What is “Grace”

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The traditional Christian answer is that “Grace is the favor of God that Jesus Christ created by His death on the cross which thus enables the salvation of Mankind”.  Christ died for our sins.

 

This is a core dogma of the Catholic Church, which was created by Christ to spread the good news of His life.  Indeed, eyewitness accounts of Christ’s ministry were provisionally assembled in 325 A.D. by an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church at Nicaea under the aegis of the Emperor Constantine.  And in 382 A.D. the modern cannon of 73 books was formerly approved ex cathedra by Pope Damasus I. [1]

 

Given this definition of saving grace, the obvious question is “What must we ourselves do to be justified?” [2] This is crucial because the Judeo-Christian teaching is that we will be judged after death on how we have lead our lives.  We will then be either united with Christ in heaven or damned to eternal hellfire as a consequence

 

Given these two premises, there is one and only one rational answer to the question of our role.

 

We are saved when we lead our lives in imitation of Christ’s example as He commanded and as recorded in the Bible, especially if after hearing the Christian message we realize it is the will of God.   We are saved by what we actually do and not by what we might think; although it is important to lead a life of Christian virtue for the right reasons.

 

 Happy thoughts are no substitute for the “works of charity” which Christ required in His reform of the Old Testament “works of Mosaic Law”. This fulfillment of scripture especially included the early question of whether circumcision was necessary for Gentile converts decided by the first Pope, St. Peter, at the Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church held in Jerusalem around 50 A.D.

 

For 1500 years, this concept of salvation was unchallenged in Christian communities until Protestant revolutionaries sought to alter it, mostly to justify their own moral laxity.  In doing so, Protestants choose the personal preferences of mere men, e.g. Luther, Calvin, et al., over the original words of Jesus Christ.

 

PROTESTANT REVISIONISM

 

Beginning in 1515 A.D., Martin Luther, regretting his vows of chastity and obedience as a Catholic monk, needed a rationalization for turning to his well-documented excesses of drinking and fornication, which pleasures had previously been denied.  Luther was a charismatic and prolific author and not shy about expressing his views.  Two telling quotes, entirely in Luther’s own words, describe his revisionist anti-Christian philosophy:

 

1. "Do not ask anything of your conscience; and if it speaks, do not listen to it; if it insists, stifle it, amuse yourself; if necessary, commit some good big sin, in order to drive it away. Conscience is the voice of Satan, and it is necessary always to do just the contrary of what Satan wishes." [3]

 

2. “Yesterday I drank something which did not agree with me, so that I had to sing: If I don’t drink well I have to suffer, and yet I do like to do it. I said to myself what good wine and beer I have at home, and also what a pretty lady or (should I say) lord. You would do well to ship the whole cellar full of my wine and a bottle of your beer to me here, as soon as you are able; otherwise I will not be able to return home because of the new beer.“ [4]

 

By proclaiming “faith alone” Luther excused his continual breaking of the Ten Commandments.   He no longer had any need to regret his sins, or to do penance, or try to provide restitution, or even intend to stop sinning.   Once he somehow realized that Christ died for us, attitudes regarding his own acts of immorality, however heinous, were inconsequential.  Again this is because “faith alone”, not works of charity or his avoidance of sin, is all that would be required.

 

Another advantage of “faith alone” was that attendance at Sunday Mass, receiving the sacraments, or indeed any features of Catholic Church administrative functions were replaced by individual happy thoughts of how we have no personal responsibility for our actions whatever.   But of course, an organization is necessary to sustain Christ’s message.  And in short order Luther founded a nearly identical structure, but now with a twisted and confused logic, and him in charge.

 

Luther’s mind bending illogic had the superficial advantage of extreme piety by extolling the priority of Christ’s sacrifice to excuse his newly liberating, profligate, and libertine lifestyle.  Please note that no Christian, and especially no Catholic teaching, holds we can get into heaven on our own.  The question is the extent of our own responsibilities.

 

Idle thoughts about the undeserved beneficence of Christ’s sacrifice or the inadequacy of human efforts compared to the perfection of God, in any honest reflection, a legitimate excuse for our own violations of conscience.  These, like all “good intentions” are the road to hell because in practice they rationalize untold evil deeds and actions.

 

The original Christian message was clearly that only with Christ’s gift of grace are our previously unworthy acts of charity and striving to avoid sin made acceptable to God.  But Christ’s message never was that our own actions are meaningless or inconsequential. [5]

 

One of the enduring strengths of Christianity is that we all have an innate sense of right and wrong and know when something is immoral.   That the Judeo-Christian tradition codifies and embodies the dictates of our conscience to guide our actions, is why each generation for millennia has preserved and honored the Catholic tradition.

 

CATHOLICS TRUST THE BIBLE

 

A few of the voluminous Biblical quotes in support of the enduring Catholic-Apostolic tradition  on the necessity of good works for salvation include

 

Exodus 20: 2-17

Deuteronomy 5: 6-21

James 2: 14-26

Matthew 25: 32-46

Revelation 20: 12-14

Revelation 22: 14-15

John 14: 15

Ephesians 2: 10

Galations 5 13-21 / Corinthians 1: 13

John 13: 14-17

John 14: 15

et cetera…

 

Basically, the original Bible contains the phrase “by faith alone” just ONCE; and then to condemn it in James 2:24 “You see then that a man is justified by works, and NOT by faith alone.”

 

Luther found this verse such a impediment to transforming from a Catholic monk into his new life of debauchery that he rewrote the Bible to say exactly the opposite [6].  This is no less profound then if he had changed “Thou shall NOT murder” to read instead “Thou shall murder”.   And yes, the difference between night and day is a single word.

 

In any event, Luther opened the floodgates to fantastic misreadings of Sacred Scripture so today we have upwards of 30,000 Protestant churches all with different and distinctive theologies.  Nor was “faith alone” an isolated revision by Luther.  In no less flagrant violation of sacred scripture, he made 1200 other major and minor changes each of which reversed extant and orthodox theology.

 

CONCLUSION

 

We can, of course, do what we want rather than what we ought.  But without moral standards, the existence of which “faith alone” deny, to guide our actions, we have no morality at all.   If we cannot trust our conscience, we are on a slippery slope that allows any depravity imaginable.  

 

Denial is not just a river in Egypt but the unavoidable human tendency, or concupiscence, to reject our innate sense of what is “right” and to instead give in to our animal lusts.  This downward spiral was certainly evident during the “Peasant’s War”, again as Luther wrote in his own words, trying to excuse hubris and revenge:

 

“To kill a peasant is not murder; it is helping to extinguish the conflagration.  Let there be no half measures! Crush them! Cut their throats! Transfix them. Leave no stone unturned!  To kill a peasant is to destroy a mad dog!” – “If they say that I am very hard and merciless, mercy be damned.  Let whoever can stab, strangle, and kill them like mad dogs” [7].

 

It is difficult, in the extreme, to understand how Luther’s instigation of the mass murder of Catholics who would not turn their back on the Catholic Church’s Biblical teaching of love and forgiveness and instead follow his admonition that our actions do not matter, was in any way what Christ would have wanted.  Even today, Protestants express a lingering anti-Christian animosity towards the Catholic Church, which is something not found on the other side.

 

So what is to be done? The question is “Can we be honest with ourselves even if that requires abandoning misguided friends of long acquaintance and return to the rationality of Catholic Church founded by Christ?”  Not easy to do, to be sure, but then the stakes are enormous (q.v. Pascal’s Wager).

 

In any such discussion, it is most important to remember the eternal truth of the Catholic Church’s rendition of Christ’s message that while we should hate the sin, we also must love the sinner.  The Catholic Church does not condemn our brothers and sisters in Christ but rather calls them to a higher standard.

 

REFERENCES

 

1.  Early attempts by the Catholic Church to mould oral tradition and scattered documents into an approved cannon was difficult because of state persecution, the inherent dangers of travel, and the lack of secure and reliable communications.   Only after the Church was granted protected status by the Roman state was an Ecumenical Council possible.

 

While the Roman Emperor Constantine funded and facilitated the Council of Nicaea, which was near his royal residence, in 325 A.D., he did not participate in any of the daily discussions nor did he cast a single vote on any proposal.   The reigning Pope, Saint Sylvester I, was too ill to travel and was not able to attend in person; but rather sent papal legates who then returned the minutes for review.

 

After study and minor revisions, Pope Damasus I convened the Council of Rome in 382 A.D, which finally approved the well-known 73 books of the modern Bible.  This version remained unchanged down through the centuries until Luther removed seven books and rewrote some of the rest beginning about 1515 A.D.

 

But the bottom line is that the Bible did not come from the Emperor Constantine, or a motley crew of proto-Protestants, but rather from the unbroken line of Apostolic tradition of the Catholic Church, which was created and chartered by Jesus Christ himself.

 

2.  Justification literally means “to make righteous”.   And righteousness involves being “sanctified” through saving “grace” which makes us beautiful or “graceful” in the eyes of God. 

 

Catholics believe this grace could only have been created by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross so its availability was thus undeserved.  Christ redeemed us from original sin and reopened the gates of heaven.  Christ by taking on human form recreated the ideal of human perfection.

 

But despite this gift, all Christians believe we have to do something ourselves to acquire this grace in order to be united with Christ.  That is, despite the perfect gift of its existence, we have to consciously act in ways to merit its transfer.   Reopening the gates of heaven by itself, does not make us graceful enough to walk in.

 

 Catholics since the time of the Apostles taught we have to love our neighbor by doing good works of Christian charity to merit saving grace.

 

Protestants revised this fundamental teaching to say we only have to learn of Christ’s sacrifice creating this grace and form a firm mental acceptance or belief in the goodness and greatness of God to earn saving grace.

 

Please note that a perfect gift from an infinitely loving God can not require any action at all on our part, however trivial.  If the infusion of grace into us was really an ideally unconditional gift, we would be saved in spite of anything we are, or think, or do.  Any thought or belief on our part would be inconsequential, to include the nebulous and illogical and tortured mental effort of somehow needing to “accept” Christ.

 

So to the extent ANY conscious thing is REQUIRED of us, our sanctification cannot be a perfect gift, by definition.  Rather only the possibility of salvation, from which we were precluded by original sin, can logically be called the perfect and unmerited gift.  That is to say, possibility is not actuality, much less certainty.

 

3.  J. Dollinger, La Reforme et les resultants qu’elle a produits. (Trans. E. Perrot, Paris, Gaume, 1848-49), Vol III, pg. 248; https://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/08/luther-perform-big-sin-to-quiet-your.html

 

4.  Luther’s Works, 50, 81.  https://wolfmueller.co/beer/

 

5.  The Old Testament describes mankind’s fall from grace and the necessity of a Messiah who would redeem the world.  The Christian message is that before Christ no human model of perfection existed and so the “original sin” was insurmountable.

 

Please note that no one is entirely removed or innocent of the “sins of our fathers.”  A case in point is that we are descended only from “survivors” who bequeathed us with the spoils of their actions (e.g. land and resources taken often by force from otherwise unoffending natives or neighbors).

6. The Greek text which Martin Luther famously changed in Romans 3:28 originally stated:

λογιζομεθα    (We reckon)
ουν                  (therefore)
πιστει              (by faith)
δικαιουσθαι  (to be justified)
ανθρωπον      (a man)
χωρις               (apart from)
εργων             (works of)
νομου             (law, i.e. Mosaic)

Reference: Newberry, T., & Berry, G. R. (2004).  Reference the interlinear literal translation of the Greek New Testament, Romans 3:28)

A literal word for word translation of the Greek would not include the word ‘alone’ which Luther inserted.  Note that this passage comes from the chapter addressing the question of whether, the Jewish requirement (under Mosaic Law) that men be circumcised in order to get into heaven, was required of Gentile converts.  But the works of the law are not the deeds and actions, i.e. “works”, of Christian charity that Christ commanded that we must do in order to be saved.

Protestant apologists claim “faith alone” should have been used; but unfortunately for radical revisionists, eyewitness accounts from the original Bible as well as the tradition of the Catholic Church from the earliest time of the Apostles did NOT.   

 

7. Erlangen Vol 24, page 294 from Luther’s “Social Justice”.