Christ must be bettered, heightened from weak union to strong, for example, through the repeated performance of the Eucharist in the power of the Spirit. "Coming after the fact as it does, our assumption by Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit means Christ's assumption of us in our active sinfulness. When we are taken with Christ to the Father to be blessed as Christ's humanity was by the Father, we are also, then, being forgiven our sins; the Father's favor takes the form of mercy in our case. The Father favors us and showers us with gifts, not because we are not sinful but because we are seen in Christ, the one in whom we live, as those who are in need of the Father's help, through the Son, in the Spirit. Sinners assumed by Christ, our living out of that assumption will be marked by great struggle, against our own sins as well as those of others." The struggle for purification and perfection of our humanity will be more extensive and protracted than anything seen in Jesus. Rather than simple struggle against temptation and the sort of external conflicts that Jesus fought with the consequences of the sins of others meeting up with him from without, the struggle to purify and perfect our humanity will entail (in addition to all this) renewed conflicts with active sin in our very persons. wwwwwwwww do Christian lives reproduce in their own distinct way, then, the incarnation of Christ and its processional, conflictual effects over the course of a fully human life. They will also reproduce in their way Jesus' final post-resurrection perfection. Christ's incarnation is matched by our assumption into Christ. Assumed by Christ, Christ becomes the subiect of our acts in much the way the second Person of the Trinity is the subject of Jesus acts. 67 Our acts are Christ's acts, we can say Christ acts when we act, in so far as what we are and do comes by way of the power of Christ, in !! See Gregory of Nyssa, 'An Address on Religious Instruction,' 303-4. See Wilfried Joest, Ontologie der Person bei Luther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1967), 233-320; Ingolf Dalferth and Eberhard Jüngel, 'Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit,' Christlicher Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft, vol. 24 of Enzyklopädische Bibliothek, ed. F. Böckle, F.-X. Kaufman, et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), 61-99; and Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1, 149, 159–62; 1/2, trans. G. Thomson and H. Knight (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 313-14; and II/2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 539. so far as we are carried beyond our capacities by Christ who takes us to himself. Being and doing what we can only be and do with him, our characteristics and achievements as graced persons are attributed to Christ. Christ is the subject of our acts for the same reason the Son of God was the subject of Jesus' acts: because Christ's agency is primary in our graced lives the way the Word is primary in Jesus' life; we act in a purified, elevated fashion (to the extent that we do!) only because Christ first acts for us by assuming us to himself, through the power of the Spirit. Despite the primacy of the Word as subject, in Jesus the same acts are attributed indifferently to either the human being Jesus or the Word incarnate; they are both Jesus' and the Word's because here the two are really one. Assumed by Christ, our graced lives, however, are more Christ's than ours. The character of our graced lives is alien to us as sinners. Unlike what happened in Jesus, we are not constituted from the first as subjects by such gifts; they come to us as already constituted persons in opposition to who we already are. Indeed, what we are and do as graced persons cannot be attributed to us at all, if 'us' means the people who are assumed by Christ. These characteristics and deeds are ours only in so far as we becomes ourselves-new people - in relation to Christ, assumed by him. We become new subjects of attribution as we become the predicates of Christ, as our lives, in other words, belong to him; only as subjects in that sense are graced char- acteristics as much our own as Christ's. There are two subjects here, where a human being is assumed by Christ, and not one, as when the Son of God assumed humanity rather than a man. This difference means that, unlike Christ who simply is the Word, we come to Christ from a distance, by way of an external call; addressing us, Christ appears outside us as the one to whom we are to be united. Our relation to Christ has more the flavor, then, of Christ's own relation to the Father, a relationship of fellowship and correspondence of wills. Our will is not Christ's will in the way the human will of Christ simply is the will of the Son, without needing to See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960), 164, 175. 56 57 from be brought into correspondence with it. Instead, our lives are made over as a result of their being assumed. Though Christ comes to us from outside us, Christ nevertheless becomes our own. Assumed by Christ, Christ lives in us, just as, assumed by the Son, Christ's human life showed the workings of the Word in and through it. Within our own lives, Christ works to revise the lives we would otherwise live without him. The force of our assumption by Christ is felt, as it was in Jesus' own life, in and through the way our lives are led, in and through what happens in them, the shape they take, whereby the gifts of God come to be distributed to us and through us to others - other persons and the world as a whole. The one process - Christ's dwelling in us and the effects that has is dependent upon the other our being assumed into Christ's own life though (again as they were in Christ) not in a temporal sequence. Because we have been assumed into Christ's life, the changes in our lives are continuously fed by the workings of Christ in us through the power of the Spirit. The two processes, moreover, do not simply run alongside each other; the one- assumption by Christ - is, instead, the immanent motor of the other. The character of graced lives is twofold or theanthropic in the way the acts of Christ's life were; graced acts seem made up of two different powers - our own and Christ's Christ's accounting for any purifying, healing and elevating of our own capacities manifest in our acts. - In us, however, unlike the life of Christ, the two processes fall far short of any perfect correspondence of identity. In Christ, what the Father gives to the humanity of Jesus through the Son's assumption of it is identical with what Jesus gives back to the Father in and through a human life of praise and service. This is one continuous action, displaying the very same character throughout: God's love for human beings is the very love that this human being, Jesus, displays for those human beings and the very love that this human being, Jesus, reflects back to God. As Karl Barth expresses this equivalence: 'The self-giving in which God himself. . . became and is . . . this man, is that which is achieved and manifested in his self-giving to God as a human act.” With us, there are two processes and they do not correspond at all 269 well, at least at first. What Christ gives us by assuming us is not simply identical with the lives we live because we live before being assumed by Christ our lives must be made to conform to what Christ is giving Our lives do not conform to what Christ is giving us and have to be brought into greater conformity with Christ's own action over time, because we are assumed by Christ as sinners. [I]n distinction from the angels of God and the company of men made perfect, [the church] finds in itself, both as a whole and in all its members, certain limits, not in the divine self-giving but in its own knowledge, its own freedom, and the form in which it may respond.... - a provisional form in contrast to the perfect form for which we may here and now wait, and to which the Church may move. 70 The perfect correspondence of identity that is Christ's life remains our hope. Already achieved by Christ, who as the very same one is both the Son giving and the human being receiving, we aim towards. this unity or identity by efforts, never completed in this life, to eradicate sin and match the life intended for us by Christ's assump- tion of us. Not simply a future yet to be for us and not simply the past achieved by Christ but not by ourselves, our future is present in us as Christ shapes us in accordance with himself." 72 Corresponding to Christ's own resurrected life, some final glori- fication awaits us, then, in which the perfections of God's own life and light will be perfectly reflected back to God in us, the struggle against sin will be no more and we will hear the call of the Word, as Karl Barth suggests in his Ethics, as our very own voice 22 The will of God for the communication of God's perfect fullness will no longer be heard as an external command obligating our service but as the natural inclination of our own hearts and minds. Through our own witness and working as ministers of God's grace, the whole world will reflect God's glory in conscious praise. A kingdom or arena suffused by the very life of the Trinity will be all and all without struggle against a kingdom of moral and physical corruption and structures of injustice; the whole world will be victorious over sin and death as Christ was before us. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1,675. See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/I, 116. Barth, Ethics, 480, 487, 492, 494, 501, 502-3, 505, 512, 514. 73 Ibid., 498, 503. * See Barth, Christian Life, 75. 58 59
Christ must be bettered, heightened from weak union to strong, for example, through the repeated performance of the Eucharist in the power of the Spirit. "Coming after the fact as it does, our assumption by Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit means Christ's assumption of us in our active sinfulness. When we are taken with Christ to the Father to be blessed as Christ's humanity was by the Father, we are also, then, being forgiven our sins; the Father's favor takes the form of mercy in our case. The Father favors us and showers us with gifts, not because we are not sinful but because we are seen in Christ, the one in whom we live, as those who are in need of the Father's help, through the Son, in the Spirit. Sinners assumed by Christ, our living out of that assumption will be marked by great struggle, against our own sins as well as those of others." The struggle for purification and perfection of our humanity will be more extensive and protracted than anything seen in Jesus. Rather than simple struggle against temptation and the sort of external conflicts that Jesus fought with the consequences of the sins of others meeting up with him from without, the struggle to purify and perfect our humanity will entail (in addition to all this) renewed conflicts with active sin in our very persons. wwwwwwwww do Christian lives reproduce in their own distinct way, then, the incarnation of Christ and its processional, conflictual effects over the course of a fully human life. They will also reproduce in their way Jesus' final post-resurrection perfection. Christ's incarnation is matched by our assumption into Christ. Assumed by Christ, Christ becomes the subiect of our acts in much the way the second Person of the Trinity is the subject of Jesus acts. 67 Our acts are Christ's acts, we can say Christ acts when we act, in so far as what we are and do comes by way of the power of Christ, in !! See Gregory of Nyssa, 'An Address on Religious Instruction,' 303-4. See Wilfried Joest, Ontologie der Person bei Luther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1967), 233-320; Ingolf Dalferth and Eberhard Jüngel, 'Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit,' Christlicher Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft, vol. 24 of Enzyklopädische Bibliothek, ed. F. Böckle, F.-X. Kaufman, et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), 61-99; and Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1, 149, 159–62; 1/2, trans. G. Thomson and H. Knight (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 313-14; and II/2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 539. so far as we are carried beyond our capacities by Christ who takes us to himself. Being and doing what we can only be and do with him, our characteristics and achievements as graced persons are attributed to Christ. Christ is the subject of our acts for the same reason the Son of God was the subject of Jesus' acts: because Christ's agency is primary in our graced lives the way the Word is primary in Jesus' life; we act in a purified, elevated fashion (to the extent that we do!) only because Christ first acts for us by assuming us to himself, through the power of the Spirit. Despite the primacy of the Word as subject, in Jesus the same acts are attributed indifferently to either the human being Jesus or the Word incarnate; they are both Jesus' and the Word's because here the two are really one. Assumed by Christ, our graced lives, however, are more Christ's than ours. The character of our graced lives is alien to us as sinners. Unlike what happened in Jesus, we are not constituted from the first as subjects by such gifts; they come to us as already constituted persons in opposition to who we already are. Indeed, what we are and do as graced persons cannot be attributed to us at all, if 'us' means the people who are assumed by Christ. These characteristics and deeds are ours only in so far as we becomes ourselves-new people - in relation to Christ, assumed by him. We become new subjects of attribution as we become the predicates of Christ, as our lives, in other words, belong to him; only as subjects in that sense are graced char- acteristics as much our own as Christ's. There are two subjects here, where a human being is assumed by Christ, and not one, as when the Son of God assumed humanity rather than a man. This difference means that, unlike Christ who simply is the Word, we come to Christ from a distance, by way of an external call; addressing us, Christ appears outside us as the one to whom we are to be united. Our relation to Christ has more the flavor, then, of Christ's own relation to the Father, a relationship of fellowship and correspondence of wills. Our will is not Christ's will in the way the human will of Christ simply is the will of the Son, without needing to See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960), 164, 175. 56 57 from be brought into correspondence with it. Instead, our lives are made over as a result of their being assumed. Though Christ comes to us from outside us, Christ nevertheless becomes our own. Assumed by Christ, Christ lives in us, just as, assumed by the Son, Christ's human life showed the workings of the Word in and through it. Within our own lives, Christ works to revise the lives we would otherwise live without him. The force of our assumption by Christ is felt, as it was in Jesus' own life, in and through the way our lives are led, in and through what happens in them, the shape they take, whereby the gifts of God come to be distributed to us and through us to others - other persons and the world as a whole. The one process - Christ's dwelling in us and the effects that has is dependent upon the other our being assumed into Christ's own life though (again as they were in Christ) not in a temporal sequence. Because we have been assumed into Christ's life, the changes in our lives are continuously fed by the workings of Christ in us through the power of the Spirit. The two processes, moreover, do not simply run alongside each other; the one- assumption by Christ - is, instead, the immanent motor of the other. The character of graced lives is twofold or theanthropic in the way the acts of Christ's life were; graced acts seem made up of two different powers - our own and Christ's Christ's accounting for any purifying, healing and elevating of our own capacities manifest in our acts. - In us, however, unlike the life of Christ, the two processes fall far short of any perfect correspondence of identity. In Christ, what the Father gives to the humanity of Jesus through the Son's assumption of it is identical with what Jesus gives back to the Father in and through a human life of praise and service. This is one continuous action, displaying the very same character throughout: God's love for human beings is the very love that this human being, Jesus, displays for those human beings and the very love that this human being, Jesus, reflects back to God. As Karl Barth expresses this equivalence: 'The self-giving in which God himself. . . became and is . . . this man, is that which is achieved and manifested in his self-giving to God as a human act.” With us, there are two processes and they do not correspond at all 269 well, at least at first. What Christ gives us by assuming us is not simply identical with the lives we live because we live before being assumed by Christ our lives must be made to conform to what Christ is giving Our lives do not conform to what Christ is giving us and have to be brought into greater conformity with Christ's own action over time, because we are assumed by Christ as sinners. [I]n distinction from the angels of God and the company of men made perfect, [the church] finds in itself, both as a whole and in all its members, certain limits, not in the divine self-giving but in its own knowledge, its own freedom, and the form in which it may respond.... - a provisional form in contrast to the perfect form for which we may here and now wait, and to which the Church may move. 70 The perfect correspondence of identity that is Christ's life remains our hope. Already achieved by Christ, who as the very same one is both the Son giving and the human being receiving, we aim towards. this unity or identity by efforts, never completed in this life, to eradicate sin and match the life intended for us by Christ's assump- tion of us. Not simply a future yet to be for us and not simply the past achieved by Christ but not by ourselves, our future is present in us as Christ shapes us in accordance with himself." 72 Corresponding to Christ's own resurrected life, some final glori- fication awaits us, then, in which the perfections of God's own life and light will be perfectly reflected back to God in us, the struggle against sin will be no more and we will hear the call of the Word, as Karl Barth suggests in his Ethics, as our very own voice 22 The will of God for the communication of God's perfect fullness will no longer be heard as an external command obligating our service but as the natural inclination of our own hearts and minds. Through our own witness and working as ministers of God's grace, the whole world will reflect God's glory in conscious praise. A kingdom or arena suffused by the very life of the Trinity will be all and all without struggle against a kingdom of moral and physical corruption and structures of injustice; the whole world will be victorious over sin and death as Christ was before us. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1,675. See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/I, 116. Barth, Ethics, 480, 487, 492, 494, 501, 502-3, 505, 512, 514. 73 Ibid., 498, 503. * See Barth, Christian Life, 75. 58 59
Social Psychology (10th Edition)
10th Edition
ISBN:9780134641287
Author:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Publisher:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Chapter1: Introducing Social Psychology
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 1RQ1
Related questions
Question
What does Dr. Tanner say about a general pattern of human action?
Transcribed Image Text:Christ must be bettered, heightened from weak union to strong, for
example, through the repeated performance of the Eucharist in the
power of the Spirit.
"Coming after the fact as it does, our assumption by Christ through
the working of the Holy Spirit means Christ's assumption of us in our
active sinfulness. When we are taken with Christ to the Father to be
blessed as Christ's humanity was by the Father, we are also, then, being
forgiven our sins; the Father's favor takes the form of mercy in our
case. The Father favors us and showers us with gifts, not because we
are not sinful but because we are seen in Christ, the one in whom we
live, as those who are in need of the Father's help, through the Son, in
the Spirit.
Sinners assumed by Christ, our living out of that assumption will
be marked by great struggle, against our own sins as well as those of
others." The struggle for purification and perfection of our humanity
will be more extensive and protracted than anything seen in Jesus.
Rather than simple struggle against temptation and the sort of external
conflicts that Jesus fought with the consequences of the sins of others
meeting up with him from without, the struggle to purify and perfect
our humanity will entail (in addition to all this) renewed conflicts with
active sin in our very persons.
wwwwwwwww do
Christian lives reproduce in their own distinct way, then, the
incarnation of Christ and its processional, conflictual effects over the
course of a fully human life. They will also reproduce in their way
Jesus' final post-resurrection perfection.
Christ's incarnation is matched by our assumption into Christ.
Assumed by Christ, Christ becomes the subiect of our acts in much
the way the second Person of the Trinity is the subject of Jesus
acts. 67 Our acts are Christ's acts, we can say Christ acts when we act,
in so far as what we are and do comes by way of the power of Christ, in
!!
See Gregory of Nyssa, 'An Address on Religious Instruction,' 303-4.
See Wilfried Joest, Ontologie der Person bei Luther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
1967), 233-320; Ingolf Dalferth and Eberhard Jüngel, 'Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit,'
Christlicher Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft, vol. 24 of Enzyklopädische Bibliothek, ed. F. Böckle,
F.-X. Kaufman, et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), 61-99; and Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics
II/1, 149, 159–62; 1/2, trans. G. Thomson and H. Knight (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1956), 313-14; and II/2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1957), 539.
so far as we are carried beyond our capacities by Christ who takes us
to himself. Being and doing what we can only be and do with him, our
characteristics and achievements as graced persons are attributed to
Christ.
Christ is the subject of our acts for the same reason the Son of God
was the subject of Jesus' acts: because Christ's agency is primary in
our graced lives the way the Word is primary in Jesus' life; we act in a
purified, elevated fashion (to the extent that we do!) only because Christ
first acts for us by assuming us to himself, through the power of the
Spirit.
Despite the primacy of the Word as subject, in Jesus the same acts
are attributed indifferently to either the human being Jesus or the Word
incarnate; they are both Jesus' and the Word's because here the two
are really one. Assumed by Christ, our graced lives, however, are more
Christ's than ours. The character of our graced lives is alien to us as
sinners. Unlike what happened in Jesus, we are not constituted from
the first as subjects by such gifts; they come to us as already constituted
persons in opposition to who we already are. Indeed, what we are
and do as graced persons cannot be attributed to us at all, if 'us'
means the people who are assumed by Christ. These characteristics
and deeds are ours only in so far as we becomes ourselves-new people
- in relation to Christ, assumed by him. We become new subjects of
attribution as we become the predicates of Christ, as our lives, in other
words, belong to him; only as subjects in that sense are graced char-
acteristics as much our own as Christ's.
There are two subjects here, where a human being is assumed by
Christ, and not one, as when the Son of God assumed humanity rather
than a man. This difference means that, unlike Christ who simply is
the Word, we come to Christ from a distance, by way of an external
call; addressing us, Christ appears outside us as the one to whom we
are to be united. Our relation to Christ has more the flavor, then, of
Christ's own relation to the Father, a relationship of fellowship and
correspondence of wills. Our will is not Christ's will in the way the
human will of Christ simply is the will of the Son, without needing to
See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960), 164, 175.
56
57
![from
be brought into correspondence with it. Instead, our lives are made
over as a result of their being assumed.
Though Christ comes to us from outside us, Christ nevertheless
becomes our own. Assumed by Christ, Christ lives in us, just as,
assumed by the Son, Christ's human life showed the workings of the
Word in and through it. Within our own lives, Christ works to revise
the lives we would otherwise live without him. The force of our
assumption by Christ is felt, as it was in Jesus' own life, in and through
the way our lives are led, in and through what happens in them, the
shape they take, whereby the gifts of God come to be distributed to us
and through us to others - other persons and the world as a whole.
The one process - Christ's dwelling in us and the effects that has
is dependent upon the other our being assumed into Christ's own
life though (again as they were in Christ) not in a temporal sequence.
Because we have been assumed into Christ's life, the changes in our
lives are continuously fed by the workings of Christ in us through the
power of the Spirit. The two processes, moreover, do not simply run
alongside each other; the one- assumption by Christ - is, instead, the
immanent motor of the other. The character of graced lives is twofold
or theanthropic in the way the acts of Christ's life were; graced acts
seem made up of two different powers - our own and Christ's
Christ's accounting for any purifying, healing and elevating of our own
capacities manifest in our acts.
-
In us, however, unlike the life of Christ, the two processes fall far
short of any perfect correspondence of identity. In Christ, what the
Father gives to the humanity of Jesus through the Son's assumption
of it is identical with what Jesus gives back to the Father in and through
a human life of praise and service. This is one continuous action,
displaying the very same character throughout: God's love for human
beings is the very love that this human being, Jesus, displays for those
human beings and the very love that this human being, Jesus, reflects
back to God. As Karl Barth expresses this equivalence: 'The self-giving
in which God himself. . . became and is . . . this man, is that which
is achieved and manifested in his self-giving to God as a human act.”
With us, there are two processes and they do not correspond at all
269
well, at least at first. What Christ gives us by assuming us is not simply
identical with the lives we live because we live before being assumed
by Christ our lives must be made to conform to what Christ is giving
Our lives do not conform to what Christ is giving us and have to be
brought into greater conformity with Christ's own action over time,
because we are assumed by Christ as sinners.
[I]n distinction from the angels of God and the company of men made perfect,
[the church] finds in itself, both as a whole and in all its members, certain
limits, not in the divine self-giving but in its own knowledge, its own freedom,
and the form in which it may respond.... - a provisional form in contrast to
the perfect form for which we may here and now wait, and to which the Church
may move.
70
The perfect correspondence of identity that is Christ's life remains
our hope. Already achieved by Christ, who as the very same one is
both the Son giving and the human being receiving, we aim towards.
this unity or identity by efforts, never completed in this life, to
eradicate sin and match the life intended for us by Christ's assump-
tion of us. Not simply a future yet to be for us and not simply the
past achieved by Christ but not by ourselves, our future is present in
us as Christ shapes us in accordance with himself."
72
Corresponding to Christ's own resurrected life, some final glori-
fication awaits us, then, in which the perfections of God's own life
and light will be perfectly reflected back to God in us, the struggle
against sin will be no more and we will hear the call of the Word, as
Karl Barth suggests in his Ethics, as our very own voice 22 The will of
God for the communication of God's perfect fullness will no longer
be heard as an external command obligating our service but as the
natural inclination of our own hearts and minds. Through our own
witness and working as ministers of God's grace, the whole world will
reflect God's glory in conscious praise. A kingdom or arena suffused
by the very life of the Trinity will be all and all without struggle against
a kingdom of moral and physical corruption and structures of injustice;
the whole world will be victorious over sin and death as Christ was
before us.
Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1,675.
See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/I, 116.
Barth, Ethics, 480, 487, 492, 494, 501, 502-3, 505, 512, 514.
73 Ibid., 498, 503.
*
See Barth, Christian Life, 75.
58
59](/v2/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.bartleby.com%2Fqna-images%2Fquestion%2F2e1cb03f-91d2-4991-91c8-37c8965f1bd7%2F01f42687-0795-43e2-8fae-af6a77e6317f%2Ffbietuj_processed.png&w=3840&q=75)
Transcribed Image Text:from
be brought into correspondence with it. Instead, our lives are made
over as a result of their being assumed.
Though Christ comes to us from outside us, Christ nevertheless
becomes our own. Assumed by Christ, Christ lives in us, just as,
assumed by the Son, Christ's human life showed the workings of the
Word in and through it. Within our own lives, Christ works to revise
the lives we would otherwise live without him. The force of our
assumption by Christ is felt, as it was in Jesus' own life, in and through
the way our lives are led, in and through what happens in them, the
shape they take, whereby the gifts of God come to be distributed to us
and through us to others - other persons and the world as a whole.
The one process - Christ's dwelling in us and the effects that has
is dependent upon the other our being assumed into Christ's own
life though (again as they were in Christ) not in a temporal sequence.
Because we have been assumed into Christ's life, the changes in our
lives are continuously fed by the workings of Christ in us through the
power of the Spirit. The two processes, moreover, do not simply run
alongside each other; the one- assumption by Christ - is, instead, the
immanent motor of the other. The character of graced lives is twofold
or theanthropic in the way the acts of Christ's life were; graced acts
seem made up of two different powers - our own and Christ's
Christ's accounting for any purifying, healing and elevating of our own
capacities manifest in our acts.
-
In us, however, unlike the life of Christ, the two processes fall far
short of any perfect correspondence of identity. In Christ, what the
Father gives to the humanity of Jesus through the Son's assumption
of it is identical with what Jesus gives back to the Father in and through
a human life of praise and service. This is one continuous action,
displaying the very same character throughout: God's love for human
beings is the very love that this human being, Jesus, displays for those
human beings and the very love that this human being, Jesus, reflects
back to God. As Karl Barth expresses this equivalence: 'The self-giving
in which God himself. . . became and is . . . this man, is that which
is achieved and manifested in his self-giving to God as a human act.”
With us, there are two processes and they do not correspond at all
269
well, at least at first. What Christ gives us by assuming us is not simply
identical with the lives we live because we live before being assumed
by Christ our lives must be made to conform to what Christ is giving
Our lives do not conform to what Christ is giving us and have to be
brought into greater conformity with Christ's own action over time,
because we are assumed by Christ as sinners.
[I]n distinction from the angels of God and the company of men made perfect,
[the church] finds in itself, both as a whole and in all its members, certain
limits, not in the divine self-giving but in its own knowledge, its own freedom,
and the form in which it may respond.... - a provisional form in contrast to
the perfect form for which we may here and now wait, and to which the Church
may move.
70
The perfect correspondence of identity that is Christ's life remains
our hope. Already achieved by Christ, who as the very same one is
both the Son giving and the human being receiving, we aim towards.
this unity or identity by efforts, never completed in this life, to
eradicate sin and match the life intended for us by Christ's assump-
tion of us. Not simply a future yet to be for us and not simply the
past achieved by Christ but not by ourselves, our future is present in
us as Christ shapes us in accordance with himself."
72
Corresponding to Christ's own resurrected life, some final glori-
fication awaits us, then, in which the perfections of God's own life
and light will be perfectly reflected back to God in us, the struggle
against sin will be no more and we will hear the call of the Word, as
Karl Barth suggests in his Ethics, as our very own voice 22 The will of
God for the communication of God's perfect fullness will no longer
be heard as an external command obligating our service but as the
natural inclination of our own hearts and minds. Through our own
witness and working as ministers of God's grace, the whole world will
reflect God's glory in conscious praise. A kingdom or arena suffused
by the very life of the Trinity will be all and all without struggle against
a kingdom of moral and physical corruption and structures of injustice;
the whole world will be victorious over sin and death as Christ was
before us.
Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1,675.
See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/I, 116.
Barth, Ethics, 480, 487, 492, 494, 501, 502-3, 505, 512, 514.
73 Ibid., 498, 503.
*
See Barth, Christian Life, 75.
58
59
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