David Kelsey on Grace

In evangelical/Charismatic Christian circles, and in amongst the wider Christian family too, there is much talk of Grace. I have blogged about Grace many times, including a mini-series looking at how grace is variously Emasculating, Common, Irresistible, Exclusive, and Dumbfounding. But the most important thing about understanding the word and the concept that we wrap up in Grace is by understanding and knowing and seeking something else. Or, rather, someone else. Jesus.

David Kelsey is a Professor Emeritus of Theology at Yale, and author of the impressive 'Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology', which is one of the key texts I will be interacting with in my MA dissertation. I was reading an article by him, 'The Human Creature', in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, and was struck by this quote;

“given Jesus’ centrality to the Christian good news, ‘grace’ ought to be explained by reference to its incarnation in the person of Jesus. This intuition is reflected, for example, in Karl Rahner’s (1978) and Karl Barth’s (1960) shared advocacy of the view that the event of the incarnation of grace is not contingent on the fact of human sin but rather is God’s plan, ‘before’ and independent of humankind’s fall into sin (‘supra-lapsarianism’), to give himself to creatures” p. 123

I think this is true and beautiful. We cannot speak meaningfully of Grace without speaking meaningfully of Jesus. And behind that, in a way that transcends easy theological boundaries (Rahner is a German Jesuit and Barth a Swiss Reformed theologian), is the bigger story, the story of a God who is before and independent of human beings, who desires above all to act in grace, and who we see in Jesus choose 'to give himself to creatures'. It is always wonderful to be reminded of God's good grace - and even more so among the longer words and footnotes of an academic book! I hope that this quote, this observation, this articulation of wonderful Grace-filled-Jesus-focused truth is of encouragement to someone...

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