Role of Grace in Atonement (Green/Huntsman 5 of 5)

What's the role of grace in atonement of Christ? Dr Deidre Green & Dr Eric Huntsman will weigh in. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/XmmPPgNaJes Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/ Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission Role of Grace in Atonement GT  00:36  Since I mentioned Willie Grills being a Lutheran pastor, of course, the subject of grace and works has to come up, especially with a Mormon talking to a Lutheran. How does grace and works fit in with the atonement? Eric  00:58  Do you want me to start with that, Deirdre? (Chuckling) This is a whole other conversation, We're going to have to do a lot of Paul and late Pauline stuff. I think it's actually a false dichotomy, number one. I mean, we're basing ourselves on a sequence of arguments in Galatians, Romans and then Ephesians. And then we're using a proof text in James, when James probably didn't have Paul in front of him. So when James says, "Faith without works is dead," he's not responding to Paul. GT  01:24  Thomas Wayment told me he was pushing back on that, on the grace, on too much grace. Eric  01:30  In the context of James chapter two, the works there, are works of charity. He's saying that if someone is naked or hungry, you need to put clothes on him and feed him. So, that's the first thing I would say. But one of the great things we're talking about the changes, in the trajectory of the way we've described the Book of Mormon over the years, when I was growing up, and Rick, you and I might be closer in age than the Deidre is to us. But, we never talked about grace in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, really. We didn't. And we started talking about it when President Benson started making us read the Book of Mormon so much. Right? Because you couldn't get away from what the Book of Mormon was teaching about grace. Back to that earlier idea, we teach to our distinctives, we understood that there's a reason for ordinances and there's a reason for obedience. And so that seems like works to us. And we felt like, at least, some Protestants, particularly evangelical Protestants, born again Protestants are emphasizing grace too much. So we shy away from the grace and we emphasize the works. Eric  02:30  But when we actually got in the Book of Mormon, if grace is what Jesus does for us, that we can't do for ourselves, it's a gift. That's what it means in Greek, or as Elder Bednar explains it from a Book of Mormon perspective, it's the strength and enabling power of the atonement. I mean, that's the connection with this topic, it's the power of the atonement. The most you can come up with--I mean, I know Elder McConkie had a rubric for it. I mean, he had the pure grace, which is the resurrection. And then he had conditional grace, which made all of us just bristle, which is you have to have faith, repentance and baptism to be forgiven for sin. But the Roman Catholics gave me a model for ordinances, which was helpful, since a lot of times--I mean, we have different kinds of works. Are we talking about ordinances as works or are we talking about good deeds as works. Let's make it ordinances for a while. For the Roman Catholics, their sacraments are conduits of grace. It's the way God has prepared for the grace of Jesus to flow into us. Well, that's exactly what we think ordinances are. You put yourself in a position to receive the grace of Christ. In terms of good works, doing good deeds, I mean, if you don't do them, I guess it's a sin of omission. So, you have to repent of that. But any number of good deeds, taking casseroles to people when there's been a funeral or mowing the lawn or doing your ministering, none of that compensates for sin. So, works as good deeds never take the place of grace. But if we're looking at works as the necessity to conform to ordinances,