Nature, Grace, and Herman Bavinck

The relationship of nature and grace is a key theme in the Reformed Dogmatics of Herman Bavinck.  For Bavinck, "grace restores nature".  This is, according to his editor, "the fundamental defining and shaping theme of Bavinck's theology".  It leads Bavinck to a robust doctrine of creation, and a holistic vision for discipleship and the Christian life.

So far so good.  But I can't help feeling that the way this plays out in Bavinck's thought is rather skewed.  Consider this (from volume 4, 395):

The gospel of Christ never opposes nature as such.  It did not come into the world to condemn but to save, and it leaves the family, marriage, and the relationships between parents and children, masters and servants, and governments and people intact.  The gospel, finding nothing reprehensible in itself and everything created by God as good if it is received with thanksgiving and consecrated by the word of God and by prayer, allows everyone to remain in the calling in which one was called... Still, while averse to all revolution, it is all the more committed to reformation.  It never militates against nature as such but does join the battle - always and everywhere, in every area of life and into the most secret hiding places - against sin and deception.

So Bavinck takes an extremely conservative social position, on the grounds that nature is good, and grace does not come to overturn nature but to restore it.  The gospel will slowly "reform and renew everything", but it will not be revolutionary; it will not upset the apple cart, so to speak.  I am not sure this fits with the more apocalyptic strand of the New Testament - with the teaching of Jesus, for example, that seems to dramatically relativise the natural family (e.g., Luke 14:26, Matt 12:48-50), or with the teaching of Paul about marriage and singleness.  The gospel seems, in Bavinck's view, to sanction human authority, but I am missing something of the radical question mark which it also puts to all human authority.  Consider the Magnificat, and the upending of human society which it envisages.  Is Bavinck's conservatism really compatible with this vision?

Earlier in the volume, Bavinck argues that the practice of infant baptism "maintains the bond between nature and grace".  That is to say, in the baptism of infants a close link is displayed between the natural family and the spiritual family, between natural birth (into the covenant community, as Bavinck would see it) and spiritual birth into the family of God.  As a baptist, I found reading this section alternately humorous and painful, as Bavinck tries very hard to square this with the New Testament.  Suffice to say: the church is not a natural family; grace is not tied to nature in this way.  That is the whole point of Romans 9-11, alongside many other passages.  Grace disrupts the natural order of things - the Lord Jesus came to divide families, to turn children against their parents, etc.

Some slightly disconnected reflections:

1. Bavinck sees very strong continuity between the world as originally created and the world as it exists now.  "Substantially and materially the creation after the fall is the same as before the fall". (436)  I'm not sure we can be so confident as that.  I tend to think that Bonhoeffer had a better understanding of the natural.  That is to say, there is much about what appears natural to us which does not necessarily reflect created design.  Nevertheless, the natural is good, in that it preserves creation at God's will.  I just don't think it's as absolute as Bavinck seems to think it is, perhaps because I see it as one step removed from creation per se.
2. I worry that for Bavinck the gospel seems to be merely an episode in the restoration of creation.  It is creation he is really excited about, it seems to me, and the natural life; the gospel seems to function as a necessary response to sin, but not as the highpoint of created purpose.  "The gospel is temporary;" Bavinck writes "the law is everlasting and precisely that which is restored by the gospel."  He means that "in heaven all its inhabitants will conduct themselves in accordance with the law of the Lord" - and the gospel seems to just be the means to get them to that state.  I do not agree.
3. I wonder whether Bavinck's position at the tail-end of Christendom (not that he knew it was the tail-end, of course) allowed him to see lots of things as 'natural' and as open to natural reason which in fact spring from the gospel and its long influence on European culture.  I wonder whether he is in some ways able to draw such a tight connection between nature and grace because he lived in a culture which had been so saturated with the gospel.  I wonder whether we can do that today.
4. Connected to this, it interests me that Bavinck's social positions seem quite radical today - in an anti-authoritarian, even anarchist, age, the idea that the gospel legitimises the family, the state, etc etc. is very appealing.  But as I try to read it with late 19th century glasses on, it seems rather bourgeois.  I worry that people who are appealing to Bavinck and others like him are actually sometimes missing the radical nature of the gospel and focusing on social implications of nature instead.  There is a lot of talk about the family from those who identify Christian ethics with conservative social positions, but less talk about the way in which the New Testament radically relativises the family!

I have more thoughts that I can't quite make choate right now.  Bavinck feels very alien to me, compared to most of the theology I've read, and uncomfortably at home in this world.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding him?  Or maybe I just don't agree.

Free grace is costly grace

Preaching this past Sunday at CCC from Jeremiah 7, I couldn't avoid mentioning Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of cheap grace. In the chapter the prophet Jeremiah was sent by the Lord to preach outside the temple courts. The subject of his sermon, like almost all his sermons, was the sin of the people of Judah; in this particular case, the numerous sins are aggravated by the attitude of the people towards the temple itself. The temple represents their security. They'll be forgiven, of course they will. They'll get away with their worship of idols, naturally. They'll be preserved from foreign invasion and divine judgement, for sure. Because the temple. The house that bears God's name is just up the hill, and they go there all the time to celebrate their salvation.

Cheap grace.

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

That's Bonhoeffer, in Discipleship.

It struck me that cheap grace may or may not seem cheap.  It might mean just praying the prayer and otherwise getting on with life.  But on the other hand it might mean a life of rigorous exertion.  In the case of the people of Judah, the sacrificial system was up and running, and that was work.  I bet it didn't seem cheap.  But what these two things - the sinner's prayer (as misunderstood and presumed upon) and the sacrificial system (as misunderstood and presumed upon) - have in common is that I give something or do something in exchange for grace.  'Grace' in this context might mean different things, but probably includes salvation, God's favour, maybe eternal life.  And it's when you start to think about what it includes that it seems cheap at the price, even if the price is a lifetime of sacrificial devotion.  Who wouldn't purchase eternal life at the cost of a lifetime of sacrifice and ritual - and if you can get it even cheaper, say just by 'believing in Jesus', then so much the better!  That is how many people understand the transition from Old to New Testament.

The other thing that the (misunderstood) sinner's prayer and the (misunderstood) sacrificial system have in common is that they both leave the rest of life untouched.  Once you've paid your dues for grace, you can carry on as you were.  Up you get from your prayer and get on with your life.  Out you go from the temple and return to - well, your abominations, says Jeremiah.  Cheap grace.

But God's grace is not cheap.  As Bonhoeffer points out, we should realise that by observing what it cost God himself.

God's grace is free.  There is nothing you have that you can exchange for God, for eternal life, for forgiveness and salvation.  You don't have anything that is worth that much, and everything you have you owe to God anyway as your Creator.  If you are going to receive those things, they will have to be given to you freely, gratis, and for nothing.  And so it, because Christ has paid for these things.

But then again, God's grace is costly.  To receive God, eternal life, forgiveness, is to lose everything you currently have and are.  Nothing can be held back.  It will take everything to be saved.  This is not a price-tag.  I'm not saying 'guys, God's grace isn't cheap; it's really, really expensive'.  I'm saying, God's grace is Jesus Christ, crucified for you and risen for you.  He has done it all.  Receiving what he has done does not require anything from you; there is nothing you can contribute.  But to receive Jesus Christ is to receive his cross.  It is grace that you lose everything you have and are, because that is the putting to death of your old sinful self at the cross of Christ, so that you might have bestowed on you the new identity of the resurrected and beloved.  It is grace that from now on your life in every single aspect is to be shaped entirely by Christ and his Spirit, because that is what eternal life looks like.

Free.  Costly.  But not cheap.

Advent IV: The Blessed Virgin

That Christ was born of a virgin means the complete contradiction of all human possibility.

It is not as if God could not have brought his Son into the world in another way.  We need to remember that Jesus was truly and fully human, and there is no obvious reason why he could not have been born in the usual manner, with a human biological father.  But the exclusion of human initiative and activity at precisely this point underlines what is happening here: God himself is taking the initiative, God himself is coming to save.

We need to see clearly that the role of the virgin Mary is not to be the height of humanity, the chosen product of human history, prepared by grace and made ready (or perhaps even worthy!) to be the Mother of God.  Far from it.  That she is the Mother of God is the accomplishment of divine fiat.  Not even her faith and acquiescence represents a cooperation with God.  The angel, after all, doesn't come with an offer which she can accept or refuse, but with an announcement: this is happening!  Mary's own 'fiat' is to her credit, but it is only an echo of the divine.  All is grace.

When Christ returns, and rights all wrongs, and ushers in eternal life - well, that too will be a one-sidedly divine accomplishment.  All our working and watching and praying will not bring in the new age.  At best, all of those things are just our own echo of the divine 'fiat', our acknowledgement that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, all is done.  Like the blessed virgin after the annunciation but before the birth in Bethlehem, we have heard God say that it will be, and we have said in response: so be it.

And after that, the wait.

Giving Yourself

The good news is that God gives himself to us.  He gives himself in the sacrifice of his Son; he gives himself in the outpouring of the Spirit.  He gives himself as price, ransoming the lost, and he gives himself as presence, drawing near to the ransomed.  It is God himself who is given, and no lesser gift.  But...  God does not give himself away.  There is no risk of him losing himself in all this giving.  He is not conditioned by his giving; rather, the recipient of the gift is conditioned by his receiving of the gift.  Even as he goes to the cross, God gives himself, does not give himself away.  He remains the giver, not the one from whom anything is taken.

In Trinitarian terms, perhaps we might say that God the Father is supremely the guarantee that God does not lose control over his giving.  He gives himself in his Son and his Spirit, but he, in his own Person, remains always the giver even in his given-ness.

It is different for us.  We can hardly give ourselves without giving ourselves away.  To give ourselves is to lose ourselves; ultimately, the martyr loses himself - gives himself away.  But it is so in every little act of love.  We give ourselves, and in giving we lose ourselves.  We give ourselves away.  We are conditioned by our giving.  We diminish.

That is why the only key to radical self-giving is the remembrance that we are in the hand of the God who holds onto us even as we give ourselves away, and regathers all of the pieces of us that we have - at his command! - freely distributed and scattered throughout our lives in acts of self-giving love (and indeed without his command, in sinful acts of illegitimate attachment).  Without the promise that he, the giver who is not given away, holds onto us, how can we dare to give ourselves away?

Without the resurrection, how could we dare to let go of ourselves?

Life and death

"Choosing the time you die is a human right."

That is according to the partner of a healthy 75 year old who recently decided to end her own life rather than face the "indignity" of ageing.  The story is, from my perspective, desperately sad - but it makes complete sense.  If life is my possession, then I can give it up when I choose.  If I have a right to life based on nothing more than my own individuality, then I surely have a right to die.

This morning, as most mornings, I said Morning Prayer, and as usual prayed: "as we rejoice in the gift of this new day..."  Today is a gift.  My life today is a gift.  But that can only be true and meaningful if there is a Giver, and if he is good.  Even a good day is only a gift if it is generously given by Someone.  And a bad day - the sorts of days which presumably Gill Pharaoh was imagining when she chose to die rather than to live through them - could only be a gift if it came from a Giver who was able to take our suffering and do something positive with it.  And of course one day we will die, and that day of my death could only be a gift - a day I could rejoice in receiving - if it came from the hand of a Giver who was able to redeem even death.

In other words, if and only if the gospel is true - if Jesus died and rose - then life is a gift, every day is a gift, and nobody has a right to choose to die (though they certainly do, following Jesus, have the 'right' to give up life for another or for Christ - but that is a different thing).

It strikes me also that the gospel has something to say about the supposed indignity of old age.  Wherein is the indignity felt to lie?  Ms Pharaoh said "I simply do not want to follow this natural deterioration through to the last stage when I may be requiring a lot of help."  Is there any inherent indignity in requiring a lot of help?  I think I know what she meant; it is not a nice thought that one day I might be reliant on others for basic functions like toileting and eating.  But the gospel does tell me that my dignity as a human being, far from being contradicted by my need for 'a lot of help', derives from being helped.  I am a person Jesus died to help.  I am utterly, utterly dependent on him for everything - and existing in that relationship of dependence is what being really human means.

All in all, I am struck by the contrast between a culture where life is a random eruption from a sphere of death, and can collapse into that sphere again at a whim, and the gospel, where life is a gift to be treasured because it can be fulfilled in Christ.  And I am reminded that my only comfort, in life and death, is that I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.

Christ-less Grace

I've been mulling over Romans 2 and 3 today, after a Peter Comont preach at MRC last night.  The main drift of the chapters is pretty clear.  Having dished out some fairly heavy condemnation of humanity - and I think in particular Gentile society - in Romans 1, Paul goes on to hit the moralist in chapter 2.  The temptation for the moralist - and he slides over the course of the verses to be talking particularly about the Jewish moralist - is to assume that they are better.  This is the sort of person who can nod along with Paul's condemnation, confident that it does not apply to them.  Paul's reply to the moralist is that they do just the same things.  Not, perhaps, the identical crimes, but the same sorts of things, and moreover they do them without any sense of needing God's mercy.  They sin with a high hand, and can expect judgement, with as little mercy as they are prepared to show to others.

The second part of chapter 2 has always seemed to me in the past to be Paul simply labouring his point, and in particular hammering it home to his former co-religionists.  There is a bit of that.  But what has struck me this time around is that Paul's imagined opponent relies on two main things - having the law, and having circumcision.  Paul's point is that neither of these things are sufficient for justification.  But I wonder whether I have always misunderstood his opponent's position.  Having the law and being circumcised - that is to say, being a Jew.  And that is grace.  The person who relies on having the law and on being circumcised does not rely on themselves (this is particularly clear with regard to the latter) so much as on God's gift.

And so I think the beginning of Romans 3 is a dialogue that goes something like this:

"What is the use then, Paul, of being a Jew?  What good is circumcision?"
(Note that Paul could say 'nothing', and indeed when the question is directly 'what good is it for justification?', he will indeed say 'nothing at all'.  But at this point that is not what he says).
"It is an enormous privilege in every way!  For starters, you have the Scriptures entrusted to you".
(This doesn't really get unpacked; I think Paul imagines himself being interrupted).
"Of course, but that is hardly the point of our discussion.  You seem to be saying, Paul, that the unfaithfulness of some - perhaps even a majority - in Israel has completely undone the faithfulness of God; you seem to be saying that God's covenant faithfulness to Israel was always dependent on Israel's goodness".
(If Paul were saying this, he would of course be flying in the face of the prophets, and of Moses.  The OT is full of the glorious truth that unfaithful Israel is chosen and upheld despite their unfaithfulness by God's faithfulness to them.  But notice the plea that is being made here; it is an appeal to grace).
"Certainly not!  God is faithful even if no-one else is.  But his faithfulness may mean judgement as well as mercy".
(The latter is implied by the OT quotation.  For more of God's ongoing faithfulness to Israel, we could jump to Romans 9-11).
The dialogue goes on, with Paul's opponent getting rather desperate and hard up for good arguments, as is often the fate of imaginary interlocutors.

To see that Paul is countering an appeal to grace (and there can be no doubt that he agrees with his opponent that law and circumcision, as the marks of Israel's election, represent grace) makes me think that the main point of these chapters, building up to the righteousness apart from the law which has now been revealed, are not so much about works versus grace, or works versus faith.  They are about anything at all versus Christ.  Even God's past grace, if it distracts from or detracts from Christ, is an unrighteousness, a filthy rag.

Faith alone is only true and important if it is faith in Christ alone.

On the night he was betrayed

Their is a real claustrophobia to the accounts of Christ's last evening with his disciples, especially in John.  The atmosphere is tense, the air thick with confusion and palpable dread.  Jesus himself is not immune from the latter, as witnessed in the garden of Gethsemane.

The words of institution, as recorded by Paul, recall that evening.  It was "the night he was betrayed".  I doubt there is anything more painful to a human being than betrayal, but this betrayal was more than that: it was the repetition in the middle of history of the event that marked and marred the beginning of it.  "For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like/Another fall of man" (Henry V).  Because of course the fall was not just a fall but a betrayal: of sacred trust, of a divine king, of a loving creator.  And the action of Judas was just the same.  Yes, Jesus went willingly to the cross.  But nevertheless, he was betrayed.

Some questions for this evening:

What made Judas different to the other disciples, humanly speaking?  Was he much worse than the others?  Was he worse than Peter - who pled the cause of Satan himself (Mark 8)?

After his betrayal of Christ, and before his suicide, what made Judas different to Peter?  Hadn't they both in greater and lesser ways betrayed him?

What makes me different to Judas?  Haven't I betrayed him a thousand times?

The only difference is grace.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ

While I'm musing on the topic of grace, let me just comment on a trend I've noticed which worries me. This trend is to talk about grace more than we talk about Jesus.

The danger here is that we start to act as if grace were a general principle in God's nature. God works by grace, which means he doesn't deal with us as we deserve. He doesn't punish us when we sin, he gives us good things we don't deserve. Hurrah. Problem is, this slightly formless, shapeless grace is not going to claim me and constrain me in the way God's real grace will. It is too easy to take for granted. It easily becomes "God will forgive me; that's his job".

On top of that, grace - understood as a general principle of God's operation - makes the cross inexplicable and unnecessary. It makes Jesus unnecessary. If God is always gracious, why the need for Christ to come and die? We even now seem to have hymns of praise addressed to "grace" rather than to Christ.

Let's be clear: when Christians say grace, what they mean is Christ. When they say "God is gracious", they mean "God has acted in Christ". When they say "I am saved by grace", they mean "God in Christ has reconciled me to himself". What the word grace actually adds is that it is all Christ, and nothing else.

Disturbing grace

Perhaps another and more troubling way in which God's grace is not comfortable is that it will not allow me to settle for being as good as I am. We sometimes think that because God is gracious - because he does not ultimately treat me as my sins deserve - I can just be content with who I am. In actual fact, I think that God's grace creates radical discontent with who I am. Let's explore.

Imagine that my relationship with God were governed by law - whether that is morality or religion or whatever. Any system that works by laying down a standard and then calling me to keep it. We could illustrate that system as being like a ladder: each individual command or ritual or good deed is a rung on the ladder, and at the top is righteousness and peace with God. So, there I am climbing.

And I sin. I fail in some way. What do I do? Well, I could despair. Yes, certainly I could do that. But I might do something else instead. I might say "well, I guess I'm not there yet. But at least I'm trying, and I'll do better next time". Now, that might call forth a mighty effort from me to do better - I might really try to scramble on to the next rung of the ladder. But I haven't been challenged to my core. I am essentially content with who I am. Not having completed the project of righteousness is okay; I have the rest of my life to do better. The system of law allows me to think that I can improve myself, and therefore allows me to think that perhaps this failure is just a product of the stage of self-improvement that I am currently at. I will grow out of it.

Grace challenges me much more radically when I sin. Because grace doesn't give me a ladder to climb. Rather, it tells me that what I have just done is impossible.

It is impossible for you to sin if you are a Christian. You died to sin - how can you live in it any longer? You have been raised with Christ - how can you wallow in the grave of sin? You have been redeemed - how can you still be a slave? You are seated with Christ in the heavenly places - how can you be dirtying yourself with the earth? Not possible.

And yet, here I am. I sinned. And I cannot say "well, I will get better. This is just my adolescence as a Christian. In future, this won't happen, because from now on it is onward and upward". I am already up as high as can be: perfected in Christ. Therefore, that sin cannot be me - not the me as God sees me, not the me as I am called to see myself in faith. Am I so radically divided against myself? Can I, in that case, hope to stand?

How God's grace disturbs me, even as it comforts me!

Assaulted by grace

Reading through Barth's commentary on Romans has got me thinking about grace. Grace - God's absolutely free acceptance and forgiveness of the sinner - is a comforting reality in the life of the Christian. If I am not justified by grace, I know for sure I will not be justified at all. If I am not in the right because God in Christ puts me in the right, then I am certainly in the wrong. The fact that God has, in Christ, actually been gracious to me is therefore my only comfort in life and death.

But have I allowed grace to become something not only comforting but comfortable?

In actual fact, God's grace is an assault on me and everything I want to be. God, in Christ, acts entirely unilaterally towards me. He simply declares me to be righteous, counts me righteous, makes me righteous - and all independently of me. Without consulting me, God sets aside the person I am - sinful, compromised, religious, moral, making an effort, failing - and produces a new me. And he does it, not provisionally and pending my approval, but with absolute finality, because the setting aside of the old me is accomplished through my death with Christ, and the production of the new me is accomplished through my resurrection with Christ - and Christ being raised is no longer subject to death. And so God's grace successfully assaults me, kills me, and raises a new me, a different me, united to Christ.

Think about the prodigal son. He has decided to live for himself, to discover himself, to assert himself, to do it his way. He fails, and sets off for home. His new plan is to beg for mercy from his father, or more particulalry, to suggest a plan by which his misdeeds and failure can be atoned for. He wants the father to take his sin seriously, to take his self-expression seriously - even though he recognises that this will invalidate his claim to sonship.

The father declines to deal with him thus.

He will not be dealt with as the person who has expressed his own identity in rebellion. That rebellious son will not be taken seriously as the person he is. The father will not even listen to his plan for reconciliation; rather, he unilaterally declares the breach healed. Sonship restored. Death dead, and life restored. In a real sense, the grace of the father sets aside those wasted years - and the person who wasted them - to make room for a new person.

Wonderful, comforting, necessary. But not comfortable. Grace assails me, defeats me, slays me. And raises me new.