What is Grace?

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” - Genesis 1:2

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

Grace is “χαρισ” or “gratis” which means “gift”, and what is it a gift of, according to the Biblical and Patristic understanding? God’s presence revealed in the “ενεργεία” of His interaction with us, His revealed work, is the substance of which grace “consists” in essence. Grace is not the desire and power to do God’s will. Grace is not "unmerited favor." Grace is God’s work in our lives, giving Himself to us and working through us as we submit to Him to accomplish His divine will. 

To fully grapple with this implication, Cappadocian philosophy used the analogy of the Sun, which is felt and interactive with us through its rays. This “condescension” or “self-diminishment” is the way that God is present everywhere and filling all things, without destroying the created being with His uncreated presence. 

The energy is the “activity” of something, not “energy” as in “electricity” in the modern day, or “energy” in the Aristotelian and Thomist sense, which is potential. This is a hard concept to grasp in its original meaning now, since this term is loaded with technological analogies now. 

To put it simply, “energy” is the activity that can be experienced by the created world, revealing the presence of another, invisible, uncreated and causal mover. I’ve always seen it as the ripples on water, caused by the wind. The Holy Spirit is the wind. The waters are the created world. You cannot see the wind, but the “energy” of the wind is visible in the ripples. God moves and we, as His creation, move with Him when we are soft and submitted to Him. 

In soteriological terms, this means God's manifestation of grace occurs the most discernibly when we cease from our own work, dying to self through the work of Christ, and manifesting God's work in us. This means that good works are accomplished in us through God's grace, by faith, and cannot be separated from our process of dying to self and living unto God. “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” (Romans 4:4-5 KJV) And, “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works... Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?” (James 2:18, 22 KJV)

Grace has no substance of its own, and is not a created intermediary. This is the problem with Western Scholasticism. It makes grace into a substance and then parses it into units, which is the origin of the theory of merit. Grace is the visible evidence of an invisible presence. This is what the Greek Fathers meant by “energy”, because the created world moves with the will of God, revealing the uncreated and invisible presence of God in the process. 

Is grace the “The Desire and Power to do God’s Will”? Well, the desire can only be restored in our natures by the regenerative work that the Spirit accomplishes in Baptism, which is the “natural” state of the will before the Fall. So, yes, the Holy Spirit produces this affect, but it is not independent of the Human Will, but rather a response of the Human Will to the vivifying work of the Holy Spirit in Baptism. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20) and "... as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." (Galatians 3:27)

This is literally the seat of what the East and West disagree about in the understanding of man’s Fall. In the West, all of man is broken and unable to recognize or want good. Therefore, man cannot submit to or cooperate with God’s pre-baptismal calling to Himself. God must first, against the will, convert the man to Himself by imparting the Holy Spirit. Then, after the Holy Spirit has regenerated the man, then and only then does he have a free will. From this perspective, although not yet Calvinist, one can see how the Augustinian position leads to an understanding of predestination that makes human cooperation with God and a conscious assent to the Gospel impossible and the whole world unable to reflect God's grace and glory in any meaningful way. 

In the East, man is broken and unable to do right, but it still able to recognize it and submit to it, so that God can do the work of regeneration in cooperation with mankind. Therefore, we all get to chose, and we are also all responsible for our actions. We are able to know good, but unable to truly “want” it, unless we submit ourselves to God (which is a voluntary death to self and ceasing from our own work, which is literally our recognition that we can do nothing to save ourselves and that we must fully rely on God for our life and redemption). 

This attitude is the “worketh not” of Romans 4, the ceasing from our own will and submitting to God’s will, which is then “imputed” for righteousness. It is literally being transformed by God’s will into His righteousness through His power, and why, even though we do not deserve or earn God’s grace, we receive it in proportion to our humility and repentance. When we cease resisting God by doing our own will, and die to self and live to God, He is then free to manifest His work, His energy, in our lives. In this, we then become “ripples in the wind”, a living state of God’s Spirit moving upon the waters and bringing about new life however He wishes. 

Face of the Waters

As mist over the water’s face

Is driven and blown by the wind 

It cannot find a resting place 

Until it gives up and falls back in

Water turns the rock to sand

The tide carves away the land

The water has no strength or power 

Though it’s weak

Streak by streak

The mighty fall beneath its shower

In our weakness and in falling 

In being beaten and oppressed 

The world will see our power

Of peace when we’re distressed

Let our hearts become a sea

That pounds in waves around the rocks 

Let our hearts become a spring

That spills out to feed the grazing flocks 

Let love pour out upon the world

Through hearts that form great aqueducts

This is the power that we hold

To tell the truth and to be bold

To obey True Love with all our hearts

With mind and soul

Give up control

And our reason here on earth will have its start

COLLECT

O Lord, our heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, who hast safely brought us to this day: Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that we, being ordered by thy governance, may do always what is righteous in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(“Face of the Waters” copyrighted in 2010 as a part of the Grassflowers Anthology, by William Boyd)