Prevenient Grace
The grace that comes first — drawing the soul before it can ever turn to God
Prevenient grace is the grace that goes before, enabling a person to respond to God prior to conversion. Augustine articulated the priority of grace, the Second Council of Orange affirmed it, and Wesley made it central to his theology. All major traditions recognize such a category, but they differ on whether this grace can be resisted: Catholic and Arminian views affirm its resistibility, while Reformed theology understands saving grace differently.
How it traveled
- A Treatise on the Predestination of the SaintsHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- A Treatise Against Two Letters of the PelagiansHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- A Treatise on Grace and Free WillHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- A Treatise on Rebuke and GraceHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- A Treatise on the Grace of Christ, and on Original SinHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- A Treatise on Nature and GraceHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- Book Second. of the Knowledge of God the Redeemer, in Christ, as First Manifested to the Fathers, Under the Law, and Thereafter to Us Under the GospelGeneva · c. 1564 CEexplains
- Book Third. the Mode of Obtaining the Grace of Christ. the Benefits It Confers, and the Effects Resulting from ItGeneva · c. 1564 CEexplains
- XIV Five discourses on the soul's eternal salvationNorthampton, Massachusetts · c. 1758 CEexplains
- Seventeen Occasional SermonsNorthampton, Massachusetts · c. 1758 CEexplains
Key passages(20)
Each passage is tagged by what it does with the idea: explains it, applies it in practice, redefines it with a new meaning, or challenges it. Relevance shows how directly the passage is about this idea.
A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 18.—The Desire of Good is God’s Gift. For they have thought that it was to be objected to us that we say “that God inspires into unwilling and resisting man the desire,” not of any very great
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A Treatise on Grace and Free Will · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 44 [XXII.]—Gratuitous Grace Exemplified in Infants. Men, however, may suppose that there are certain good deserts which they think are precedent to justification through God’s grace; all the
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Men Naturally God's Enemies · Jonathan Edwards
2. All the restraints that men are under from the word and ordinances, is from grace. The word and ordinances of God might have some degree of influence on men’s natural principles of self-love, to re
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A Treatise Concerning Man’s Perfection in Righteousness · Augustine of Hippo
(41.) Specimens of Pelagian Exegesis. But I beg of you to see what kind of objection, after all, he makes, that to him who “willeth and runneth” there is no necessity for God’s mercy, which actually
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A Treatise on Grace and Free Will · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 38.—We Would Not Love God Unless He First Loved Us. The Apostles Chose Christ Because They Were Chosen; They Were Not Chosen Because They Chose Christ. Let no one, then, deceive you, my breth
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A Treatise on Nature and Grace · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 29 [XXVI.]—A Simile to Show that God’s Grace is Necessary for Doing Any Good Work Whatever. God Never Forsakes the Justified Man If He Be Not Himself Forsaken. See the treatise De Peccatorum
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Seventeen Occasional Sermons · Jonathan Edwards
3. You do not know that you shall ever have such an opportunity again. God is now striving with you by his Spirit. If you should lose the strivings of his Spirit, it may be that God’s Spirit would nev
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A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 26.—Further Appeals to Cyprian’s Teaching. Does that holy and so memorable instructor of the Churches in the word of truth, deny that there is free will in men, because he attributes to God t
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A Treatise on Grace and Free Will · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 17.—The Faith that He Kept Was the Free Gift of God. His last clause runs thus: “I have kept the faith.” But he who says this is the same who declares in another passage, “I have obtained mer
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Anselm's Cur Deus Homo · Anselm of Canterbury
How those things which are to be said should be received. Boso. As the right order requires us to believe the deep things of Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason; so to my mi
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Book Second. of the Knowledge of God the Redeemer, in Christ, as First Manifested to the Fathers, Under the Law, and Thereafter to Us Under the Gospel · John Calvin
7. But perhaps there will be some who, while they admit that the will is in its own nature averse to righteousness, and is converted solely by the power of God, will yet hold that, when once it is pre
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A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 34 [XVII.]—The Special Calling of the Elect is Not Because They Have Believed, But in Order that They May Believe. Let us, then, understand the calling whereby John xv. 16. Eph. i. 4. Jas.
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Book Third. the Mode of Obtaining the Grace of Christ. the Benefits It Confers, and the Effects Resulting from It · John Calvin
23. If you attend properly, you will perceive that the Apostle speaks not of one particular lapse or two, but of the universal revolt by which the reprobate renounce salvation. It is not strange that
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Discussion: First Part · Martin Luther
Sect. LXIII. — NOTHING, therefore, could be more absurdly adduced in support of “Free-will” than this passage of Ezekiel, nay, it makes with all possible force directly against “Free-will.” For it is
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A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 37 [XIX.]—The Beginning of a Good Will is the Gift of Grace. But you think that a man is so aided by the grace of God in a good work, that in stirring up his will to that very good work you b
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A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 22 [X.]—According to Whose Purpose the Elect are Called. Why, then, is it that, in what follows, where they mention what they themselves think, they say they confess “That grace also assists
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A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 23.—Nothing is Commanded to Man Which is Not Given by God. Since these things are so, I see that nothing is commanded to man by the Lord in the Holy Scriptures, for the sake of trying his fre
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A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 38.—What is the Nature of the Gift of Perseverance that is Now Given to the Saints. And thus God willed that His saints should not—even concerning perseverance in goodness itself—glory in the
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A Treatise on the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 15 [XIV.]—He Who Has Been Taught by Grace Actually Comes to Christ. Now as touching this kind of teaching, the Lord also says: “Every man that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, come
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A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 3 [II.]—Even the Beginning of Faith is of God’s Gift. Therefore I ought first to show that the faith by which we are Christians is the gift of God, if I can do that more thoroughly than I hav
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