Colin Gunton writes that ‘the notion of divine grace is best understood as a mode of God’s action towards, or relatedness to, the creature and not as some kind of substance that God imparts to the creature. For that reason there is much to be said for P. T. Forsyth’s objection to the expression in Newman’s hymn, ‘a higher gift than grace’. There can be no higher gift than grace if grace means a form of God’s relatedness to us. If that is so, it would also seem right to say that the relationship of God to Adam and Eve in Genesis 2, before the Fall, is a gracious one, or with Rahner that all creaturely existence is in some way graced existence. Grace is not something reserved for sinners, we might say, but the fundamental form of God’s relation to the creature.’ (God and Freedom, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995,126). But don’t believe him, he’s just ‘messing with your head!:-)