Some scattered thoughts inspired by comments from Chris Schlect and Doug Wilson at a faculty discussion of de Lubac today:
How is it that theologians (like Norman Shepherd, Steve Wilkins, Rich Lusk, and others) who want to expunge the notion of merit from theology get accused of being “neo-nomians” and legalists, teaching that we can be saved by our own works? How can they be so badly misread? What is happening in Reformed theology that so polarizes and confuses things?
A possibility: Schlect suggested that what’s happening in the current Reformed debates amounts to a Copernican Revolution, largely revolving (I didn’t even notice the pun at first – sorry) around the definition and positioning of gift and grace in relation to nature.
Much Western theology, including Reformed theology, has assumed that nature provides the context for and positions grace. Reformed theology has understood the covenant of grace in the context of the covenant of works; the mercy and grace of God intervenes in a world governed by a just God; we become sons of a kind Father after being made as servants of a good Lord. Grace only makes sense if there is a prior nature, and specifically if there is a prior fallen nature.
But what if we say that grace/gift is the deepest and widest possible context? What if we say that there is no “nature” that is not always already, in its deepest reality, gift? Then nature is positioned within and contrextualized by gift and grace. God does not intervene graciously into a world that operates by strict justice; His intervention for salvation is an intervention in a world where all – literally all – is already gift. He is our Creator-Father who creates us to be brothers to His only-begotten Son through the Spirit.
These contrasting conceptions of nature and grace is undergirding many of the current debates.
Of course, we must say that all is gift if we profess creation, but the fact that this Copernican Revolution is controversial shows how far Western theology has been from a fully creationist theology.
This is not to deny the reality of God’s Lordship or His justice. By the doctrime of simplicity, God’s justice and Lordship cannot be anything but His goodness and graciousness. And so another deep level is theology proper: Is God essentially Lord, and only “accidentally,” at a second moment, a gracious Lord? Or is God Lord precisely in His goodness and grace?
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