What's the role of grace in atonement of Christ? Dr Deidre Green & Dr Eric Huntsman will weigh in. Check out our conversation...
https://youtu.be/XmmPPgNaJes
Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/
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Role of Grace in Atonement
GT 00:36 Since I mentioned Willie Grills being a Lutheran pastor, of course, the subject of grace and works has to come up, especially with a Mormon talking to a Lutheran. How does grace and works fit in with the atonement?
Eric 00:58 Do you want me to start with that, Deirdre? (Chuckling) This is a whole other conversation, We're going to have to do a lot of Paul and late Pauline stuff. I think it's actually a false dichotomy, number one. I mean, we're basing ourselves on a sequence of arguments in Galatians, Romans and then Ephesians. And then we're using a proof text in James, when James probably didn't have Paul in front of him. So when James says, "Faith without works is dead," he's not responding to Paul.
GT 01:24 Thomas Wayment told me he was pushing back on that, on the grace, on too much grace.
Eric 01:30 In the context of James chapter two, the works there, are works of charity. He's saying that if someone is naked or hungry, you need to put clothes on him and feed him. So, that's the first thing I would say. But one of the great things we're talking about the changes, in the trajectory of the way we've described the Book of Mormon over the years, when I was growing up, and Rick, you and I might be closer in age than the Deidre is to us. But, we never talked about grace in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, really. We didn't. And we started talking about it when President Benson started making us read the Book of Mormon so much. Right? Because you couldn't get away from what the Book of Mormon was teaching about grace. Back to that earlier idea, we teach to our distinctives, we understood that there's a reason for ordinances and there's a reason for obedience. And so that seems like works to us. And we felt like, at least, some Protestants, particularly evangelical Protestants, born again Protestants are emphasizing grace too much. So we shy away from the grace and we emphasize the works.
Eric 02:30 But when we actually got in the Book of Mormon, if grace is what Jesus does for us, that we can't do for ourselves, it's a gift. That's what it means in Greek, or as Elder Bednar explains it from a Book of Mormon perspective, it's the strength and enabling power of the atonement. I mean, that's the connection with this topic, it's the power of the atonement. The most you can come up with--I mean, I know Elder McConkie had a rubric for it. I mean, he had the pure grace, which is the resurrection. And then he had conditional grace, which made all of us just bristle, which is you have to have faith, repentance and baptism to be forgiven for sin. But the Roman Catholics gave me a model for ordinances, which was helpful, since a lot of times--I mean, we have different kinds of works. Are we talking about ordinances as works or are we talking about good deeds as works. Let's make it ordinances for a while. For the Roman Catholics, their sacraments are conduits of grace. It's the way God has prepared for the grace of Jesus to flow into us. Well, that's exactly what we think ordinances are. You put yourself in a position to receive the grace of Christ. In terms of good works, doing good deeds, I mean, if you don't do them, I guess it's a sin of omission. So, you have to repent of that. But any number of good deeds, taking casseroles to people when there's been a funeral or mowing the lawn or doing your ministering, none of that compensates for sin. So, works as good deeds never take the place of grace. But if we're looking at works as the necessity to conform to ordinances, which God has established for us, that these are vehicles or tools by which the grace of Christ flows into us, that Roman Catholic model of sacramental grace, I think they're not opposed. The ordinance as works, are the way the grace comes to us. I just said a whole lot of nothing, Deidre, fill me out here.
Deidre 04:21 Well, I don't know that I'll be any more concise than that. I have a few different points I want to make. The first, and I think I'm indebted to Joe Spencer, if I'm remembering correctly, and maybe Joe will not want to claim this. But I believe I learned this from him. When we think about 2nd Nephi 25 in the Book of Mormon that tells us it's by grace we are saved after all that we can do. That alludes nicely to what we read in Alma 24 with the anti-Nephi Lehis, where it says it was all they could do to repent. It was all we could do to repent. And so that might be one way of reading what it means in 2nd Nephi 25, to say all we can do is required before grace comes in. But what that means really is repentance. I'll say that, for me, what I understand the works piece to be is really the willingness to receive the gift that Christ makes possible. One way to think about that, how do I show that I am receptive to the gift? Well, I show that through the way I live my life. I show that through the way I exist, and that humility, that repentance, that constantly viewing myself as utterly dependent on God and utterly dependent on Christ. That that's the way that I show that receptivity, because I believe that what it means to be Christian, and what it means to be a Latter-day Saint is something that really is not expressed primarily through words, but through the way that we act and the way that we live.
Deidre 05:55 I will say also, King Benjamin gives us this beautiful sermon, about the atonement. And Eric just alluded to that earlier. But part of what I think we don't always appreciate is that what Benjamin is describing there, when he talks about all these illustrations of the ways that people's lives transform, is that he's been descriptive about a Christ-like life that we begin to live as we receive the atonement. I think sometimes we might be tempted to read that list of changes and transformations as prescriptive, that these are the things we have to do to receive the atonement. Instead, it's a result of how the atonement and grace work on us, that these changes flow out of us. And so, we've had a tendency, for a long time within the Church to focus on the works piece, and have this laundry list of things we have to do before the Atonement is really at work or before we receive grace. I think that that's wrong. I think, really, what it is, what the work for us is to be receptive, to receive the gift of the Atonement, to receive the gift of grace. And what that looks like, is recognizing our utter dependence on Christ and having a penitent way of being in the world, and that demonstrates our receptivity. Then as a result of that, as a result of receiving that grace, receiving the atonement, that is really what transforms us and allows us to live a radically different life than we would have without it.
GT 07:32 Very good. I, personally, like Eric said, I think that there's way too many arguments about grace and works and they're just two sides of the same coin. But I had Willie on, so, of course, we've got to talk about it.
Eric 07:49 Well, and Joe via Deirdre has given me something really to think about. I mean, we have to make a long list of what works are. If we have the works of repentance, and then we have sacramental works, and then we have good deeds, which I think most Protestants would say flow out of grace, I mean, we're furnished with good works. I think we throw around works and we don't always even say what we mean by that. Are we talking about the works of faith and repentance? Are we talking about conforming to ordinances, performing them? Are we talking about the good deeds that flow [when we're] trying to be like Jesus? So, I think we're not very thoughtful about what we mean when we have these discussions about works.
GT 08:36 I mean, I know as a missionary in South Carolina, getting called out because well, baptism is a work and we don't really believe baptism is necessary and all your home teaching and all of the laundry lists that Mormons have a lot of things that were supposed to go to. Those were the things that we got attacked [on.] So, ordinances probably not as much as just like, oh, well, you feel bad because you didn't bring the casserole because somebody was sick or whatever. I think Mormons can get really get into a checklist mentality. We do try to cover, we do try to get grace because we're doing all that we can do to get that grace. After all we can do, then I can get the grace. A hardcore Lutheran or born again Christian is like, all you've got to do is confess Jesus, you're good to go.
Eric 09:38 Let me push back on that a little bit, because I don't think Latter-day Saints are alone in the checklist. Theologically, they may say all you need to do is confess Christ, but it's, like, the Protestant work ethic, right? I mean, the people who were the greatest examples of the Protestant work ethic were people who believe in grace and double predestination. But they want to assure themselves that they were elected to grace. So you had to show that Christ had changed you somehow. I think it's a natural human tendency to want to have something verifiable or something that you can recognize. It's like all these things that are as much about boundary maintenance as they are about obedience. We do certain things, we act a certain way, we dress a certain way to show ourselves and others, that we're Jesus' [follower.] And because I did my last few years of high school in Jackson, Tennessee, and I had a lot of friends who were saved by grace, and they were born again Christians.
