The Transforming Power of Grace

by Thomas C. Oden

How does an infinite God relate to finite human beings? How does the death of Jesus Christ bring about human salvation? How are Christians able to actively address the world's ills while maintaining their citizenship in the kingdom of God?

These are questions the church grapples with today, as it always has. Yet, according to Thomas C. Oden, contemporary theology has neglected the church's traditional answer to these the doctrine of grace. All too often modern theologians either ignore the doctrine of grace or relate it to the achievement of a particular political agenda. Oden asserts that only by reclaiming the centrality of grace--defined as God's self-giving through Jesus Christ in personal encounter with the individual human will--can Christian theology be true to the gospel.

In order to reclaim the doctrine of grace, the author reaches back, beyond the fragmentation of theology that took place during and after the Enlightenment. He draws upon the ecumenical consensus held by early Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant theologians, councils, and creeds regarding this cardinal Christian doctrine. By adducing this ancient unity, Oden challenges modern assumptions concerning the sources and methods of the theological enterprise and calls contemporary Christians to discern what their forebears in the faith knew to be essential to the that to be a Christian is to be formed, nurtured, and upheld solely by divine grace.

Genres: Theology

222 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1993

About the author

Thomas C. Oden was Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics at Drew University in New Jersey from 1980 until his retirement in 2004. He remained faculty emeritus until his death. He was the general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and the Ancient Christian Doctrine series as well as the author of Classic Christianity, a revision of his three-volume systematic theology.

Reviews

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't be fooled by the title - although "The Transforming Power of Grace" sounds like the latest book by a celebrity pastor, it is really a rigorous exposition of the theology of grace. Oden, a leading paleo-orthodox scholar, copiously cites both the Bible and the wisdom of the classic Christian consensus in order to back up his points. He wrestles with the contentious questions of foreknowledge, predestination and election and effectively demonstrates the soundness of Arminian theology (though Oden himself does not explicitly state this). The first part of the book deals with philosophical and theological questions before investigating how grace was present in Biblical history and how it permeates through our world today. I have heard that Eastern Orthodoxy and Wesleyanism share some theological ideas and with Oden's fondness for the Eastern Church fathers, that appears to be the case. This book certainly makes me want to read some of the Church fathers! This is a gem of a book that should be read by any and all Christians. Truly, truly, it demonstrates that life is "all of grace."

[Vinnie Santini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for understanding the non-Calvinist position on Grace! Never will I think they are man-centered again. Made me question the true historical continuity of the Calvinist position with the Vincentian method-"By the threefold test of ecumenicity, antiquity, and general lay consent, the believing community may distinguish between true and false teaching." p.24 Augustine did formulate some strong positions against the Pelagian heresy and those views were not accepted in there more extreme forms by the whole church of his time. I think Augustine was an amazing saint of the church, but his speculative theology should not trump dogma given by ecumenical consent. This book displayed a true love for the Grace of God while holding in balance a Sovereignty of God that respects the created freedom given to his creatures. In a way that gives Honor to God and not man. I think he should have read Bernard Lonergan's book on Aquinas to help with the relation of grace to freedom, but he combined the Molinist position with the Congruist position in a unique way. "Molinist teaching that God knows contingent futures remains a useful contribution to the defense of free-will. The Congruist teaching of the contextuality and economy of grace remains a useful clarification of how grace relates to variable circumstances." p.118 Aquinas offers more with his view of the permission of God toward evil.

[Nathan Casebolt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less than a year before the death of United Methodist theologian Thomas C. Oden, he submitted to an interview with Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In that interview, Oden sketched an outline of his evolution from a seminarian steeped in Marxist and socialist fervor to a conservator of orthodox Christian teachings. He got there by way of a Jewish friend whose knowledge of rabbinic and midrashic teachings led Oden into the patristic writings and finally to an affirmation of the Resurrection as an historical event. His faith journey was thus deeply shaped by multiple forms of Christianity; so if your faith partakes of a suspicious sectarianism, it’s best you understand this before Oden spooks you with the sweep of his ecumenicity in “The Transforming Power of Grace.”

The book is interesting for two reasons. The first is Oden’s conviction that a retrenchment of Christian spirituality on the grace of God is the cure for the “acids of modernity” driven by “American society [as] the advancing storm front of a narcissistic individualism thundering around the world.” His outlook on Protestant American Christianity in the early 1990s is bleak. Liberals and conservatives alike are “waking up each morning in bed with a deteriorating modern culture, between sheets with a raunchy sexual reductionism, despairing scientism, morally normless cultural relativism, and self-assertive individualism.” Christians react to this disintegrating world either with a “graceless accommodation” or by retreating “to hurl biblical invectives at its idolatries.” Neither approach benefits souls left behind in the wastelands. What is required of the church, per Oden, is the “fresh breeze of relief” that comes from “unearthing the ancient teaching of grace” which is “more like being discovered than discovering.”

These quotes all come from the preface. Taken together with Oden’s abandoned beginnings in left-wing theology, “The Transforming Power of Grace” is interesting because it’s not merely a handbook of systematic charismology. It certainly is that once you get past the preparatory comments in the preface, but the metanarrative is that of an armory for the Christian who wishes both to defend the faith once for all delivered and to rescue those perishing in the swamps of a modernity Oden once promoted, stagnant sinks that promise apotheosis and deliver dehumanization. “The tested language of the church,” Oden writes, “speaks in its own unrelenting ways to modern minds struggling with the absurdities and limits of modernity. Deteriorating modern ideologies must now work hard to stay abreast with the creativity of classical Christianity, not the other way around.”

As I said, if you’re most comfortable in a small room with people who agree with you, prepare to be discomfited as Oden anchors his charismology on “points of substantial agreement between traditions of East and West—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—on the power of grace in spiritual formation.” He accepts baptism as the delivery system for saving grace; not that the act is meritorious in itself, but that this is God’s sovereignly chosen sacrament by which he responds to saving faith and provides the grace that does the saving. He is not a Young Earth Creationist and doesn’t feel that an historical Adam and Eve are necessary to make sense either of Genesis or of salvation history. He’s just as comfortable quoting popes and patriarchs as he is quoting Luther and Wesley. In short, my fundamentalist undergrad alma mater would never have invited Oden to expound his doctrine.

I call it “his” doctrine, but Oden would be the first to reject that honor. The task as he sees it, and the second reason this book is interesting, is to mount a serious defense of an Arminian theology of grace drawn from two millennia of teaching across all orthodox Christian traditions. Through eleven chapters, Oden argues for an economy of grace in which "the very purpose of creation…was to allow freedom to determine itself toward the greater good. This permission could not be given without giving each sapient person some possibility of turning away from the greater good. The good one receives and makes actual by one’s own choice is only possible by grace. The good which is negated by one’s own choice is emptied without any assistance from God. God does not assist the will to fall.” Through the cross, God provides the same prevenient grace to every fallen human, which allows each of us (through no merit of our own) to overcome the utter disability wrought by sin sufficiently to make a morally accountable decision about the gospel. Moral accountability is an important anchor of Arminian theology: “That same text appeals to all to be accountable…those who believe in Christ will be adopted into the family of God and be given sufficient grace to become accountably conformed to his Son.” God’s glory, then, lies not in a double predestination to salvation or damnation in a grotesque puppeting of humanity; but rather in his “decision to honor, and not coerce, human freedom.”

Though I hail from Calvinistic traditions, I appreciate the scope and clarity of Oden’s defense of Arminian soteriology. He even draws on the writings of Augustine and Calvin to support what he takes to be a classical doctrine of grace. He mostly avoids direct polemics, but does seem to find “Five-Point Calvinism” an aberration in church history. He dismisses lapsarian theories of regeneration as “the ‘zap’ theory of conversion” and asserts that “God treats us as self-determining persons, not mudballs to be thrown,” which I take to be a swipe at a Calvinistic overemphasis on our identity as clay in the divine potter’s hand. He even goes so far as to cast full-throated modern Calvinism as the negative image of an ancient heresy: “Two opposite errors must be avoided: either exaggerating the capability of natural will to accomplish salutary acts without grace (Pelagianism); or the utter incapacity and impotence of the natural will to do anything whatever pleasing to God (an irrational, pseudo-Augustinian antinomianism that tends to undermine natural morality and civic virtue).”

Despite my appreciation for Oden’s work, he never answers the knottiest question I have for an Arminian: if all have access to the same enabling, prevenient grace, why do only some believe? To his credit, Oden attempts to answer this in a brief section entitled “Why Are So Many, Having Received Sufficient Grace, Unenlightened By It?” Regrettably, he merely restates the problem in the form of a quote from John Chrysostom: “He enlightens all so far as in Him lies. But if some, willfully closing the eyes of their mind, would not receive the rays of that Light, their darkness arises not from the nature of the Light, but from their own wickedness, who wilfully deprive themselves of the gift.” In other words, Oden answers the question with a tautology: some choose to remain unenlightened because they choose to remain enlightened.

By my lights, this is not a small question. If moral accountability is as critical as Arminians take it to be, and if I reject God, whose fault is it? Does the will to disbelieve spring from my genetics and thus make God responsible as creator of my DNA? Oden would probably reject such a materially reductionist explanation. At times, he seems to blame social conditioning, at least in part: “This social history becomes further entangled each time an individual wills lesser goods than those offered and situationally available…The forbidden fruit never lacks volunteer tasters. They soon become compulsive eaters.” If the fault lies in my repeated poor response to conditions, and if God truly desires all to be saved, then why didn’t he arrange better conditions such that I would believe? The safest refuge here might be Molina’s Middle Knowledge, in which God perfectly knows all logically possible outcomes and has constructed the world most likely to save the greatest number of, though not all, sinners.

Yet even this wouldn’t explain why two individuals with access to the same background and genetics and social order (for example, biological twins in the same family) might respond differently to the message of grace. The ultimate locus of choice must be the individual will — but whence the will? If the will is an outflow of a person’s soul, is it God’s fault that he created a soul with a will to reject him? Surely he would know that he was creating such a soul and would choose to create differently if he desires all to be saved. Does the soul perhaps generate without direct creative involvement? If so, then has God delegated creative power to parents such as Traducian theorists would have it? This, though, would seem to circle us back to something like genetics; and surely an omnipotent and omniscient God could arrange the elements of parental generation so as to create a soul conditioned to accept his grace. If we want to escape this tangle entirely, must we ultimately fall back on Open Theism, strictly limiting God to probabilistic knowledge and thus granting that he may indeed create (or help to create) a soul that gives rise to a will that rejects him because he can’t foresee the future well enough to avoid it?

As you can tell, I’m great fun at parties. I wish Oden were still with us so I could corner him by the punchbowl and ask him all the questions that, surely, not one of his students over four decades of teaching ever thought to ask. He would probably give me the same answer he gives regarding the fairness of God toward those with no chance to hear the gospel: “Faith does not itch every day to preempt secret things when so much is revealed.” At any rate, I don’t think he would take offense. By all accounts he was a gracious man; and in his book on grace, he had the grace to write, “A deeper faith is engendered by the balanced employment of doubt, critical debate, and measured skepticism, than by abruptly pretending to settle all moral ambiguities by narrow preemptive authoritarian appeals. Respect for the authority of scripture and tradition is not opposed to the power of critical reasoning, but rather invites its critique in order better to strengthen its modes of argument.” Well said, Dr. Oden. We may have occupied different sides of the punchbowl, but by the grace of God we share the same punch. The most important question is not the precise concoction of the punch, as crucial as that might be to the life and health of the church; but how well we share it with an exceedingly thirsty world.

[Nicholas Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Oden continues to be enjoyable despite being outside of my theological tradition. He lays out his case from patristics quite well but at times he seems to assume a knowledge of distinction between various views where you’re left with more questions than answers. To that; the point is well taken when it comes to the premise of consensus, yet, I have left the book unconvinced of Oden’s position for numerous reasons. All in all, I enjoyed the book and it will challenge you.

[Don Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are a several of lines from Oden that lay out the trajectory of the book:

"The purpose of caregiving [the pastoral ministry] is to make the truth of grace plausible and appropriable in the inner life of the individual."

"Grace is God's way of empowering the bound will and healing the suffering spirit."

"The more we try to autonomously to ignite a moral imperative within, the more it turns to dust and ashes in our hands."

That God is powerful and sovereign and that we are held accountable to him, the Bible itself declares that we need no Bible to tell us. But that God is merciful and kind to sinners, good to us in his grace, is the message of the Bible. In this book, Thomas Oden, a Methodist theologian, roots the great vision of the Christian life in grace.

Oden is particularly concerned to restate the Arminian view of prevenient grace(though he never refers to himself as an Arminian), that grace which goes before, flowing from the work of Christ on the cross, enabling those who are lost in sin to not be so overwhelmed by the loss of original righteousness in the Fall that they have become totally inert and passive with respect to the free offer of the Gospel. All begins with grace, but this grace enables choice.

This stands in contrast to Calvinism which sees the will as totally captive to the sin nature in such a manner that it remains wholly passive and without any capacity to choose (in the normal sense of choose, which is the power of contrary choice). Because man is totally noncooperative in regeneration, grace is monergistic and irresistible. The very act of choosing, according to the Calvinist, is evidence that one has already been enlivened by Christ and made new. Because of such, he can now by faith and repentance receive the offer of the Gospel, is then justified by God and converted.

Oden sees this process as described by the Calvinist something remote, impersonal and fully contrary to the nature of persons in relationship, not to mention not only without full biblical support but outside the consensus teaching of the church. Grace is to his mind resistible, but it is gracious on the part of God to so restore us from our lost condition that choosing is a meaningful and personal act. That God would by fiat, apart from human choosing, elect to revivify some and pass over others whom he could save but chooses not to, would run contrary to the metanarrative of the biblical story as well as to human consciousness itself, not to mention the very character of God as good.

Calvinism appeals often to the writings of Augustine. In fact, Calvin's Institutes is essentially a restatement of Augustine. But, as Oden points out, the "early Augustine" is much more moderate and in keeping with the church fathers. The late Augustine with its rigid predestinarianism moves further away from consensus Christianity, and these views were never affirmed by the church councils, though Augustines stand against Pelagianism was fully embraced.

In these days there are few powerful descriptions of Arminian accounts of grace. For an explanation of this state of affairs, see Roger Olson's Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities.

[Ken Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book enormously helpful, as there seem too few books out there offering a non-Calvinistic view on Biblical grace (and I had never read one before). To hear Calvinists referring to Reformed Theology as a Theology of Grace, as if any other position in the history of the church neglects grace, makes me wince. Oden does a magnificent job of drawing thoroughly on the historical ecumenical consensus regarding Biblical grace in order to celebrate how grace has long been emphasized throughout church history. Oden is clearly Arminian in his convictions, and having read this book, I will never again think of Arminianism as man-centered or works-based. This book very capably explains a God-centered grace-based theology that allows for the exercise of our free wills to receive it or reject it, and documents how the Church has held such positions (with notable exceptions) since the early Church Fathers. Make no mistake, this is not a devotional book, but one more tilted toward academic use, but I found it truly edifying.

[J. Ewbank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas C. Oden has written an excellent, readable book on the grace of God. We have all read books that talk about God's grace and at least I have had some confusion about what in the world they were talking about or the distinctions between various graces of God.

This book is the best exposition of God's grace that I have read. It also talks about John Wesley's prevenient grace by going way back to the comments of the early church.

The book is divided into five sections. The first is Grace in spiritual formation, the second is The reach and depth of the forming work of Grace, the third is how grace becomes freedom, the fourth is on predestination and the permissionof recalcitrance and the last is where the history of grace meets the mystery of personal choice.

This is an excellent read for anyone who is interested in learning about the different graces of God.

J. Robert Ewbank, author, "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"

[Natalee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very, very thought provoking. Many beautiful points made. However, although I understand it is mainly a history, I would have preferred more Scriptural basis.

[Christopher Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, this book is way denser than I anticipated it being. The title really only gets at part of what Oden covers. Oden really dives into the history of grace viewed theologically, ecumenically, and spiritually. And this man is through. It’s similar to his systematic theology in that sometimes the sub-sections are titled questions I didn’t know anyone was asking. This can be a little annoying, but it also means it's very easy to move around the chapters. His writing on prevenient grace is particularly helpful. He did a great job showing the history of interpretation and how widespread the doctrine of prevenient grace is. He delineated common grace from human conscience which is a question that comes up occasionally. The last third of the book focuses on grace and freedom and he systematically traces the theological idea major thinkers have brought and the most common questions. Oden is not at all hostile to Calvinism and quotes Ausutine probably more than anyone, but he is firm in what he believes the evidence shows. He shows why double predestination never gained ecumenical consent. He also spends a lot of time on predestination and election.


Overall I enjoyed what I learned from the book, but I wish it was a little less dense. That’s probably why it’s out of print, but a book like this that was more accessible would be so valuable to the church.


“Nobody has ever come into existence by writing a letter to their parents asking them for life….similar is the new birth from above.”

[Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oden does a masterful job of summarizing the consensual teaching on salvation during the first 500 years of Christian history. (There are hundreds of quotes from early church fathers.)

As a theology teacher I loved this book, but some phrases were off-putting even to me. Here's one example: "The language of foreordination becomes problematic at the point at which it yields the impression of unilateral divine omnicausality - implying that all secondary causes are negated, or that free human agency is obliterated by divine decree, which amounts to an assault on the Christian teaching of creation."

Fortunately, those types of phrases are few and far between. This is an excellent book for digging deeper into the meaning of grace. It's much more than "undeserved favor." As Oden states, "Grace is an overarching term for all of God's gifts to humanity, all the blessings of salvation, all the events through which are manifested God's own self-giving." (p. 33)

[Brandon Bagley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent synthesis of early church thought and the areas of consensus from more modern theologians on the role of grace in christian faith and practice. Very well cited. Although this is a consensus oriented book, Oden takes a more Wesleyan/Arminian view by emphasizing God's dispensation of prevenient grace, which enables (but does not force) all mankind to respond in faith to Christ, thus making election conditional on God's foreknowledge of our affirmative response.

[Hether Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times the wording seems pretty academic, however, the content in this book is wonderful. It takes the sometimes difficult topic of grace and presents it beautifully. Though it was required reading for school, I was hooked after the first chapter. The entire book was one I was excited to read weekly. I learned a lot from it.

[Jaakko Haapanen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic exposition on grace from a non-Calvinist perspective.

[Nathan Whitley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oden is outstanding in this seminal work on grace. Not an easy read in some parts, and you may need a dictionary handy to define his scope of vocabulary, but worth the trouble.

[Aaron Case · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an easy, or even enjoyable read, but weighty and impactful for those willing to pay the price of reading it.

[Tori Hook · Rating 1 out of 5]

The theology was solid, but the writing was just so DRY. Not my favorite.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grace, grace, God's grace!!!
Oden masterfully surveys grace from the perspective of the consensus of the ancient church. This is the finest book I have ever read on the topic of election and freedom. This is not easy reading, in fact it is quite academic. However, if you take the time to listen and digest what Oden is giving here, you will no regret it.

[Nicholas Quient · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good. A bit dated regarding "Grace" and the NT, but deeply devotional and historically relevant. Highly recommended!