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operating or subsequent grace. The former enables the will to choose the good, and the latter
co-operates with the already enabled will, to do the good. In his struggle with Semi-Pelagianism
Augustine emphasized the entirely gratuitous and irresistible character of the grace of God.
In the subsequent struggles the Augustinian doctrine of grace was only partly victorious.
Seeberg expresses himself as follows: “Thus the doctrine of ‘grace alone’ came off victorious;
but the Augustinian doctrine of predestination was abandoned. The irresistible grace of
predestination was driven from the field by the sacramental grace of baptism.”[History of
Doctrine, I, p. 382.] During the Middle Ages the Scholastics paid considerable attention to the
subject of grace, but did not always agree as to the details of the doctrine. Some approached
the Augustinian, and others the Semi-Pelagian conception of grace. In general it may be said
that they conceived of grace as mediated through the sacraments, and that they sought to
combine with the doctrine of grace a doctrine of merit which seriously compromised the
former. The emphasis was not on grace as the favor of God shown to sinners, but on grace as a
quality of the soul, which might be regarded as both uncreated (i.e., as the Holy Spirit), or as
increated, or wrought in the hearts of men by the Holy Spirit. This infused grace is basic to the
development of the Christian virtues, and enables man to acquire merit with God, to merit
further grace, though he cannot merit the grace of perseverance. This can only be obtained as a
free gift of God. The Scholastics did not, like Augustine, maintain the logical connection
between the doctrine of grace and the doctrine of predestination.
The Reformers went back to the Augustinian conception of grace, but avoided his
sacramentarianism. They placed the emphasis once more on grace as the unmerited favour of
God shown to sinners, and represented it in a manner which excluded all merit on the part of
the sinner. Says Smeaton: “The term grace, which in Augustine’s acceptation intimated the
inward exercise of love, awakened by the operations of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), and which in
the scholastic theology had come to denote a quality of the soul, or the inner endowments, and
infused habits of faith, love, and hope, was now taken in the more scriptural and wider sense
for the free, the efficacious favour which is in the divine mind.”[The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,
p. 346.] While the Reformers used the term grace in connection with justification, in other
connections they often used the phrase, “the work of the Holy Spirit,” instead of the term
grace. While they all emphasized grace in the sense of the internal and saving operation of the
Holy Spirit, Calvin especially developed the idea of common grace, that is, a grace which, while
it is the expression of the favour of God, does not have a saving effect. According to the
splendid dogma-historical study of Dr. H. Kuiper on Calvin on Common Grace,[pp. 179 ff.] he
even distinguished three kinds of common grace, namely, universal common grace, general
common grace, and covenant common grace. The Arminians departed from the doctrine of the
Reformation on this point. According to them God gives sufficient (common) grace to all men,