GRACE, MEANS OF: In Protestant theology
the Word and the sacraments of baptism and the
Lord's Supper, considered as means divinely ordained by which God offers through his grace to all
sinners the salvation won by Christ the mediator,
and gives and preserves in them a true faith. These
means were those given by Christ for the continual
propagation of his Church, and received by the
apostles as having this specific content and purpose. What they thought of the preaching of the
Word may be seen in such passages as
I Cor. ii. 1, 4, 5;
I Theas. i. 5, ii. 13; and as in it the presence of God is felt
(I Cor. xiv. 25),
so from it proteed definite divine workings, faith and the
creation
of a new moral nature
(Acts xviii. 8;
Rom. i. 16;
I Pet. i. 23;
James i. 18).
In like manner baptism is regarded as a means for imparting communion
with Christ and moral renovation
(Acts ii. 33;
Eph. v. 26;
Heb. x. 22;
Rom. vi. 3
sqq.;
Col. ii. 11;
Gal. iii. 27;
Titus iii. 5;
I Pet. iii. 21);
and the appropriation of the new covenant in the blood of
Christ, the remission of sine, excepted from the
recurrent presence of Christ in the
Lord's Supper.
The two sacraments are thus connected by Paul in
I Cor. x. 1-5,
as a parallel to the great works of
salvation wrought by God for the children of Israel
under the old covenant.
In the early Church great stress was laid upon
the preaching of the Word, at first entrusted to
persona specially endowed with charismata (" apostles, teachers, prophets "),
and then becoming part
of the regular official functions of the
The Word Church. In spite of all developments
and Sacra- in a formal direction, many citations
meats. might be adduced to show how long
the primitive relation of Word and
sacraments, of baptism and
communion, was insisted on in the ancient sense. Medieval theology
raised the sacraments as means of grace above the
Word; Dionysius the Areopa,gite taught the East to
seek grace in the "mysteries," and Abelard revised
the Augustinian arrangement of faith, love, hope,
replacing hope by a developed sacramental doctrine with a, keen insight into the tendencies of his
age. From his day and that of Peter Lombard, the
sacramental system formed an important separate
section of medieval dogmatics. The absence of a
similar stress laid on the preaching of the Word was
felt, and supplied by the preaching orders. It was
one of their members, the Franciscan Duns Scotus,
who worked out &e' thought (in his treatise
De
perfedione statuum,
Paris ed. of his
Opera, 1895, vol.
xxvi.) that the preaching of the Word and personal
influence is a higher thing than mere administration
of the sacraments, so that monks who preach and
represent a life of moral perfection are of more importance to the Church than the priests who administer the sacraments. Along this line it was
possible to return to a position which restored to
preaching its primitive significance as a means of
grace; and Luther did so fully. Through " the
Word and sacraments " the Spirit comes to men,
and Christ performs his miracles in the soul.
Precedence is given to the Word, and the sacraments are reduced once more to two; the Scriptural
conception is recovered by this and by the attribution of the efficacy of the sacraments to the
religious faith awakened by the words of institution. The Calvinistic theology laid equal emphasis
on Word and sacraments both as vehicles of grace
and as notes of the true Church, but considered
them to be effective only in the predestinate, for
whom the work of Christ was performed. This
led to the view that they were not indispensable or
necessarily connected with the saving divine operations. The Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century worked out systematically the ideas
promulgated in the sixteenth, without reaching any
essentially new conclusions. The Pietistic conception of an "inner word" as an immediate
revelation of the Spirit, while it was to some extent
anticipated by Anabaptist tenets, had its importance as leading up to the rationalist idea that the
true revelation of God consists in innate religious
and moral concepts. The more modern development formally recognizes Word and sacraments as
the means of grace, but is inclined to empty them
of their force by understanding the sacraments in
a Zwinglian sense as mere commemorative symbols,
and failing to realize the present and operative
divine power of the Word.
A survey of the primitive development of the
means of grace, with their relation to the work of
Christ and to the Holy Spirit as continuing that
work, leads to certain logical conclusions which it
will be useful to state. (1) Since the
Conclusions. corporate life proceeding from Christ
is a historic life, the means to be used
for transmitting and preserving it will be along the
line of bumanandhistorictradition. (2) Since mem
bership in the body depends on recognition of Christ's
authority, the means of grace and the method
of their administration must be those ordained by
him. (3) Since the life created and preserved by
the means of grace can be understood only as the
result of a supernatural causality, it follows that
the actual effect of them can not be produced with
out the presence of God, i.e., the direction of the
almighty Will to the hearer or recipient. (4) Since
the means of grace, as the historic form of the econ
omy of the Spirit, can, on account of his relation
to Christ, have no other purpose than Christ's pur
pose, no other operation can be attributed to them
arrace
Gradual
than the saving of souls.
(5)
An essentially similar
operation must be attributed to Word and sacraments, but this does not exclude a " difference of
operation" " according to the different manner of
the administration, baptism and the communion
having each its own special purpose and the Word
being distinguished as either Law or Gospel. (6 )
Since revelation is intended to produce faith, the
main purpose of the means of grace must be the
awakening and preservation of faith; thus the administration of the sacraments is inconceivable
without the presupposition of the Word and without strict relation of their purpose to it.
(R. Seeberg.)
Bibliography:
The subject is treated in most of the works
given under
Dogma, Dogmatics, and in the literature
under the articles on the sacraments; Consult, for ex
ample, Hamaek,
Dogma, ii. 133
sqq.,
iii. 163
sqq.,
iv.
306
sqq., v.
84
sqq.,
155-168, 205
sqq.; B.. M. Stanbrough,
Scriptural View of Divine Grace,
New York,
1890; J.
Watson,
Doctrines of Grace,
ib.
1900.
