Untangling the Words: Grace, Prevenient Grace, and Faith

When we talk about God's love and our salvation, our definitions have gotten so muddled, our terminology so churchified that it's easy to lose track of what we're discussing. Ben Witherington, a man that most would grant knows a few things about Christianity, wrote:

And if the greatest being of all wants to love me, why would I not respond positively, grace or no grace? Now having said that, I do think that we are saved by grace through faith, but one can argue that God only gives prevenient grace to those he knows will respond positively. Thus we are back to square one. -- Ben Witherington, comments section of his post on Origen, and the Nature of God's Sovereignty*

After reading that, I felt compelled to type some definitions as quickly as I could manage.

Grace: that someone is inclined to behave kindly towards another; a state of favor. In theology, that God loves the world and that the world is therefore in a state of favor with God.

Prevenient grace: That God loves us first.

Faith: Trust. In theology, a recognition that God is trustworthy, a response to his love, which came first (see prevenient grace).

Which is to say, the fact that God wants to love us is grace. The fact that he loves us while we are plainly unworthy and even hostile is prevenient grace. God's love comes to us through Christ, which is what it means that grace comes through Christ. God's love towards us is, for us, his trustworthiness, his faithfulness. It causes us to trust Him, which is faith.

Which is exactly why the view of some camps that God is uninterested in saving most people is so destructive to faith. It is impossible to trust a Being you plainly think is glad to blast most of the planet for personal reasons, and unwilling to help most people.

It is also exactly why telling people about God's faithfulness in Christ is the seed that bears fruit and changes lives, and why the gospels -- which do nothing but tell about God's faithfulness and love coming to the world through Christ -- are the ultimate evangelistic material.

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* This is not meant to pick on Dr. W. That quote was in the comments section, and comments tend to be written off-the-cuff. I wouldn't have quoted it except it was such a good example of the "theologianese" that I have seen far too often, where the "theologianese" has lost its roots in the real world to the point where someone will oppose a word's ultimate meaning ("if God wants to love me") to its churchified meaning ("grace or no grace") without even realizing it. Systematic theology can become systematic distortion when we aren't more careful about what words mean.