Even though Wesley shared the Western view on total depravity, as I have shared in the last lecture, he had a different concept of grace from the Western theologians. Yes, we are totally helpless on our own, but here's the thing. We are not left on our own devices, Wesley believed.
We are not without hope. God's grace operates in the midst of our helplessness. So what is his grace? It is what we call preventing grace.
Again, as I have mentioned, preventing grace is the original term for prevenient grace. The term prevenient grace did not come into use until the 19th century. So preventing grace is the grace that Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 1 9-10.
I hope you take note. Okay, if someone asks you about prevenient grace or preventing grace, where can we find that in the Bible? But this is the place to find it.
2 Timothy 1 Verses 9 to 10, where Paul said, He has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and who has brought life and immortality to light. through the gospel. So preventing grace is that grace that was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus. So this is why we say preventing grace is the grace that comes before.
So that's why people started using the word prevenient instead of preventing because preventing doesn't seem to denote before than prevenient does. Prevenient actually is synonymous to the word precede or antecedent. But as for me, since I'm more of a historian, I actually prefer using preventing more.
And also there's a good reason for that, which you'll see later. But before going farther, I need to mention that there is a broad and narrow definition of preventing grace as used by Wesley. The broad definition, according to Outler, refers to all grace as God's prior activity, the grace that precedes.
It includes all manifestations of grace. So in essence, all grace for Wesley is prevenient or preventing grace. So you can say justifying grace and sanctifying grace are all species of preventing grace.
However, there is also a narrow definition. And this narrow definition refers to all the works of grace before justifying and sanctifying grace. So in this lecture, we're using the narrow definition and not the broad definition of preventing grace.
So what is preventing grace then? Let's begin with Article 8 of the Articles of Religion. In the previous lecture, I only read to you the first half of that because the other half talks about this.
And I didn't want to give you any spoilers. It says, The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and works to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore, we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God.
without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will and working with us when we have that good will. See that? It talks about our total depravity first, but then there's a twist. It says, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us.
Take note, we are in a terrible state because of our total depravity, and yet there is hope because of God's preventing grace. This is also the essence of what Wesley wrote in his sermon on working out our own salvation. For allowing that all souls of men are dead in sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man that is in a state of mere nature. There is no man unless he has quenched the spirit. that is fully void of the grace of God.
No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called natural conscience. But this is not natural. It is more properly termed preventing grace. Every man has a greater or less measure of this, which waited not for the call of man. Everyone has some measure of that light, some faint glimmering ray, which sooner or later more or less enlightens every man that cometh into the world.
See here, Wesley begins with a statement on original sin or sinful nature. And yet this state of being in sin, while as we found out in the previous lecture, led to our total depravity, is not a totally hopeless situation. Why?
Because there is no man unless he has quenched the spirit that is wholly void of the grace of God. In other words, God has given us his grace. That same grace mentioned in 2 Timothy 1. Wesley said, 2 Timothy 1.1-2 Every man has a greater or less measure of this which waiteth not for the call of man.
In other words, this grace is available to all and freely given. That's why Wesley also called this free grace. And actually there's a sermon on this titled Free Grace.
Also, this grace does not depend on us. That's why it says it waiteth not for the call of man. We need not call on God for this grace. God freely gave it to us. So as you can see, preventing grace, narrowly defined, is the grace that God gives to us to counter, take note, to counter the devastating effects of original sin and its consequence.
That is total depravity. And so this is why the word prevent is more appropriate here. Amen? But going back to the sermon, there is some qualification there that Wesley mentioned. Unless we have quenched the Spirit, he wrote.
This brings to light the fact that preventing grace is the work of the Holy Spirit. Remember the previous lecture, I talked about the administrator or facilitator role of the Spirit in our redemption. So if you consciously or willfully reject the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not going to force this on you.
So we, all of humanity, are beneficiaries of God's preventing grace. Except for the qualification I mentioned, of course. So what sort of benefits we receive from it, anyway?
And by the way, I'm using Collins. I got this from him. So what are these benefits?
First, basic knowledge of the attributes of God. Initially, because of original sin, we were supposed to be born atheists. No knowledge of God. It's as if God was fleshed out of our consciousness. But preventing grace counters that by giving us a basic knowledge of God.
So this then answers the point I raised in the previous lecture. Because we know that even the most isolated indigenous people groups have a concept of a deity or even gods. There seems to be this innate instinct in humanity to connect with a higher power, which seems to confirm the saying often attributed to Blaise Pascal, there's a god-shaped hole in all of us.
In Acts 17, discerning for God was even apparent in an altar used for pagan worship. at the Aeropagus in Athens, where it is written to the unknown God. And Paul took note of that and used that to reach out to the people there.
So without preventing grace, humanity would have been lost to godlessness. Second, the reinscription of moral law to some measure. In other words, a sense of righteousness and holiness is restored to us to some degree. And this brings us back to my previous point about isolated cultures or people groups.
They have some form of government. They have rules to maintain order. Why?
Because somehow they have a sense of morality. Just looking at my own kids, even though I mentioned previously that I see manifestations of original sin in them, I can also say that there is an innate morality in them which I believe I didn't have to teach them in the first place. They're upset when they do something wrong.
or see someone else do something bad. And that innate sense of morality, of what is right and wrong, is a manifestation of God's preventing grace in them. And again, we will reflect on that in our exercise.
Third, conscience. We have this inward judge that guides our affections and actions. Wesley even called it supernatural gift from God in a sermon titled On Conscience.
But in his sermon, The Scripture Way of Salvation, he made a clear connection between conscience and preventing grace. If we take this in its utmost extent, it will include all that is wrought in the soul by what is frequently termed natural conscience, but more properly preventing grace. All the drawings of the Father, the desires after God, which if we yield to them, increase more and more. All that light wherewith the Son of God enlighteneth everyone that cometh into the world.
all the convictions which his spirit from time to time works in every child of man. Although it is true, the generality of men stifle them as soon as possible and after a while forget or at least deny that they ever had them at all. So that inner voice that guides and even restrains us, which we often call conscience, is actually a manifestation of God's preventing grace in us. And by the way, I used this same quote previously to stress that redemption is the work of the Trinity.
See the Father, the Son, and the Spirit working in concert here? You see here a self-awareness in Wesley that while he generally attributed grace, like preventing grace to the work of the Holy Spirit, he also knew that the Holy Spirit is working in tandem with the two other persons of the Trinity. Amen? Now, on to the fourth benefit, a measure of free will. Essentially, we lost free will as a result of the fall, that we could not help but commit sin as a result.
We were like robots controlled by sin. But through preventing grace, a measure of our will was supernaturally restored. Now we have agency. Now we can choose not to act on our evil passions and do good. This captured very well in Article 7 of the Confession of Faith, titled Sin and Free Will.
We believe man is fallen from righteousness and apart from the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, is destitute of holiness and inclined to evil. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God in his own strength. without divine grace, man cannot do good works pleasing and acceptable to God.
We believe, however, man, influenced and empowered by the Holy Spirit, is responsible in freedom to exercise his will for good. See, the first part talks about original sin, and the second part talks about divine grace, which really is the same preventing grace we are talking about, which frees us to do good works pleasing and acceptable to God. This brings us back to the illustration I showed you in the first lecture of Doctrine 3, about antinomianism.
Antinomians or Calvinists believe that we lost our free will as a result of the fall, and therefore we are helpless until God saves us, or that is, predestines us. The ability to have free will or human agency, they believe, would be in violation of the understanding that salvation is the 100% work of God. By adding free will, they argue, it's like saying God does not save us 100%.
It's more like saying we are the ones who are saving ourselves if we have free will. But in Wesley, it's different. The ability to have free will is not really human ability to begin with. Because free will did not come from us. It came from God.
It is a supernatural gift given to us through God's preventing grace. And this free will is essential because we can now decide whether to do good or evil. We can now decide to follow God or not.
Now, here's the fifth benefit, restraint of wickedness. This is the breaking effect that preventing grace has on human evil. This is the reason why it was called. preventing because of this breaking effect. It puts our propensity, our inclination to sin to check.
So in other words, without preventing grace, humanity probably would have ceased to exist by now. Why? Because we would have annihilated one another out of existence by now. But what's preventing that? By the way, no pun intended.
It's because there's also this innate sense of morality in people. There are laws that prevent us from totally giving in to our passions. And that's communal. But there's also personal restraint, isn't it?
Well, you're upset. You want to erupt like the Hulk. You know, you want to hurt the person who hurt you. But then deep inside of you, there's this sense of restraint.
And so you act on that sense of restraint and you stop. And so this benefit is the fruit of all the other benefits. Your sense of a higher being.
Your sense of what is right and wrong. There's that inner voice or conscience. Your will to do the right things. And then you actually listen to them. you act on them and you restrain yourself.
And that is made possible because of God's preventing grace. So God's preventing grace is God's initial response to the sin of this world as outlined in Romans 5.15. According to Paul, But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God. And the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.
See that? So in other words, even though sin abounds in this world, God's grace in Jesus Christ also abounds. Amen?
And that's followed up in verse 20 of the same chapter. But law came in with the result that the trespass multiplied. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
See that? So the more sin came into this world, the more grace abounded. So see that? That preventing character of God's preventing grace. It counters the devastating effects of original sin or total depravity.
So that's why I often compare preventing grace to a safety switch or fuse box. You know, if you own a home, you know what I mean. It's that electric box in your basement that has all of the fuses that's connected to all the wiring in your house. But what I have on the screen is much more crude than that. Much more crude than what we normally have in our homes.
This one actually shows the fuses. See those three things that look like dynamites? Well those are the fuses. So what's a fuse anyway? It's an electric safety device that can stop current from flowing if it becomes overloaded.
For example, if there is a short circuit, that short in your system is going to call for a strong electric current to surge through and it's going to overload the system. It's going to damage your appliance or cause a fire. But before that strong current even surges, the fuse will detect that sudden surge and it will trip or it will break, hence saving your home.
from what could be a disaster. Same thing with preventing grace. It is God's fuse or safety switch for the world.
Essentially, these five benefits entail or can be summed up as the partial restoration of our faculties lost during the fall. But actually there's one more benefit that Collins didn't mention and I'm adding it here because he mentions it in other places in his book. It is this.
Preventing grace clears us from the guilt of Adam's sin. You know in the Philippines, since it's a Roman Catholic country, infant baptisms are common. And when I say infant, I'm talking about mostly newborn babies being baptized.
I don't get to see that a lot here, but in the Philippines that's quite common. And part of the reason for that is the understanding that until the infant is baptized, he or she is doomed to hell because of original sin. They believe baptism will result in baptismal regeneration and thus save the child. And that's why the need to get baptized right away in case something happens to the child. Also, sometimes I get to hear accounts of priests baptizing dead infants too because of the same reason.
And so, does God really doom infants to hell on account of original sin? Well, Wesley didn't believe so. On November 21, 1776, here was his response to John Mason based on that same question. Wesley wrote that by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men, all born into the world, unto condemnation. It's an undoubted truth and affects every infant as well as every adult person.
But it is equally true that by the righteousness of one, the free gift that came upon all men, all born into the world, infant or adult, unto justification. Therefore no infant ever was or ever will be sent to hell for the guilt of Adam's sin, seeing it is cancelled by the righteousness of Christ as soon as they are sent into the world. Wesley said, Therefore no infant ever was or ever will be sent to hell for the guilt of Adam's sin. In other words, preventing grace cancelled the guilt of Adam's sin. By the way, guilt here is another term for penalty.
This means the penalty that was due us as a result of original sin, it was cancelled by virtue of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. And so this happened to everyone. It benefited everybody regardless of religion. Okay, it doesn't matter whether the child is born out of a Christian family or not.
And so it benefited everyone. However, just to clarify, this is not universalism, okay? Universalism is that belief that everyone will be saved eventually.
No, Wesley did not subscribe to that belief. He did not believe in universalism. It's simply saying that infants are protected by God's prevenient grace or preventing grace. And this is the reason why we baptize infants.
It's an affirmation. It's a celebration of God's preventing grace that was given them. But Wesley also believed that these infants will eventually grow up.
And when they reach the age of accountability, they will have to decide whether to follow God or not. whether to give into their own passions or not, they will still need to experience the new birth. They still need to be born again.
Well, much will be said about this when we study baptism, so wait for that. So this ends the third lecture. Thank you.