Justification/Salvation by Grace

David deSilva makes a very relevant comment for my purposes in his recent book, Honor, Patronage, Kinship, & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture. With regard to grace he writes, "Because we think about the grace of God through the lens of sixteenth-century Protestant polemics about 'earning salvation by means of pious works,' we have a difficult time hearing the New Testament's own affirmation of the simple, yet noble and beautiful, circle of grace" (141).

deSilva here alludes to what has now become commonly accepted, namely, that grace and gift language in the NT is language of patronage. Throughout the Greco-Roman world of Paul's day, informal relationships existed between the "have's" and "have nots" of society. The "have's," the patrons, would give to various other groups who were in need of resources. The "have not's" received their patronage as "clients" and in return gave their patrons honor, sometimes suffered for them, might perform various tasks for them, etc...

Such patronage was of course "unmerited" in the sense that the client did not pay the patron for services rendered. And because the relationship was informal, there was no contract that constituted obligation on the part of either party. The client in that sense had no formal strings attached. On the other hand, a client that dishonored his or her patron could not assume that the patron would simply continue patronage as if nothing had happened.

If we look for modern illustrations of such grace, we might think of a donor for a college building. John Maxwell is not obligated in any way to donate funds to Indiana Wesleyan for a building. Such donation is gracious on his part, it demonstrates his willingness to act as a patron, it is an example of his charis, his grace. The gift is a charisma, the product of grace.

Now I don't know if IWU was obligated contractually to name the Maxwell building after Maxwell. I can at least imagine that the arrangment might be informal--a kind of mutual understanding. On the other hand, you can imagine that if IWU were to act ungrateful and say bad things about Maxwell, he probably would want to donate anything more to the university!

This is thus a fair example of patron-client relationships today, and it works a lot like it did in ancient times in the days of the NT.

The relevance of this cultural background for understanding grace in the NT is striking. From God comes "every good act of giving [dosis] and every perfect thing given [dorema]" (Jas. 1:17). The spiritual gifts of 1 Corinthians [charismata] are instances of grace that comes through the Holy Spirit [charis].

Therefore, when we approach certain key Pauline texts on grace, we should be careful about foreign assumptions about what it means to say that justification or salvation comes through grace.

Romans
God has dispensed His grace in Romans through Jesus Christ. God has shown his propensity to serve as our patron by offering Jesus as a means of our redemption (Rom. 3:24), offering him as a means of atonement (3:25), thus showing his love for us (5:8). These are the means and basis for our justification, our acquittal in the divine court--we are "justified as a gift [dorean] by his grace [charis] through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (3:24).

Our Protestant propensity for confusion does not come so much in the discussion of God as patron. Rather, it comes when we begin to discuss the implications of grace for us as clients. Take Romans 4:3-5:

For what does the Scripture say, "Abraham had faith in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now to the one "working" the reward is not reckoned according to grace but according to debt. But to the one not working but having faith on the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness."

Here again we see the key concepts of grace. Grace does not involve obligation on God's part to give. It is something that God does not have to give but something He gives "as a gift."

But at the same time, we should not make "working" a polar opposite to grace or faith. The point of the logic is not that God doesn't want works. The point is that no amount of works add up to an obligation on God's part.

I might add as a side note James Dunn's emphasis that what Paul is primarily discussing here is "works of law," that is, acts of the Jewish law and especially acts that tended to distinguish Jew from Gentile. These are matters of the Law like circumcision, food laws, Sabbath observance, etc... Dunn's classic article on this topic can be found in Jesus, Paul, and the Law. In his most recent mention of the topic The New Perspective on Paul (an expensive Mohr/Siebeck monograph that reprints his classic articles also on the topic, along with a some 70 page introduction, I believe), Dunn denies that he ever restricted the sense of the phrase "works of law" only to boundary matters.

My own sense is that Dunn's recent comment is the right balance. When Paul uses the phrase "works of law," he primarily has in mind the kinds of matters that intra-Jewish conflicts were made out of. The title of the Qumran document 4QMMT is surely relevant: "Some of the Works of the Law." It is a document that argues for the right way to live out the law with regard to the temple.

At the same time, Paul is talking of "deeds of law" and does at more than one point generalize in terms of works versus faith (e.g. 10:32, see Stephen Westerholm). So while Paul may be thinking primarily of "things in the law that distinguish Jew from Gentile," we cannot restrict his meaning to such things.

So also Romans 4:16:

For this reason, [justification is] on the basis of faith in order that it might be in accordance with grace...

At this point post-Augustinian denominations begin to wrankle over where the faith comes from. Is faith a work if it is something a human does? Is it a "badge of covenant membership" (N. T. Wright), something that shows a person is a member of the people of God rather than something that gets you in? Does it refer to Christ's faithfulness (Richard Hays) and not even human faith in verses like this one at all?

I agree with Hays that Paul refers to Christ's faithfulness in verses like Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16, but I agree with Dunn in Romans 4 and Galatians 3. Ek pisteos for Paul does come from Habakkuk 2:4, "the person righteous on the basis of faith will live." But I think Paul primarily has human faith in view (although I think he would apply the verse to Jesus as a human as well). So I believe Paul is talking about faith as something a human places in God and in Christ (see places where the verb is used, especially the sequence in Rom. 9:32-33), like Abraham did.

These Protestant debates are completely foreign to Paul. In my opinion, Paul says nothing about where some internal faith comes from (Rom. 10:17 is not talking about internal causes but external ones). He discusses it as a human act. It would not have contradicted the idea of patronage for the client to solicit patronage, any more than it would contradict the patronage of John Maxwell for IWU to ask if he would be willing to donate money to the university for a building. The dynamics of the internal causes of faith in a believer are of no concern to Paul.

Ephesians
Ephesians is of course different enough from Paul's other writings that the majority of non-evangelical scholars consider it pseudonymous. One minor place of such difference (although not of contradiction, in my opinion) is in the discussion of grace.

By grace you have been saved [and still are] through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift [doron] of God not from works, so that someone cannot boast. For we are his product, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared so that we might walk in them (Eph. 2:8-10).

The main difference is the language of salvation rather than justification. Salvation language in Paul is usually future rather than past oriented, since no one has yet literally escaped God's wrath.

Notice that as new creations in Christ Jesus, we will live producing good works. This is significant for the second part of our discussion, the false opposition often made between salvation by faith and good works.

Disgracing the Patron
deSilva rightly turns to Hebrews 6 to discuss the potential consequences of dishonoring a patron.

It is impossible for those once enlightened, and who have tasted of the heavenly gift [dorea] and become partakers of Holy Spirit and who have tasted the word of God and the powers of the coming age and have fallen away, [it is impossible for them] again to be renewing for repentance, since they crucify again to themselves the Son of God and expose him to disgrace.

The author then illustrates with a field that has been watered often and yet yields thorns and thistles. In the words of James 1:7, "do not let that person think s/he will receive anything from the Lord."

Conclusion
The preoccupations of the Reformation with regard to God's grace--how it might be received apart from human work and the impossibility that it might in any way connect subsequently with human work--were none of Paul's concern in the manner of our discussion. For Paul, faith was something a human did and which a human must do to receive God's justifying/saving grace. Similarly, God's grace subsequent to justification was never understood to be compatible with a "client" who might flagrantly disgrace Him.

What we see here are points where the Calvinist tradition has often criticized the Wesleyan tradition as being incoherent or even Pelagian. But Paul doesn't care. Take it up with him.