Charnock on Supernatural Salvation

Stephen Charnock argues that salvation must be supernatural because nature is insufficient for the task: “A change from acts of sin to moral duties may be done by a natural strength and the power of natural conscience: for the very same motives which led to sin, as education, interest, profit, may, upon a change of circumstances, guide men to an outward morality; but a change to the contrary grace is supernatural.”

This insistence depends on an understanding of the limits of nature: “Nothing in the world can raise itself to a higher rank of being than that which nature has placed it in; a spark cannot make itself a star, though it mount a little up to heaven; nor a plant endue itself with sense, nor a beast adorn itself with reason; nor a man make himself an angel. Thorns cannot bring forth grapes, nor thistles produce figs because such fruits are above the nature of those plants. So neither can our corrupt nature bring forth grace, which is a fruit above it. Effectus non excedit virtutem suae causae [the effect cannot exceed the power of its cause]: grace is more excellent than nature, therefore cannot be the fruit of nature.”

The question, though, is whether a vine can, of itself, bring forth grapes or a fig tree figs? Does it possess any inherent grape-producing power? To be sure, it is a secondary cause of the production of grapes, but even that secondary-causative power is entirely a gift from the Creator.

And the axiom about cause and effect, venerable and popular as it is, is at best ambiguous (how to measure the “power” in view? what kind of power?) or simply and obviously false. I push a man in front of a moving car; it’s a small exertion of power on my part, and who would say that the cause exceeds the effect?

To clarify again: I am not saying that we have the capacity in ourselves to do anything to please God. I am in fact denying that we have any capacity that is purely and entirely ours, any capacity that is not a gift, any capacity whose operation is independent of God’ absolute causation. But I’m suggesting that the underlying assumption that we do possess “our own” capacities has skewed soteriological questions and answers for a very long time.