<\/p>
The meaning of the word \u201cgrace\u201d has been a central question in the Federal Vision discussions. On the anti-FV side, it\u2019s often said that \u201cgrace\u201d means not only \u201cunmerited favor,\u201d but \u201cfavor shown in the face of demerit.\u201d Pro-FV types point out that the Bible uses \u201cgrace\u201d and equivalents in a variety of ways. <\/p>\n
The Biblical argument is not even open to question. It is simply not the case that \u201cgrace\u201d always means favor in the face of demerit. To cite just one example: According to Psalm 136, God created out of His \u201clovingkindness\u201d; He opens His hand to give food to all flesh out of His \u201clovingkindness.\u201d Had Adam demerited anything before God, in His lovingkindness, created him? Does God \u201cin his lovingkindness\u201d open His hand to feed the wild animals in spite of their sin and rebellion? <\/p>\n
But contrasting these two definitions of grace doesn\u2019t really capture the full scope of the debate regarding grace. <\/p>\n
Consider baptism. Does God claim the baptized person as His own in baptism? Does He, by pressing His Name on the baptized, say that they belong to Him? I suppose someone could question this, but even someone with a very low view of baptismal efficacy could affirm this. It\u2019s a simple fact that the baptized are baptized in the name of the Trinity; and therefore that they \u201cbear\u201d that name. <\/p>\n
Now: Is that favor? Of course it is. It\u2019s a great privilege to bear God\u2019s Name. <\/p>\n
Is it unmerited favor? Yes. Out of all the billions of people who live and who have lived, God has chosen to lay His name on this particular baptized person. The baptized has done nothing to receive the favor of being baptized. <\/p>\n
Is it unmerited favor in the face of demerit? Yes. For the baptized has not only done nothing to earn the privilege of bearing God\u2019s name, but in his rebellion and sin has done a great deal to demerit that privilege. <\/p>\n
Notice: None of this depends on a traditionally strong view of baptismal efficacy. None of it depends on saying that baptism has some spiritual energy attached to it; none of it depends on saying that the baptized is regenerated; the baptized may not ever have faith of any kind. We can say that baptism is nothing but the \u201csociological\u201d fact that the baptized is publicly identified with Christ and His church, and the logic still holds: Even on these premises, baptism is, in itself, a gift of unmerited favor in the face of demerit, the favor of being claimed by God. <\/p>\n
Now: Would those who oppose the FV want to say that baptism is, for the reasons and in the senses I suggested, invariably an act of grace? I would expect not. If they are willing to admit that, then a large part of the FV debate over grace and baptism has been a monumental misunderstanding. Because, speaking for myself, I have throughout this debate been operating with a view of baptismal efficacy that is much, much closer to the view I\u2019ve just outlined than it is to any \u201cmagical\u201d view of baptismal water. I fondly thought that if my views on baptismal efficacy were going to be controversial, it would be because they were too Zwinglian! <\/p>\n
At base, baptism is a grace, a gift, beause it confers the name of the Triune God on the baptized, because it inducts the baptized into the church, because it invests the baptized with the great privilege of dressing himself as a priest in the presence of God. Whether the baptized lives a life of faith or not, these gifts are given in baptism. <\/p>\n
If, as I suspect, the anti-FV forces would refuse to call baptism \u201cgrace\u201d in the sense and for the reasons I\u2019ve given, it shows that the issue in debate over grace is not only whether \u201cgrace\u201d means \u201cunmerited favor\u201d or \u201cunmerited favor in the face of demerit.\u201d The anti-FV position seems to require that the favor must be a favor of a certain kind if it is going to receive the honorific title of \u201cgrace.\u201d It cannot be the merely \u201cexternal\u201d favor of wearing the Name of God, being incorporated into His people, being delegated to a place in the worship of God. For grace to be grace, it has not only to be unmerited favor in the face of demerit, but has to be a \u201cspiritual\u201d favor, not the kind of \u201csociological\u201d favor I\u2019ve described. <\/p>\n
This raises some important questions about the status of \u201ccommon grace\u201d in the anti-FV position. But more importantly, it points again to one of the real cruxes of the whole debate, namely, the nature\/grace or nature\/supernature dualism that runs along behind the whole anti-FV position. If it refuses to acknowledge baptism as grace in the sense I\u2019ve described, then the anti-FV position is implicitly conceding a zone of autonomous nature; there is, on this view, such a thing as a \u201cmerely social\u201d baptism, a \u201cmerely external\u201d initiation ceremony into the church of Jesus Christ. <\/p>\n
But that is only possible if there is a zone of \u201cmerely social\u201d that is somehow outside God\u2019s action and interest. A \u201cmerely social\u201d baptism assumes some zone of autonomy in human life that the Reformed tradition, much less the Bible, does not concede. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The meaning of the word \u201cgrace\u201d has been a central question in the Federal Vision discussions. On the anti-FV side, it\u2019s often said that \u201cgrace\u201d means not only \u201cunmerited favor,\u201d but \u201cfavor shown in the face of demerit.\u201d Pro-FV types point out that the Bible uses \u201cgrace\u201d and equivalents in a variety of ways. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-soteriology"],"yoast_head":"\n