Grace in Christianity

"[7] The Catholic Church holds that it is because of the action of Christ and the Holy Spirit in transforming into the divine life what is subjected to God's power that "the sacraments confer the grace they signify": "the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through [each sacrament], independently of the personal holiness of the minister.

According to Evangelical theologian Charles C. Ryrie, modern liberal theology "gives an exaggerated place to the abilities of people to decide their own fate and to effect their own salvation entirely apart from God's grace.

"[7] Grace is the English translation of the Greek χάρις (charis) meaning "that which brings delight, joy, happiness, or good fortune.

"[14] The Septuagint translates as χάρις the Hebrew word חֵ֖ן (ẖen) as found in Genesis 6:8[15] to describe why God saved Noah from the flood.

[31] The joint declaration between Catholics and Lutherans on the doctrine of justification affirms: We confess together that all persons depend completely on the saving grace of God for their salvation.

[32]According to a commonly accepted categorization, made by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, grace can be given either to make the person receiving it pleasing to God (gratia gratum faciens) – so that the person is sanctified and justified – or else to help the receiver lead someone else to God (gratia gratis data).

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love.

[36] Sanctifying grace remains permanently in the soul as long as one does not reject one's adopted sonship by committing a mortal sin, which severs one's friendship with God.

John Cassian, in continuity with patristic doctrine, taught that though grace is required for persons to save themselves at the beginning, there is no such thing as total depravity, but there remains a moral or noetic ability within humans that is unaffected by original sin, and that persons must work together (synergism) with divine grace to be saved.

[22] This does not mean that other groups of Christians have no treasury of grace at their disposal,[50] for, as the Second Vatican Council declared, "many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of (the Catholic Church's) visible structure".

Citing the Council of Trent, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man.

Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.

Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men.

Among Eastern Christians generally, grace is considered to be the partaking of the Divine Nature described in 2 Peter 1:4.

[5][6] Orthodox theologians reject Augustine's formulation of original sin and actively oppose the content and implications of John Calvin's conceptions of total depravity and irresistible grace, characteristic of Reformed Protestantism, as well as the Thomistic and scholastic theology which would become official Roman Catholic pedagogy until the Second Vatican Council.

[53] Orthodoxy teaches that it is possible and necessary for the human will to cooperate with divine grace for the individual to be saved, or healed from the disease of sin.

[5][54] In the works of John Cassian (c. 360–435 AD), Conference XIII recounts how the wise monk Chaeremon, of whom he is writing, responded to puzzlement caused by his own statement that "man even though he strive with all his might for a good result, yet cannot become master of what is good unless he has acquired it simply by the gift of Divine bounty and not by the efforts of his own toil" (Chapter 1).

In Chapter 11, Cassian presents Chaeremon as speaking of the cases of "Paul the persecutor" and "Matthew the publican" as difficulties for those who say "the beginning of free will is in our own power", and the cases of Zaccheus and the good thief on the cross as difficulties for those who say "the beginning of our free will is always due to the inspiration of the grace of God".

Chaeremon thus concludes; "These two then; viz., the grace of God and free will seem opposed to each other, but really are in harmony, and we gather from the system of goodness that we ought to have both alike, lest if we withdraw one of them from man, we may seem to have broken the rule of the Church's faith: for when God sees us inclined to will what is good, He meets, guides, and strengthens us: for 'At the voice of thy cry, as soon as He shall hear, He will answer thee'; and: 'Call upon Me', He says, 'in the day of tribulation and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me'.

Augustine Casiday states that, at the same time, Cassian "baldly asserts that God's grace, not human free will, is responsible for 'everything [that] pertains to salvation' – even faith".

Colm Luibhéid says that, according to Cassian, there are cases where the soul makes the first little turn,[58] but according to Casiday's interpretation, any sparks of goodwill that may exist, not directly caused by God, are totally inadequate and only direct divine intervention ensures spiritual progress;[59] and Lauren Pristas says that "for Cassian, salvation is, from beginning to end, the effect of God's grace".

Martin Luther's anger against this practice, which seemed to him to involve the purchase of salvation, began a swing of the pendulum back towards the Pauline vision of grace, as opposed to James's.

Luther taught that men were helpless and without a plea before God's justice, and their acts of piety were utterly inadequate before his infinite holiness.

As opposed to the treasury of grace from which believers can make withdrawals, in Lutheranism salvation becomes a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy, in which penitents acknowledge the inadequacy of their own resources and trust only in God to save them.

Calvin and Luther believed free will does not co-operate with God's grace which, according to them, cannot be rejected (see monergism).

"[61] The French reformer John Calvin expanded and further developed these Augustinian themes in his systematic Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.

In the beginning of the 17th century, the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius formulated Arminianism and departed from Calvin's theology in particular on election and predestination.

This is done through prevenient grace which acts on all people to convince them of the Gospel, draw them strongly towards salvation, and enable the possibility of sincere faith.

The ritual as interpreted in light of such ideas does not at all bring about salvation, nor does its performance bring about the forgiveness of sins; the forgiveness which the believer has received by faith is merely pictured, not effectively applied, by baptism; salvation and participation in Christ is memorialized ("this do in remembrance of me" in the Lord's Supper and baptism picturing a Christian's rebirth as death to sin and alive in Christ), not imparted, by the Eucharist.

Concerning Ephesians 2:8 which states: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God", it is noted that the word "it" is a pronoun and refers back to a noun.