Understanding Sola Gratia: The Gift of Divine Grace

The doctrine of Sola Gratia or Gratia, however you want to pronounce it, which means literally: by grace alone. Now in the Middle Ages in the Roman Catholic Church, of course the leading theologian was Saint Thomas Aquinas and the church since that time has referred to Thomas as the angelic doctor; the doctor angelicas, the doctor of the angels. [00:00:44]

Augustine’s nickname is doctor gratia; that is he’s known as the doctor of grace in church history because he is the one who first formulated this idea of sola gratia. And that notion that Augustine articulated was recovered and recaptured in the Reformation by his two main disciples of that period -- Martin Luther who was an Augustinian monk at Erfurt before the Reformation began, and from John Calvin. [00:01:33]

Justification by faith alone is a truth that needs interpretation. The principle of Sola Fide is not rightly understood until it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of Sola Gratia. Now, let me interrupt myself at this point. You hear what Packer and Johnston are saying, is that you can’t really understand the Protestant doctrine of Sola Fide unless you understand it against the deeper question, against the backdrop of the doctrine of Sola Gratia. [00:03:11]

What is the source and status of faith? That’s the question; in other words, where does faith come from and what is its status? Is it the God given means whereby the God given justification is received or is it a condition of justification which is left for man to fulfill? Now do you understand the difference there? [00:04:45]

Is it a part of God’s gift of salvation or man’s own contribution to salvation? If our salvation – is our salvation wholly of God or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves? Those who say the latter, as the Arminians later did, thereby deny man’s utter helplessness in sin and affirm that a form of semi-Pelagianism is true after all. [00:05:36]

Arminianism was in Reformed eyes, a renunciation of New Testament Christianity, in favor of New Testament Judaism. For to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle from relying on oneself for works, and the one is as unchristian and antichristian in the other – as the other. In the light of what Luther says to Erasmus, there’s no doubt that he would have endorsed this judgment. [00:07:56]

Now this whole idea of Sola Gratia that Packer and others are talking about here, is related historically to two other theological issues. We’ve seen that it’s indirectly related to justification. We’ll come back to that. But the two major theological concepts by which this phrase Sola Gratia has immediate application are: number one, the doctrine of original sin, because it was in that context that this idea was first affirmed by Augustine, and second of all, the doctrine of election. [00:11:00]

Pelagius was a British monk who came to Rome, to visit Rome, and heard of the reputation of the great Augustine. But when he came to Rome, he was appalled by the behavioral patterns and the licentiousness of members of the church and those who were professing Christ. They seemed to be living godless lives, and so in a very real sense, Pelagius wanted to be a reformer of the morals of the Christian church of his day. [00:13:15]

Augustine was saying is God gave His Law to man in creation, and man was created to mirror and reflect the character of God. God is holy, and we were created with a mandate to be holy, a mandate to be righteous, a mandate to be perfect. But Augustine says, “In the fall, man was ruined as he fell into a corrupt status by which it was no longer possible for that human being to obey all of the commands of God. [00:16:50]

The doctrine of original sin does not refer specifically to the first sin – the original one, you know, the first one that got everybody in trouble. No, what original sin defines or describes in theology is the result of that first sin, the result being the fallen corruption that was the subsequent judgment of God upon the first sin, so that after Adam’s sin, after Adam and Eve fell, then their future decedents are born in sin. [00:18:21]

The church of that time roundly and soundly condemned Pelagius as a heretic and completely rejected Pelagian theology. Not only in the fifth century but again in the first three cannons of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, the church reaffirmed its judgment against Pelagianism, and in fact in the fifth century, the church ruled in favor of Saint Augustine – vis-à-vis, Pelagius. [00:21:15]

Moral inability. Namely, that the fall was so radical and so corrupt, sin so invaded our humanity that we are born in a state that the Bible describes in terms of being in a state of spiritual death or in bondage to sin and saying that we are morally impotent to do the things of God. Augustine said there can be an outward conformity to the Law of God from unconverted people and unregenerate people. [00:22:03]