What is Grace?

How Augustine helps me read Matthew Bates's allegiance proposal in "Beyond the Salvation Wars"

Augustine writes, "grace ... is not paid out as earned but given gratis; that is why it is called grace" (On the Trinity, IV.1). While this definition may seem familiar, scholars today have challenged this understanding. Recently, John Barclay has clarified the semantic range of the word grace in the New Testament, showing that it can both signify a gift to the unworthy and an expectation that the recipient will transform their life (Paul and the Gift). Nothing here should surprise us since God gives grace not merely to save someone as a mental exercise but to transform every sphere of life.

However, some recent attempts to speak about grace, faith, and salvation have shifted the conversation even further. Matthew Bates, for example, speaks of faith as allegiance. In his view, our faith-allegiance is not part of the Gospel but a response to it. In other words, our allegiance to Christ saves us.

Yet in Bates's summary of salvation, he does not mention the word grace (Beyond the Salvation Wars, 258–60). Understandably, he may want to avoid this term because of its charged meaning in both Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions. But the effect is to make Christ's Kingship the Gospel itself, while our faith or allegiance to Christ becomes a response to this good news. Where then does grace fit into this scheme? Perhaps Bates would say grace operates throughout the whole process. But at least in his summary, he does not integrate grace into his structure of salvation.

By contrast, Augustine, for all his diversity of thought, places grace before faith and as the reason we believe in Christ (On the Trinity, IV.1). Augustine explains that unless we know that Christ died for us (Rom 5:8), we will not have the courage (or humility) to reach out for his hand savingly. In other words, apart from the grace of the Incarnation that shows us God's love for us, we would never believe.

This understanding of grace matches Augustine's mature writing on Predestination and Perseverance, as well as similar writings by Fulgentius and the Scythian monks on grace.

As I have written elsewhere as a summary of Augustine and Fulgentius:

"Predestination is when God wills to show his free mercy upon sinners before the world's foundation.

Grace is predestination applied when grace awakens our hearts to believe in Jesus.

Perseverance is the form of grace that means God brings our faith to the finish line.

Grace actualizes predestination in time by granting faith, and perseverance is the form of grace that allows this faith to reach its intended end. Both are gifts of God, as Augustine states.

Predestination ensures that the priority of God's love comes first—we love him because he loved us; perseverance ensures that the gift of faith leads to good works. Both are necessary because "without holiness no one will see the Lord" (Heb 12:14).

Fulgentius speaks of infused faith and the gift of faith, both sourced in God by means of divine Goodness. He means something like imputation, but readers might miss this if they focus on that one word alone and not the broader concepts at work in Fulgentius's writings."

On this Augustinian view, grace precedes faith because of predestination. Grace is predestination applied in time. Grace thus causes our faith, our good works, and perseverance—all of which are necessary, as all Protestants should affirm (but occasionally don't!).

I am a Protestant, and I believe that grace or the Goodness of God precedes my faith. That grace and Goodness centers on God's love for us made manifest in the virgin birth (Rom 5:8; Titus 3:4). Only when grace awakens my heart to have the courage and humility to grasp God's outstretched hand in faith can I enter into the Empire of the Holy Spirit.

Understandably, the theological language of justification, sanctification, imputation, infusion, and more can make it sound like we have a rigid system of salvation. Bates, for his part, objects to Calvin's division of justification and sanctification as well as the language of imputation as lacking biblical support (236–7).

Part of Bates's rejection of Protestant views of salvation (although to be clear, he also accepts much of the Protestant schema) follows from an over-reliance on modern categories. Some Protestants use infusion and imputation. Others speak of Christ incorporating us as the place where we receive Christ's righteousness—something akin to Bates's proposal for incorporated righteousness.

At this point, we could find ourselves wrangling over words all day. But what matters is the meaning of these words. I want to get at the real judgments that separate Protestants from Rome, and which, I believe, separate us from Bates's proposal.

Let me mention one difference here since I do not have time to spell out the various distinctions. This one difference, however, illustrates the point well.

In his reading of Paul, Bates concludes: "God's predestinating election is a future-conditional corporate benefit for all those who are 'in the Christ'" (151). Bates advocates that Christ is predestined to give benefits to his corporate body conditionally (e.g., based on their allegiance to him).

To my mind, this view contradicts the Augustinian and Reformed priority of predestination as grace prior to God's gift of righteousness. Martin Luther found Gabriel Biel's view of grace unacceptable because it relied on congruent grace by which humans could first reach out to God before he granted his righteousness. But predestination as grace planned, and grace as predestination applied in time, places the priority of grace before faith in our salvation to ensure that grace is free.

"Grace," Augustine says, "is not paid out as earned but given gratis; that is why it is called grace."

Fulgentius writes in his First Letter, “By predestining, [God] has himself prepared the gift of grace that, once the grace is actually given, completes the effect of the predestination” (Fulgentius and the Scythian Monks, §66, p 106)

But if "God's predestinating election is a future-conditional corporate benefit," as Bates says, then I wonder how we ensure the free grace of our salvation, regardless of the scheme we use.

I appreciate the catholic approach that Bates brought to his work Beyond the Salvation Wars. Some critiques of his work have been largely knee-jerk reactions. But in reality, we should do our best to consider what the Bible says about salvation and how we might talk with other communions.

But high levels of irenicism must be matched by high levels of conviction. I find myself, for many reasons, unpersuaded by Bates's work. I have noted one above simply because it gives a larger picture of why. It helps us focus on judgments, since Bates's work by definition has to deal with so many technical words that it can be difficult to articulate exactly why his proposal might or might not be successful.

For my part, the priority of grace applied in time due to predestination prevents me from seeing his proposal as particularly successful. After all, it was this view that Martin Luther used in his earliest period of arguments against Biel and others who spoke in ways that suggested God’s grace of justification relied on our initiation.

Despite the mystery of it all, grace alone still precedes my faith, no matter how I define it. And for this reason, I doubt Bates will be able to unite Roman and Protestant theologians because he has not adequately addressed the question of grace.