Of course, Luther's solution to this set of three Augustinian questions did not end the matter, but his reflections have become decisive for what it means to be a protestant Christian. This is why I am dismayed to hear some today advocating what sounds like a strange departure from the radical narrative of grace we hear in Luther and Augustine. Whether in the questions of students struggling to understand their faith for the first time, or in the arguments heard on the floors of our governing bodies, some are insisting that if God's grace is to be defined as truly grace, then it must be something that is not binding on God. Grace by definition, they say, must be something that God remains free to withhold. This view is put in differing ways.
Grace is given willy-nilly and hither and yon, depending on the uprightness of the recipient.
This position, of course, has a certain earthly human logic. Whatever hypothetical power God may have to withhold grace is rendered beside the point in the outpouring love of Christ. This miscarriage in the understanding of grace trades on defining God's disposition to be for human beings as though grace could somehow be decoupled from its concrete embodiment in the promise, as though it could somehow stand apart from Christ's unreserved embrace of the Other. Grace is more than just a juridical act by which God saves us from our sin. Prior to any such action, grace is the very reality of who God is.