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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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46 Interpretation JANUARY 2003

(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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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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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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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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