GR ABAU, JOHANN ANDREAS AUGUSTUS. See
Lutherans, United States, Buffalo Synod.
GRABE, gra'be, JOHANNES ERNST: Septuagint editor and patristic scholar; b. at Konigsberg July 10, 1666; d. at Oxford Nov. 3, 1711 He received his master's degree at Konigsberg in 1685, and then visited several other universities. At the close of 1687 he lectured on church history in Konigsberg with great acceptance, but declined the offer of a theological chair because of lack of sympathy with Lutheranism. After 1694, with other Konigsberg teachers and students, Grabe became involved in charges of leanings toward Romanism; and in the course of investigations which followed he accused Luther and the " Evangelicals " of apostasy from the true Church. For a time he was confined to his house, under arrest, but in May, 1695, he was allowed to leave Konigsberg and went to Breslau. On the way he received tracts composed against him by electoral mandate by Baier, Spener, and Sanden. The last one prompted a defense (Abgenothigte Ehrenrettung), but Spener, by his gentleness, won his confidence and dissuaded him from the step of transition to Rome. In 1697 he emigrated to England, where he found his ideal realized in the Anglican Church. He took up his residence at Oxford, and a royal pension and the income of an ecclesiastical office afforded him leisure for the scientific works that have rendered his
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Governor Grace
name famous (cf. P. de Lagarde, Mittheilungen, ii., Gottingen, 1887, p. 190).
He first published the incompleted Spicilegium patrum et hcereticorum sceculorum i.-iii. (2 vols., Oxford, 1698-99), issued Justin's Apologia (1700) and Irenseus's Liber adversus hareses (1702), and then proceeded to his most celebrated work, an edition of the Septuagint on the basis of the Codex Alexandrinus, which was preserved in England. Volumes i. and iv. were published by Grabe himself in 1707 and 1709; volumes ii. and iii., after his death, edited from his manuscript by F. Lee and G. Wigan respectively, in 1719 and 1720; the Annotationes designed in conclusion of the work remained unprinted. Grabe 's comprehensive acquaintance with patristic writings proved greatly to his advantage. He sought to verify the three recensions of the Septuagint (Hesychius, Lucian, Origen) in the manuscripts of his acquaintance, and in this way marked out the course and aim of modern Septuagint researches. In his last years he felt a great longing for his home, and there is no doubt that he was a significant factor in the contemporary efforts to introduce there the Anglican hierarchy and liturgy (cf. G. J. Planck, Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, Gottingen, 1831, p. 355). His manuscript remains are preserved in the Bodleian Library. J. Erdmann.
Bibliography: P. J. Spener, Der evangelischen Kirchen Rettung, Frankfort, 1695; B. von Sanden, Beantwortung der dubiorum M. Graben, Konigsberg, 1695; S. Schelwig, De eruditionis gloria in Anglia per advenas propagata in memoriam T. E. Grabii, 1712; Acta Borussica, vol. i., Konigsberg, 1730; ADB, ix. 536-537; DNB, xxii. 306- 307; H. B. Swete, Introduction to the O. T. in Greek, pp. 125-126, 183 sqq., Cambridge, 1900.
GRACE.
Biblical Teaching (§ 1). Medieval Doctrine (§ 3). The Church Fathers (§ 2). Luther and Melanchthon (§ 4). The Reformed Church (§ 5).
In the language of religion grace is the spontaneous, unmerited manifestation of divine love upon which rests the redemption of the sinner. Of the respective Hebrew expressions, hen has the general meaning of favor, while hesedh belongs specially to the sphere of religion and ethics, and denotes divine as well as human love. The term charis in the New Testament represents both conceptions, but is used preponderatingly of God's disposition. Manifestation of love is mercy (Heb. rahamim, Gk. eleos) in so far as it relieves need and misery; grace, in so far as it does not consider the unworthiness of the receiver as an obstacle.
The people of Israel founded their election upon God's grace, which has no end (Isa. liv. 8-10). The Gospel of Jesus is a testimony of the pardoning and saving love of God7 although the word " grace " is not used. The time of grace, promised by Isaiah, was fulfilled in Jeeus, who manifested i. Biblical himself as the mediator of saving grace.
Teaching. Salvation in the kingdom of God was represented by Jesus repeatedly as the reward of corresponding conduct (Luke vi. 35, xvi. 9; Matt. v. 11 sqq., xix. 29); although at the same time every legal claim of man upon God (Luke xvii. 10) and all proportion between human achievement and divine gift are denied (Matt. xx. 1-16).
John attests the fulness of grace which is to be found in Jesus (John i. 14, 16) and places charis in antithesis to nomos (verse 17); but for him the conception of love preponderates. For Paul, however, grace is the fundamental concept of the Gospel. It is God's free favor toward sinners, effecting their salvation in Christ. It is entirely spontaneous, and excludes all relation of debt or merit. It is mediated by redemption; its result is righteousness (Rom. v. 21) or forgiveness of sins (Eph. i. 7), and its aim is eternal life (Rom. v. 21). For Paul, grace is in the first place God's personal disposition; but it is also God's effective activity in Christ as it realizes itself in actual deeds (Eph. ii. 5; Titus ii. 11); and, finally, he understands by it the share of the individual in salvation as it is seized in faith (Rom. xii. 3; II Cor. xii. 9). Paul never regards grace as a general power separable from the person of Christ and his historical activity; it is always a " grace in Christ " (II Tim. ii. 1).
The Greek Church Fathers regarded freedom of choice as an indispensable condition of all moral
life. Sin, according to them, is only 2. The an instantaneous decision of the will. Church Grace can not, therefore, abolish man's Fathers, freedom, but only supplements his
spontaneous activity. For Pelagius, liberty of will is an endowment of nature that can not be lost. According to Augustine, man has lost the will to do good by his fall. Grace is, therefore, the power which frees man from evil concupiscence and creates in him the will to do good. The will to do good is conditioned by grace not only in its incipiency, but also in its continuance. Thus there seems to be no room for human merit; yet Augustine can think of good action only in the form of good works. Therefore he makes them dependent upon grace and regards them as gifts of God (dei munera), as phenomena of an inner change. Thus Augustine's doctrine of grace agrees with that of Paul in so far as he traces salvation exclusively to God; but it differs from Paul in so far as it brings grace only into a loose connection with the person of Christ and as it sees its essence not so much in the forgiveness of sins as in the communication of moral powers.
The scholastics of the Middle Ages retained essential elements of Augustine's doctrine of grace; Thomas Aquinas especially followed closely in his steps. According to the scholastics, the original communication of grace is entirely unmerited.
Grace is here also a communication of
3. Medieval power, a quality that is infused into
Doctrine, the soul. With the infusion of a new
moral life there is also brought to us the remission of guilt, though the latter is dependent upon the former. Like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas upholds the necessity of good works which are made possible on the basis of received grace, although he infers the necessity of grace not from the radical nature of sinful corruption, but from the transcendent character of the religious gift which is obtainable only by a transcendent power. Moreover, his statement that God is the " first cause " is for him only an abstract metaphysical sentence ; in practise he gives room to free will in the preparation
Grace Gradual