Status Updates From Christ the Key (Current Iss...

“Contrary to common associations of the term ‘become,’ the Word is not fundamentally altered in becoming incarnate. It undergoes no basic transformation of character or change of location. The Word does not become a man in the way…a character in a Kafka short story might become a roach…The Word is not going somewhere in becoming incarnate with the intent…of gaining a new set of experiences…” (p. 144)

Tanner charging the nouvelle theologie with sneaking in its own form of natura pura:

“By affirming the idea of a nature-based desire for God, one cannot…avoid in any thoroughgoing way the naturalism associated with a two-tier account of nature and grace–nature as a self-enclosed substructure with grace an added superstructure–because the idea of such a desire is itself implicitly naturalistic” (p. 124).

Tanner drawing on Luther’s theology of grace, reminding us to lose our anxiety:

“Everything for us has therefore already been done without us; there is nothing more we need to do, as if some deficiency remained in what Christ has done for us, to be remedied by our own worried attention to the character of our own deeds” (p. 101).

Tanner correcting so much of subordinationist Trinitarianism in contemporary thought:

“Jesus is not the comprehensible stand-in or substitute for an incomprehensible divinity but the very exhibition of the incomprehensible divinity of the Word in human form…” (p. 55)

That is to say, there is no subordination between image and archetype, between second person and first person—both are incomprehensible.

“With the distortion of weak imaging through human imitation comes the loss of strong imaging by way of the presence of the divine image…From prideful wisdom one falls into simple stupidity. All that is left is a weak image in the weakest sense - human capacities themselves as the image of God without the divine Spirit of the Word’s own goodness and truth that allows to be exercised excellently” (p. 35).

Continuing my year long journey with Kathryn Tanner – arguably one of the greatest living theologians.