A Pilgrimage of Unfolding Grace

Kenneth Tanner

Episode Summary

Part of our philosophical inheritance in the West is the notion that “knowledge is power”. We’re taught from an early age to scan information for whatever may be helpful to make sense of the moment, yet in doing so we often reduce the beautiful to the merely useful. Those of us who still inhabit the Christian household fall prey to this way of engaging truth by turning language about God into functional equations that, ironically, rob us of vision. This is especially true of two of our most sacred beliefs - that God is a triune being, and that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Our doctrinal beliefs are cheapened to intellectual exercises rather than realities to be experienced. Part of why I framed this project in trinitarian language, each theme correlating with a Person of the trinity, is to show the vitality of the things we say we believe about God, and how they shape our understanding of who we are and what we’re here to do. Kenneth Tanner is an Episcopalian priest in Michigan who inspires me to rethink what I think about God, and especially the God revealed in Jesus. In this conversation we discuss trinity, the character of Jesus, and human nature, and how this informs and blesses a theology of work.