The Tensions of Grace
Part 4, The Natural Desire for God
We've been talking in this series about what I'm calling "the tensions of grace." The specific tension we're puzzling over is how much grace is intrinsic to creation versus how much grace is the work of Christ.
The reason for talking this through is that we're seeing the rise of Christian theologies where creation carries more and more grace. Such theologies have a lot to commend themselves, but because they front-load grace into creation they struggle to make sense about what was accomplished, if anything, by the death and resurrection of Christ. If everyone, simply by existing, is already "graced" and "saved" then Jesus' death is rendered superfluous. In short, there is a tension between creation theology and soteriology. Phrased differently, how much continuity versus discontinuity is there between nature and grace?
An example of this debate is one I wrote about last year, the Catholic debate about if humans have a "natural desire for God."
To recap, the origins of the debate go back to the French theologian Henri de Lubac and his book Surnaturel, which had a significant influence upon Vatican II.
In Surnaturel de Lubac argues that humans have a natural desire for God. That is to say, human nature possesses a natural, intrinsic, and created desire for a supernatural end. God implants in human nature a longing for union with God. As de Lubac argued, this belief was held by the early church fathers. You see it right there in Augustine's famous statement, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." Human life is restless and unfulfilled, less than what it was created to be, until it comes to rest in union with God.
Lubac's view won the day at Vatican II, and remains the widely held consensus. And yet, one of the authorities de Lubac cited in making his argument was Thomas Aquinas, and since the publication of Surnaturel Aquinas scholars have raised questions about if de Lubac read Aquinas correctly. In my assessment of the controversy, much of this has to do with Aquinas himself not being wholly consistent or clear, creating some interpretive ambiguity.
At the heart of this debate, which bears upon this series, is an idea called "pure nature." The idea of "pure nature" suggests that human nature was created whole and complete in itself. Think of a tree. The nature of a tree is complete and whole in itself. A tree doesn't need anything "more" to be a flourishing tree. No miracles or supernatural "extras" are needed.
Consider, in a similar way, a human being. The idea of pure nature says that humans are like trees, that humans have a nature and the "logic" of creation can actualize that nature to produce flourishing persons, a logic available to everyone. Happiness isn't extrinsic to human nature, but intrinsic, built into our DNA so to speak. Human nature is whole and complete as it stands.
And yet, we've just stumbled back onto the tensions of grace! On the one hand, we affirm that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. But on the other hand, we affirm that humans can flourish simply by following the logic of their nature, that an atheist can be just as happy and well-adjusted as a Christian. So which is it? Are atheists secretly ailing, less fulfilled and actualized in their development because they lack God in their lives? Or are they truly happy without God, all on their own, because God has given human nature the gift of joy simply because we are a human person?
Facing this conundrum, Catholic theologians will describe how God gives humanity "two gifts." The first gift is the gift of existence, created human nature. Protestants here think of "common grace." The second gift is the gift of grace, (re)union with God. Protestants think here of special and sanctifying grace. There is an attempt here among Catholic theologians, in positing two gifts, to balance the tensions of grace.
Still, the "two gifts" attempt at balancing doesn't answer all the questions. There remains the issue of continuity versus discontinuity between nature and grace.
On the one hand is the view that grace is radically discontinuous with nature, given that grace is an extrinsic gift. Grace accomplishes what nature cannot do on its own. Grace arrives as gratuitous surprise, wholly unanticipated and "beyond" nature.
This discontinuity seems right to us, almost definitional for what it means to call something "grace." If nature could, on its own, catalyze the beatitude we experience in a state of grace then that beatitude would not be an extrinsic gift but, rather, be latent within a creature's naturally endowed potencies.
And yet, a problem is raised here. Specifically, if grace is radically alien to human nature--recall how Kathryn Tanner described grace as "alien" in the last post--then wouldn't the meeting of nature and grace be less a gentle embrace than an ontological collision? That is the argument David Bentley Hart makes against describing grace as "alien," arguing that the greater the discontinuity between nature and grace the more nature would "reject" grace as an alien intrusion, the way the human body rejects a transplanted organ. If grace is radically discontinuous from nature the union between them doesn't make a unified organic whole but a freakish hybrid.
Again, as I've done in this series, I don't want to make a comment about the correctness of any particular view in these debates. My goal in revisiting this conversation from last year is simply to highlight, as I did with Kathryn Tanner's work, locations where these "tensions of grace" show up. In the Catholic debates concerning the natural desire for God there's a debate about just how "graced" is pure nature, how lacking and in need of God. Relatedly, how continuous or discontinuous are the "two gifts" of grace? As we've seen, Catholic and Orthodox theologians view all this differently, balancing the tensions in unique ways. As, I expect, do you.
Reading Girard, we get an anthropology where all desire is a desire for Being, and a human being who comes into the world not knowing what to desire. Desires are inevitably imitated. Thus, the issue for the fulfillment of the atheist (or the believer for that matter) is not whether they believe in God so much as whether they are oriented to models who desire the good, the true and the beautiful. The believer will unabashedly point to God as the ultimate model and end of the good, the true and the beautiful, as you have done in previous posts.
For decades I have followed the Dali Lama’s advice: "Don't try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are."
Throughout this series, I’ve kept coming back to the Buddhist understanding of what is Real as contrasted with what the “selves” created by human brains imagine is real. Most of human struggle, confusion, and suffering arises because we are wrestling with the labels and categories our minds have made up, instead of simply being in the Real.
We do such imaginative and conceptual work in order to try to describe to ourselves and to each other what we experience as “real.” In order, in fact, to evoke similar experiences in each other, as well as to persuade others regarding the belief systems which we imagine describe what is “real.”
However, the very act of fixing our attention on these conceptual inventions distracts us from the Real—or, worse, deceives us into believing that we actually know the Real. As a post-Christian “Friend of Jesus” (Quaker), I see this distraction and self-deception as analogous to the traditional Christian notions of “sin” or “fallenness.”
Switching between Buddhist and Christian language, one might say that the Real—Creation or Nature as it actually is, not as we conceptualize it—is always in unity with God. But we human beings are usually not in such unity. Instead, we are usually busy trying to compel the world of human experience to match what we want it to be.
Grace, the possibility of unity with God, is always present in Creation and, hence, in every human being. Grace does us no good, though, until we are not only aware of it but willing to submit to it, willing to release our own notions of what is “real” and to surrender to the Real, to God.
So, where does Jesus’ self-sacrifice come in if grace is already present in every created being?
Thich Nhat Hahn writes the following in his book, "Living Buddha, Living Christ" (1997):
“Before the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself alive in 1963, he meditated for several weeks and then wrote very loving letters to his government, his church, and his fellow monks and nuns explaining why he had reached that decision.
“When you are motivated by love and the willingness to help others attain understanding, even self-immolation can be a compassionate act. When Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified, He was acting in the same way, motivated by the desire to wake people up, to restore understanding and compassion, and to save people….
“When you are caught in a war in which the great powers have huge weapons and complete control of the mass media, you have to do something extraordinary to make yourself heard…. Self-immolation can be such a means.
"If you do it out of love, you act very much as Jesus did on the cross and as Gandhi did in India…. These great men all knew that it is the truth that sets us free, and they did everything they could to make the truth known.”
Jesus knew intimately that grace is already present in every person but that most of us do not see it, or, if we do see it, we fear to trust and surrender to it.
All of his life, Jesus acted according to God’s grace within him. With his choice to accept death, he invited all of us to pay attention to God’s grace already alive in us.