Awaiting Grace & Obeying the Law

While there are seemingly two places where Adam and Eve fail (they disobeyed God’s explicit command and they didn’t await God’s gift of knowledge), here awaiting grace takes precedence. The cosmic repercussions that God declares in Genesis 3 is not so much because a divine command was violated, but because what was meant to be a gift was not patiently awaited, and was taken without grace.

The reason for my apotheosis of grace (in contradistinction to an "apotheosis of nomos,” to borrow Taubes’ phrase) is that, not only is awaiting grace a posture that implies a more radical trust in God (that God’s grace instead of our obedience to God’s particular commands will save us), it also relieves us of the impossible task of explicating God’s commands and rigorously following them (not to mention the terrible possibility of our declaring God’s will and enforcing it).

With this approach, God’s commands, or laws, such as the prohibition to Adam in GENESIS 2:16-17, take place within the grace movement (Adam was, after all, already graced with life at this point and called to grace others), and as such they are defined by it, or for it, and are fulfilled with its completion, so that as long as we remain faithful to God in the more radical sense of awaiting grace, the law will be upheld whether we can cite it or not.

Now, this isn’t to say that obeying the law isn’t important, but only that it is secondary to, and defined by, a greater responsibility, which the law is designed to help us meet, even as, once given to us, the law becomes an occassion for sin, a possible idol. Our greatest responsibility, which voids the idolatrous potential of the law even as it fulfills God’s particular commands, whatever they may be, is to await grace. The law can be set aside; it is not necessary. All that is necessary is that we take only when given, and only what’s been given. All that is necessary is that we await this saving grace through death itself, if that’s our fate.

I have read a few explanations of grace but frankly they are all like plates of spaghetti. Convoluted arguments try to reconcile free will, determinism, God’s omnipotence and omniscience and God’s anger and punishments described in the Bible.

It seems better just to drop the idea of grace altogether. God gave mankind free will. God rewards or punishes based on whether an individual uses that free will to fulfill God’s wishes.

I’m not trying to reconcile these… I’m trying to understand the Christian mission.

That’s just ridiculous. The Bible begins and ends in grace (or blessing if you prefer that word). You can’t just drop it.

The best place to see what I’m talking about is Job, for it re-enacts the entire Biblical drama. Job begins in blessedness and he ends in blessedness. In between these moments he awaits God’s blessings in nudity.

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”

One can probably add that Job would persist in his nudity from birth to death should God never grace him with clothes. Nudity is the posture that awaits grace. Job shows us this. Job didn’t obey any law (hell, he was a Gentile and didn’t even have the law!). What Job did was await grace. He began in grace, awaited it, and ended in grace.

Books have been written about grace. But nothing has been explained about it. Can you explain grace to a 8-year old child?

Maybe you should explain what you require in an explanation!

I’d say a child is in a better position to understand grace, or what grace requires, than us, for children are already predisposed to trust and await grace. As a child grows, it starts to put its trust in other things, like its own sweat and blood, instead of in grace, thinking it can “get by” on its own, that its works can save it, and that it doesn’t need grace. But in early childhood, there is still a radical trust in grace, an oppenness to the world, a subconcious recognition of need that gets lost as we establish our ‘independence’ and that I want to bring back to the fore.

This immature adult mindset aside, grace is what happens when we’re given what we need. It’s the coat we’re given on a cold day. It’s the breast we’re given when we come out of the womb tired and hungry. It’s the resurrection that comes three days after our death.

So can I make a child understand grace? Of course. It’s as simple as the air that it breathes.

Alyoshka,

We are all grateful for life, health and various necessities of life. But how does it apply to ‘eating from the tree of knowledge’?
I also have a problem when grace is required to turn from sin and attain salvation. It God doesn’t grant a sinner the grace of salvation then how can the sinner be punished for his sins? Are there two kinds of people - those who get grace and those who don’t? Why would there be a difference? Are not all souls basically the same?

Grace is existential relaxation (i.e. relative to guilt), accompanied by perspicacity. I think it is mainly a “gift” received by adults, though I can’t prove it, and it’s not necessarily so.

I don’t think that an 8-year old would understand this sentence.

I’m asking that someone dumb-it-down for me, because I, personally, don’t understand the concept.

What is missing here is the old, crusty, christian assumption of born in sin that needs god’s grace for redemption. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” It just might be, that some people aren’t in need of grace or redemption of any god. Watch the assumptions. They are telling…

I claimed that an 8 year old wouldn’t understand. Does my statement make any sense to you? I guess not, but if you think about it a bit maybe? It doesn’t strike me as difficult (on the other hand this version of grace is my own, and I’m not a Christian - apologies Alyoshka).

Knowledge, too, is something that must come through grace. It’s not something we can do on our own, but something we must await, and prepare ourselves for. Adam and Eve didn’t do this, and that was their failure. They took and made use of knowledge before it was given.

This is not something I would say. Grace is not required for us to turn from sin but rather our turning from sin is what prepares us for grace, and for salvation through grace. Sin is when we fail to await grace, so the whole time up to our being graced is marked by our turning from sin. Make sense? So grace is not required for us to turn from sin, but yes, it is grace that saves us. It is the coat on a cold day.

Since I don’t think grace is necessary for us to not sin, it’s difficult for me to respond. Our struggle with sin starts before grace comes, and we can be sinless prior to its arrival. Nevertheless, I do share a concern with you here, for why is it that grace doesn’t come to all? Or why, for instance, did Job have to suffer?

It’s popular these days to think of God as powerless, or to do so-called “Death of God” theology. And you know, there is something deeply right about this contemporary intuition. As my OP makes clear, there is an apotheosis of grace in my thinking, where grace is, perhaps, even more important than God, who in my thinking sets off a cosmic grace movement through an original gift but who, after this, is no longer necessary, since grace is capable of multiplying itself, or of filling the cosmos with grace without any further intervention by God.

The idea here is not that God is dead, or that God has no power, but nevertheless that God is not necessary, and that the ball, so to speak, is in our court. It is up to us to give power to this cosmic movement, to multiply grace, so that when an instance arises where grace is lacking, such as in the case of Job or Christ, it is not to God who we should be looking with disapproving eyes, you know?

So to your question “are there two kinds of people,” the answer is no and yes. We are all gifted by and called to grace, so in this way the answer is no. But not everyone receives grace after their original blessing, and not everyone becomes its source, so in this way yes. But these latter divisions are not God’s fault. God, through the original gift, graced and called us all to grace. It is up to us to make something of it.

Yes, good, but this passage you cite does not mean we are “born in sin.” Rather, what it means is that without grace we can’t help but fall short and sin. Works cannot save us. We cannot do it on our own. Only grace can save us.

If you believe in God, and pray to him to save you from your sins, and you think he answered your prayer, you will relax in a certain sense. You will feel better, more alive, more awake, more free. This is a good thing unless you start to depend on this “gift” of grace, as if it were a drug. Where does such a gift come from? From God? Who knows? It came from somewhere special though.

Here grace seems to mean obeying God’s orders.

Here grace seems to be a fair judgment from God.

The way the word ‘grace’ is used is constantly shifting. Didn’t you say in another post that a rock can get grace? What did it mean in that case?

But what is “grace” may be just recognition that we have the capacity of both good and evil, and that recognition is grace itself without the need of a god. Our “works” are then a matter of choice - again, without the need of a god. We can (and do) postulate all sorts of causes for our empathy, but conjecture is not the same as knowing.

Be careful. In my OP the point is that through grace the law is fulfilled (and God’s orders are obeyed), but that we don’t need any law or orders for this to happen. My intention in all of this is to try and break free from the law, which has become oppressive.

Think of the law as a tool, given to us by God in order to help us participate in grace. In succeeding to grace, we fulfill the law. But the law and obedience to the law is not the point, and to make it the point is to betray grace. So where the Jews, for instance, started holding the tool/law on high, thinking that it could save them, I say no, only grace can save us, and we’d best make ready for it by letting go of this tool that steals our trust and makes us think we can go it alone.

I’m trying to be consistent. Sure, I think a rock can be a conduit of grace (receiver and giver). I think everything can be. It’s like Genesis 1, where God says “Let the waters bring forth life…”, so that the waters themselves are what do the blessing, when just a passage or two before God was blessing the water.

For all of us, whether rock, human, or animal, there is a beginning and end in blessing. Or at least, this is what is supposed to happen.

Where would you turn, if not to grace? On what would you start to depend?

Grace isn’t a drug. A drug isn’t a need, at least not in the way you’re using it here. Grace is a need. Without it we are lost. Without it we’re mired in illegitimacy or else a world where everything (and nothing) is permitted.

But all have sinned. So grace is never applied before sin occurs.

Again this seems to imply a lack of free will. If you do ‘good’ works, won’t God judge you to be a person worthy of eternal life? Yes, a gift from God, but a meritorious gift.

I can’t help but take grace beyond this. Grace saves. In what you describe here, grace only recognizes, and salvation depends upon proper choice after this.

I’m not sure how you tie grace and recognition together, or how grace can be reduced to recognition of our capacity for good and evil…

Isn’t ‘grace’ in this case synonymous with ‘God’? You turn to God. You depend on God. Grace is then simply God’s relationship with mankind.