Pre-emptive pardons, which essentially are instruments designed to protect persons who have not yet been investigated or charged with crimes they may have committed, are fundamentally unearned blanket forgiveness. They are what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian and martyr, characterized as “cheap grace.”
He wrote,
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! [Italics mine.]
Bonhoeffer’s words were directed to the German churches of the 1930s, most of which were rapidly capitulating to the demands of the Third Reich. But they are applicable to the present government’s determination to dispense grace cheaply by means of pre-emptive pardons.
Pre-emptive pardons amount to secularized salvation based only on the grace and mercy extended by a mere human being, the president of the United States. The president decrees that the law has not been and is not presently applicable to those he pre-emptively pardons. They are guiltless, no matter what they have done or whom they have harmed. They are guiltless even though they have not confessed, have not repented, and doubtless remain disinclined to change their ways.
They are guiltless by the secular decree of a mere human, by whose dispensation of grace the pardoned are become new persons.
The idea of pre-emptive pardon as salvific, as creating a “new man,” is not without precedent, as the SCOTUS’s 1866 ruling Ex parte Garland reveals. As William Lane Craig writes in his article “Divine Forgiveness as Legal Pardon,”
The truly controversial question is whether a pardon serves to remove the criminal’s guilt. Following the English model, the U.S. courts were at first emphatic as to the effect of a pardon in expiating guilt. In Ex parte Garland (1866) the Supreme Court famously declared:
... the inquiry arises as to the effect and operation of a pardon, and on this point all the authorities concur. A pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the guilt of the offender; and when the pardon is full, it releases the punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence. If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching; if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities, and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity (Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333, 380-1 [1866]).
For the educated American in 1866, the teachings of the Bible still infused everything, including the law. The Ex parte Garland clause cited reflects the general knowledge of Paul’s letter to the Romans, in which the apostle outlined the happy results of salvation, which gave freedom from the condemnation of the law and effectuated a new birth.
The justices applied Paul’s doctrine of salvation to the case. But where they erred, and where President Biden errs in considering issuing pre-emptive pardons, is in declaring that guilt is removed by a legal decree; that sin is no longer a force to be reckoned with; and even more importantly, that the human propensity to sin has also evaporated.
In other words, the SCOTUS 1866 ruling established antinomianism, an ancient heresy Paul addressed. When Paul asks the question, “Shall I sin that grace abound,” for the antinomian, the answer is “YES!” For the person issued a pre-emptive pardon, the answer is also “YES! Since I have a pre-emptive pardon exempting me from the law, I can do anything I want to do.”
Joe Biden, who calls himself a practicing Catholic, is doubtless ignorant of the Church’s teachings against antinomianism as well as the Church’s teaching that God alone can free from sin and the law. He is thinking of establishing himself as a dispenser of grace only God can give. By a pre-emptive pardon, he would release a whole class of people from the law, thus allowing them to live as they wish, free of any consequences of sin.
We have in Joe Biden’s potential granting of pre-emptive pardons the wildly distorted and completely secularized equivalent of plenary indulgences — an indication that once deeply established Christian cultural mores are never entirely eradicated, but merely take on warped forms.
A plenary indulgence is a grace from the Catholic Church that removes all temporal punishment for sins that have already been forgiven. It is considered a powerful way to obtain remission of punishment for all sins committed up to that point — as long as the recipient repents and meets all the requirements.
A pre-emptive pardon does not require admission of guilt, repentance, or consequences. To summarize Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous quote on cheap grace and antinomianism, “the essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.”
The White House’s pre-emptive pardons, should they be issued, are a secular dispensation of “grace,” which is redefined as mere affiliation with the prevailing political party, an affiliation sufficient to attain a soul as white as snow.
In short, the State, which has for decades gradually pre-empted the role of the Church, would essentially hijack the Christian belief in salvation provided by God and make it a matter of state religion, with the president appropriating God-like authority.
But the Church has always seen salvation from sin and expiation of guilt as a matter between God and sinful human beings. Jewish and Christian faiths alike see sin as ultimately being a transgression of God’s law, with forgiveness and erasure of guilt within God’s provenance alone. As King David repentantly wrote after his murder of a loyal friend and adultery with Bathsheba, “Against You and You only have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight.”
No president can put himself in the position of savior, as one who can forgive sins, including sins that have not yet been committed. No one can put an entire group of people above the law by declaring them free of sin, guilt, and legal consequences. To do so would be to establish what is essentially a protection racket.
Bonhoeffer wrote, “Grace cannot be had for nothing. ... It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.”
He concludes, “Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”
At this Christmas season, Christians remember the incarnation of Christ as the Son of Man and the Son of God, who takes away the sins of the world. At Christmas, Grace was embodied; Grace come to Earth; Grace releases the punishment of the law and blots out the guilt of sin.
May the costly grace of Christ rest on you this Christmas.
Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines. A regular contributor to American Thinker, she may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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