Some readers are having difficulties viewing my interview with Ross Allen here, using Substack’s video platform. The interview is now available on Youtube, where no such problems should arise.
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Some readers are having difficulties viewing my interview with Ross Allen here, using Substack’s video platform. The interview is now available on Youtube, where no such problems should arise.
No posts
This also provides an automated transcription that makes it wonderfully easy to search for key terms or points in the conversation.
A further reflection on grace and nature...
Dr. Hart, with regard to grace and nature, I’ve been reading John Barclay’s Paul and the Power of Grace. In reading his book I can’t quite make out his position. He seems to advocate grace alone but also the necessity of our response. This leaves everything hinging on our response.
So if we are saved by grace alone it’s through receiving the grace.
And if we don’t receive and respond to the gift/Charis then the grace alone which could have saved us fails to benefit us.
So if we are saved it is by grace alone, but if we are damned it’s because we rejected the grace alone which could have saved us.
So then our receiving of the grace doesn’t add to the power of grace to save us, but grace can’t save us unless we receive it.
So if we are saved it’s all by the grace of God, but if we are not saved it’s our fault for not being saved.
So then it’s 100 percent grace if we are saved, and 100 percent our fault if we are not saved.
But then what about God’s foreknowledge?
How helpful is the gift of grace to us if God knows in advance that we will, or just might, fail to receive it.
It seems that those with this with this kind of position want have their cake and eat it too. They want to claim that they believe salvation is by grace alone, and that our decision to receive it is only instrumental and not meritorious. But then if we fail in our instrumental and non meritorious reception of grace we are damned.
This makes the instrumental part of our reception of grace finally decisive and beyond that which grace can guarantee. This ultimately I think drives a wedge between nature and grace which I have trouble with. If salvation really is all of grace, then even our ability and desire to ultimately receive grace is driven and empowered by grace. Finally then grace and nature are two sides of the same coin and inextricably linked. They finally collapse into the same thing.
Is this a fair reading of Paul, or am I importing something into Paul that’s not really there?