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In gratitude for grace: praise, worship and the sanctified life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2017

Tom Greggs
Tom Greggs*
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen, King's College, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article seeks to offer a theological account of gratitude from a Protestant perspective by arguing that the Christian life is one marked by a covenant of grace and gratitude in which the creature's response of gratitude to divine grace is a participating in that grace, and, as such, is a full recognition of the ways of grace which flow from the divine life to creation. The first section of this article examines this theme in relation to creation from nothing. The second establishes God's electing will as the foundation of God's willing to be for another in creation. The third section examines justification by grace as the soteriological form of God's gracious turning towards the creature in divine mercy. The fourth section sketches the forms of gratitude that one might find in the Christian life as these are brought together in the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist.

Keywords

creationelectiongracegratitudeobediencesacraments
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 147 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 This is a very different condition of human life to that described by Gordon Mikoski, who identifies the culture in which we live as one of ‘deficit, demand and desire’ brought about by a deep-set ingratitude in society. Mikoski, Gordon, ‘On Gratitude’, Theology Today 61/4 (2011), p. 387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A theological consideration of gratitude in light of this seems pressing, especially if Immanuel Kant is correct in seeing ingratitude as one of the three worst vices that can affect the individual and society: Kant, Immanuel, Lectures on Ethics, ed. Heath, Peter and Schneewind, J. B. (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), p. 197 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Despite this, gratitude is a theme which is relatively neglected in much recent theological discourse.

2 O'Siadhail, Micheal, Collected Poems (Chester Springs, PA: Bloodaxe Books, 2014), p. 687.Google Scholar Permission granted by author.

3 This conceptualisation of gratitude differs somewhat from a more Thomistic approach. For Thomas, gratitude is an annexed virtue (on annexed virtues, see Summa Theologiae 2/2, qu. 80) to the virtue of justice (as are piety, religion and obedience: Summa Theologiae 2/2, qu. 58). Thomas’ account is very much concerned not with overflow but with debt, which is responded to in a hierarchy of worship that takes different forms dependent on the one to whom the gratitude is shown: God (through religion); parents (through honour); and superiors (through observance). Obligation is a major theme here. See Summa Theologiae 2/2, qu. 106 (and also qu. 107 for the shadow vice of ingratitude).

4 Cf. Kelsey, David F., Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), p. 344:Google Scholar ‘[D]oxology is the appropriate response to God's glory in Godself, or more exactly, the appropriate response to the hospitable generosity of the triune God's glory in se . . . [G]ratitude, precisely as doxological gratitude, is appropriate response to God for the glory of God expressed in our proximate contexts. It is thanks for those proximate contexts, including fellow human creatures whose practices in large part constitute them, as expressive of God's glory and thus as themselves derivatively the glory of God.’

5 For an overview of issues relating to the analogia entis, see White, Thomas J. (ed.), The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011)Google Scholar. Bonhoeffer's, Dietrich discussion of related themes to the postlapsarian condition can be found in his Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, vol. 2 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, Fortress, 2009), pp. 136–55Google Scholar. Although gratitude is not mentioned directly here, the force of the argument is retained since the Lutheran principle of sola fide credendum est nos esse peccatores applies.

6 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD) (London: T&T Clark, 2004)Google Scholar, I/1, p. 41.

7 Ibid., pp. 243–4. Further consideration is required here of the doctrine of the imago Dei. It is worth noting that, for Calvin, to glorify God by praise and gratitude is what it means to image God as we were created to do so; see Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T., trans. Battles, Ford Lewis (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1960), I.15.3 (pp. 186–9)Google Scholar; cf. Gerrish, Brian A., The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 154.Google Scholar

8 CD II/1, p. 216.

9 Ibid., p. 217.

10 Ibid., p. 670.

11 Ibid., p. 671.

12 Cf. CD II/1, pp. 671–2.

13 Clearly there are lots of ways to read creation: the problem of evil makes this clear, as does biological materialism which recognises nature as red in tooth and claw. There are, furthermore, other possible relations ‘gods’ can have to creation (e.g. as contingent upon the acts of creation). We might read the struggle against Baal and other fertility gods in the Old Testament as an example of confrontation with such an alternative reading.

14 Ford, David F. and Hardy, Daniel W., Living in Praise: Worshipping and Knowing God, 2nd rev. edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), pp. 8–10 Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

16 CD III/1, §41.2–3.

17 Ibid., p. 231.

18 Ibid., p. 232.

19 For Barth, Karl, election is the election of Jesus Christ; and in Jesus Christ, all humanity is elected. See CD II/2, esp. §33. Much has been written on this, and for surveys of the literature and recent discussions of the topic, the reader is directed to my Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity (Oxford: OUP, 2009), ch. 2Google Scholar; and my Theology Against Religion: Constructive Dialogues with Bonhoeffer and Barth (London: T&T Clark, 2011), ch. 5.

20 CD II/2, p. 413.

21 Ibid. On the topic of the relationship between election and the human life, see Nimmo, Paul T., Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision (London: T&T Clark, 2011)Google Scholar.

22 CD II/2, p. 414.

23 Ibid., p. 415. Clearly, there is a distinction between electing God and elected man. Elected man has no place to choose or reject others.

24 Ibid., p. 369.

25 Ibid., p. 375.

26 See the discussion of creatio ex nihilo above.

27 I have explored this issue in relation to belief as a potential work in my work on universalism. See esp., ‘Pessimistic Universalism: Rethinking the Wider Hope with Bonhoeffer and Barth’, Modern Theology 26/4 (2010), pp. 495–510; Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation; and ch. 5 in Theology against Religion.

28 O'Siadhail, Collected Poems, p. 686.

29 CD IV/1, p. 41.

30 Ibid., p. 45.

31 Cf. Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, p. 105.

32 Wainwright, Geoffrey, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life. A Systematic Theology (New York: OUP, 1980), p. 27 Google Scholar.

33 Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, p. 13.

34 This idea of ‘catching them up in His movement’ might be otherwise spoken of as ‘abduction’. On abduction, see Hardy, Daniel W., Wording a Radiance: Parting Conversations on God and the Church (London: SCM, 2010)Google Scholar, pp. 45–56, 67–71; cf. Ochs, Peter, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011)Google Scholar, pp. 192–4.

35 Wesley, John, The Works of John Wesley, vol. 1, Sermons I, ed. Outler, Albert C. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1984), p. 280 Google Scholar.

36 Luther, Martin, Luther's Works, vol. 14, ed. Pelikan, Jaroslav and Poellot, Daniel E., trans. Guebert, Arnold (St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1958), p. 163 Google Scholar.

37 For Calvin, gratitude and love for the Father should lead Christians to devote themselves completely to obedience to God and to seeking to honour God in all things. See Ioannis Calvini Opera Selecta, vol. 1, p. 76.

38 CD II/2, pp. 674–5.

39 Cf. CD IV/2, p. 496.

40 Wainwright, Doxology, p. 17.

41 Hardy, Daniel W., God's Ways with the World: Thinking and Practising Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 14 Google Scholar.

42 Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, p. 19.

43 The Methodist Worship Book, standard edn (Nashville, TN: United Methodist Publishing House, 1999).

44 Calvin differentiates between forms of sacrifice, and speaks of Christian sacrifice in all forms of worship (including the eucharist) as a ‘sacrifice of thanksgiving’ or ‘a sacrifice of praise and reverence’. This is contrasted to ‘the sacrifice of expiation . . . which is intended to appease God's wrath, to satisfy his judgment, and so to wash sins and cleanse them that the sinner, purged of their filth and restored to the purity of righteousness, may return into favour with God’. This latter form of sacrifice is that which is accomplished not in the church but singularly by Christ. The uniqueness of Christ's sacrifice is something Calvin is determined to emphasise: ‘And it was done but once, because the effectiveness and force of that one sacrifice accomplished by Christ are eternal . . .’ Calvin, Institutes, IV.18.13 (pp. 1441–2).

45 On the inter-relation of grace and gratitude in the eucharistic theology of John Calvin, see Gerrish, Brian A., Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)Google Scholar.

46 Wainwright, Doxology, p. 422.

47 This paper was first given at Blackfriars, Oxford, at the Jubilee Centre Conference on Gratitude. It was commissioned as an exploration from a Protestant perspective of the concept of gratitude. Quiet engagement with the theology of Karl Barth occurs throughout the article, largely in the footnotes, as Barth's theo-logic is drawn upon constructively for a theology of gratitude. For a broader consideration of gratitude in the Christian tradition, esp. in reference to the wider context of the intellectual history of gratitude, see Leithart, Peter J., Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.