2. The Church Fathers

The Greek Church Fathers regarded freedom of choice as an indispensable condition of all moral life. Sin, according to them, is only an instantaneous decision of the will. Grace can not, therefore, abolish man's freedom, but only supplements his spontaneous activity. For Pelagius, liberty of will is an endowment of nature that can not be lost. According to Augustine, man has lost the will to do good by his fall. Grace is, therefore, the power which frees man from evil concupiscence and creates in him the will to do good. The will to do good is conditioned by grace not only in its incipiency, but also in its continuance. Thus there seems to be no room for human merit; yet Augustine can think of good action only in the form of good works. Therefore he makes them dependent upon grace and regards them as gifts of God (dei munera), as phenomena of an inner change. Thus Augustine's doctrine of grace agrees with that of Paul in so far as he traces salvation exclusively to God; but it differs from Paul in so far as it brings grace only into a loose connection with the person of Christ and as it sees its essence not so much in the forgiveness of sins as in the communication of moral powers.

3. Medieval Doctrine

The scholastics of the middle Ages retained essential elements of Augustine's doctrine of grace; Thomas Aquinas especially followed closely in his steps. According to the scholastics, the original communication of grace is entirely unmerited. Grace is here also a communication of power, a quality that is infused into the soul. With the infusion of a new moral life there is also brought to us the remission of guilt, though the latter is dependent upon the former. Like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas upholds the necessity of, good works which are made possible on the basis of received grace, although he infers the necessity of grace not from the radical nature of sinful corruption, but from the transcendent character of the religious gift which is obtainable only by a transcendent power. More over, his statement that God is the "first cause" is for him only an abstract metaphysical sentence; in practise he gives room to free will in the preparation

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for grace. Finally he deepened the distinction between operating and cooperating grace. The beginning and continuance of salvation are not dependent upon grace in an equal degree; the fact that after conversion will is not only caused, but causes, justifies a special consideration of the share which it has in good works. The meritorious work of the converted is meritum de congruo in so far as it proceeds from his free will, meritum de condigno in so far as it originates from grace. According to Duns Scotus, man is the sovereign ruler of his will and the sole cause of the individual acts of will. Grace does not create the good, it only increases it.

Luther began as a disciple of Augustine. With him he taught the total incapacity of the natural man for the truly good. All good is a work of grace. There is no preparation for its reception 4. Luther on the part of man. The scho- and Me- lactic conception of the infusion of lanchthon. grace was at first accepted by Luther, but even then the idea of Paul began to take possession of him that the real blessing is not moral transformation, but the forgiveness of sins. The grace of forgiveness depends upon Christ and his work, which must be seized as the power of God that effects redemption. The means by which God bestows grace is the Word. The Evangelical thought that grace is not an infused quality, but the personal favor of God, first appears in the works of Melanchthon, who explains gratin by "favor." It is only from God's benevolence that the gift of the Holy Spirit follows. The same interpretations are to be found in the works of Luther and Calvin. Thus the personal character of grace, as found in Paul, was restored, and the merits of man vanished behind the one merit of Christ. In his treatise De servo arb4rio (1525) Luther tried to build the necessity of grace and the certainty of salvation through faith upon metaphysical ideas of determinism and predestination. But the influence of these thoughts upon the Lutheran Church has been slight. Beside Luther's religious determinism, there appeared after 1527 Melanchthon's doctrin6 of liberty. Both tendencies culminated in the synergistic controversy (see Synergism). The opponents of Philippism upheld the sole causality of God in conversion, but they did not approve the doctrine of a grace that acts irresistibly and can not be lost. The Formula of Concord concluded that there is no cooperation of man in conversion, but at the same time it restricted predestination to the eternal will of God to save those who believe in Christ (art. xi.). Thus, by putting into the background metaphysical questions, it tried to uphold the religious position of Luther.