Soveriegn Grace and Human Freedom -- By: John Hesselink

Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 12:2 (Spring 2003)
Article: Soveriegn Grace and Human Freedom
Author: John Hesselink


Soveriegn Grace and Human Freedom

I. John Hesselink

Historical Background

Philip Schaff, a distinguished Church historian of a past generation, once called the debate about God’s sovereignty and human freedom “the question of the ages.” That may not be so for everyone, but with the Church it remains a question that will not go away. What the late Albert Outler wrote in 1975 is amazingly relevant today:

In our day when all the great traditions that have held the world together for centuries (however tenuously) are suddenly becoming frazzled and “inoperative”—the issue between human self-sufficiency and God’s primacy is still the great dividing line in all our struggles for a theology of culture that is actually theo-logy and not some sort of religious anthro-pology writ large across a cosmic backdrop. All our most fashionable credos today (the new a-morality, the new secularism, the new emotionalism and “supernaturalisms”—ESP, psychokinesis, “transcendental meditation,” TA, and others) are all fresh variations on the old themes of human autonomy: the conviction that human beings can and must accept final responsibility for their own well-being and their collective destinies.1

Augustine and Aquinas

It all began with Augustine’s famous debate with Pelagius about the freedom of the will. That is, are sinners able to choose rightly without the assistance of God’s grace? Augustine’s analysis of the doctrine of grace was a turning point in the theology of the early Church. The early Church Fathers generally taught that the reception of God’s mercy and grace was to some extent dependent on an individual’s response.2 Augustine concluded that human merit plays no part in our salvation and that God’s grace is utterly gratuitous. However, in his early writings Augustine conceded that to some extent humans must respond to God’s gracious initiative by cooperating with God’s grace.3 However, once he was attacked by Pelagius, Augustine clarified his position concerning the bondage and freedom of the will. In De spiritu et littera (The Spirit and the Letter), written in 412, Augustine clarifies his views on sin, grace, and the freedom of the will in response to Pelagius’s misuse of certain passages in Augustine’s earlier writings. He came to see that a radical view of sin requires a radical view of grace and that our salvation from beginning to end is a work of God’s grace. Key texts for him in his later writings were John 15:5;

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