Rethinking Nature and Grace: The Logic of Creation’s Consummation
A central challenge of Christian reflection on eschatological hope is the ability to balance affirmations of continuity and discontinuity between life now and the life to come. This challenge is exemplified in 2 Peter’s assurance that believers become ‘participants in the divine nature’ (1:4), which...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2022
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| In: |
International journal of systematic theology
Year: 2022, Volume: 24, Issue: 1, Pages: 56-79 |
| IxTheo Classification: | NBD Doctrine of Creation NBE Anthropology NBK Soteriology |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | A central challenge of Christian reflection on eschatological hope is the ability to balance affirmations of continuity and discontinuity between life now and the life to come. This challenge is exemplified in 2 Peter’s assurance that believers become ‘participants in the divine nature’ (1:4), which raises tricky questions regarding the relationship between human nature as created and the grace by which it is elevated to glory. Various attempts to address this problem using the categories of nature and grace fail because the use of these terms invariably results in a framework where grace is either decoupled from nature in a way that risks making it appear a mere addendum, or so integrated with nature as to risk blurring its distinctiveness. Drawing on the work of David Kelsey, this article instead proposes that addressing the question in terms of the categories of creation and redemption, understood as two distinct forms of grace, allows the life of glory to be viewed as genuinely gracious without being made ontologically superfluous to human flourishing. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-2400 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: International journal of systematic theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/ijst.12539 |