Grace, Part II: Is Salvation a Human Choice?

I again use Grace Kelly to personify grace

So far, I have laid out that salvation and humanity’s coming-to-God is possible because the Spirit resides within us. However, there has still been talk of a required human response to God’s work in order for it to take effect, which still leaves the question of Philippians 2:13 open:  if “it is God who is at work in [us], enabling [us] both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” how can we say we choose God with our own free will? How can we say it is all God’s grace when it requires our response? I will begin this discussion with 3 foundational thoughts: 

First, as we have already seen, the breath of God in Adam’s nostrils gave him more than just life—that is, more than just mere being. It also gave him more than the presence of God’s Spirit within him; it equipped him with everything he needed to be a servant and lover of God.  To re-use a quote from Origen, he equipped Adam with “all the desires and all the impulses with which [he could] work towards virtue and make progress, and also planted in [him] the power of reason with which [he could] recognize what [he] ought to do and what to avoid.”(25) Included in this equipment was free will. He endowed Adam with the ability to choose to love him or hate him, embrace him or reject him.

Secondly, God sustains all things (Heb. 1:3; Col. 1:16). Paul said in Acts, “In him we live and move and have our being” (17:28). As Karl Barth notes, “It is on the free will of God that everything depends.”(26) Reality itself, then, is God’s grace. God’s breath in Adam’s nostrils reveals that the fact we breathe at all is God’s grace.

Finally, we are told that every perfect gift comes from the Father (Jas. 1:17). He is responsible for all the good, not only of that which he has directly provided, but of the good we have accomplished. Therefore, we should not boast in anything we do, for we branches do not support our root, but the root supports us (Rom. 11:18). 

The answer to our question, then, is that because of everything with which God has provided us, we cannot refer to any good that we accomplish as our own doing. He gave us the breath of life, the capacity for good, the ability to reason, the free will, the influence of his Spirit, etc. We might also add that he himself is goodness, and so nothing good can find its origin in us because all goodness is God’s self-communication.  

Consider this analogy. Let us say a man opens up a bank account for his son and places billions of dollars in it. Then he gives his son a debit card and the PIN. If the son purchases something, can it really be said that he pays for it? Can it be said that he makes himself able to use the money? No. His father gave him the money, and his father gave him the ability to use it (the debit card and PIN). That being said, the Son cannot just walk around and experience the benefits of the money he has in his account; he has to use the card his father gave him in order to experience it. But even the using of the card is attributable to his father, because he gave him the card.

Likewise, God has given us salvation and has given us everything we need in order to experience it and engage in relationship with him. We must make the decision to engage, but God is ultimately responsible for the decision because he is responsible for everything that brought us to the decision.

Origen

Heschel says that in establishing a relationship with God, the “initiative must be ours, yet the achievement depends on Him.”(28) Indeed, yet, God is even, in part, responsible for the initiative. Not that he himself made the decision for us, but he gave us the ability to make the initiative. He gave us will power. Again, he gave us every single thing we needed in order to choose him. As Origen said, “God does most of the work.”(27) But even the work we do is something for which God is responsible, even if indirectly.(28) 

“God is at work in us” does not mean that God is the one doing all the work. It means he is “enabling us to will and to work.” He is drawing us to him, luring us to him, and giving us what we need to come to him. Philippians 2:13 is referring to the supernatural existential at work, that divine immanence in us that is responsible for all the goodness we manifest, including our choice to follow God. Again, it does not do the work for us, as the Calvinist doctrine of irresistible grace implies, but it influences and entices us to embrace Christ. When and if we do, God is the one responsible, for he gave us reason and free will, and he gave us the Spirit to influence that reason and free will. And everything he gave us is a manifestation of his grace.(29) We play a part, and indeed a vital one, but it is most definitely nothing of which we can boast, for God is ultimately the one responsible.

Conclusion 

This study, rather than thinking of salvation as either the work of grace or a human choice, has embraced salvation as both the work of grace and a human choice. It emphasizes both the biblical teaching of God’s grace and providence, and the biblical teaching of human choice and moral responsibility. 

We need not believe that we have no part in our salvation in order to say with confidence that grace is the all-determining factor. I have often heard from Calvinists that because they know how sinful they are, they know that they could never choose God, so he had to have chosen them. A human can do nothing for God without grace, they say, so salvation must be solely the work of God’s grace and we must not have anything to do with it. This conclusion is understandable, but, as we have seen, it demonstrates a misunderstanding of God’s grace. Our free choice to serve and love God is itself a manifestation of grace, for such a choice would not be possible without it. God’s grace is the equipment with which God empowered humanity, and it was indeed sufficient in enabling humanity to walk freely to him. Thus, we can affirm with Paul that when we work out our salvation, it is God who is at work in us, enabling us both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 

Notes:
(25) von Balthasar, 195.
(26) Barth, 74.
(27) Heschel, 129.
(28) von Balthasar, 196.
(29) If this is true, one could then ask, “Doesn’t that mean God is indirectly responsible for evil?” Since this is not relevant to the topic of my paper, I will not spend too much time answering this question, but it is important to at least respond to, even if in a small way.
First, evil was not created when man sinned. Evil entered into this world through humanity’s sin, but its origin was found in Satan, before the earth was created. We do not know the nature of evil’s actual origin; all we have are the bits and pieces we find in some biblical and apocryphal books. For an overview, see Elaine Pagels, “The Social History of Satan: From the Hebrew Bible to the Gospels,” in The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995), 35–62. The question then becomes, “Is God responsible for evil’s entrance into this world?” No. Evil is not of God, and he was not responsible for its origin. He is also not responsible for Satan’s influence on creatures. The reason why he is—at least indirectly—responsible for the human’s choosing of him is because he has not only given them the ability to choose him, but he has done everything they need in order for them to choose him. Because he has not provided evil, and he has not provided the devil’s influence, but has only given humans the ability to choose to reject him, he is not responsible in any way—even indirectly—for humanity’s sin.
(30) As Origen says, God “gives everything as grace.” See von Balthasar, 196.

Grace, Part I: Is the Doctrine of Total Depravity Totally Depraved?

I chose this picture because nothing says
'grace' like Grace Kelly

The relationship between God’s providence and the human will has been the subject of much theological debate throughout Christian history, particularly as it regards to salvation. If God’s work “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:6) and if it is true that grace does not depend on works (11:6), then how can we say that humans choose God out of their own volition?(1) How can we say that the choice is ours when we are told that “it is God who is at work in [us], enabling [us] both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13)? Calvinist doctrine states that we cannot, that salvation is not at all based on the human’s response to God but solely on God’s choice of whom to save—his elect. Furthermore, it states that humanity is totally depraved and unable to choose God, and that it is God’s grace alone which brings the elect to him.

I, on the other hand, contend that the most balanced and accurate response to the question states that the human’s free choice to enter into a relationship with God is a manifestation of the reality of grace, because God equipped the human with everything necessary in order to walk freely to him—and that this divine equipment was a bestowal of grace, and thus, everything accomplished by its work finds grace as its origin.

Humanity in the Pre-Cross and Post-Cross Periods

We must begin with a discussion of what occurred at the Fall, so that we can understand what occurred on the Cross. With these, we can more accurately discuss the nature of grace and human will, and their roles in salvation.

Jonathan Edwards describes well the view of the Fall I wish to oppose here:

When man sinned, and broke God’s covenant, and fell under his curse, [the divine principles of the Spirit] left his heart: for indeed God left him; that communion with God, on which these principles depended, entirely ceased; the Holy Spirit, that divine inhabitant, forsook the house.(2)

Thus, Edwards believed the Fall made us totally depraved. Greg Forster defines the doctrine of total depravity in the following way:

Calvinism says that everything in our fallen nature is hostile to the perfect goodness of God--to 'goodness' in the absolute sense. This is not because our nature contains nothing that is good in any respect, but because everything in us is spoiled by our sin. In other words, Calvinism is saying that we are born as slaves to Satan. . . . We are born with every part of ourselves participating in, and hence defiled by, a state of freely chosen rebellion against God.(3)

Thus, to Calvinist doctrine, the Fall left us completely unable to move toward God without him doing all the work. Such is the Calvinist understanding of the Fall, and the doctrine of total depravity. This interpretation, however, runs counter to the Hebrew understanding of God’s ruah. God breathed his breath into Adam’s nostrils (Gen. 2:7), which was very significant to ancient Hebrew anthropology. Harold Knight provides that this “essential quality of the divine” was “the acceptable explanation of all that was striking or unusual in human conduct,”(4) such as, wisdom.(5) It meant that “God’s Spirit [is] in the human person”(6) and was understood to be a “permanent indwelling in man”(7) and “a core human characteristic.”(8)

Therefore, to the ancient Hebrew mind, the Spirit of God did not forsake the house, as Edwards put it. Rather than making humans totally unable to move to God, the Fall made humans conflicted; it assured that they would thenceforth be engaged in a constant inner battle between good and evil. The Fall established that life would be a long stream of existential choices between stepping towards God or stepping towards total depravity. Humanity’s constant movement towards depravity is what made the Cross more and more necessary.

What strikes me as odd about the doctrine of total depravity is that it is maintained even after the Cross. Christ brought us salvation, but Calvinist doctrine says that it can only be obtained by those upon whom God has bestowed it. Since humanity's corruption makes us unable to move to God, we cannot choose salvation; it can only be given by God’s irresistible grace.(9) 

The predicament in the pre-Cross period was not that humanity was rendered incapable of moving to God, but that the seed which God had planted in humans became perishable in the Fall (1 Pet. 1:23). In the event that humanity strayed far enough from God, that seed would cease to exist. If humanity chose to follow depravity long enough, we would eventually lose our ability to choose God at all, for we would have trapped ourselves in a depraved mind. Thus, if salvation was going to spread throughout the world, it was going to require further action on God’s part.

Enter Jesus Christ, who came to undo what Adam and Eve did (Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:20–49). The Cross re-established the image of God that humanity was created to be, and planted an incorruptible, imperishable seed in humans (1 Pet. 1:23). He placed inside us the Holy Spirit, God’s indwelling presence (Rom. 8:23; Jn. 14:17). Therefore, humanity is not in a state of total depravity. On the contrary, Christ perfected humanity’s state of being (Heb. 10:14), and created all people anew (2 Cor. 5:17). In this state, humanity is not doomed to slip into total depravity, but, as Karl Barth says, “[all of humanity’s] mistakes and confusions and sins are only like waves beating against the immovable rock of his own proper being.”(10) Sin no longer has the power to destroy the image of God and the seed of the Holy Spirit held within us.

Origen beautifully states that, “God has given human beings all the desires and all the impulses with which they can work towards virtue and make progress, and also planted in them the power of reason with which they can recognize what they ought to do and what to avoid.”(11) Christ established in the hearts of humans everything we needed in order to choose God and be saved. As Vernon Grounds puts it, “God working through Jesus Christ and by his Holy Spirit enables a man to be and do what otherwise tantalizes him as merely an impossible possibility.”(12)

Grace and the Supernatural Existential

What, then, of the choice? Is it our own? Norman Geisler provides that the general Calvinist response to this question is that “if God’s choice to save was based on those who chose him, then it would not be based on divine grace but would be based on human effort.” He sensibly states of this claim that it “flies in the face of the whole biblical teaching on grace.”(13)

The simplest definition of God’s grace I can think of is divine help. And for all of human history, we have been in need of it. H. Wheeler Robinson states, “It is emphatically recognized that man is totally incapable of good without grace, and that no element in him can be, so to speak, isolated from the corruption of his fallen nature.”(14) Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel echoes this understanding, stating that, “for all our aspirations we remain spiritually blind unless we are assisted. Without [God’s] love, without His aid, man is unable to come close to Him.”(15)

Karl Rahner

There is truth to the doctrine of total depravity, but human depravity is not “total.” We are, as I said above, in a constant state of existential conflict between the Spirit of God and our sin nature. Because we are faced with a constant barrage of evil influence, and because we have been made frail by our choice of sin, we have always needed the assistance that Heschel spoke of, that divine aid, that grace. And this grace is not only expressed transcendently in what God does for his creatures, but it is expressed immanently in what God does within his creatures. There is in human nature a divine immanence at work, which Karl Rahner referred to as the “supernatural existential,” imparted to humanity by God’s grace, as God’s grace.

This grace, Rahner explains, “makes it possible for [the spiritual movement of mankind] to reach God in himself. Naturally, therefore, grace divines man and bestows upon him a share in the holiness of God.”(16) He further describes grace as the self-communication of God, and that this self-communication “stamps and determines man’s nature.”(17) Such is the supernatural existential. Henri De Lubac describes it as the “divine element which man’s effort cannot reach . . . but which unites itself to man, elevating him . . ., penetrating him in order to divinize him, and thus becoming as it were an attribute of the ‘new man’ described by St. Paul.”(18) It is “God’s gift [that] has been implanted in the depths of man’s nature.”(19) This supernatural existential, this divine immanence, paved the way for humanity to freely enter into relationship with God. The Cross altered human nature, restoring the image of God. Christ breathed God’s breath back into humanity, and solidified his Spirit inside all, making it forever possible for us to reach God.

Rahner goes on to say that the Cross made humans “subject to the universal salvific will of God, . . . redeemed and absolutely obliged to tend to this supernatural end. This . . . is an objective, ontological modification of man, added indeed to his nature by God’s grace and therefore supernatural.”(20) The Cross established an objective reality: the reconciliation and perfection of all of humanity. Christ has made us his own (Phil. 3:12); though we sin, we have been deemed saints (Rom. 1:7).

Thus, Christianity is about subjectively experiencing this objective reality: “We, then, who are perfect, let us think on that!” (Phil. 3:15);(21) “Let us live up to what we have already obtained” (v.16, NIV). This subjective experience can be described as the affirmative response to God’s initiative, to his Spirit dwelling inside us: “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls” (Jas. 1:21). In our subjective experience of salvation, we make ourselves vulnerable and malleable to the Spirit. The kingdom of God is within us (Lk. 17:21), and we must say ‘Yes’ to the Spirit’s work so that the kingdom can be manifested in our lives.(22) 

Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6). He also said that “No one can come to me except drawn by the Father who sent me” (6:44). And he also said that when he is lifted up from the earth, he will draw all people to himself (12:32). No one can come to the Father except through the Son; no one can come to the Son except by being drawn by the Father; and the Son is in the business of drawing all people to himself, through the work of the Spirit, who resides in us (Jn. 14:17; 1 Cor. 2:10–13).

Notes:
(1) Scripture quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
(2) Jonathan Edwards, “God is Not the Author of Sin,” in Readings in Christian Thought, 2nd ed., ed. Hugh T. Kerr (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 203-204.
(3) See Greg Forster, The Joy of Calvinism: Knowing God's Personal, Unconditional, Irresistible, Unbreakable Love (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 35-39.
(4) Harold Knight, The Hebrew Prophetic Consciousness (London: Lutterworth Press, 1947), 9.
(5) Tremper Longman III states that “wisdom [was not understood as] the result of human effort, but rather [as] a gift . . . the gift of the spirit of God.” See “Spirit and Wisdom,” in Presence, Power and Promise: The Role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament., eds. David G. Firth and Paul D. Wegner (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 109. John Levison echoes this understanding, stating that, to the ancient Hebrew mind, “wisdom belongs to the providence of the spirit within, of the influx of life that all humans receive.” See Filled with the Spirit (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing, 2009), 66. He adds that “the language of filling [with the spirit] is not about a particular experience at a particular moment with an eye toward a particular task. . . . [Rather], filling is actually about fullness, about the expansiveness of the spirit within.” See 65–66.
(6) Richard E. Averbeck, “Breath, wind, spirit and Holy Spirit in the Old Testament,” in Presence, Power and Promise: The Role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament., eds. David G. Firth and Paul D. Wegner (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 36.
For more on an Old Testament understanding of the Spirit of God, see Presence, Power and Promise: The Role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament, eds. David G. Firth and Paul D. Wegner (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), Wilf Hildebrandt, An Old Testament Theology of the Spirit of God (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), John R. Levison, Filled with the Spirit, Leon J. Wood, The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), and Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing the Holy Spirit through the Old Testament (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).
(7) Knight, 31.
(8) Levison, 67. Also see p. 81.
(9) For a more thorough overview, see R. C. Sproul, “Humanity’s Radical Corruption,” in What is Reformed Theology? Understanding the Basics, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 117–138. Also, Edwin H. Palmer, “Total Depravity,” in The Five Points of Calvinism, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1972), 11–28, and, David N. Steele, Curtis C. Thomas, and S. Lance Quinn, “Total Depravity or Total Inability,” in The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended, and Documented, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2004), 18–26.
(10) Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Vol. 4.1:57-59 of Church Dogmatics, eds. G.W. Bromily and T.F. Torrance, trans. G.W. Bromily (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 89.
(11) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen, Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 195.
(12) Vernon Grounds, “God’s Universal Salvific Grace,” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1975), 24.
(13) Norman Geisler, “God Knows All Things,” in Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom, eds. David Basinger and Randall Basinger (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 66.
(14) H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, 3rd ed. (Edingburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1926), 194.
(15) Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983), 129.
(16) Karl Rahner, Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, Vol. 16 of Theological Investigations, trans. David Morland (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 40.
(17) Karl Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” in Vol. 6 of Theological Investigations, trans. Graham Harrison (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 394.
(18) Henri De Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature & Grace, trans. Richard Arnandez (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 41.
(19) Ibid., 85.
(20) Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, ed. Cornelius Ernst, trans. Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 161.
(21) This is Karl Barth’s translation of the verse. See his Epistle to the Philippians, 40th anniversary ed., trans. James W. Leitch (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 111. I believe it to be the most accurate translation given the message of the context and the statement in the following verse.
(22) See Rahner and Vorgimler, “Grace,” in Theological Dictionary, 196.

Petitionary Prayer: What is it Good for?

Prayer is often thought to be something that doesn't affect what will actually turn out. Because God already knows what he is going to do, so it is said, prayer is for our benefit, our own change, rather than changing what will occur.

Prayer is also often treated like a vending machine; insert a prayer, out comes a blessing. God is a genie in a bottle, to whom we can go to with any request for him to fill.

With these construals of prayer, it is widely taken for granted or trivialized. I often get the feeling in prayer groups that we're all praying for stuff to happen but we don't actually think anything is going to come from it.

Prayer has become a ritual to which we ascribe power on a surface level, but we don't use it in such a way that we take seriously the power it has.

A problem I think we have is that we pray without acknowledging any limits to our prayers, resulting in unrealistic prayers. Treating God like a genie in a bottle who can do anything for us trivializes prayer, because it doesn't ring true. We don't experience prayer that way. I do not experience the effectiveness of my prayers the same way I experience the effectiveness of a dollar when I use it to buy a Coke from a vending machine. Because of the dissonance between idea and experience--between what is thought about prayer and what the reality is--the power of prayer is demeaned, and prayer becomes just something that we do. Ask for it in prayer because that's what Christians do, but don't expect anything.

I think this trivialization could be changed if we thought about prayer more realistically. In an attempt to do so, I would like to highlight a couple of major limitations on prayer that we seldom acknowledge.

Disclaimer: Talk of what God can or cannot do must not be taken to mean I am questioning God's actual ability. I assume God's omnipotence. However, there are certain things God cannot do within the framework which he himself has set--that is, within the boundaries he set on himself and the natural order. There's a difference between the power God possesses and the power he exercises.

1. God cannot violate the free will of human beings

By saying 'Yes' to free will for humans, God inevitably said 'No' to absolute control; he chose to give humans quite a bit of control over what occurs. Thus, when we pray, we must take into account that God cannot just do anything we ask of him. Consider David Basinger's words:

God so values the inherent integrity of significant human freedom . . . that he will not as a general rule force his created moral agents to perform actions that they do not freely desire to perform. . . . [I] doubt that he would override the freedom of one individual primarily because he was freely asked to do so by another.(1)

For example, if a friend of mine is going into a job interview, I cannot realistically pray that God will simply have the employer hire him/her, as if God is going to overrule the employer's free will and give my friend a job. Put yourself in the employer's position; would God override your freedom and control your actions to accomplish a certain end?

We do not see God doing this in Scripture. Consider these examples:

All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations. Isaiah 65:2

I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?' Ezekiel 33:11

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Matthew 23:37

The Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves. Luke 7:30

You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Acts 7:51

These verses point to the reality of human freedom, and how often that freedom can oppose the will of God; and if God wants people to have freedom, there's only so much he can do in a particular situation.

2. God cannot violate the free will of spiritual beings

This one is often overlooked by Christians, but it's a big one. Walter Wink says,

Prayer involves not just God and people, but God and people and the Powers. What God is able to do in the world is hindered, to a considerable extent, by the rebelliousness, resistance, and self-interest of the Powers exercising their freedom under God.(2)

A striking example of this is found in Daniel 10, in which an angel comes to Daniel in a vision and says:

Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. vv.12-13

This passage tells us that, when Daniel prayed, an angel was dispatched to meet his need, but was held up by an evil being! And it was so bad that had to call in for back-up. This, he says, is why it took so long for Daniel's prayer to be addressed.

Have you ever heard that passage talked about in a sermon on prayer? It gives us an incredibly different picture of the power of prayer than the one we so often engage. Prayer is not simply asking God for things. Prayer is spiritual warfare! Our prayers are spiritual contributions to the victory of the kingdom of God over evil. With prayer, we add oil to the Kingdom fire.

An Alternative View of Prayer

God is always doing everything he can to bring good out of every situation (Rom. 8:28). Terence Fretheim notes that to say God intervenes is a mistake, because it implies, "that God is not normally present but intervenes now and then with a goody or a baddy."(3) Subjectively, it may seem like God intervenes, but in such cases, our eyes are being opened to what God is always doing, or trying to do. As Greg Boyd says, "God sovereignly influences the whole process, working to bring about as much good and to prevent as much evil as possible."(4) William Hasker describes several ways God does this:

There are circumstances which God is able to arrange. There are the influences coming from other persons who are in tune with God's purposes in a situation. And above all, there is the 'internal operation of the Holy Spirit,' working within a person's mind and will in ways we only dimly understand. God respects us, but he does not 'leave us alone' to make our decision in isolation from his loving concern for us.(5)

Given this framework, our prayers create opportunity through which God can work; they create possibilities that were not possible before we prayed. As Boyd says,

By God's own design, [prayer] functions as a crucial constituent in the 'givens' of any particular situation that makes it possible for God more intensely to steer a situation to his desired end.(6)

Or, in Fretheim's words, "prayers make available to God some new ingredients . . . with which to work the divine will into a situation."(7) Put another way, Clark Pinnock says that prayer "expands God's effective presence in the world."(8) This is what we provide as vessels of the Holy Spirit.

Challenge

When you pray, think about how you are praying. Consider the fact that your prayer actually has power to affect what happens, and let that acknowledgement inspire you to pray realistically, taking the free wills of others into account.

This may sound like it limits prayer, but I think if we begin to pray realistically, we will start to pray more fervently and effectively, because it will teach us to pray for things in such a way that we acknowledge our prayer can affect what happens, instead of merely praying ritualistically.

Acknowledging parameters on how we pray will keep us from taking prayer for granted or trivializing it, and will expand our understanding of the power of prayer.

For further reading:
Gregory A. Boyd, "Praying in the Whirlwind," in Satan and the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 209-241.
Terence Fretheim, "Divine Dependence on the Human: An Old Testament Perspective." Ex Auditu 13 (1997): 1-13.
Vincent Brümmer, "Praying for Things to Happen," in What Are We Doing When We Pray? rev. ed. (Burlington, Ashgate, 2008), 33-81.

Notes:
(1) David Basinger, "Practical Implications," in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 160-161.
(2) Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 311.
(3) This was said in a presentation Terence Fretheim gave called "Divine-Human Relationship," which can be found on Itunes U. 
(4) Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 237.
(5) William Hasker, Providence, Evil and the Openness of God (New York: Routledge, 2004), 224.
(6) Boyd, 231.
(7) Terence Fretheim, "Divine Dependence on the Human: An Old Testament Perspective." Ex Auditu 13 (1997), 2.
(8) Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 173.

Concerning the Nature of Faith and Works

"For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified."
Romans 2:13

"Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."
James 1:22

"Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!"
Luke 11:28

Throughout Christ's teaching, there is an emphasis on one's righteousness. Indeed, the essence of being Christian is imitating Christ (Eph. 5:1; Phil. 2:5). However, since the Reformation, the term 'works' has become a scary word for many Christians. We do our best to avoid implying works-based salvation. We often think of works as penance or things we must do to earn salvation or to earn God's favor. Unfortunately, practicing good works can be and has often been perverted into something we must do to earn God's love--what one of my professors calls 'natural human religion'. That being said, performing good works is an important aspect of Christianity and a well-rounded philosophy of it must be established.

The Nature of Faith

James says, “Faith without works is dead” (2:14, 17-24, 26). Rather than advocating works-based salvation, he is describing something natural. The nature of faith needs works to survive. Works fuel faith. Psychologically, this is perfectly natural. A belief, if not fueled by some sort of application in one’s life, will fade. It will die. Likewise, if faith is not actively applied to one’s life, it will disappear. Not because it isn’t good enough, not because God didn’t give the person enough, but because the person did not provide the means necessary for the faith to thrive. As Douglas Moo aptly suggests, “[it] is not that works must be added to faith but that genuine faith includes works. That is its very nature.”(1) Thus, we could say that we are justified by our faith, and our faith is justified by our works. As Moo adds, “Perfect faith is produced through successive acts of obedience.”(2)
Martin Luther struggled with James' concept of faith needing works to survive, almost to the point of disregarding the book as part of the canon. Ironically, he brilliantly conveyed what I am trying to say here:

O it is a living, busy active mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good things incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done this, and is constantly doing them.(3)

The Nature of Works as Participation

Works, rather than “things I should do or else I am not a good Christian,” are acts of obedience to God. They are contributions to God's Kingdom.
Furthermore, performing good works, rather than acting out of obligation or guilt, is actively participating in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. . . . And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. . . . And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (Jn. 14:15, 21, 23)

Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. (15:9b-10)

Works make us vulnerable to God’s work and influence. By obeying God, we say ‘Yes’ to his grace and we open up our hearts for him to enter in and transform our being. With works, we let him have his way in the molding of who we will become. By performing the works of his Kingdom, we involve him in our lives. Thus, by our works, our relationship with him is made stronger. “Draw near to him and he will draw near to you” (Jas. 4:8); not that God isn’t already Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23)—not that anything can objectively separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38–39), but subjectively we can be distanced from him. Thus, when we subjectively engage him, our hearts and minds become more intimate and personal with him.

Our work has the power to embrace or reject God's work. Thus, we can see how natural it is for James to say that faith without works is dead. Faith is the substance of things hoped for (Heb. 11:1), but if the thing hoped for is not close to our hearts and minds, and not being manifested in our lives through our active engagement of it, what happens to the faith? It naturally dies.


The Nature of Works as Subjective Experience

The second thing we must discuss in relation to the nature of works is what the Cross accomplished for humanity. That is, salvation for all (1 Jn. 2:2), for each and every person who ever was and is and is to come. This was the objective reality accomplished on the Cross. Thus, our true nature is hidden in Christ (Col. 3:3). In Christ, we are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), we are sinless, perfect, complete, and wonderfully Christ-like. As Paul says, “We, then, who are perfect, let us think on that!” (Phil. 3:15).(4) However, there is an absolutely essential subjective experience of that reality that is required in order for it to take effect.

First, one needs faith. One cannot experience what Christ accomplished on the Cross without faith. One must have faith in the new creation Christ has made him/her. In order to actually experience the benefits—if you will—of the Cross, one must believe in one’s new nature as a sinless, perfect image of the Amazing Creator. This cannot just be something with which one agrees (especially since it is such an absurd concept; me—perfect?). This cannot just be an idea that one believes and sticks on a shelf but is never actualized. One has to take upon that new nature and embrace it. One must begin to manifest the new creation that he/she really is.
This is where works come in. Works are subjective manifestations of the objective reality we have in Christ. Paul says, “Let us live up to what we have already obtained” (Phil 3:16). We have obtained perfection in Christ; "Therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

This is why Paul says, "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). Faith in Christ means faith in what Christ accomplished for the one's entire being. Christ established in all people a nature from which works flow like rivers. Thus, when we sin, it is only because we do not have faith in our perfect nature in Christ. If we had perfect faith, we would always manifest the new creation and would never sin.
It is not unlike when Morpheus was trying to free Neo from the limitations of his mind. It was only the matrix that was telling him what he couldn't do. In reality, he could jump from building to building (a leap of faith, if you will), best Morpheus in combat, and stop bullets in mid-air; but he had to be opened up to that reality and embrace it so that it was made manifest in his life.

We should stop living in the pre-Cross period. We should stop living in the old, dead flesh. We must stop living in the matrix. Let us obey God's commandments so that we can embrace him with our lives and manifest the truth of our perfection in Christ. This is why works are so essential to the Christian life and why faith without works is dead.

Notes:
(1) Douglas J. Moo, James, reprint ed. (Downers Gover: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 103.
(2) Ibid., 116.
(3) Martin Luther quoted in Ibid., 117.
(4) This is Karl Barth’s translation of the verse. See his Epistle to the Philippians, 40^th anniversary ed., trans. James W. Leitch (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 111.