What Is Grace?

What Is the Question?

Grace, in the Christian theological and philosophical tradition, is the unmerited divine assistance that heals the disordered will and restores the human being to right relation with God. The word comes from the Latin gratia, meaning "favor" or "kindness," and it carries the sense of a gift, an undeserved benefit, and a divine action that goes beyond what the recipient has merited. The concept is central to Christian theology, where it names the heart of the divine work of salvation, and it has shaped the Western moral and spiritual imagination. The philosophical questions grace raises are deep. Is grace compatible with freedom, since if the grace heals the will, the healed will is not the sinner's own? Is grace just, since if the grace is given to some and not to others, the question arises why God saves some and not others? And how is grace related to the moral life, since if the grace heals the will, the moral life is the work of God, not of the human being?

The SEP entry on philosophy of religion treats grace as one of the central topics of the tradition, especially in the theology of Augustine, who developed the doctrine in his debates with Pelagius. The philosophical work is to articulate the concept, to distinguish its theological accounts, and to ask the philosophical questions it raises.

Historical Background

The concept of grace has its roots in the Hebrew Bible, where it is framed as the covenant love of God, the hesed that God shows to the people, and the chesed that God commands the people to show to each other. The prophets, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah, deepened the concept, treating grace as the divine forgiveness of sin and the restoration of the covenant, and they pointed to a future age in which God would write the law on the hearts of the people, the new covenant of grace. In the New Testament, the concept is centered on the person and work of Jesus, whose death and resurrection are treated as the divine act of grace, the deliverance from sin and death.

Augustine, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, gave the concept its classical philosophical form. Augustine held that grace is the unmerited divine assistance that heals the disordered will, and that human beings cannot be healed by their own powers. The Augustinian account was developed in his debates with Pelagius, who held that human beings can choose the good by their own powers, and who minimized the role of grace. Augustine's position was affirmed at the Council of Carthage in 418, and it became the dominant position in the Western church.

Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, systematized the Augustinian account, distinguishing the grace that heals from the grace that elevates. The healing grace, on Aquinas's view, repairs the damage of original sin, restoring the proper ordering of the will to God. The elevating grace, on Aquinas's view, raises the human being to a share in the divine life, the grace of the beatific vision, in which the saved see God face to face. The Aquinan account has shaped the Catholic theology of grace, and it has been the reference point for the subsequent debate.

The Reformers, especially Calvin and Luther, developed the Augustinian account in the doctrine of sovereign grace, the view that grace is the work of God, not of the human being, and that the grace is given to the elect, not to all. The Reformation debate, especially between Catholics and Protestants, has shaped the modern theology of grace, and it has produced a number of distinct accounts, including the Catholic account of grace as the infusion of charity, the Protestant account of grace as the imputation of Christ's righteousness, and the Arminian account of grace as the enabling of the free will.

Augustine: Grace and the Disordered Will

Augustine's account of grace is the classical form of the doctrine, and it deserves a closer look. Augustine's central claim is that grace is the unmerited divine assistance that heals the disordered will, and that human beings cannot be healed by their own powers. The disordered will, on Augustine's view, is the inherited damage of original sin, the disorder of love that tends toward evil and that cannot be healed by human powers. The healing of the will requires grace, the divine action that reorders the love, and the grace is a gift, not a reward, since the sinner has merited nothing but punishment.

The Augustinian account has several features that are philosophically important. The first is that grace is unmerited, a gift, not a reward, and the gift is not unjust because no one merits it. The second is that grace is the work of God, not of the human being, and the healing of the will is the divine action, not the human effort. The third is that grace is necessary for salvation, since without grace the will cannot be healed, and the unhealed will cannot choose the good. The fourth is that grace is given to some and not to others, and the question of why God saves some and not others is the question of predestination, one of the deepest questions in the theology of grace.

The Augustinian account was developed in the debates with Pelagius, and the controversy is worth examining, because the questions Pelagius raised are still live. Pelagius held that human beings are born free of the taint of the first sin, and that they can choose the good by their own powers. The view has a number of attractions. It preserves the freedom of the will, it makes God just, since God does not save some and not others, and it makes moral responsibility straightforward, since each person is responsible for their own choices. Augustine's reply was that the Pelagian view does not take seriously the fact of moral failure, the persistence of the gap between what we know and what we do, and that the gap is the result of the disordered will that requires grace.

Aquinas: Healing and Elevating Grace

Aquinas's distinction between healing and elevating grace is the heart of his contribution to the theology of grace. The healing grace, on Aquinas's view, repairs the damage of original sin, restoring the proper ordering of the will to God. The elevating grace, on Aquinas's view, raises the human being to a share in the divine life, the grace of the beatific vision. The distinction is not a piece of technical theology but a serious philosophical claim, that grace has two dimensions, the healing of the disorder and the elevation to the divine, and that both are the work of God.

The Aquinan account has been influential, and it has shaped the Catholic theology of grace, which treats grace as both the healing of the will and the elevation to the divine life. The account raises deep questions about the relation of grace and freedom, and about the compatibility of grace with the moral life, and the questions have been central to the Catholic theology of grace, especially in the debates of the early modern period.

Grace and Freedom

The central philosophical question is whether grace is compatible with freedom. If the grace heals the will, and the healing is the work of God, then the healed will is not the sinner's own, and the question arises whether the sinner is free. The Augustinian answer was that the sinner is free, because the disorder is the result of the original free choice of the first humans, and the inherited disorder is a just punishment for that choice. The healing of the will, on Augustine's view, is the restoration of the freedom that was lost in the fall, and the restored freedom is the true freedom, the freedom to choose the good.

The contemporary philosophical debate has refined the question. Compatibilists, who hold that freedom is compatible with determination by prior causes, can hold that the sinner is free, even if the will is healed by grace, since the healing does not remove the freedom but restores it. Libertarians, who hold that freedom requires the absence of determination, may struggle to reconcile the healing of the will with the freedom of the sinner, since the healing is a kind of determination. The debate is part of the larger question of freedom and responsibility, and it is not settled.

The Molinist account, developed by Luis de Molina in the sixteenth century, offers a distinctive solution, by holding that God knows what each free creature would do in each possible circumstance, the middle knowledge, and that God, in creating, chooses the set of circumstances that will result in the salvation of the elect. The Molinist account preserves the freedom of the creature, since the creature is free in the circumstances, and it preserves the sovereignty of God, since God chooses the circumstances. The account has been influential, especially in the Catholic theology of grace, but it has been criticized, including by the Thomist tradition, for making God dependent on the creature's choices.

Grace and Justice

The second question is whether grace is just. If the grace is given to some and not to others, then the question arises why God saves some and not others, and the question is whether the unequal distribution is just. The Augustinian answer was that the question is not ours to answer, and that the grace is given as a gift, not as a reward, and the gift is not unjust because no one merits it. The Augustinian account has been criticized, both within the tradition and without, as making God the author of the unequal distribution, and as raising the question of the justice of God.

The contemporary debate has produced a number of distinct accounts. The Calvinist account holds that the grace is given to the elect, and that the election is the sovereign choice of God, not based on any merit of the creature. The Arminian account holds that the grace is given to all, and that the question of who is saved is the question of who responds to the grace, a question that the creature, not God, answers. The universalist account holds that the grace is given to all, and that all will be saved, in the end, by the grace of God. The debate is live, and the question of justice is one of the deepest in the theology of grace.

Grace and the Moral Life

The third question is how grace is related to the moral life. If the grace heals the will, and the healing is the work of God, then the moral life is the work of God, not of the human being, and the question arises whether the moral life is the creature's own. The Augustinian answer was that the moral life is the creature's own, because the healing of the will restores the freedom, and the restored freedom is the true freedom, the freedom to choose the good. The moral life, on Augustine's view, is the work of both God and the creature, in cooperation, and the cooperation is the mark of the restored freedom.

The question bears on the wider question of the rationality of faith and of the problem of evil, since the doctrine of grace is part of the account of how God deals with the moral evil of sin. The theodicy of John Hick, which treats the evils of the world as part of the soul-making process, offers a partial answer, by holding that the grace is part of the process, and that the process is for a greater good that the creature cannot see.

Contemporary Relevance

The doctrine of grace remains a live topic, both in theology and in philosophy. The persistence of the human longing for healing, for restoration, and for the wholeness that the doctrine of grace promises, and the recognition that the longing is not easily satisfied by the resources of the secular age, have kept the question of grace on the philosophical agenda. The honest philosophical stance is to take the doctrine seriously, to engage with the modern critiques, and to ask what the doctrine names that the alternatives do not. The work of philosophy is not to dismiss the doctrine by procedural fiat, but to do the careful work of comparison and assessment that the question deserves.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philosophy of Religion" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Augustine" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Thomas Aquinas" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Original Sin" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-sin/

Related Topics

• What Is Sin? — the problem grace addresses.
• What Is Original Sin? — the inherited condition.
• What Is Salvation? — the goal of grace.
• Is Faith Rational? — the wider question.
• What Is Prayer? — a means of receiving grace.
• What Is the Problem of Evil? — the moral challenge.
• Philosophy of God — the wider domain.