revelation of the Divine Life which is at the same time the principle of the world’s real life (Logos). Resurrection here is just fullness of life, the perfection of personality, which we See in Christ (historic), who is the Resurrection and Life, and who communicates it to believers, with self-evidencing force, in the life of love. This new life is attained from the new birth in an experienced succession‡ [Note: Cf. W. R. Inge, art. ‘John, Gospel of,’ in DCG i. 885 ff., where, however, the successiveness of the stages is overdrawn, and the equally true simultaneity is obscured.] of ever-deepening intuitions and acts of faith, in a rich immanence of Christ in the believing soul,§ [Note: Too narrow a content is at times given to St. John’s ‘knowledge’: it includes not only the mental part, but all the parts of a man’s self.] and of such a soul in Christ, like that of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father.|| [Note: | John 14:20-21 .] We may tabulate thus:
A.Pre-existent Logos and Life. God Light Life Love B. v . = v . v . v . World. Darkness. Death. Sin. C. Incarnate Logos, principle of Resurrection and Life. The broad result of both descriptions of the life of grace is notable. It vindicates the outstanding fact of the Synoptic presentation of Christ: the uniqueness of His self-estimate for salvation. That is the conspicuous fact likewise of apostolic experience: ‘the mystery of Christ now revealed to his holy apostles.’ Unique as His life was, it yet can be the very law of all life. And it is so, when a relation between men and Christ is established of such a nature as links them to Him, so that they abide in Him as in their element. That relation is not adequately expressed as simply ethical harmony. It is rather an interpenetration of essence, in which the soul, gathering up all its faculties in unitary interplay and under His infusion of His Spirit, enters on a progressive sanctification, the illumination of the mind, the cleansing of the Spirit, until the whole nature is filled with the rich gifts of grace. Man in all this is neither depersonalized nor self-deified. He is, indeed, a self-contained system of spiritual operations-a little cosmos. but he is this in order to take his rightful and ordained place in the larger cosmos; for the fundamental energy in his new life is the wider fundamental energy which is co-extensive with creation vitalizing all that lives. So large is God’s gift.* [Note: Romans 8 .]
(c) The gift of the Holy Ghost .-We find the life of grace to be consummated under the pre-ordained Divine ideal by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the hope of glory. The life of grace is the eternal life in its earlier stage. The gift alone corresponding to the requisite grace is the Holy Spirit. It is a gift, the natural and necessary sequel to the process just described.† [Note: This is prominent in Romanist teaching of gratia, infusion of saving energy by the work of the Spirit, just as in Reformed doctrine ‘grace’ is the free favour of God, manifested in justification, which brings with it assurance. St. Paul’s idea comprises both.] For the Spirit is the agent of the operations of grace. If God justifies, adopts, and sanctifies, regenerates and converts, it is but fitting that He take means to make known the fact to them who are subject to these acts of grace: hence in justification the Spirit ‘sheds abroad in our hearts’ the love of God;‡ [Note: Briefly, the Spirit’s ‘manifestation’ is (a) ecstatical, (b) ethical, (c) religious. St. Paul gives the lowest place to (a), the highest to (c) (1 Corinthians 13).] in adoption ‘the Spirit beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God.’§ [Note: Romans 8:16-17 .] St. John dwells on the importance of the sending of the Spirit.|| [Note: | John 14:16, etc.] The Spirit is specially the gift of God; His mission the most important of the consequences of Christ’s Exaltation. As Christ grew Himself in grace by the Spirit, so by the Spirit He did His work for man, does His work in man, and mystically abides in man. The Spirit comes not to supply the place of an absent Christ but to bring a spiritually present Christ. He dwells in the believer as that Divine personal influence that brings Christ into the heart and seats Him there. He joins us to Christ, and in Christ we are joined to God-hence the terms ‘Spirit of Christ.’ ‘Spirit of the Son,’ ‘Spirit of Jesus Christ.’ Again, the Spirit does His work not abstractly, but by producing conviction of sin, righteousness, judgment to come, in relation to Christ whom ‘He glorifies.’¶ [Note: John 16:13 .] He makes the historic facts of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ the vital points of connexion through which He acts; and because it is so, men experience in grace those energies which constitute the Spirit of the Son, the energies of God.
Hence His indwelling manifests itself in the particular dispositions and graces of character** [Note: * St. Paul gives a fine list (Galatians 5:22-23); St. John gives its no less fine spirit-love (1 John 3:1).] which He calls into existence, called ‘the fruits of the Spirit.’ We need not trace the forms in which the spiritual principle unfolds or the spheres within which it operates.†† [Note: † Romans 5:5 .] We point only to the infinite variety and individuality of grace in its exhibition here, and to its limitless prospect and horizon. God in Christ through His Spirit is the Maker, the Creator of this new spiritual character.‡‡ [Note: ‡ Ephesians 2:10, ‘we are His “poem” created.’] It is the production of the original and underived conception of His mind, not an origination in man’s nature nor within its limits. Hence its freshness, pregnancy, fruitfulness, and hopefulness. It is a life to be worked up to (a Divine ideal), not worked out from-and no man can fix the bounds of its splendour.
It finds exercise in the natural virtues, in the spiritual graces, in the service and worship of God, in the religious emotions, and in the realization of the blessings of salvation. It is ‘unto good works,’ with sublime inclusiveness. There is no fixed pattern. God has no set moulds for character to run in: nothing is fixed but the predestined path ‘that God has ordained that we should walk in.’* [Note: Ephesians 2:10 .] The same idea occurs in another fine setting in St. Peter.† [Note: 1 P 1:3-5.] The greatness of grace lies quite as much in what it is to be as in its present value; in grace there is an inherent, indefinitely prolonged, and enduring propagativeness, another aspect of grace’s resources. In this regard the Spirit is ‘an earnest.’ An earnest implies two things-more to follow, and more of essentially the same kind. The presence of the Spirit in a man’s life speaks to him with assurance of the future, and the blessedness awaiting; and, if it does not enable him to forecast the particulars of that life, yet it does enable him to foretaste its nobleness and bliss. What grace gives here‡ [Note: ‘The Spirit of glory and of God rests upon us now’ (1 P 4:14).] will he enjoyed there in perfect glory and perfected fullness. Only let us ‘live in the Spirit’ and ‘walk in the Spirit.’§ [Note: The believer who has the Spirit thus has Him as ‘a seal’ (2 Corinthians 1:22, Ephesians 1:13).]
3. Historical controversies .-The subject of grace bristles with controversy. Every fresh epoch, bringing larger thought and fresh foci of emphasis, sees the recurrence of perplexities. The Apostolic Age is no exception. Its apologetic protagonist, St. Paul, discusses at least four points-grace in relation to (a) nature, (b) merit, (c) freedom, (d) the Church and sacraments. A brief note on each may fitly close this exposition.
(a) Grace and nature .-The question is in reality part of the perennial problem of nature and the supernatural, and their re lation. With the Apostle it offers two facets: (1) the extent to which unregenerate man may be said to be under grace; (2) the conversion of sinful nature by grace. As to the former, there have been in subsequent times two attitudes: (α) man’s unregenerate nature is wholly outside grace, a massa perditionis (St. Augustine), a ‘total depravity’ (Calvin), ‘in bondage’ (Luther); and (β) it is only in part outside the operation of grace; grace includes natural virtue as well as supernatural gifts; in the working of reason and conscience we See the working of God’s Spirit; the question is one of degree. As to the latter there have been also two attitudes: Is sin radical or superficial, imperfection or perversion? If it is a radical perversion, then the converting grace required is above nature, the free gift of God’s mercy; if a superficial imperfection, moral influence by way of education will suffice to eradicate it.
These attitudes in varying guise have divided Christendom through the centuries. On which side may we range the apostles? The question is not easy to answer. They offer no systematic statement. Two considerations are relevant. First, they inherit the national attitude, the cardinal feature of which is the natural affinity of man for God and the easy access of God’s Spirit to man. The Spirit operated specially but also generally; His grace lay in the ordinary as well as in the exceptional facts of moral and religious life. There is no sign that the apostles broke with this point of view (nor did the Patristic age).|| [Note: | The Greek Fathers teach that the Greek philosophers are under the influence of the Holy Spirit.] They make, however, a most significant addition, due to the vital effect of Christ’s Personality in their experience, introducing an absolutely new strain, forming a new centre round which the problem gathers. The inherited theory is left unreconciled with the new focus; the new focus inevitably leads to the profoundest widening of the gulf between nature and grace; and pre-Christian moral and religious life is conceived of as, in its general disposition, evil, abandoned of God, even if, in its higher tendencies, especially in Israel under the Law, it was propAEdeutic and led to demands for revelation of grace. In both St. John and St. Paul the conception of sin is immeasurably deepened-its opposition, even enmity, to God and grace starkly expressed.
(b) Grace and merit .-The doctrine of merit in its full technical sense belongs to later days. It is fully developed in mediAEval scholasticism, where it occupies a large place. It was seriously assaulted by the Reformers. It was prepared for by a long anterior development from small beginnings as early as the sub-apostolic teaching.* [Note: In ‘Hermas’ we have the idea of supererogatory merit; and also of some works better pleasing to God than others.] Many factors entered in the course of history to enhance its theological interest. From the sub-apostolic age there begins the emphasis on works . Again, increasingly, Christianity tends to become a new Law, the Christian life its submissive acceptance. Still more, as the Church-consciousness grew, there grew the ecclesiastical idea of redemption as a great system beginning in baptism and ending in resurrection; grace working not spiritually but mechanically in its mode.† [Note: Not the same as the magical working of the impersonal ‘infusion’ of later scholasticism.] The Latin Fathers gave a strong impetus to the idea of merit in the doctrine and discipline of penance. In the Pauline anthropology the idea is present and is opposed in its most rudimentary form. It has a natural basis, which the Apostle takes up, and, dissociating it from the popular view, makes serve as the foundation of his doctrine of faith as the human factor in the renewal of the believing heart. It is not quite true that in Pauline theology man ‘can do nothing’ and ‘needs to do nothing.’ Grace requires man’s co-operation in faith, which is not simply an initial act, but a constant attitude. Faith, or the receptive heart, implicit, humble trust in God, may be all the sinner has to exercise-but it is a vast deal, and has a distinct moral worth.‡ [Note: Hebrews 11:6 .] Its worth, however, is not extended to the good qualities or good works of which it is the precursor; these are credited solely to the grace whose reception faith renders possible.§ [Note: This is all more fully considered under art. Justification.] The Pharisaic doctrine of merit is before the Apostle’s mind; and his arguments emphasize the gospel of absolute grace in reaction from the conception of Law as conditional reward. He labours to prove that the Law by its very nature cannot unite the sinner to Christ or God, union with whom is the proper idea of grace. The true relation is reversed when character and conduct are made pre-conditions of our obtaining Divine grace instead of the joyous result of our having accepted it. Besides, even faith is the gift of God. The Spirit implants. For that express purpose Christ is exalted.|| [Note: | Acts 5:1 .] These principles reappear in the Reformers’ polemic against the Catholic dogma. ‘Faith unites the soul to Christ.’ That primary fact it is that outcasts all merit, and faith is ‘the gift of God.’
(c) Grace and freedom .-In the life of grace as a human experience God of His own motion takes part. Another problem is: What is the part God takes, and what is man’s? The problem is one of the most difficult. It is continually emerging in the course of human thought, and, like all of these grace problems, has continuously divided Christian loyalty. Two great answers have been given which in their extreme statement are directly contradictory of one another, but modifications of which are continually proposed. The first is known as Pelagianism, according to which the spiritual life of a man is the direct result of his own choice. The second is known as Augustinianism, according to which the spiritual life is necessitated by God’s will. The best-known modification is Semi-pelagianism, which finds prevailing favour in the Roman Catholic teaching, as Augustinianism does in Reformation doctrine. It is a form of Synergism, according to which Divine grace is insufficient till human effort conjoins with it. The three may be thus defined-in the Pelagian view, grace precedes and assists the natural (unregenerate) will; in the Augustinian, grace prepares and assists the regenerate will; in the Semi-pelagian, grace is not operative at all till man’s will (indifferent) brings it into play. The answer to the problem depends on the philosophy of personality adopted.* [Note: A question into which we need not here enter.] What is here relevant is the fact that the apostolic doctrine has nothing of all this in view, however much it may suggest it. These eternal values are carried up to the eternal purpose of God and at the same time the ethical basis of moral responsibility in human freedom is recognized. The Divine control of human life in the whole of its activities is one of the great conceptions of the OT. It is power animated by a gracious and righteous purpose and conditioned by the recognition of human freedom. The OT idea of providence culminates in the NT idea of salvation. The assertion of human freedom runs through both OT and NT, Divine control and human freedom accompanying each other, in harmonious intimacy, regarded in a purely practical manner. Whatever invasion of ‘freedom’ there is, is due to sin; but the evil tendency is never pressed into determinism. The apostles, as later the Fathers, think in this ancestral descent. Religious dependence has for necessary concomitant moral independence; the deeper the dependence (religious) the richer the independence (morality). It is this independence that St. Paul emphasizes in the blessing which he terms ‘the glorious liberty of the sons of God,’ ‘the freedom wherewith Christ sets us free’† [Note: Galatians 5:1 .] -a primary feature of the new life. Grace is the personal relation to our moral self by which that self attains emancipation. Modern moral theory approves.
(d) Grace and the Church and sacraments .-In apostolic thought the Church is a visible and Divine institution: the Body and Bride of Christ. It is the appropriate social environment for the sanctified soul, wherein at once the gifts of each are available for the profit of all and the spiritual atmosphere conduces to the uplift and sanctity of all. It is specially the ‘fulness of him that filleth all in all,’‡ [Note: Ephesians 1:23 .] i.e. the complement of His purpose, the means by which He accomplishes His loving scheme for man’s salvation. There are two strata of concepts concerning the Church, one lower than the other, which have given some justification for the belief that the apostles describe the Church in two aspects, visible and invisible, realistic and idealistic. Rather they find in the Church as men See it something evident only to spiritual insight. To them the Church’s life and spirit are but the realization and extension of the Spirit of Christ Himself, and the Church possesses, in the midst of its variety of spiritual influence upon its members, a mysterious unity, which is not only the sum-total of all present variations, but something always beyond and far-reaching, inviting and calling and assisting the believing members upward and onward identically after the manner of Christ Himself with the soul living in Him. To magnify the Church is to magnify this Divine Spirit living and working in the Body of Christ.
The ordinances of the Church possess a particular character. They are not subordinate as mere means of influencing the soul: they are means of grace to the soul. They are of co-ordinate importance with the Incarnation, whose effects they continue, with the Atonement, which they commemorate, for they apply the graces of these. This efficacy hangs on the Living Presence of Christ, whose grace they convey; for the effect of sacraments depends on the action of Christ Himself. In them He communicates what He alone can bestow, for the use of which faith and spiritual affections are required, but which they cannot create.* [Note: The point is not how Christ acts upon us by His Divine Humanity in the Church ordinances, whether by transubstantiation or spiritual power, but the fact that He does so act really and truly, whatever the mode.] Through His Spirit’s operation they unite us with Him in the mystical union. The Church in this sense was purchased by Christ’s blood† [Note: Ephesians 5:25, Titus 2:14 .] and is the object of justification.‡ [Note: Cf. Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, ii. 217 ff.] Very early the rapidly growing Christian society seized upon this conception and began to relate the grace of Christ through His Spirit to the sacraments as feeders of the mystery of the inner life. The whole ancient Church, e.g., connects the gift of the Spirit with baptism. Yet there is no disposition to regard the rite as magical or mechanical: the spiritual efficacy of the ordinance is due to the Holy Spirit.§ [Note: Cf. H. B. Swete, Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, 1912.] Not the rite ex opere operato, not the minister, but the Spirit dispenses grace; the visible elements and the ministerial action derive their validity from the Spirit alone. Soon pagan and superstitious elements were to enter in, to alter this free spiritual idea of sacramental grace into ‘another grace’ altogether-a lapse from personal to sub-personal categories, in perfect consonance with the new and attractive idea of the Church in its visibility and authority as the exclusive custodian of grace. Externally as that idea was formulated, and false as its rapid development grew to be to the apostolic mind, its opponents too often forget that to the apostolic mind there is no idea so fundamental as the reality of a great spiritual society living by its own truth and life, having its own laws, and these exclusively spiritual. For the life of grace consists not simply in the new life of the soul. It is the new order of the world, a new permanent order of life, a real supernatural constitution unfolding itself in the world, in absolute rupture with the present world, deeper and more comprehensive than the life of believers, having objective substantiality in the Life of God as the Life of Christ itself, whose embodiment on earth it is-an idea whose present and practical realization the modern social necessities imperatively demand.
Literature.-Besides the books referred to in the body of the art. [Note: rt. article.], the following will be found useful: the artt. [Note: rtt. articles.] ‘Grace’ in JE [Note: E Jewish Encyclopedia.], CE [Note: E Catholic Encyclopedia.], and ‘Gnade’ in PRE [Note: RE Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche.] 3; the Commentaries on Romans, particularly that of Sanday-Headlam in ICC [Note: CC International Critical Commentary.], 1902; C, Piepinbring, Jésus et les Apôtres, Paris. 1911; A. E. Garvie, Studies of Paul and his Gospel, London, 1911; J. R. Cohu, St. Paul in the Light of Modern Research, do. 1911; G. Steven, The Psychology of the Christian Soul, do. 1911; W. A. Cornaby, Prayer and the Human Problem, do. 1912; a series of artt. [Note: rtt. articles.] by W. M. Ramsay, A. E. Garvie, and H. A. A. Kennedy in the Expositor, 8th ser. iii. [1912], iv. [1912], v. [1913]; the great work of H. J. Holtzmann, Die Neutest. Theologie 2, Tübingen. 1911, and an older work of great merit-J. W. Nevin, The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846.
A. S. Martin.