(6) The Christian experience. — The apostolic doctrine of grace presupposes the distinctive Chris- tian experience. The NT teaching falls into three groups : Synoptic, Pauline, Johannine. The first reproduces the most immediately and literally faithful picture of Christ's sayings ; the second and third present the earliest impressive developments of His sayings in individual realization, and are rich in exposition and explanation of the subjective apprehension and appropriation of Divine grace. It is the process in man's activity that is detailed more than the analysis of the attribute in God. Between the two types we are conscious of marked contrasts, not only in their form but in the sub- stance and mode. Along with a deep underlying unity of fundamental thought, it is true to say that the consciousness of the apostles is not identical with the consciousness of Christ. Christ is not repeated in them. J The teaching of both is the direct transcript of their spiritual history ; but their spiritual constitution is so radically different that their teaching is bound to have radical differ- ences. ' He spoke as the sinless Son of God ; they wrote from the standpoint of regenerated men.'§ The principle of sin alters the whole position. The view-points for estimating grace increase. Thus it is that while Christ speaks little, if at all, of grace, it is a central conception of the apostles. There- fore also, while grace is in both, it is ' in Christ ' in a vitally intimate way such as cannot be predi- cated of the apostles except ' through Christ.* It is ' the grace of Christ,' as ' of God ' ; not the grace of the apostles, whose it is only ' by his grace.'
Again we have to note in Christ's case no trace of that separateness of the human from the Divine Spirit in their communion and inter-operation in the relationship of grace, which is so clear in the case of the apostles, a distinction of which they are so confident that they claim a special illumina- tion and infusion of supernatural light and energy in this experience. Christ's mediation of grace to them is basic. It differentiates their doctrine not only from Christ's, but from all ethnic and pro- phetic ideas. The apostles are neither mere seekers after God, nor simply seers or servants or inter- preters of God : they are sons, the bearers of Him- self ; II and the immensely richer experience is reflected in the ampler refinement of their idea of grace and its more commanding place in their system. Nor should we fail to observe that the term 'grace' denotes a new economy in human history. Primarily it signifies a fresh advance of the human spirit iinder the impetus of new Divine
• Cf. Tennyson's picture of 'the awful rose of dawn' in the Vision of Sin.
t Cf. Newman's hymn : ' Praise to the Holiest in the height.*
t Cf., for an admirable discussion of this point, P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 1909.
§ W. P. Paterson, I'he Apostles' Teaching, pt. i. : 'The Pauline Theology,' 1903, p. 5.
II Cf. the early Christian term for believers — Xpi(rro<f>6poi.
508
GRACE
GRACE
redemptive force. That fact implies a fresh out- flow of energ}'' from God and a fresh uplift of the world's life ; man is ' a new creation,' * the world ' a new earth ' ; t there is revealed a new stage in the fulfilment of the eternal purpose. Grace here has cosmic significance. Sin is over-ruled for good in the whole world-order as it is in the individual Christian heart. History, like the soul, is trans- formed through Christ. The initial and control- ling causes of that whole vast change are discovered to the primitive Christian perception in a great surprise of God's forgiveness, pronounced and im- parted by Christ, and made efl'ective for regenera- tion by a force none other than, not inferior to. His Holy Spirit. Thereby a new era is inaugur- ated— the dispensation of ' the gospel of the grace of God.' J Grace, then, comprises three specific moments : a supernatural energy of God, a mystical and moral actuation of man, an immanent economy of Spirit.
(c) Essential characteristics. — Grace, accordingly, is erroneously regarded when defined as a substance or force or any sort of static and uniform quantum. It is ' spirit and life,' and as such its characteristics ajQ personality , inutuality, individuality. The ex- perience of grace is that of 'a gracious relation- ship ' § between two persons, in which the proper nature of either in its integrity and autonomy is never at all invaded. The mode is not impersonal or mechanical. The blessing is not an influx so much as response to an influence ; a gift yet a task ; a mysterious might overpowering, but not with power, rather with persuasion ; the renewal of the entire disposition through implicit trust in God's goodness and by the diligent exercise of the powers of Spirit, ever latent and now let loose, with which He enables and quickens. It is not only an awakening of the moral self into more active freedom : it is first the conscious springing up and growth of a new life, sudden or gradual and wondrous, from immersion in the mystic bath,|| fed by the heavenly streams, whose cleansing power, if before unknown, is not alien, and invests the finite life witli the sense of infinite worth and im- perishable interest — a sense welcomed as native and as needful for the life's predestined end. The process is easily intelligible, yet readily liable to misunderstanding. The traditional doctrine, Catholic and Protestant, in its anxiety to safe- guard both the mystical and moral constituents of the experience, has tended towards two grave defects — the separation of the two which in reality are one, and the confusion of the mystical with the magical.lT Grace then becomes a material quantity, instead of spiritual quality. Psychologically a