The Tensions of Grace: Part 3, Strong and Weak Images of God

To share a concrete illustration of how theologians attempt to balance grace across creation theology and soteriology, navigating continuity and discontinuity, let's revisit Kathryn Tanner's insights from her book Christ the Key, which I wrote about a few years ago. 

Tanner's reflections in Christ the Key concern human nature and center on the question: What does it mean that humans are created in the image of God?

One common answer here is that humans possess, as created beings, some trait or capacity that is analogous to God's nature. For example, some have suggested that humans reflect the image of God in that we possess intellect and rationality. As Tanner writes:

Different creatures can be more or less the image of God in virtue of their particular created characteristics. Human beings in virtue of their rationality, for example, might naturally be better images of God's own Word and Wisdom than creatures without intelligence. 

Here we find a creational grace, how every human person "naturally" and "intrinsically" can be viewed as being an "image of God."

And yet, while Tanner accepts this sort of creaturely "imaging," she ultimately rejects creaturely imitation as the deepest meaning of what it means for us to reflect the image of God. Tanner calls creaturely imitation--the notion that our creaturely traits or characteristics reflect God's image--"weak imaging." The reason for this is due to the radical ontological difference between creatures and God. That is, any creaturely characteristic, like intelligence, is so ontologically diminished when compared to God, such a poor, broken reflection, that it can scarcely be called an "image of God." And beyond this ontological contrast, there is also the wound of sin. 

In contrast, then, to this "weak imaging," Tanner suggests that there is "strong imaging," where humans reflect the image of God by directly receiving and participating in God's own self and life. And this life isn't produced through creaturely striving, but comes to us as a gift. As Tanner writes,

God finds a way, however, to communicate the goodness of God's own life to creatures without abolishing of mitigating the difference between them and God. In a second, much stronger way of being an image through participation in what one is not, creatures would receive the divine image itself for their own, and end the futile struggles, so to speak, to approximate God in and through what they are simply in themselves. Creatures would receive from God what is beyond themselves--the divine image itself--and be considered the image of God primarily for that reason. They would image God, not by imitating him, but in virtue of the gift to them of what remains alien to them, the very perfection of the divine image that they are not, now having become their own. Rather than being in themselves merely similar to what God is in some full and perfect fashion beyond their reach, they would share in, hold in common with God, what is and remains itself divine, the perfect divine image itself.

Tanner calls this sort of "strong imaging" the imaging of "participation," and, per the title of her book, Christ is our key to understanding here. Christ reflects the image of God not through some human trait or characteristic pushed to the heights. Christ isn't super-smart or super-strong. Christ is, rather, the image of God through participation. "I and the Father are one," Jesus says. Jesus says the Father lives in him and works through him. And in this humanly participation in the life of God Christ shows us how human nature can strongly reflect the image of God.

Summarizing, human nature can reflect the image of God in a strong sense by "showing off the light of the divine image itself...by glowing with a light that remains another's."

And beyond a merely passive reflection, Tanner goes on to argue that the divine image remolds, remakes, and reshapes human nature. In this we see another contrast between creation theology and soteriology: 

All creatures can do something like this showing off or shining back the divine glory given to them. Even now creatures can glorify God, glow with a kind of divine penumbra by pointing to, and in that sense making manifest, the goodness of the God who made them. The wonders of the world speak of the wonders of God...

What remains unusual about human beings--and what therefore makes them the image of God as other creatures are not--is that the character or identity of human life is remolded in the process. Humans do not simply reflect the image of God. In doing so something happens to human life itself. Its very own character is altered or transformed for the better. Humanity takes on, in short, its own perfect shape by being reworked through attachment to the divine image.

By way of this attachment, its very human character becomes an image of God in a stronger fashion than before, beyond anything possible simply by participating in God as a creature...[H]uman nature becomes, so to speak, imprinted with the character of the divine seal itself by way of the impression that the very presence of the divine image makes upon it.

In light of the topic of this series, we can see in all this how Tanner is working to balance the tensions of grace, arguing for locations of both continuity and discontinuity. As for creation theology, all of creation glows with a divine penumbra. The wonders of the world speak to the wonders of God.

And yet, there is a "stronger imaging" available, beyond the "weaker imaging" of creation. This stronger imagining is soteriological, where human nature receives grace as a gift that is alien to it, an ontological participation in God's very life. Such a participation reshapes and remakes human nature, elevating it ways that go beyond mere creaturely potentiality. We cannot, solely with creaturely effort, bridge the gap to God. But God can elevate human nature and bring us into ontological communion. 

Now, to say this again, I'm not here judging Tanner's contrast between "weak" and "strong" imaging of God. Some theologians, for example, would object to Tanner's description of grace as being "alien." This goes to the debate regarding if humans have a natural desire for God. We'll revisit that issue in the next post. For today, however, I offer Tanner's contrast between weak and strong imaging to give a concrete example of how theologians attempt to balance grace across their creation theology and soteriology, noting locations of continuity and discontinuity.