Read Ephesians 2: 1-10The Apostle Paul’s description of the human condition is quite bleak. We are dead in our sins. We follow the “prince of the air”, that great deceiver, Satan. And we are “children of wrath.” This phrase should conjure in our minds the typical way in which Israel, and subsequently Christians, are referred to in Scripture, namely as children of God. The promise of our adoption fills us with hope and displays God’s mercy. The promise of wrath for the ungodly fills us with terror and displays God’s holiness and justice. But before this terror can grip us, Paul interjects in verse four, reminding the believers that God is indeed merciful, and that while we were still dead He made us alive again.
The language of death and life make it abundantly clear that we have no part in this work of salvation, for a dead man cannot make himself alive again, but to labor the point Paul says twice in this passage that it is by grace that we are saved. He adds also that our works do not factor in, but faith alone is the vehicle of our salvation. Paul then ends the passage by reminding us that we, as regenerated believers, are the creation of God, and that in addition to being the architect of our salvation, He has also prepared many good works to do in and through us, which we ought to walk in. This concluding remark serves two purposes. First it acts as a caution for the previous statement. Though our salvation does not depend on our works, that does not give us license to act however we please under the guise that we are saved by our faith. James makes it clear that faith unaccompanied by works is a “dead” faith, revealing that such faith makes us no different than those whom Paul describes as children of wrath at the beginning of this passage. Thus Paul ties God’s original work of salvation as a past action to His continuing work of salvation that will continue throughout the rest of our lives. Second, Paul’s language of “walking” in the good works God has prepared exactly parallels the beginning of the passage in which the sinful man is described as walking in his sins and trespasses. Before we walked in evil works, now we walk in good works.
What we see here, at least implicitly, is an imperative that we must always strive to do good works in order to show that we have indeed been made alive by God in Christ. How else can we be assured that we are in fact God’s workmanship if we do not show it by walking in the good works that He has prepared for us? Again, James is clear on this point. It is not simply a matter of letting other people know that your faith is genuine, for a genuine faith cannot help but make itself known. Paul ties God’s work in us in salvation directly to His continuing work in and through us by good works. It is impossible to separate the two.
Now at this point someone might be inclined to think that the point of this passage is that a true Christian will be some kind of saint, perfectly obedient to the will of God and always doing good works. This is by no means the case. We are all still sinners and will continue to struggle with sin for the rest of our lives. Paul is not talking about perfection here. But what we must realize is that true faith cannot come without at least some outward indication. Fighting the inclinations of the flesh will be a harder battle for some than for others, but everyone must at least show signs of engaging in the battle, even if they lose more often than they win.
If we have no part in our salvation, then why do we still sin? Wouldn’t that basically be God’s fault if our salvation is His work? Why doesn’t He just save us all at once instead of letting us anguish in sin for so long?
Why does God do anything that He does? Could God just save everyone right now, snap up the earth in the apocalypse and then institute the new heavens and earth? Sure, but He chooses to act in other ways.
THE FOLLOWING IS A KNEE-JERK, HIGHLY OFFENSIVE REPLY:
You continually argue that we have to work out our salvation. We have to DO something in order to actually make ourselves right before God. Of course, this isn’t works righteousness because you don’t define it that way. On a related note, homosexuality isn’t sinful because God commands us to love each other, and that’s just how some people define love.
I know this verse says we’re not supposed to boast, but I’ve improved so much on God’s prevenient grace that I think everyone should really acknowledge how awesome I am. Maybe if you pray to me a bit or touch one of my old jeans, I’ll put in a good word for you with the ol’ guy upstairs….Oh, and that’s not boasting because I don’t define boasting that way. I just commune with God on a superior level because I’m so holy, maybe even a super-saint. My super-saint power is divine sarcasm…and shooting spaghetti out of my fingertips.
How do the saints hear the prayers of many people (sometimes thousands or even millions of people) all around the world at the same time, since they are presumably still finite and not omnipresent? If it’s a particularly prominent saint who gets a LOT of prayers, he/she would never even be able to relate them all to God (if he/she could hear them all in the first place).
As an Orthodox Priest said in response to such a question on Ancient Faith Radio, we don’t have to know how it works as long as it is a good practice, or even a commanded practice, that we ought to do.
In keeping with the knee-jerk and generally unhelpful responses being given in these comments, I’m just going to copy and use the blessed Priest’s response: I don’t have to understand every detail of how the tension works between God’s absolute sovereignty and man’s moral responsibility, but I see quite clearly the teaching of Scripture and I’m inclined to follow it, rather than fudging it to fit my preconceived philosophical understandings of a concept that the Bible never even treats explicitly.
Anyway, it’s not as though your comment was meant to open up genuine discussion so much as to hammer your own views yet again.
I’ll respond more later to this but to throw in a quick knee jerk response to Nilsen since that’s what we’re all doing:
C’mon bro. By that same token I could just as easily say that your post wasn’t meant to open up genuine discussion and was merely meant to “hammer your own views yet again.” Seriously, what’s the difference between a genuine discussion and just hammering your own views? Why is your post not the same as my comments.
On some level we’re always both saying the same thing because we’re repeating our paradigmatic story and and trying to present it to one another in different ways in hoping that the other might experience some sort of cognitive dissonance and change their minds. I’m just saying…people in glass houses….
I know…that was meant to be pejorative. Notice I said knee-jerk and unhelpful.
And I live in a plastic house…
I live in a glass house…. a BULLETPROOF glass house. Yeah, that’s right.
If I end up being a saint (and aren’t all believers?), I don’t want to have to sit in heaven and listen to Dave crying every night wondering why I had to be taken so soon or Mark bitching about no one listening to him. I think I’d rather just glorify and worship God…if I had to get to the Big Man by my own holiness and sticktuitiveness, screw whatever random schlep wants me to give him a boost.
I would hope that we aren’t all doomed to be God’s secretaries. Being a Calvinist, I’m expecting at least a middle management position. However, if saints are responsible for passing prayers on to God that would explain quite a few things. Donald, I should be married to a supermodel by now….your grandparents are slacking up there.
Cut my grandpa some slack…he just got there. Plus, they have to deal with all the shit the rest of my family was sending their way. You know, like “help me find a husband on WoW”
Now that was truly a miracle. Do you think God’s spirit was in the computer or just the mouse?
David–
Does the language of life and death make it clear that we have no part in our salvation? Surely a dead man does not walk; and yet we “*follow* the course of this world”, “*follow* the prince of the power of the air”, “*live among* them in the passions of our flesh”, “*follow* the desires of our flesh”. This parallels the language of being saved through “*faith*” (which is a human volitional action *and* a gift from God–both equally real and equally important, not one to the exclusion of the other) and good works being what we “walk in” or have as a “way of life” (which you recognize). There seems to be a strong emphasis on human volition as what works with the world, the flesh, and the devil to produce sin and cause death. And there seems to be an equally strong emphasis on human volition that works with God’s grace in bringing us to salvation.
You say that by laboring the point “it is by grace you have been saved” Paul is excluding us “having a part” in the process. But does “God did it by grace” mean “God did it by grace to the exclusion of my involvement being real, important or necessary”? That certainly doesn’t seem to be what happened in Christ Jesus, whose possession of the fullness divine grace did not exclude the necessity and reality of his human striving.
It is also important to think of the meaning of death carefully. Does “death” always imply an ontological immutability, an inability to change? Or can it just have the connotation of disunity and of broken relationship? Think of the Prodigal Son: “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:24) The son in the story seems (for all that we can tell) to have come to his father volitionally–he returns to him, he decides to get up; part of the reason that he is “found” is because he sought to return to his father. The metaphor of death need not imply that one cannot do anything good or change (or so it seems). Why can’t Paul be thinking of death in a way similar to how Jesus thought about it–not in terms of a fixed, immutable state of total inactivity and inability to do anything good, but of a severed relationship?
Also, where does Paul say faith alone is the vehicle of salvation? I see “not by works”; but that is not equivalent to “faith alone”. For Paul could easily only be excluding one kind of works from being part of the salvation process. Witherington, for instance, thinks the “works” are Gentile religious works (hence verse 11). When Paul says “and this not of yourselves” it is most natural to read that as a reference to those works–so its not excluding the idea that faith is a human volition. Nor, given the past tense, does any of this seem to exclude the idea that good works could be instrumental to our progression toward a state of being more saved, after our being initially saved by faith alone. The works he mentions here could also be the “works of debt” Paul decrys in Romans 4:4, or the “works of the law” in Galatians. But that doesn’t mean that *good* works are not instrumental to salvation/justification (Romans 2:13, 6:16).
Also, its important to ask ourselves what this passage is saying about justification. Is it saying anything about justification at all? Does the language of “made alive” seem to be referring to justification? That kind of ontological, vital terminology doesn’t fit too well with imputation of Christ’s righteousness being a legal declaration irrespective of a change in ontology. Of course I think that justification encompasses ideas of resurrection (Romans 4:15, compare to 1 Cor 15:21-22) and being freed from death and sin (Romans 6:7, 8:1-2–no condemnation is roughly equivalent to justification) so I have no problem with reading it this way. But this passage doesn’t seem to have much to say, if we just look at the language (and assume a Protestant conception of justification) about how we are justified.
In your last paragraph, you leave open the possibility that a Christian may lose more often than he or she wins. If we lose more often than we win, then doesn’t this seem to show that we aren’t saved? Paul says just a few chapters later (5:5) that fornicators, the impure, and the greedy (idolators) do not have any inheritance in the kingdom of God. That doesn’t seem to mesh very well with the idea that a Christian could be someone stuck in the mire of habitual sin. Nor does it mesh with Paul’s optimism about Christ’s power (Romans 6) or the Spirit’s power (Romans
to overcome our sin and corruption.
Also, Paul seems to have a lot to say about the resurrection (v.4-5 we are made alive with Christ and raised up with him) and ascension (we are seated in heaven with Christ) causing our salvation. That seems to be one of the most important things Paul says in Ephesians 2; I am interested in why this was missing from your analysis. Also, it seems to indicate that if all the stuff in Ephesians 2 is being caused by the resurrection and ascension, that doesn’t sit to well with the idea that Paul is talking about the Protestant understanding of justification, which is just caused by the crucifixion.
Responses to comments will have to come later.
“And there seems to be an equally strong emphasis on human volition that works with God’s grace in bringing us to salvation.”
I flatly disagree with this. You’re right that some of Paul’s language doesn’t necessitate a total lack of human volition, but that’s a far cry from putting any sort of positive emphasis on it (he does quite the opposite in fact).
I always dislike drawing out too many details from a parable or metaphor, but there are a few ways to see it. It’s possible that “death” in the parable does mean exactly what Paul seems to mean by it, and we simply can’t draw too many conclusions about the son’s volition, since that’s not the point of the parable. It’s also possible that death is meant in a different way, as you suggest, since it is directly linked to being lost and found. Either way, the parable doesn’t really do much to inform us of what Paul means in this passage.
As far as the death metaphor here, think of it this way. Dead people do deadly things. For a physically dead person this means being motionless, getting cold and sticky, smelling, etc. For a spiritually dead person it means walking in sins, among other things. But this doesn’t at all suggest that because we’re still “walking” that we can “walk” from spiritual death to spiritual life.
As far as faith being volitional and yet not in any way meritorious, I’d be interested to hear how you explain that. And if faith is a work, regardless of whether or not there is merit, doesn’t that make salvation ultimately dependent on works? As far as Paul referring to some specific type of work and not all works, I’d have to hear the arguments for thinking that to be the case. But if Paul had in mind that some works do save us and not others, you’d think he’d make that clearer, rather than always juxtaposing works in a relatively vague sense against salvation, which is always tied to grace. Something that I found interesting when looking at commentaries on this passage was that many of the Fathers (Chrysostom included) believed that the “gift” Paul refers to is faith itself. I found this interesting because most Arminian arguments I’ve heard deny this and argue that the gift is just salvation in general. Do you have any thoughts on this?
As far as justification, I don’t think I specifically talked about that and I don’t think a discourse on penal substitution is necessary in this passage, since there are many different ways in which the atonement is described in Paul’s letters, and the resurrection is certainly a major part of the overall atoning work.
David–
You’re right–the language of “*equal* emphasis” was wrong. Come to think of it, there is more emphasis put on God and his working. But that doesn’t change anything about the meaning of the passage; human agency still factors in as important and that’s what matters for my case.
Why do you dislike drawing details from parables, but like emphasizing the Pauline metaphors and drawing details from them? I agree that the dead do “deadly things”; but the dead/alive metaphor is just one of many in Scripture. There is also the metaphor of healing that is used frequently for salvation. A patient can come to his or her doctor volitionally; they might need help getting there, but they are in part responsible for coming. Why shouldn’t we take the healing metaphor in the specific direction that I’ve suggested? It seems at first glance just as legitimate as what you’ve done with the metaphor of death.
Also, I can affirm that there is a sense in which we have been saved without any volition playing any part. Specifically, human nature has been restored to life. And this is not the result of any normal human person’s strivings. So I can take the death metaphor in the way that you do, and just apply it to human nature, and how God saves human nature. But this doesn’t require going the next step and saying God monergistically saves particular *persons*. And that’s absolutely crucial for your argument. Why think that the death metaphor as Paul articulates it here must have its allegedly monergistic connotations carry over to persons?
“Volitional” is not equivalent to “work”. Work involves the exertion of effort. Volition can be effortless. Think of the act of accepting a present that’s being given to you on your birthday. You reach out your hands as your father hands it to you, but we wouldn’t call that “work” or “effort”. Gifts can be volitionally accepted, but its a huge stretch to predicate merit or effort of the person who reaches out her hands to take the present that her father is offering. That’s how I look at faith. It is an act of accepting a divine gift. It is energized and motivated by divine help, which brings us to the point where we are like that child who can reach out for the gift with no effort on our part. Faith is not a work–an exertion of effort. It is a volitional response of receiving grace.
You wrote:
“But if Paul had in mind that some works do save us and not others, you’d think he’d make that clearer, rather than always juxtaposing works in a relatively vague sense against salvation, which is always tied to grace.”
I think that if James had in mind the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, he probably would’ve made it clearer, rather than saying “not by faith alone”.
Also, Paul is not always clear. Even Peter, another apostle, thought so (2 Peter 3:16). We shouldn’t expect there to be some ultra-easy solution to the dynamics of faith and works in his letters.
Paul juxtaposes past-tense salvation and works. But he seems to think that works can contribute to continual and eschatological salvation. Take for example Romans 2:13, where he says that “the doers of the law will be justified”. The “good works” of 6, 7, and 10 are instrumental to God rewarding people. These works are done by God’s grace (2:4). This seems to be an example of eschatological justification (future tense of the word “justified”) that is partially based on the works of a person. Works are a partial cause, not just an effect or sign, of justification. That actually seems pretty clear to me; I don’t know about you.
Regarding salvation more generally, I’d point to for instance Philipians 2:12-13. Works here are aided by grace, but seem to be instrumental to salvation. Salvation also seems to be an ongoing process. Works are definitely not opposed to salvation here, whatever else may be said about the passage.
Examples of Paul talking about works being instrumental to God making a good judgment about us include 2 Corinthians 5:10, 9:6, 11:5, Galatians 6:7-8, Ephesians 6:8, Colossians 3:24-25, and 1 timothy 6:18-19. Other examples, many of which are implicit, abound outside of and inside Paul’s writings.
Its unfortunate that some Arminians don’t realize that faith is a gift of God. This is probably because they see an inherent opposition between God’s grace and human activity. This is, of course, a false dichotomy. I naturally agree with Chrysostom that the gift includes faith.
I assumed that you were reading justification information into this passage; perhaps I did so wrongly.
Also, could you address the following points that you did not include in your first response:
- where is “faith alone”?
- do you agree with my argument about Christ showing that grace and effort are not in conflict?
- do you agree with my argument that your view of sin in the saints does not take seriously Pauline optimism about God’s work, and Pauline pessimism about the consequences of sin?
- I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about how the resurrection and ascension cause our salvation. That is obvious very big in this passage–it is the explanation for why we can move from death to life. What do you think?
“- where is “faith alone”?”
Pauls says we are saved by faith, and explicitly states that we aren’t saved by works (although he may be talking about some specific kind of work I suppose). I can’t think of anything else that would contribute to salvation, so what else could there be?
“- do you agree with my argument about Christ showing that grace and effort are not in conflict?”
I don’t believe grace and effort are in conflict in a person after the initial regenerative act, but sinful man will simply not choose God of his own volition. After the initial monergistic act I’d consider myself a synergist.
“- do you agree with my argument that your view of sin in the saints does not take seriously Pauline optimism about God’s work, and Pauline pessimism about the consequences of sin?”
You may have misunderstood my meaning. Let me ask you, are only those who cease to struggle with sin on earth going to heaven? If not, then I’d say the possibility of losing battles with sin is ever present. But I didn’t mean to suggest that a Christian will constantly lose battles in every area of his life.
“- I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about how the resurrection and ascension cause our salvation. That is obvious very big in this passage–it is the explanation for why we can move from death to life. What do you think?”
As I said, it’s part of the explanation. There is no single answer to “how does Jesus save us?” Somehow the resurrection is effective in giving us new life and the overall work of the atonement as well as the crucifixion. Are you asking something else?
One more thing.
““Volitional” is not equivalent to “work”. Work involves the exertion of effort. Volition can be effortless.”
Perhaps, at any rate I won’t dispute that at the moment. But then what I’m curious about is why the merely volitional act of refusing to accept a gift (and surely that is no more “work” than accepting it) merits of damnation.
David–
- Alone is not equal to “apart from” or “not by”; and I think Paul is only excluding some kind of works when he says “apart from” or “not by”. Hence my appeal to other examples where I think he does speak of works as being instrumental to salvation.
- Why would it be bad to say that prevenient grace brings us to the point where we can choose? Is there a biblical argument against this?
- As for the losing battles, that makes more sense; but your language before had strong connotations of “habitual sin is compatible with salvation”. That’s what the language of “lose more often than win” seems to say, to me at least.
- Yes, Im asking further about whether or not your categories are compatible with these biblical statements. Do you believe Christ had human nature in a unique way, as a “universal human nature” or “the form of human nature”?
- Who said anything about:
(a) anything or anyone *meriting* damnation?
(b) the specific act of rejecting the opportunity to exercise faith being the decisive thing that explains why a person is ultimately in hell?
Also, the act of rejecting a gift is weird. It seems to be morally bad to reject a gift, and morally good to accept it. And yet at the same time the exercise of volition involved in accepting seems to be non-meritorious, whereas the act of rejecting a gift seems to make one unworthy.
We might cash out the distinction as follows: God commands all to repent and have faith. Those who fail to perform their duties, if they have the opportunity to do so, do moral evil on this basis. But those who perform the duty of repenting and having faith merit nothing, because grace provides all the energy necessary to do these things, such that performing them is effortless. They merely accept the good offered to them.
I don’t think it is merely rejecting the gift that merits damnation, I think it is the whole sin thing. Furthermore, the gift is God Himself. He offers union with Him and the rejection of this gift is ultimately a rejection of God. This is damnable.
Accepting God’s gift of Himself doesn’t seem meritorious. Merit is not even an idea in view here. Salvation is not about debts being rectified. The Father demands no payment, for who could ever pay off His debt. See how the father acts in the parable of the prodigal son. He doesn’t demand any payment, but embraces his son with open arms and throws a feast for him. See also the parable of the unforgiving servant. The king forgave the servants debt free and clear. He did not make some one else pay for the servant.
Justification has to do with repentence. Look to Christ’s teaching on the subject with the parable of the pharisee and the publican. The publican was broken hearted over his sin and prayed to God to have mercy on him, and he left justified that day. This is what it means that God does not desire a sacrifice, but a broken and contrite heart. A necessary part of repentence, is turning from one’s sin. If you never turn from your sins, you will not be justified.
One must love God in order to be saved. This seems fairly basic. Christ says that the one who loves Him will keep His commandments. It seems that obeying Christ’s commandments must be a necessary part of salvation.
Of course Jesus also says that the doers of the law will be justified, not merely the hearers.
So…how do you harmonize what seem to be clear readings of the teachings of Christ with your interpretation of the difficult to grasp, highly rhetorical teachings of St. Paul. Isn’t there something in the Evangelical mode of interpretation about defining the more clear by the less clear? Aren’t Christ’s stories easier to understand than the arguments of St. Paul?
“Do you believe Christ had human nature in a unique way, as a “universal human nature” or “the form of human nature”?”
I’m still not quite sure what this means. What do you mean by “universal” and “the form of” and how does it relate to his resurrection taking some part in our salvation?
I don’t know, there doesn’t seem to be any difference between accepting a gift and rejecting it, as far as “how much” we exert our will. Moreover, if grace simply brings us to neutral as you suggest, than it is no longer grace that is providing the motivation for us to accept the gift, because our choosing to accept it would be caused solely by us (since we have to be unmoved movers for our choice to be truly free). Grace has lifted us up out of death into life, but once there it is entirely up to us to choose to continue in life or to fall back into death, and at that point everything seems to rest on our use of will, which though it may have been aided by grace initially must be acting of its own accord, again, to be acting in true freedom. (And, actually, on your view it wouldn’t seem correct to say that grace actually “lifts us into life”, because that would suggest effectual calling. Grace must simply lift us to some place between life and death, from whence we can then make our choice, and this definately seems to suggest plenty of room for merit in salvation).
After reading all this I have to go with David.
Are Donald, Alex, David and ……….. getting together this Dec/Jan?
David–
You wrote:
“I’m still not quite sure what this means. What do you mean by “universal” and “the form of” and how does it relate to his resurrection taking some part in our salvation?”
I mean that Christ is united to human nature in a weird way. Normally we think of human beings as having particular instances of human nature which all participate in the universal called “human nature”. A universal is a quality that can be multiply instantiated. Take red for example. There is more than one instance of the quality red; its in more than one place; more than one thing in reality has “redness”. There are red houses, red paintings, and red fire trucks. Plato thought that qualities have a kind of existence that is independent of all the particular instances of it–a form. The particular instances of a universal stand in a certain kind of relation to the form of that universal. This relation is called “participation”. Participation as we normally talk about it involves being involved in something that more than one person can be involved in–for instance you participate in a company, a dance, a school, etc. Similarly, particular instances of a quality are all “involved in” their form.
I am saying that Christ has human nature in a similar way to how a form has the properties that it is a universal of. He has all particular instances of human nature contained within his instance of it. All human beings are united to Christ because their human nature participates in his human nature.
What do you think of that idea? The question of how its related to salvation can come later.
You wrote:
“I don’t know, there doesn’t seem to be any difference between accepting a gift and rejecting it, as far as “how much” we exert our will.”
It seems to me at least possible to say that rejecting something requires more effort than accepting something. But that’s not strictly relevant, because (1) there are other reasons why I think the unsaved are in hell and (2) amount of effort is not necessarily proportional to degree of responsibility.
You wrote:
“Moreover, if grace simply brings us to neutral as you suggest, than it is no longer grace that is providing the motivation for us to accept the gift, because our choosing to accept it would be caused solely by us (since we have to be unmoved movers for our choice to be truly free). Grace has lifted us up out of death into life, but once there it is entirely up to us to choose to continue in life or to fall back into death, and at that point everything seems to rest on our use of will, which though it may have been aided by grace initially must be acting of its own accord, again, to be acting in true freedom.”
Why is it bad for it to be up to us to choose to accept more grace? Its not like we are making the choice independently of grace, after all. Grace is what makes each choice possible; why think that it is bad if the very choice itself is a gift offered by God? That sounds like a gift depending on a gift, with no merit involved and no effort involved. Its like my friend giving (note the *grace* language) me, a guy in a wheelchair, a ride to my birthday party, where he gives me a gift that I can either accept or reject. First of all, that hardly sounds meritorious. You may be making the choice to accept the gift, but that doesn’t look meritorious. Nor is it objectionable in some other sense of “oh it looks like your having the gift is dependent on your own will, and that makes it man-dependent, which is really bad. You were really in control of the process with you and your friend who moved you around in the wheelchair.”
If your friend drags you out of a bar fight and takes you in his car back to your driveway and puts the car in neutral, and asks you to make a choice about whether or not to put the car back in gear, its hard for me to see where the effort is located.
You wrote:
“(And, actually, on your view it wouldn’t seem correct to say that grace actually “lifts us into life”, because that would suggest effectual calling. Grace must simply lift us to some place between life and death, from whence we can then make our choice, and this definately seems to suggest plenty of room for merit in salvation).”
This would be correct for Arminainism perhaps, where salvation is solely conceived of as personal. But for the Fathers, no one escapes Christ’s soverignty because all men are united naturally to Christ. Christ loses nothing of all that the Father has given him; all men receive life, but some receive a greater measure of life because they align their personal wills with the immortality (note: a divine energy; hence it is grace; hence it is God) that has entered their natures through Christ’s incarnation and resurrection. The salvation of human nature is effectual. Grace lifts all to life; but not all persons participate volitionally in that grace.
“I am saying that Christ has human nature in a similar way to how a form has the properties that it is a universal of. He has all particular instances of human nature contained within his instance of it.”
That definately sounds interesting. How exactly would that work? Any particular reason for thinking this to be the case?
“If your friend drags you out of a bar fight and takes you in his car back to your driveway and puts the car in neutral, and asks you to make a choice about whether or not to put the car back in gear, its hard for me to see where the effort is located.”
Effort, perhaps, but I never agreed with your original assessment that work just means effort and volition is something different. In your example, your choosing to not put the car back in gear (and presumably return to the bar) may not require “work” in the sense of physical exertion, but we would certainly give you credit for whatever element in you that it was, “strength of will” we might typically call it, that restrained you from going back to the bar fight. The point being that this quality within you is something that would be lacking in a “weaker” person who would give in to his base desires. No matter how much you might thank your friend for pulling you out of a bad situation and “showing you the light”, no matter how much you might owe him, the final decision rested on you and was totally dependent on that quality within you, not on something outside of you. And if in your example the difference between merit and no merit is that the person who rejects his friend’s “grace” has to flex his arm muscle to change the car’s gear…well…I’m sure that isn’t what you’re getting at because that’s just silly.
Nilsen,
You said: “…if in your example the difference betwen merit and no merit is that the person who rejects his friend’s grace has to flex his arm muscle to change the car’s gear…”
I may be misunderstanding you, but I would say there is no merit for either decision. In Orthodoxy, we don’t think that salvation has anything to do with merit. No one ever merits salvation, God simply gives it as a free gift. Putting the idea of merit into salvation is a Western idea; a consequence of viewing salvation from within a legal framework.
It seems that St. Paul defines grace as a free gift. So given how the idea of giving gifts works, can’t we assume that the typical idea of the possibility of accepting or rejecting the gift is in play here?
Think about the apostles as bringing this gift to all peoples, and when a city rejected the message of an apostle, the apostle would kick the dust off his sandals after leaving the city, condemning it. The reason for this condemnation is that they had not rejected man, but God. The free gift is God Himself, and so we can see why man would be condemned for rejecting God. Or at least this seems fitting to me based on my intuitions.
David–
You wrote:
“That definately sounds interesting. How exactly would that work? Any particular reason for thinking this to be the case?”
The question of mechanism is interesting, but not totally relevant. Its like asking how a property participates in its form. One (acceptable) answer is “it just does”. This would be acceptable if we had good reason for thinking that such universals exist.
You wrote:
“…we would certainly give you credit for whatever element in you that it was, “strength of will” we might typically call it, that restrained you from going back to the bar fight. The point being that this quality within you is something that would be lacking in a “weaker” person who would give in to his base desires… the final decision rested on you and was totally dependent on that quality within you, not on something outside of you.”
Alright, granted my example could be read as having those kinds of implications; I didn’t mean it to. But lets say that your friend also gave you a chill pill that makes whoever takes it have the same identical good dispositions such that they can resist going back into a bar fight without it being a strain. The difference between those who choose to enter back in and those who don’t is not one of whose better/more meritorious, but just of who decides to choose rightly.
When we say “the reason so-and-so chose x over y was because he is morally better than what’s-his-face who chose y instead of x” we assume determinism. We assume there is some inherent feature of so-and-so that makes him better. But if we see things through libertarian lenses, the reason one person chooses x over y is not because he’s better but because he just chose to.
Also, David, I was wondering what your response is to my last response on John 9.
Not to mention the other arguments above in comments such as 12 and 15 that you haven’t attended to yet.
And Donald if you have time to look at the post that I mentioned that I made, “A Response to Donald’s ‘Liability Standards and Sin Before God’” I’d appreciate it.
Looking at many things…Will respond eventually. Currently studying 12-16 hrs a day for the exams that will more or less determine my professional career. Sorta trumps this discussion.
“The question of mechanism is interesting, but not totally relevant. Its like asking how a property participates in its form. One (acceptable) answer is “it just does”. This would be acceptable if we had good reason for thinking that such universals exist.”
I think you’ve lost me. Was there a reason you originally brought this up?
“But lets say that your friend also gave you a chill pill that makes whoever takes it have the same identical good dispositions such that they can resist going back into a bar fight without it being a strain. The difference between those who choose to enter back in and those who don’t is not one of whose better/more meritorious, but just of who decides to choose rightly.”
See, what I’m still not getting is this connection between physical exertion (and now brain chemistry) and merit. You can keep adding to the story (why not make the other person an exact clone of the first, who shares all his memories, etc?), but at some point the story comes down to a choice. You say the choice has nothing to do with whether or not the person is morally better, very well. But is the choice a morally better choice than its opposite, or not? If it is, then whatever is responsible for the choice would seem to merit something for choosing it over the morally worse option. If, however, the thing responsible for making the choice is some random, instantaneous (arbitrary?) “sparking” of the will that merits nothing for the decision, its hard to see how the same process of the will making the opposite decision could condemn anyone.
“Not to mention the other arguments above in comments such as 12 and 15 that you haven’t attended to yet.”
Was there anything specific in your previous comments that you wanted me to respond to?
David–
You wrote:
“I think you’ve lost me. Was there a reason you originally brought this up?”
Yes. I think there’s a reason why you didn’t discuss the role of the resurrection and ascension in salvation in Ephesians 2. Its because you don’t have a view of Christology and human nature that can properly incorporate these realities. That’s a major, important thing thats going on in Ephesians… and Corinthians… and Colossians… and Romans… and… it might be good to try and focus on something that Paul seems to care about a lot (the role of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension in salvation). The speed with which some people pass over statements of these kind is remarkable, and revealing.
You wrote:
“See, what I’m still not getting is this connection between physical exertion (and now brain chemistry) and merit. You can keep adding to the story (why not make the other person an exact clone of the first, who shares all his memories, etc?), but at some point the story comes down to a choice.”
You’re right; what I’m trying to say is that moral equals will sometimes make totally different choices. Grace brings us to the point where we can choose A or B. People can be given equal opportunities, and choose differently; it is not because one person has more meritorious qualities that they choose what they do.
“You say the choice has nothing to do with whether or not the person is morally better, very well. But is the choice a morally better choice than its opposite, or not? If it is, then whatever is responsible for the choice would seem to merit something for choosing it over the morally worse option.”
Again, I don’t think that the choice to accept a gift is meritorious. It is a morally better choice than not choosing to accept a gift; but gift-receiving is a unique case that doesn’t involve merit where you can be “credited” for accepting a gift. I’d sure hope you don’t buy the implausible premise that its meritorious to accept a gift. And of course I don’t identify the “whatever” that is responsible for the choice with some sort of pre-existing morally superior quality; that’s the whole point of grace making us all able to choose.
You wrote:
“If, however, the thing responsible for making the choice is some random, instantaneous (arbitrary?) “sparking” of the will that merits nothing for the decision, its hard to see how the same process of the will making the opposite decision could condemn anyone.”
What is this accusation about “arbitrary”? An agent is causing their choice and they’re acting for a reason… that doesn’t sound arbitrary to me.
And to repeat what I’ve already said, I’m not saying necessarily that the choice to reject grace merits damnation. Granting for now that the language of “merit” is Christian, though, I do think its possible (on a Western framework) to say that rejecing grace merits damnation. Why not? Wouldn’t you punish your kids if they refused to accept a gift from their grandparents?
You wrote:
“Was there anything specific in your previous comments that you wanted me to respond to?”
There’s a lot of stuff, it should be obvious if you look at your responses that you have focused on some very specific aspects of responding to me. Tell me if you can’t find it and I will help you out.