Grace 101

Musings for the Confused and Curious

One of my recent articles stirred some family conversation about Grace, which made me think that I need to understand this concept better. To me, when I was LDS, it seemed like because Grace isn’t something we can do anything about, we put more emphasis on living a Christ-like life.

For those who are wondering who’s “Confused and Curious?” - I am, so please bear with me as I work this out, and please remember that I’m a catechumen and not an orthodox theologian. Please don’t rely on anything I say as being the “gospel truth.” If you are also confused about the Orthodox perspective on Grace, please speak to your spiritual father and read up on the subject. If you are LDS and looking for the LDS perspective, the talk “The Gift of Grace,” by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf is one of the more recent and developed articulations¹ of LDS Grace by an LDS ecclesiastical leader.

For this article I’m going to rely heavily on the discussion of Grace from Chapter 2 of the book, “know the faith,” by Fr. Michael Shanbour². I did not come up with this on my own. All of the quotes below are from his book. If you like this article, please buy Michael’s book³.

What is Grace [in Orthodoxy]?

At its core, Grace is the divine, uncreated energies of God that He Himself imparts to His creation. A helpful analogy is that of sunlight.

We all experience the power and energy of the sun. We truly experience and feel its warmth and light through the rays of energy that shine down upon us. These rays do not merely give us an impression of what the sun is; they are not a substitute for the sun; they do not present us with ideas about the sun; they do not merely illustrate what the sun is like; they are a real participation in the very energies of the sun itself. By our contact with the rays of the sun, we actually participate in the light and heat it produces. The sun’s power interacts with our human cells, and real, organic changes occur in our human chemistry.

Similarly, the energy of the sun generates the natural process of photosynthesis in plant life. The sun’s light interacts with carbon dioxide in the plant’s cells, creating a chemical reaction that converts it into the necessary nourishment for the organism as well as releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.

Yet we cannot participate in or fully experience the essence of the sun. If we were to try to approach the scorching essence of the sun in an attempt to discover the inner source of its energies, we would be quickly overwhelmed and annihilated.

For a broader discussion on God’s essence and energies, please see my previous article.

Illuminating the Mysteries of the Divine Nature, Man, and Creation, Part II

In Orthodox anthropology, Grace is not foreign or added to our nature; it's an inherent part of our being. This perspective differs from common Western theologies that view Grace as an external addition or a legalistic concept. For instance, the doctrine of original sin in the West often implies that humans are fundamentally devoid of grace due to inherited guilt.