Some Thoughts 002

What I’ve learned

A central theme we’ve touched on in my medieval and reformation church history class is the relation of nature to grace. Here are some things I’ve learned on the topic. Note that what follows does not necessarily reflect the views of my professor or my institution. Any inaccuracies are entirely my fault.

The natural part of man is what constitutes his substance—what is inherent to him by virtue of his creation. Grace is any gift or favor God gives to man; thus, grace is outside and apart from man’s nature.

For medieval theologians, nature is inherently incapable of eternal life. To attain eternal life, man needs an addition to his being through God’s grace. This superadded gift (donum superadditum) makes man capable of obtaining eternal life by cooperating with God’s grace. Thomas Aquinas summarizes this view by saying, “grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.”

The reformers continued to use the distinction between nature and grace, but they had a fundamentally different view from the medieval theologians. They taught that Adam was created in righteousness and holiness and thus did not need anything additional to his nature to be capable of eternal life. Had Adam obeyed God in the garden, he would have entered into blessedness. However, by his disobedience, he plunged all of humanity into condemnation and brought him and his progeny under the captivity of sin.

For the reformers, God’s grace is His declaring us righteous though we justly deserve condemnation for Adam’s first sin and our own. This declaration is the essence of our salvation. God’s grace also frees our nature from bondage to sin and begins the work of killing the sin that remains, a work that He will bring to completion at our glorification. Thus, for the reformers, grace renews nature.

There’s a third view of nature and grace: the Anabaptist view. For the Anabaptists, grace does not perfect nature, nor does it renew nature; rather, grace obliterates nature. For the anabaptists, salvation so radically changes a person that anything deemed “worldly” or “unspiritual” is no longer worthy of the Christian.

On My Mind

When I think about the three views of nature and grace, I see many parallels between the anabaptist view and how I’ve thought about the Christian life in the past. For example, there was a time when I put all secular music aside and exclusively listened to church music. Of course, I knew that non-christian music was not inherently sinful, but I was also confident that really holy people chose the purity of worship music over what the world produced. Any entertainment, art, or literature that wasn’t explicitly Christian was unworthy of the mature believer’s thought. While it wasn’t sinful to engage in secular content at times, they would eventually have little to no part in my life as I matured.

This mindset can manifest in ways that aren’t just related to entertainment and art. When it comes to issues around self-improvement and counseling, it leads to questions like if you have Scripture, why read a book on practically building better habits? Why go to a psychiatrist when the Bible has everything for life and godliness? Why pursue a career in psychology when the real solution to man’s problems is the Gospel, not therapy?

The assumption behind this mindset is that, to some extent, the grace of salvation wipes out those natural, common realities that Christians share with all people. However, this assumption does not adequately distinguish the realities of nature and grace.

Because nonbelievers are created in God’s image, they can utilize their natural faculties to create art, music, literature, and entertainment that express the goodness of God’s creation, even if they don’t have that intention. When we acknowledge the fingerprint of God in their work, we magnify the name of God, who makes the sun to rise on the righteous and the wicked.

But what about when it comes to psychological matters? It’s true that in regeneration, the Holy Spirit gives us a new heart that radically changes our inner man. However, it’s also the case that even after God saves us, our minds retain a natural component shared with all humans. Thus, neurologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists can all provide meaningful help to a Christian struggling with mental ailments, just as a gastroenterologist can aid a Christian struggling with stomach ailments.

None of what I’ve said is meant to discount the spiritual realities at work. I am not encouraging us to be undiscerning regarding secular art and entertainment. Nor am I calling us to uncritically accept the conclusions of nonbelievers working from fundamentally different presuppositions. But we shouldn’t immediately discredit the potentially helpful insights from the nonbelievers around us who seek to bring to light what is natural to man. Grace does not obliterate nature.