As you likely know, debates about grace and free will have dominated Western theology for centuries. Augustine versus Pelagius. Calvin versus Arminius. The central question has always been this: What can human beings contribute to their own salvation? On the one side is the conviction that everything about our salvation is grace, even our ability to consent to and choose God. On the other side is the conviction that if humans are not, to some degree, consenting to their salvation, then grace is being imposed upon them in a way that violates the integrity of human personhood and identity.
But in light of the argument we've been exploring in this series, there might be a different way to look at this debate.
Human nature was wounded in the Fall, a wounding that would have affected our will and volition. On this point—the damaging of the will—Augustinian and Calvinistic perspectives make a good point. However, Christ assumes our wounded nature and heals it, a healing that affects every human person, no matter who they are, because human nature is a single, unified whole. And we should expect every faculty of our humanity to participate in that healing, including our capacity to receive God.
If this is so, I believe it reframes the old debates. Simply put, grace is no longer opposed to human capacity. Rather, grace restores human capacity. More precisely, grace restores humanity's capacity to receive grace.
This is the soteriological impact of the Incarnation. Christ heals human nature. And because human nature is a unified whole, every human person now participates in a humanity that has been restored in Christ. One aspect of that restored humanity would be a renewed openness to God.
Simply put, the capacity to receive grace is itself a gift of grace, which, to my eye, cuts the knot that has long bedeviled these theological debates. The issue isn't grace versus human effort. Rather, the issue is Christ, in the Incarnation, healing and restoring a capacity for receptivity in human nature, a healed nature in which everyone participates.
