Grace is something positive that is bestowed to someone underserving, such as a gift, a blessing, or love. In theology, grace typically refers to the good things that God bestows upon undeserving humanity. This divine grace can further be divided into grace that God gives to everyone, called common grace, and grace that relates to God’s redemptive role, called saving grace. This section addresses the doctrine of God’s saving grace.
The theological concept of grace became prominent during the Pelagian controversy. Pelagianism taught that God would never command people to do something impossible; people are not tainted by original sin and are therefore capable through free will to live a sin-free life. In this view, there is no need for God’s grace for a person to achieve salvation.
Augustine vigorously opposed Pelagianism. He writes, “Whoever maintains that human nature at any period required not the second Adam for its physician, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted as an enemy to the grace of God.”[i] In other words, Aristotle views salvation as requiring God’s saving grace which is only available through the salvific work of Christ, referred to as the second Adam.
According to Augustine, original sin significantly taints man’s ability to correctly make decisions regarding sinful actions. He uses the analogy of a scale to describe people’s ability to make correct moral assessments. Due to original sin, an unregenerated person has a biased scale that makes correct moral assessments impossible (see figure below). Mankind’s corrupted nature will tend to make good things seem to be not as good and evil things not to as evil. It is only through God’s grace or regeneration that this bias can be overcome, allowing the regenerated person to make correct moral assessments with God’s help.
Aristotle sub-divides God’s grace into three kinds: prevenient grace, operative grace, and cooperative grace. Prevenient grace is active in all people, even to unbelievers. It prepares a person for conversion, without which conversion would be impossible. Conversion is accomplished by God’s operative grace, which does not rely on any human cooperation. After conversion, cooperative grace allows a person to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the sanctifying process of becoming more Christlike.
Thomas Aquinas adds to Aristotle formulation of grace through the concepts of actual grace and habitual grace. Actual grace refers to acts of God that positively influence our behavior. Habitual grace refers to a supernatural substance put in a person’s soul by God that permanently changes the soul for the better. This understanding of grace by Aquinas eventually lost favor, but the general Aristotelian understanding of grace remains highly influential.
Up until the Protestant reformation, the concept of salvation focused on biblical verses that emphasize grace such as “[W]ith Christ by grace you have been saved” (Eph 2:5). This radically changed with the Reformation and Martin Luther’s strong focus on verses that emphasize justification by faith. Although both concepts are theologically compatible, it is clearer to understand salvation as involving both grace and faith. For this reason, it is perhaps clearer to describe justification and salvation to be by “grace through faith” rather than by “faith alone.”
Although post-Reformation language tended to switch from grace to faith, Reformed theology developed an extensive doctrine called the Covenant of Grace. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were under the Covenant of Works, where they could remain righteous before God through obedience. Since the Fall, mankind is under the Covenant of Grace, where salvation through grace is offered to all people on the condition of faith. People are sinners, are completely undeserving of saving grace, and are completely helpless to achieve salvation through any human effort. Grace is simply a free gift offered by a loving God to all those willing to receive it through faith.
The Reformed doctrine of grace holds that the means of salvation has always been the same since the Fall. This is necessarily true since God is eternal and unchangeable. The form has changed throughout history (in periods called dispensations), but OT saints were saved by faith in the same way that NT saints were saved by faith as are people today. Louis Berkhof writes, “It is essentially the same in all dispensations, though its form of administration changes … The Bible teaches that there is but a single gospel by which men can be saved. And because the gospel is nothing but the revelation of the covenant of grace, it follows that there is also but one covenant.”[ii] Charles Hodge echoes this thought but adds that grace is not bestowed to those with general faith in God, but to those with faith in the redemptive power of the Messiah.
“As the same promise was made to those who lived before the advent which is now made to us in the gospel, as the same Redeemer was revealed to them who is presented as the object of faith to us, it of necessity follows that the condition, or terms of salvation, was the same then as now. It was not mere faith or trust in God, or simply piety, which was required, but faith in the promised Redeemer, or faith in the promise of redemption through the Messiah.”[iii]
That faith has always justified sinful man is echoed in Hebrews, which discussing the role of faith in of OT figures (such as Abraham and Moses) in gaining God’s approval. “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him” (Heb 11:6). The NT brings additional clarity as to the mechanism of salvation by grace through faith, but Abraham and Moses became righteous before God in essentially the same way as Peter and Paul.
If grace is offered in the OT in the same manner as the NT, the question arises about the specific role of Christ’s death and resurrection, which obviously had not yet occurred during OT times. The answer to this question is ultimately a mystery but may have to do with God existing outside of space and time. Although people witnessed Christ’s death and resurrection from the human perspective of being within space and time, the redemptive power of Christ (if God is understood to be immutable) must be an eternal quality.
Although the term is not used, the Covenant of Grace is essentially shared by Roman Catholic, Lutheranism, Reformed, and Arminian theologies. In each, initial justification is achieved by divine grace through faith. The difference is that Roman Catholics and Lutheranism believe that original sin is cleansed by baptism, and all but Reformed theology believes that everyone has the ability to experience saving grace. Reformed theology limits saving grace to the predestined elect.
[Next Topic: The Doctrine of Christ]
[i] Augustine, “A Treatise On The Grace Of Christ, And On Original Sin,” in Augustine’s Writings on Grace and Free Will, ed. John Hendryx, West Linn, OR: Monergism Books, 418/2021: Bk. 2, Ch. 34.
[ii] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 1941: 279.
[iii] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. 2, Anthropology, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1872/2013: 371-372.
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