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2 - Grace (part one)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Kathryn Tanner
Kathryn Tanner
Affiliation:
University of Chicago Divinity School
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Summary

With an eye to Christ, who is both the model for and means to our becoming the image of God, we saw in the last chapter that humans primarily image God by attachment to the divine image itself, an attachment that forms human life according to its pattern. Through the power of the Holy Spirit within them, humans are molded by the very impression of the divine image to become human versions of it. This Christ-centered treatment of the way humans image God contained implicitly an account of grace. We become images in the strongest fashion in being bound in Christ to what we are not, the second person of the trinity, and by having what we are not, the Holy Spirit, within us as the power for new life according to that divine image. The strong sense here in which we participate or share in what we are not could simply be called grace.

In this chapter (and the next) I make this account of grace explicit by developing the way it accords quite well with Protestant sensibilities while bridging the usual theological divides between Protestants and Catholics. Despite the fact that early church sources formed the underpinning for the treatment of the way humans image God in the last chapter, the Protestant resonances of what that treatment implies about grace are nevertheless very strong.

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Chapter
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Christ the Key , pp. 58 - 105
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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