Grace in Christianity
Grace is a concept of central importance in the theology of Christianity. Because it is central to salvation, grace has proven to be one of the most contentious issues in the history of Christian sectarianism.
Shared concepts of grace
All Christians believe that humans achieve salvation through the grace of God.
Most Christians of any of the major denominations agree that humans are born in a state of sin. This is a consequence of original sin; a sinful nature is inherited; it is part of the human condition. Traditionally, original sin is explained as a result of the fall of man through the first sins of Adam and Eve in Eden. Some would now reject the story from Genesis as history. But even those who reject it still agree that humans are born in sin. The original state of grace enjoyed by the once-good people God created has been lost, for them and for their descendants. We are born having forfeited any claim to salvation.
God's grace responds to this otherwise hopeless situation. God, at His initiative, sent prophets and other teachers to reveal His existence to humans. He gave the Torah, the Law of Moses, to the Jews, and made them his chosen people to provide a moral example to the rest of humanity.
Most importantly for Christians, however, God's grace sent his Son, Jesus Christ, who sought to make atonement for the sins of the human race through his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. God's grace is freely given, on behalf of the humans He has called to salvation. God was not obliged to save anyone; humans cannot make themselves good enough to earn their way into Heaven on their own initiative, or give rise to a duty on God's part to save them. It is only through the redemption bought by Christ's sacrifice that anyone is saved, and the path of salvation for humans lies in participating in that redemption.
Grace, then, is God's initiative and choice to make a path of salvation available for humans. On this, almost all Christians agree, though they may disagree on the meaning of some terms, or on which parts of the narrative of grace to emphasize. But from here out, it gets more contentious.
New Testament ideas of grace:
The New Testament word that is usually translated "grace" is in Greek charis (χαρις), which literally means "gift". The word was not often used by Jesus himself; in the canonical Gospels it is spoken by Him only in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John. However, the parables attributed to Jesus in the Gospels make clear that Jesus did in fact teach the concept of grace. More importantly, He told stories that underlined that grace was God's to give, God's sole prerogative, and that it was freely offered.
Parables such as the Workers in the Vineyard, Matthew XX:1-16, tell of an employer (who in the traditional Christian understanding, represents God) who hires some workers early in the day, some later, and some an hour before quitting time, then pays each of them the same amount. When the workers who worked all day balk, the employer's explanation is, Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? . . . So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few are chosen. Matt. XX:15-16 (KJV)
Similarly, the well known parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke XV:11-32 is traditionally understood by most Christians as containing the teachings of Jesus on grace. A son demands the family fortune and wastes it, then returns home expecting little in the way of good treatment. The father welcomes him handsomely, over the objections of his other son who stayed at home and served dutifully.
Many throughout Christian history have perceived a common thread in these parables of Jesus: the grace of God is something that upsets settled human notions about merit, about what is deserved, and what is due as recompense.
Disputed concepts of grace: In the New Testament
The basic outline of the later dispute appears in the New Testament itself. The parables of Jesus seem to preach grace that seemed broad enough to forgive any sin, and to be available regardless of the seeming unworthiness of its recipient. But He also raised the bar for what was expected of His followers in what seemed needed to obey the Ten Commandments. (See, Sermon on the Mount) An apparent contradiction was brewing here.
The difficulty becomes yet more focused in the New Testament epistles. St Paul of Tarsus wrote that For by grace ye are saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. Ephesians II:8-9 (KJV) For St Paul, salvation, like the wages of the labourers in the parable, is God's gift at God's sole prerogative. Were it achieved by human effort, people could take pride in their efforts toward holiness, and God's gift of grace would be diminished in contrast to human effort. This would contradict his clear teaching of the universal problem of sin. (E. g. Romans III:9-20)
A sharply contrary perspective is presented by the Epistle of James II:1-26, concluding that faith without works is dead. By "works," James here appears to include both acts of charity, and righteousness according to the code of laws; the preceding text mentions charity to the poor as well as sins against the law of Moses. An inward change, the forsaking of old sinful ways, and being reborn in a spirit of generosity is to James the true test of conversion. Without these things, claiming to have "faith" is a sham. Grace must be something that steels the Christian to avoid sin and practice charity. Without these signs, it seems likely that grace was never there.
Various later theologies profess to resolve these approaches in different ways, but from the plain texts of the Epistles appear to contradict one another.
A prologue to further discussion
Sociologists of religion, analysing the functioning of religious faiths and institutions as social structures without specific regard to their doctrines, have observed that religions operate differently, require different institutional forms, depending on how integrated they are with the surrounding society. Labels that have been given to some of these relationships include cult, sect, denomination, and ecclesia. In roughly ascending order, these terms relate to the integration of a religious institution with the society that surrounds it.
After the close of the New Testament period, the Christian church underwent a number of dramatic changes in its relationship with the surrounding society, and with the Roman Empire, the principal government of the area where the Christian movement operated. To simplify greatly, these changes took the church from a period where the persecution of Christians was an ever-present threat, to a time when the Emperor Constantine ended all persecutions of Christianity and made its practice legal. The Roman Emperor, moreover, took an active interest in the way the Christian church was run, calling the first Council of Nicaea to resolve a dispute in church doctrine over Arianism. Many historians believe that he was motivated to encourage unity in the Church as a way of preserving unity in his Empire.
The history of Christianity at this point is of a remarkable reversal of fortune. No longer a rejected minority, Christians enjoyed political clout. The rulers took an active interest in who the church leaders were. Cæsar acted to settle disagreements between them. Former pagans, seeing that their emperor now favoured the Christians, lined up to join.
At this time, the Roman Empire's days as a unified political entity were already numbered. There were cultural divisions between the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire and the Latin Empire in the West. There were also substantial economic and military discrepancies between the relatively prosperous East and the relatively exposed West. This division would lead to the collapse of the Latin Empire in less than two hundred years. This, too, affected the fortunes of Christianity as an institution.
Grace in Western Christianity
According to Eusebius, the Roman emperor Constantine I was not baptised until shortly before his death in the year 337. To some this might suggest that his commitment to Christianity was lukewarm; in an attempt to rebut this suggestion, a contrary suggestion was made. Christians at the time of Constantine, or at least at the time this explanation was devised, believed that the performance of the ritual itself conferred forgiveness of sins. This, however, was a one shot deal; post-baptism sins cannot be forgiven in a second ritual, and could only be resolved by penance. By postponing baptism until the last illness, it made it unlikely that the believer committed a serious sin between baptism and death.
From a contemporary perspective, it is impossible to tell what Constantine intended. But the theology assumed in this explanation suggests that the concept of grace had been altered into something hard to fit into the New Testament's treatment of the concept.
Rather than God's property to be offered at His sole discretion, in Western Christianity at least, grace had become a sort of spiritual currency, and the Church was its banker. Believers acquired grace by participating in the Church's sacraments. The sacraments were effective in conferring God's grace by virtue of their being performed, provided that the liturgist was authorised by the Church to perform them. The grace offered through the sacraments enabled Christians to lead a better lives and to deepen their faith.
In addition to grace, merit was earned by good works and acts of charity; by this merit, believers can earn the right to rewards from God. Conversely, sins reduce your merit before God and incur a debt to Him in the divine economy. Sufficiently serious sins not only remove merit, but also extinguish sanctifying grace in the believer's soul, which could be restored by the sacrament of penance. These sins are mortal sins. Less serious sins, venial sins, incur loss of merit. Believers whose accounts were overdrawn at the final accounting went to Hell, believers without enough merit for Heaven went to Purgatory, where they could work off the debt they owed to God.
Fortunately, some saints achieved so much merit in their lifetimes on Earth that they got into Heaven with some to spare. This surplus was called works of supererogation, the Church's treasury of surplus merit. The Church can offer the excess merit in its treasury to be applied to the deficits in merit suffered by its penitent sinners. Pope Clement VI proclaimed this to be a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church in 1343.
Specific developments in Western Christianity:
Specific developments in Eastern Christianity:
are there any?
Reformation ideas of grace:
- Lutheranism;
- Calvinism;
- predestination;
- predestination (Calvinism);
- total depravity;
- sola fide;
- sola gratia;
- Protestantism and sacraments;
- Baptists on baptism (believers baptism);
- Arminianism