Origin 412 to 1547 CE
Grace is God's favour toward those who have no claim on it. Every Christian tradition affirms that. The division comes at the next question: whether grace does the whole of the work, whether it can be resisted, and whether anything a person does afterwards counts toward their standing before God.
The Reformation put the question as justification. Luther's answer was that the sinner is accounted righteous on account of Christ, by faith, and that the righteousness is imputed rather than infused, so a person is simultaneously righteous and a sinner. Trent answered in 1547 that justification is not merely a declaration but a real renewal, that grace is genuinely poured into the person, and that the will cooperates. Both sides anathematised what they took the other to be saying.
Part of what the two sides were arguing about was a difference in what "justification" named, and this was recognised late. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church in 1999, stated a common understanding sufficient to lift the sixteenth-century condemnations as they apply to the partner today. It is easy to overstate what that achieved. It did not settle the questions of merit, of the sacraments, or of authority; a number of Lutheran theologians objected that it papered over a real difference; and it does not bind the Reformed or the Orthodox. It is a genuine convergence on one point, not a resolution of the dispute.
The Eastern churches frame the whole matter differently, as participation in the divine life rather than as a transaction over status, and the Western argument about the mechanics of imputation does not translate cleanly into that frame.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account Held ByChristianity as a whole holds grace to be the unearned basis of salvation; Roman Catholic teaching holds it as infused and co-operated with, while Lutheran teaching confesses it as the sole ground of justification, a difference the 1999 Joint Declaration records as a differentiated consensus rather than an identity. 2 Status
Status Within the TraditionDefined and binding within this tradition 1Tradition: Roman Catholicism Sourced to the subject's own accountDefined at Trent, Session 6: grace is infused and co-operated with, not merely imputed Status Within the TraditionDefined and binding within this tradition 3Tradition: Lutheranism Sourced to the subject's own accountConfessed as the sole ground of justification. The 1999 Joint Declaration records a differentiated consensus with Rome on this point The Claim
The ClaimGrace names the unearned favour of God toward humanity, understood across Christian traditions as the basis of salvation, though traditions differ sharply on how grace relates to human freedom and merit. 2 Learn More
Favour That Is Not Earned
Grace, in Christian usage, is God's favour freely given rather than earned, together with the help God supplies to turn and to do good. The doctrine's permanent question is what, if anything, the human being then contributes.
Paul supplies the charter texts, "by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing" (Ephesians 2:8-9), and the shape of the later argument was set by the clash between Augustine and the British monk Pelagius in the early fifth century. Pelagius, defending human responsibility, taught that people can take the first step toward God by their own effort and that grace assists a capacity already intact. Augustine answered that sin has so wounded the will that grace must precede, enable and carry the whole movement of conversion. The Western church sided with Augustine: the Council of Orange in 529 condemned Pelagianism and the compromise later called semi-Pelagianism, establishing that even the beginning of faith is a gift, while stopping short of the hardest predestinarian conclusions.
The Reformation Flashpoint, and a Handshake in 1999
Grace was the formal cause of the sixteenth-century split, and the atlas keeps the confessional positions side by side rather than adjudicating them. The Catholic teaching, defined at the Council of Trent, is that grace is genuinely infused into the person, really transforming them, and that the justified truly cooperate with it. The Lutheran confession insists grace is God's unmerited favour received by faith alone, apart from any human contribution that could be counted as merit. The Reformed tradition of Calvin and the Synod of Dort adds that saving grace, given to the elect, is effectual and not finally resisted. The Wesleyan position holds that a prevenient grace goes ahead of everyone, restoring enough freedom to respond, and that this grace can be resisted and lost.
The most striking recent development is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification of 1999, in which the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church declared a "differentiated consensus", a shared core beneath differing emphases, and stated that the mutual condemnations of the sixteenth century no longer apply to the teaching of the partners as here presented. Methodist, Anglican and Reformed bodies later associated themselves with it. It did not dissolve the differences; it reclassified them.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Held Differently
Anglicanism, Denominations Grace as God's unearned favor and enabling power is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.
Grace as irresistible and efficacious in those God has elected, not merely offered, is doctrine per the Canons of the Synod of Dort, Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine, 1619.
Grace as God's unearned favor and enabling power is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.
Presbyterianism, Denominations Grace as irresistible and efficacious in those God has elected is doctrine per the Canons of the Synod of Dort, Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine, 1619.
Grace as God's unearned favor and enabling power is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.
Grace as sovereign and effectual, not finally resistible in the elect.
Grace as infused and cooperating with the will, received through the sacraments. Signatory to the 1999 Joint Declaration with the Lutheran World Federation.
Belongs to Tradition
God's favour is taught under the phrase undeserved kindness, which this body's own translation uses in place of grace throughout.
Grace as God's unmerited favor, received through faith and not merited by works, is the Reformation's material principle per the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, Of Justification.
Methodism holds a distinctively Wesleyan account of grace: prevenient grace goes before conversion and enables a person to respond, grace remains resistible rather than irresistible, and the ordinary means of grace, prayer, scripture reading, the Lord's Supper, fasting and Christian conference, are the channels through which it works.
Grace is understood as God's own uncreated activity toward creation rather than a created gift, the Eastern reading these churches share.
Positions on This Question
Grace alone, received by faith alone, with the will passive in its own conversion. Signatory to the 1999 Joint Declaration.
Prevenient grace, given to all, restoring the capacity to respond without compelling the response.
Related To
Amazing Grace is built entirely around the Christian doctrine of grace, from which it takes its title and refrain.
The effect described is a change worked by grace in the person who looks at the cross rather than a transaction conducted over their head.
The council's canons are the classical statement that even the beginning of faith is a gift of grace.
Sources
1. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent
Council of Trent, 1563Session 6, Decree on Justificationthe holders' own accountView the Source 2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source 3. Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification
Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, 1999Sections 3 and 5, and the Annexthe holders' own accountView the Source The Augsburg Confession
The Canons of the Synod of Dort
Synod of Dort, 1619Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine, Of the Corruption of Man, His Conversion to God, and the Manner Thereofthe holders' own accountView the Source The Sermons of John Wesley
John Wesley, Abingdon Press, 2013On prevenient, sanctifying and actual grace, and the means of graceView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
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