Theocentric or anthroprocentric?

Reading Tom Torrance is great because he gets how exciting and shocking it is that God became man in Jesus Christ. He has taught me to see that this is central to everything, while never losing what PT Forsyth says is 'the true seat of Incarnation — a Christ made sin' ("Immanence and Incarnation"). This post is a bit of an application of that...

Listening to a recent discussion on Wright and Piper's debate I was reminded about how both see much contemporary Christianity as too anthroprocentric, and not theocentric enough. I've never been completely happy with drawing a sharp distinction between the two as humanity is made in the image of God. Therefore to be truly anthroprocentric is to be theocentric.

But we can go further in rejecting this dichotomy.

Both Wright and Piper are part of the Reformed tradition and so this also reminded me of John Halton's post quoting Herman Bavinck saying that 'the Reformed Christian thinks theologically, the Lutheran anthropologically' (RD 1:177). John says that he would like to say that 'the Lutheran thinks Christologically' and to be Christocentric is to combine the two in the God-man.

In Christ the true God is revealed, but we are less familiar with the idea that he also reveals our true humanity. For some reason we have focused on all the NT statements that Jesus is the image of God (e.g. 2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3, cf. John 1:18; 12:45; 14:9) as just referring to his divinity and missed the implication that this shows his humanity as well.

As Tom Smail comments:

Christ is both the divine prototype that is stamped on to our humanity and so imparts to it the divine image, and is also the human being who has received that image and is the perfect expression of it. In the rest of us, in our over-flexible human nature, that image has been eroded and distorted but in Christ it is fresh and new, authentic and complete.

(p. 59, Like Father, Like Son)

So if we want to be free to be ourself we have to look to Christ. But not by following his example, because we cannot be the image of God, but by being in the image of God by his gracious identification with us in our sinful twisted humanity.

Adam is, as is said in [Romans 5:14], the type of Him who is to come. Man's essential and original nature is to be found, therefore, not in Adam but in Christ. In Adam we can only find it prefigured. Adam can therefore be interpreted only in the light of Christ and not the other way round.

(p. 29, Karl Barth cited in Tom Smail, Like Father, Like Son)