Christ the Key by Kathryn Tanner (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 311 doctrine a compellingtheological way of affirming unequivocally God’s universal will for salvation without falling into the theological error of teaching irresistible universal salvation. Torre’s book points to an urgent desideratum—a translation (with commentary) of Marín-Sola’s three central essays together with a major selection from the Concordia Tomista. REINHARD HÜTTER Duke University Divinity School Durham, North Carolina Christ the Key. By KATHRYN TANNER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. 322. $30.00 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-521-73277-2. Kathryn Tanner has fulfilled her promise of a sequel to her brief systematic theology entitled Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity (2001). In that volume she began with Jesus to situate the entire spectrum of Christian doctrinal loci. Although “brief” it displayed her virtuosity of theological engagement, revealing a consistency in thinking within the classical Christological and Trinitarian categories that inform and shape the praxis of Christian faith and life. Her interlocutors were many, but primary attention was given to the Greek Fathers and the Reformed tradition, the latter under the guidance (in the main) of its two greats doctors, John Calvin and Karl Barth. Neither slavish in her imitation, nor cautious in her speculative reach, Tanner offered a gem of a book, one that demonstrated the relevance of Christian dogma for life in the world. The present text, Christ the Key, follows up on the prior project, now dealing in depth with issues that require attention but would have interrupted the flow of her brief systematics. If the previous book was all about grace (in the best Barthian terms) the present one is all about the parsing of what we mean by such grace. To deal successfully with this, some intricate issues require sustained attention. Tanner’s first move is in the direction of theological anthropology that builds on two basic principles from the prior volume, namely, a “non-competitive relation between God and creatures” and a “radical interpretation of divine transcendence.” The former has been captured in the long-familiar axiom of Karl Rahner that the divine-world relation varies in direct, not inverse proportion. The latter accentuates Tanner’s Barthian provenance and is a signature of the Reformed theological tradition. In Christ the Key Tanner argues for a “Christcentered treatment of our creation in the image of God” (1), intended to affirm both the distinction between God and creature as well as the necessity of seeing how this is instantiated throughout creation in Christ. Hence she is critical of Augustine and those in the Latin tradition who locate the divine image in some BOOK REVIEWS 312 aspect of the human soul such as intellect. Rather, the image of God is something given to them, not of their own possession (the perennial Barthian worry), borrowed from the gift bestowed. The emphasis is on image as participation, realized in Christ, whose image in his human nature through the hypostatic union is, nevertheless, “a low-level image of God . . . insofar as the end product is a human state” (17). Thus Tanner can even speak of this gift as something “alien” to us (12), given beyond our created nature, and requiring a “gift of grace” (19). The language is typical of the Reformers’ doctrine of justification, intending that the original state was characterized by “living off God . . . drawing their very life . . . from the divine image to which they cling” (15). If readers, especially Catholics, are begging for more nuances, Tanner does not disappoint. Two chapters follow, on the intricacies of the theology of grace that informs these positions. In chapters 2 and 3, respectively entitled “Grace (Part 1)” and “Grace (Part 2),” Tanner engages in a sustained conversation with the Catholic theology of grace. In both chapters she attempts a new solution to Protestant-Catholic differences, albeit with a Protestant twist. Two issues are the primary focus of chapter 2: (1) nature-grace and sin-grace as emblematic of Catholic and Protestant approaches respectively, and (2) the distinction between justification and sanctification relative to interior transformation. On the first issue Tanner’s account and, therefore, solution is quite unique. To put it simply, by her lights, nature without grace (more on “pure nature” in...