My New Testament professor brought this up in class today.
When people talk about how God’s grace works, many refer to cat and monkey theology. A mama cat with kittens in danger, grabs them gruffly by their neck and removes them from danger. God sees the mess we’re in and picks us up and rescues us out of danger
A mama monkey would walk to the little one and stand over to reach the baby. The little one had to reach and grab on, if it didn’t that was it. With this argument there has to be a response on our part that effects our rescue or salvation.
For a colleague of my professor's neither worked. He responded with a water theology. Water has the property of buoyancy, we can float in it. It’s not a matter of something that we do to effect it, and not something that the water does and forces on us. If we pick up our feet from the pool and let go to the things we are holding on to, that buoyancy is there. We cant force it or create it. It’s there all the time whether we need it or not, or choose to participate, nothing we do takes away from the property of buoyancy of grace.
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