Posted on 06/13/2012 10:09:53 AM PDT by Salvation
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
INTRODUCTION |
||
PART ONE: GRACE CONSIDERED EXTENSIVELY |
||
 |
I. | Why Grace? |
| II. | What Is Grace? | |
| III. | Grace to the Angels | |
| IV. | Grace to Adam | |
| V. | Grace in the Old Testament | |
| VI. | Grace to Christ | |
| VII. | Justification in the New Testament |
|
Deiform Man. What graces were given to Adam in the state of original justice? The array of graces that made him supernatural man: the Indwelling Trinity – sanctifying grace – infused virtues – gifts of the Holy Spirit. What kind of man may we now call him? Sanctified, divinized, deified – but the term we like best, the one which many Fathers and St. Thomas have used, is deiform. Adam was God-like; two complementary “natures” were united, interwoven, into one deiform man. Adam was not God; he was not made ever into God. But he was made god-like, a deiform man, lifted up as it were into the realm of God. And it was sanctifying grace that gave him this deiform nature, infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that gave him his deiform powers, the Indwelling Trinity that caused and conserved all these graces in him.
We find in him also certain preternatural gifts: integrity, impassibility, immortality, infused knowledge. We call these graces, too. But while the graces mentioned above (sanctifying grace, etc.) are absolutely supernatural, since they are not due to any created nature, the preternatural gifts are relatively supernatural (supernatural relatively to human nature) since they are undue to human nature, but are due to angelic nature.
Integrated Man. The gift of integrity effected a harmonious relation between flesh and spirit in Adam, by completely subordinating his animal passions to his reason. There was no precipitous pull of passion before or against reason. This gift that put harmony and order in Adam (and Eve) gave him another likeness to God, Who is perfect Order. With such perfect order and control it is hard to understand how Adam could sin. Yet we must remember that he was free, and freedom is a tremendous power – to say NO to God.
By these preternatural gifts in Adam, he became something that we are not, even when we are baptized. He became an integrated man. Human nature is not perfect in itself, and is certainly not the perfect thing that some would have us believe. If man had been created with natural endowments alone (pure nature), there would still have been the seeds of conflict within him. For in man, God has done the seemingly impossible: He has combined “incompatibles,” matter and spirit. The body goes quickly to the things of sense; the mind goes more slowly to things of the spirit. Thus, there are roots of disorder in man’s very nature. St. Paul spoke so eloquently of this battle, this conflict in man (Rom. 7). In Adam, God did not remove the disorderly tendencies, but by the gift of integrity He put in him a principle of control.
Adam likewise had, of course, natural endowments of body, mind, and a will which was free. His nature was like ours, but probably very much better.
Original Plan. What was God’s “original” plan with regard to men? All these gifts to Adam were intended for the human race. We, too, would have been born with the whole line of supernatural gifts, as well as with the preternatural gifts. (The gift of infused knowledge is disputed – perhaps it would have been given only to Adam, who was made “adult” and as King of Creation needed it – to know and name the animals, plants, etc., etc.). We would have been in sanctifying grace, but not confirmed in it; we would have been free to sin and might have sinned. But we, too, would have been: deiform and integrated human beings.
The Fall. What intervened to disrupt God’s plan? Sin, the sin of Adam. And was it a grave sin? Yes. The consequences for Adam were loss of the supernatural gifts (except faith and hope??) and of the preternatural gifts: he became subject to concupiscence, pain, suffering and death of the body. And hell – eternal “death” of the soul – would be his lot unless God would show special mercy. For us the consequences were the same.
Many struggled with this question of original sin. One of these was Pelagius, born either in England or Ireland. He later went to Rome. As spiritual director there, he heard people complaining in discouragement that they were unable to keep from sin, through lack of grace. From his own disturbance he emerged with an amazing answer: there is nothing wrong with human nature, no such weakness in it. Man is a moral superman, strong and independent, full master of his destiny: he can do anything, avoid every sin, do any good, even gain the Beatific Vision – without grace. Adam had no grace, lost none for us; in fact he never fell. There was no fall, there is no original sin and hence no need of grace or baptism to remit this sin.
St. Augustine of Hippo struck out fiercely against this, and wrote out boldly: Nature can do nothing without grace. The controversy was on – with some monks in Africa, who felt Augustine had gone too far. St. Augustine clarified his position: nature can do nothing salutary, nothing conducive to salvation, without grace. But can human nature do all things natural to it – can it keep the whole moral law – without grace? We answer with St. Thomas and the Church: for a short time, yes; but for a long time, no.
The Fall, then, was devastating. And its extent? Is there complete darkness of mind? Complete loss of freedom? Is man a slave to his passions? Is he depraved? Is his nature corrupted? Luther and Calvin said, Yes. But the Church says, No: man is only deprived – of superadded gifts. The Fall wrought great harm: man lost those supernatural and preternatural gifts, but not free will. Without grace man can still know God and other speculative and moral truths, and can do naturally good acts. But he cannot keep the whole natural law, without grace, for a long time. He is not corrupted or depraved; he is deprived of supernatural and preternatural gifts.
God has not made man too strong in himself. As if perhaps to say: “I made angels strong, and many of them did not need Me. I will make man to lean on Me.” So it is God’s part to give grace, and man’s to pray for it and use it. Prayer is man’s expression of his need, salutary prayer; grace is God’s answer to man’s need expressed in salutary prayer.
Orginal Sin. Man in the state of original sin lacks sanctifying grace, and this is not mere absence; it is a privation. Something is not there in the soul which should be there. Moreover, there is the habitual inordinate tendency of the sense appetite, the proneness to inordinate appetition that we call concupiscence.
If God had washed His hands of man, so to speak, and left him alone, what would have happened to him? All those dying as infants would have gone to Limbo, it seems. All adults would have gone to hell, since without grace they could not long keep the entire natural law, could not long keep out of mortal sin. So if they lived long enough they would sin, die in sin and go to hell. Would there be anything contrary to justice in this? No. God could have left man thus; but we say He would not, and He did not.
The Promise. God promised man a Redeemer. This was a serious, operative promise – that would be infallibly fulfilled. And something happened immediately. Grace flowed again into the world as soon as God made that Promise – in virtue of the foreseen merits of the Redeemer. “I will put enmity between thee and the Woman, between her seed and your seed:” these were not empty words. God acted. Instantly a whole new providence, so to speak, comes into play.
God’s providence is amazing, infallible, inscrutable, reaching from end to end mightily, ordering all things smoothly. Now grace was given to Adam in view of the merits of Christ. Adam is no longer King and Center, and Eve is no longer Queen. Christ is the King of the New Order; Our Lady replaces Eve as its Queen.
Is the “second providence” greater that the first? It seems so. The Church in her liturgy sings, “O felix culpa.” Man is now centered in someone else than Adam: in Christ, the God-Man, King of angels and men. All creation is turned to this new Center. Angels apparently had the first and greatest place. Yet it seems that God loved man more than the angels. When man sinned, God sent God in the form of man so that what man had undone, Man would restore. And Our Lady? She is Woman. Again and again the bond between the New Testament and the Old seems reiterated when Our Lord speaks to Our Lady as Mulier, “Woman”, with no further qualification. “Woman, what is that to Me and to thee?” “Woman, behold thy son.” We feel carried back to the promise in the Garden, “I will put enmity between thee and the Woman.” Who else was the Woman of the Garden – but Our Lady, the Second Eve?
Who received the first grace after the Fall? Adam, it seems to us, then Eve. This first grace might well have been an actual grace of repentance. Did this grace flow, so to speak, from precisely the same source as before? No; before Adam sinned he had the grace of God; after he sinned he had the grace of Christ, that is, grace dependent on the merits of Christ, the Redeemer, Who would surely come and redeem.
Grace Ping!
THOUGHTS ON AN INVITATION TO GRACE (Catholic Caucus)
Cardinal Burke calls young converts 'beautiful' image of God's grace
The Mystery of the Annunciation is the Mystery of Grace, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [Catholic Caucus]
Responding to Your Questions for MORE! (Eblast from Grace Before Meals priest)
Fatima, A Grace for Mankind [Catholic/Orthodox Caucus]
[Ecumenical] Lent through Eastertide - Divine Mercy Diary Exerpts: Obstacles to God's Grace in Souls
[Ecumenical] Lent through Eastertide - Divine Mercy Diary Exerpts: Grace
Catholic Word of the Day: DIVERSITY OF GRACE, 01-27-11
On The Grace of Gratitude – A Thanksgiving Meditation
Radio Replies Second Volume - Grace and Salvation
The Holy Ghost and Grace : Lesson 9 from the Baltimore Cathechism
Days of Grace (September 29 -- October 7) [Catholic/Orthodox Caucus]
[CATHOLIC CAUCUS] Obedience as a Conduit of Grace
Catholic Word of the Day: ANTECEDENT GRACE, 08-13-10
The Operation of Divine Grace on Hadley Arkes . . . And Friends [Jewish Convert to Catholicism]
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: The Sacraments: The Life of The Christian
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: The Sacraments: Opportunities of Grace
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Baptism: Initiation and Regeneration
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: The Sacraments: Opportunities of Grace: Reconciliation
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Opportunities of Grace: Confirmation
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Opportunities of Grace: The Eucharist: The Lord's Supper
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Opportunities of Grace: Healing/Anointing of the Sick
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Opportunities of Grace: Matrimony
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Opportunities of Grace: [Holy] Orders
Pope Benedict XVI Reflects on True Freedom, Grace of Penance...
"This Pain is Grace, Because It Is Renewal": Off-the-Cuff, the Pope Speaks
Revitalizing Your Priesthood (The Grace of Ars -- about St. John Vianney)
With Pope Benedict XVI: At the Throne of Grace
Catholic Word of the Day: GRACE OF GOD, 01-22-10
The Essentials of the Catholic Faith, Part Two: Channels of Grace, The Sacraments
The Essentials of the Catholic Faith, Part Two: Channels of Grace, Baptism
The Essentials of the Catholic Faith, Part Two: Channels of Grace, Confirmation
The Essentials of the Catholic Faith, Part Two: Channels of Grace: The Eucharist
The Essentials of the Catholic Faith, Part Two: Channels of Grace, Penance
The Essentials of the Catholic Faith, Part Two: Channels of Grace, Anointing of the Sick
The Essentials of the Catholic Faith, Part Two: Channels of Grace, Holy Orders
All Is Grace
Catholic Word of the Day: INTERNAL GRACE, 09-15-09
Radio Replies First Volume - Grace and salvation
Beginning Catholic: Catholic Sacraments: Vehicles of Grace [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: The Sacrament of Baptism: Gateway to New Life [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: The Sacrament of Confirmation: Grace for Fullness of Faith and Life [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: The Eucharist: In the Presence of the Lord Himself [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: Receiving the Lord in Holy Communion [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: The Sacrament of Reconciliation: Rising Again to New Life [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: The Anointing of the Sick: Comfort and Healing [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: The Sacrament of Holy Orders: Priests of the New Sacrifice [Ecumenical]
Beginning Catholic: Catholic Marriage: A Union Sealed by the Sacrament of Matrimony [Ecumenical]
“Hail, Full of Grace" (Catholic)
Grace is Dark Matter
Your tag line is misleading...According to all of the nonsense you have posted the tag line should be, “With the RCC all things are possible. God will have to get clearance from us when He wants to act.”
Evidently, according to your post — you don’t have Matthew in your Bible? Is that true?
Or St. Paul? st. Paul is always talking about the grace of God.
There is the Latin Rite, the Byzantine Rite, the Alexandrian Rite, the Syriac Rite, the Armenian Rite, the Chaldean Rite and the Maronite Rite -- all CATHOLIC with a capital C.
Who is St. Paul? Is that one of the guys in your secret Rome clubhouse? Is he one of the guys that manufactures all of the conditions and directions and instructions that one must do to acquire the “grace” your group speaks of?
I am aware of Paul of Tarsus, who was called to be an apostle, set aside from his mother’s womb (predestined), the writer of much of what we call the New Testament. Nowhere in his writings does he call himself St. Paul, so you must mean someone else. Paul of the Bible teaches grace is the free gift God gives to His elect, those whom God chose before the foundation of the world. Ephesians, Romans, Galatians. Check those writings...they are better by far than what the Roman organization has peddled.
And, yes, I have a Matthew in my Bible. In my Bible there is a particular passage which says, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” If one reads the entire passage, Jesus is referring to the impossibility of men doing enough “religion” to save themselves. However, Jesus says, if God decides to save you, any man can be rescued. Surely, you didn’t mean to use 1/2 of the verse as a tag line, did you?
Could you specify with what points in the article you disagree?
Or St. Paul? st. Paul is always talking about the grace of God."
Who is St. Paul? Is that one of the guys in your secret Rome clubhouse? Is he one of the guys that manufactures all of the conditions and directions and instructions that one must do to acquire the "grace" of which your group speaks?
I am aware of Paul of Tarsus, who was called to be an apostle, set aside from his mother's womb (predestined), the writer of much of what we call the New Testament. Nowhere in his writings does he call himself St. Paul, so you must mean someone else. Paul of the Bible teaches grace is the free gift God gives to His elect, those whom God chose before the foundation of the world. Ephesians, Romans, Galatians. Check those writings...they are better by far than what the Roman organization has peddled. And, yes, I have a Matthew in my Bible. In my Bible there is a particular passage which says, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." If one reads the entire passage, Jesus is referring to the impossibility of men doing enough "religion" to save themselves. However, Jesus says, if God decides to save you, any man can be rescued. Surely, you didn't mean to use 1/2 of the verse as a tag line, did you?
**Who is St. Paul? **
Are you saying that you don’t believe St. Paul is in heaven? LOL! You are so mistaken.
Are you saying that you don’t believe St. Paul is in heaven? LOL! You are so mistaken."
I certainly don't believe in a St. Paul. (except perhaps Minnesota). The Paul of the Bible did not use this name, unless you consider everyone a "saint", the way the Scriptures describe us. So, Paul the saint, of course. The "St." is a fabrication of your club.
What is your point? The errant material presented under this thread is from Rome. Thus, the RCC is responsible for this error. QED
Well, out of the chute...
"Deiform Man. What graces were given to Adam in the state of original justice? The array of graces that made him supernatural man: the Indwelling Trinity – sanctifying grace – infused virtues – gifts of the Holy Spirit. What kind of man may we now call him? Sanctified, divinized, deified – but the term we like best, the one which many Fathers and St. Thomas have used, is deiform. Adam was God-like; two complementary “natures” were united, interwoven, into one deiform man. Adam was not God; he was not made ever into God. But he was made god-like, a deiform man, lifted up as it were into the realm of God. And it was sanctifying grace that gave him this deiform nature, infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that gave him his deiform powers, the Indwelling Trinity that caused and conserved all these graces in him. We find in him also certain preternatural gifts: integrity, impassibility, immortality, infused knowledge. We call these graces, too. But while the graces mentioned above (sanctifying grace, etc.) are absolutely supernatural, since they are not due to any created nature, the preternatural gifts are relatively supernatural (supernatural relatively to human nature) since they are undue to human nature, but are due to angelic nature."
This is a fig newton of someone's imagination. Nowhere in Scripture does it represent Adam as anything like this. If James is correct, then a lust for independence existed in Adam (just as it did in Lucifer) which gave birth to sin and led to death. But, "deiform"? Please. This is part of the RCC's heady ambition to make men (mostly themselves) more than they are.
We are broken beings with natures like Adam. We need rescued by Christ. Some have been chosen before the foundation of the earth to be rescued...others have been fashioned for destruction. Grace, in abundance, is given to the former. Destruction will be dealt to the latter. With which part of this biblical position do you disagree?
Here, I will argue with Fr. Hardon. I don't think he says it completely (who can blame him?), and I don't think he says it the best way.
Why, as he says, would the Angelic Doctor say that without supernatural grace one can do good for a while but not for long? It is because the conflict Paul describes in Romans 7 is ever with us. Without grace we will, first, not KNOW what a perfectly just motive would be and, second, always be of mixed mind and feelings, because we are shattered creatures. This inner division or rupture is just too much, too fundamental to be overcome without grace. A hero might be able to walk a little way with a torn Achilles tendon, but if he is to walk well the tendon must be repaired.
And similarly,I think Fr. Hardon is a little unfair to Calvin and especially to Luther. I'm really not sure of Calvin's philosophical competence, and I think Luther was messed over by Nominalism. But I think at least Luther would get that to speak of depravity and corruption cannot mean the every single aspect of the human being is completely evil. Philosophically and psychologically that won't hold water.
For: knowledge of the good and the ability to discriminate between good and evil are both goods.
A thing with SOME good cannot be totally evil.
Therefore the totally corrupt mind would not recognize that some things are better than others.
But few are so evil that they cannot appreciate pleasure or have no sense of justice and loyalty, even if it is a primitive and tribal sense.
And even those who think the Gospel foolishness or worse argue from ideas of justice, freedom,and responsibility and even truth.
SO,
unless we have a kind of meaningless tautology
(any good thing anybody ever did came entirely from grace and in spite of his thoroughly corrupt nature)
we must understand that fallen man is a disordered admixture of good and evil.
After all, the evil is not corrupted, What is good is corrupted with some taint, which does not remove but which spoils the good.
And therefore Fr.Hardon is perhaps a little glib both with the errors of Luther and Calvinbut also with the nature of original sin.
Q.E.D.
No one who writes this can be entirely evil. Just sayin'
:-)
I'll try to give a more thoughtful answer tomorrow, D.V. I would say at first blush that "deiform" is an attempt to deal with "image and likeness," and that first time through I didn't find much to object to in what you wrote.
Adam must have been one powerful individual to disrupt God's plan.
"Orginal Sin. Man in the state of original sin lacks sanctifying grace, and this is not mere absence; it is a privation. Something is not there in the soul which should be there. Moreover, there is the habitual inordinate tendency of the sense appetite, the proneness to inordinate appetition that we call concupiscence."
Man was created in the Image and Likeness of God per Genesis 1:26-27. God did not rescind any gift, nor did He change His mind in any other way.
"The consequences for Adam were loss of the supernatural gifts (except faith and hope??) and of the preternatural gifts: he became subject to concupiscence, pain, suffering and death of the body. And hell – eternal “death” of the soul – would be his lot unless God would show special mercy. For us the consequences were the same.
There was never any loss of gifts. Faith is simply a belief in what someone says. Hope is simply a desire for change based on some reason. Man was created as a sentient rational being in the Image of God. Knowledge and understanding are not elements of that Image, as was made clear in the parable of Genesis. That same parable indicates an immortal existence in this world was never a gift and neither was a pain free life. Note also that Ezekiel 18 indicates that God would never punish anyone else for someone else's transgression.
" Many struggled with this question of original sin. One of these was Pelagius, born either in England or Ireland. He later went to Rome. As spiritual director there, he heard people complaining in discouragement that they were unable to keep from sin, through lack of grace. From his own disturbance he emerged with an amazing answer: there is nothing wrong with human nature, no such weakness in it.
Pelagius was right, God created man in His Image and likeness and never retracted those gifts. Disturbance wasn't how he arrived at the conclusion though, rational thought was.
" Man is a moral superman, strong and independent, full master of his destiny: he can do anything, avoid every sin, do any good, even gain the Beatific Vision – without grace.
Hyperbole is neither evidence, nor fact. God's grace was in His creation and which was never rescinded.
" Adam had no grace, lost none for us; in fact he never fell. There was no fall, there is no original sin and hence no need of grace or baptism to remit this sin.
That's correct. See Gen 1:26-27 and Ezekiel 18.
"St. Augustine of Hippo struck out fiercely against this, and wrote out boldly: Nature can do nothing without grace. The controversy was on – with some monks in Africa, who felt Augustine had gone too far. St. Augustine clarified his position: nature can do nothing salutary, nothing conducive to salvation, without grace.
The grace was there at the beginning.
" But can human nature do all things natural to it – can it keep the whole moral law – without grace? We answer with St. Thomas and the Church: for a short time, yes; but for a long time, no."
There was never any time limit placed on how long a person's decisions would last.
:-)"
Well, there goes my cover.
Looking forward to your thoughts on this topic. And, I understand the "image and likeness" attempt, but the detailed descriptions were far beyond this level. Nevertheless, I will await.
I think the problem faced by anyone who draws or tries to draw conclusions from Scripture is doping out when the last tether was cut and the craft started drifting randomly -- if you take my meaning.
As I rushed through Fr. Hardon's stuff, when I see "deiform" I just think, okay, that's a Latinate way of referring to man's being made in the image and likeness (hereinafter "I+L"). So I don't have the sense of hitting a wall that you had (I'm guessing) when you ran across that word. So I have to go back and see what I missed.
I was struck with the, let's say,"enthusiasm" of the first part of Hardon's description. But I think he pulls it out of the fire when he says:
The body goes quickly to the things of sense; the mind goes more slowly to things of the spirit. Thus, there are roots of disorder in man’s very nature. St. Paul spoke so eloquently of this battle, this conflict in man (Rom. 7). In Adam, God did not remove the disorderly tendencies, but by the gift of integrity He put in him a principle of control.IF I understand him, he's saying that of unfallen man.
So, if that's right, to sum up the first part is to say that by the grace of his creation, by the grace of his "right relationship" (itself a gift) to God, Adam has many other graces which follow, like holiness. He also has graces that are (Hardon says) praeternatural, graces such that creatures (like angels) might be given.
(I hit a wall at impassibility. I don't see why unfallen man would not suffer, and I would want clarification here.)
So, two things: one is that a lot of this seems to be just drawing out what a man, an animal that can think and choose, is and what would be the case if such a creature had no history of sin. When Hardon writes of "a principle of control" that seems to answer to my experience. The "higher" thing for me is to watch my diet because it's good to take care of the body God gave me. Because of the Fall, my "principle of control" is out of whack. When I ride my bicycle where the aroma of hot oil from all the fast food places assaults my nose, I know how weak my principle of control is.
But I can imagine unfallen Adam saying,"Yeah, smells great. No thanks."
And deiformity seems to me to be not SO bad a term. "You are gods," quotes IHS. And John says, "We will be like him for we shall see him as he is." And remember, when we say "form" we don't mean shape, we mean something like principle. One might say the "Form" of a chair is "sit-on-ability." So man's deiformity would be something like thinking and choosing and loving spiritual things-ability. And it's approximate because we can't create stuff, including ideas (true ones,anyway), because it is in every respect derivative, while God's form is what he is, AND it is, "adjusted" to suit an animal who feeds and breeds.
So to me,the TERM "deiform" just is shorthand for I+L. And then all the stuff Hardon says about it is not found in scripture any more (or any less) than Euclid's proof of the Pythagorean Theorem is found in his definitions and axiomata.
I guess my hope is that if you hack your way through my verbiage, you can find the question or two that skewers the whole thing OR you can comment on the different turns I take in the road and say why you would have turned the other way.
"Now faith is the [hypostasis] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
Can you relate these two statements? I don't mean to be contentious. I'm interested.
Frankly, your light-handed (in the best sense of that term) treatment of this material leaves little to squabble over (some, but little). My original squawk was the enormously complex integrated circuitry drawn by Hardon (& Co.) wherein "grace" is mapped into packets of "power" Adam is either granted or denied (or eventually stripped of).
When Hardon denies that the Adamic story is the direct outcome of God's plan for human failure ("What intervened to disrupt God's plan?"), he makes God a surprised bystander (or a hand-wringing buffoon) who must scramble for a plan B. What about the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world? So, God didn't know what was going to happen? He really did not know where Adam was when He asked, "Adam, where are you?"? The whole Hardon trail points in the wrong direction right from the beginning.
Hardon hints of the "roots of disorder", but claims Adam has "...perfect order and control...". This is simply not the case. The character cannot withstand the very first enticement to rebellion by his wife. Control? Please. Further, Adam could not have possibly been as "god-like" as Hardon wishes him, since he did not originally possess even the capacity to recognize good and evil, an understanding acquired as his on-board lusts drove him to eat of the tree. Recall, this was no apple tree, but the tree of the "knowledge of good and evil". Once sampled, God said the man had to be removed as he now had become, "...like Us, knowing good and evil."
Evidently, Adam also lacked eternal life from the get go, seeing that God drove him from the garden before he could eat of the tree of life and live forever. The guy was really just everyman, doing what we do best...rebel. And, Paul makes this point in spades, "There is none righteous, not even one, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God..." Rom. 3:10ff. Hardon misses this by a country mile and, as you noted, mischaracterizes Luther & Calvin. I might disagree with much the two said, but that everything the unregenerate man thinks, does and believes is tainted with evil is spot on. Hardon loves man too much; total depravity is a reality.
As I said, the excessive focus on "grace" being treated like various power pills sprinkled over everything detracts from the grace to which Paul refers. When God invades a life, dead in its trespasses and sin, adopts the person while still at war with Him, breaks the heart over the rebellion, and rescues the man by forgiving him, then clothes the soul in the righteousness of His Son, we see what "grace" is. This is the only grace described by Paul. This is the course on grace Hardon should take.
I have grappled with you in the past, but I have always noticed you maintain a kind of peaceable reasonableness. And, while it is obvious that you have deep connections to the Organization (which I consider the errant perpetrator of an instituional and non-biblical theology), it seems you wander dangerously close to allowing the Book to tell the story and out where the Son of God, alone, is the Head of His body.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.