3 Quotes by Kathryn Tanner

Grace knocks us flat, preventing any form of self-congratulation. All the good we achieve is to be attributed to God rather than to ourselves. What makes our lives good is not anything we are ourselves but the presence within us of what we are not, a divine presence never ours by right because never ours by nature. All the glory for the good we exhibit in our lives should therefore be reserved for God.

Sin has no power to break God’s faithfulness to God’s own original intentions for us; we are still in God’s eyes at least the creatures God created us to be.

We are good not in virtue of what we are but in virtue of what we are not, like darkness lit up by a light that enters into it from without. We are not light in ourselves but in virtue of having within us what is light in itself.