Is prayer grasping the gift, or asking for the gift?

One of my favourite blogs these days is Martin Yee, a Singaporean Lutheran. Here is something to put in your theological pipe from his recent digest of a Philip Cary article:

Augustine gives us the gist of the prayer for grace in a famous formulation that irked Pelagius: “Give what you command, and command what you will.” To bring the difference between Luther and Augustine into focus, we can contrast this prayer with a formulation in Luther’s treatise, The Freedom of a Christian (1520): “The promises of God give what the commandments of God demand”. This formulation both echoes Augustine’s prayer for grace and replaces it with something new. Instead of human words of prayer, it draws our attention to the divine word of promise, which Luther elsewhere calls by the name “Gospel.” The distinction he draws in this treatise between commandments and promises as the two types of the Word of God is clearly the same as the distinction he draws elsewhere between Law and Gospel. The crucial point about the Gospel promise is always that it gives what it promises to those who believe it. So for Luther faith does not mean praying for grace and righteousness, but obtaining them by taking hold of Christ in the Gospel.

How being creatures gives us dignity

A recent realisation for me has been that the unbridgeable divide between Creator and Created, between God and Human, does not just honour God as God but also gives human beings dignity.

Karl Barth comments:

It is only the heathen gods who envy man. The true God, who is unconditionally the Lord, allows him to be the thing for which He created him. He is far too highly exalted to take it amiss or to prevent it.... There can be no doubt that with an autonomous reality God does give to man and to all His creatures the freedom of individual action

(CD III/3, p. 87, HT Colin Gunton)

The key thing in that quote is that human dignity is a gift. Because it is not ours, then the gift can be a massive as the giver can afford and as permanent as the giver is unchangeable in his attitude towards us.

The dignity of any human being lies in the indissoluble intertwining of element and instituting word. It is attributed to him or her — bestowed, given on loan — by the One who promises and gives himself unconditionally to humankind: namely, God. Thus, my dignity as a human being is attributed to me "without any merit or worthiness on my part". This dignity is at the same time categorically withheld from me and categorically granted to me; it is given to me totally without merit—and precisely because of this, it cannot be taken away from me by any other human.

(p.279, Oswald Bayer, "Self-Creation? On the Dignity of Human Beings" Modern Theology 20:2 April 2004)

Because all that we have is from God he is not going to jealously want back what he has given us. He does not resent our creative activity but encourages us in it.

the figure of Prometheus, who epitomizes the very notion of self-creation, is often played off against the creator-God of the Christian creed. But this is unjust because the "Prometheus" of the young Goethe revolts against a jealous and merciless Zeus and not against the One who—as the Almighty and at the same time Merciful One—grants the dominium terrae to humankind, entrusting them with it, all the while remaining himself free from envy.

(ibid, p. 276)

Because we are "acknowledged as a person prior to invoking any language of merits or qualities" (p. 280) we have dignity whether we are bright or stupid, pretty or ugly, physically strong or weak. This understanding should "utterly revolutionize the bio-ethical debate" (p. 280) but it should also encourage me and enable me to be creative without fear, and love without evaluating the worthiness of those I love.

From a lover of love...

PT Forsyth:

I was turned from a Christian to a believer, from a lover of love to an object of grace

(somewhere in p. 281ff of Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind)

The Threat of Grace

Tim Keller recalls recalls how he once met a women who found the promise of free grace 'scary'. When he asked her why she replied:

If I was saved by my good works, then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with "rights" - I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by sheer grace - then there's nothing he cannot ask of me.

(The Reason for God, p.183)

On not being able to return the favour

Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

I have recently been thinking about all the good gifts I receive from people I know, in particular my church and my family. This has been prompted by a recent splurge of gifts due to various sudden needs. I have found that grace is a difficult thing to accept as humans. If someone gives me something I feel compelled to return the favour. I find it really, really hard to accept gifts that are not part of a reciprocal relationship. I think we all do because we don't want to dependant people. That's part of why people commit suicide rather that 'be a burden', why British people are obsessed with rounds of drinks, and why we feel compelled to buy a birthday card for someone if they bought us one last year.

I see grace most often in my parents. Most of us have received a crazy amount from our parents who have given up so much for us. I find it almost crippling in my relationship with them to realise this. To realise I will never be out of their debt. I can never return the favour.

Kids often try and ignore the reality of their parent’s grace by claiming that it is a parent’s 'job' to do something, or that it is part of the circle of life because we will do the same to our children (and so on). These are pathetic attempts to avoid the reality of our debt. As adults we are more sophisticated. We accept that we have received much but draw a line over it at 18 (or whatever) and pretend that it never happened as we begin to live as equals giving in a strictly reciprocal way.

It is obvious to me that how we think and act towards our parents is usually mirrored in our relationship with our heavenly Father.

The weight of condemnation is weighing on me at the moment, but I don’t have to be burdened… the trouble is I perversely prefer to shift the burden around with me than accept that I need help.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy