Trinitarian Ontology and Israel in Robert W. Jenson's Theology

Lee

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498294652
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Can Christian theology overcome its long-standing supersessionism without diluting its Trinitarian faith? Can Christian faith remain genuinely Christian when it fails to recognize the covenantal significance of the Jews? In his later career, leading Trinitarian theologian Robert Jenson's theology moves in a post-supersessionistic direction. That said, the conceptual nexus between his Trinitarian theology and his post-supersessionism is not always patent on the surface of his texts. In this book, Lee traces the post-supersessionistic development of Jenson's Trinitarian theology and uncovers the reasons why Jenson's Trinitarian theology sets out to embrace the existence of the Jews. This book seeks to show that Jenson's revisionary--historicized, "carnalized," hermeneutical, and eschatological--Trinitarian ontology allows for genuine confession of the eternal triune God as the God of Israel, and that it thereby lays a firm basis for a properly Christian post-supersessionism.

1

God’s Decision upon His Being

Temporal Actualistic Ontology toward Post-supersessionistic Theology

Jenson’s theology of Israel is not merely an ecclesial consideration, but a deeply ontological reflection, conceptually closely related to his trinitarian theology. For Jenson, Christian trinitarian faith requires radical revision of the ontology inherited from the Greek philosophy. Christian post-supersessionistic theology of Israel/the Jews can be secured only when it is anchored into the trinitarian theo-ontology that requires rigorous and audacious recognition of the ontological significance of the time and the body of the incarnate Son, Jesus of Nazareth, who is placed at the heart of the being of God, as the second hypostasis of the Trinity. Jenson’s revisionist trinitarian ontology, informing his post-supersessionism, is best understood when we explore his actualistic ontology, as the first step, which developed through his critical and creative reception of Barth’s doctrine of election. In this actualistic ontology, the time and the body of Jesus Christ function as major determinants of the being of God, as God elects his Son Jesus in his “eternity” and in his eternal being.

So this first chapter will center upon Jenson’s reading and reception of Barth’s doctrine of election. In tracing this line, we will see that Jenson closely follows Barth’s actualistic ontology, but makes a temporalistic turn. Focusing on his earliest works, Alpha and Omega (1963) and God after God (1969), in which the temporalistic turn is already visible, this chapter will proceed in four sections: 1) Jenson’s reading of Barth, 2) Jenson’s criticism of Barth, 3) Jenson’s innovation, 4) Jenson’s post-supersessionistic development.

Jenson’s Reading of Barth

No Hidden Decree

On Jenson’s reading of Barth’s doctrine of election it is best understood as an extended attempt to overcome the problematic of the Reformation doctrine of the hidden decree. On this doctrine, even John Calvin himself felt the problem:49 “[W]hence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess.”50 Luther also experienced deep anxiety about such an understanding of the divine decree: “who would not take offence? I have taken offence myself more than once, down to the depths and the abyss of despair, so that I wished I had never been made a man.”51 And precisely in this condition, Luther claimed, “This is the highest degree of faith to believe that he is merciful who saves so few and damns so many.”52 But it was indeed a “concealed and dreadful will of God,”53 curiously in opposition to God’s preceptive will, that is, his will to save all.

Perceiving the Anfechtung concealed in the doctrine of the double decree, Barth holds that the reformers’ understanding of God’s election cannot be the gospel. For Barth, “the truth of the doctrine of predestination, is first and last and in all circumstances the sum of the Gospel, no matter how it may be understood in detail, no matter what apparently contradictory aspects or moments it may present to us.”54 The doctrine of predestination should be “to us a proclamation of joy. It is not a mixed message of joy and terror, salvation and damnation. . . . The No is said for the sake of the Yes and not for its own sake. In substance, therefore, the first and last word is Yes and not No.”55 If in his hidden will God divided humanity into right and left even from eternity, then “we cannot possibly be required or advised to entrust ourselves”56 into God’s hand. Barth is aware that Calvin’s double predestination may be considered “extremely fitting and useful for piety,”57 and that as Calvin believed it “rightly builds up faith and teaches us humility, [lifting] us to admiration of the immeasurable goodness of God to us and awakens us to celebrate it.”58 However, Barth cannot just gloss over the horror of the double decree and of God’s hidden will as formulated in Calvin’s theology.

So Barth jettisons the hidden or absolute will from his doctrine of election and upholds Jesus as the only will of God for us. Barth states, “There is no such thing as a decretum absolutum. There is no such thing as a will of God apart from the will of Jesus Christ.”59 The distinction between the perceptive will and decretive will is accordingly discarded: God’s will is not divided, but one and unified will.60 Jesus Christ who has borne the condemnation for us is God’s one and only will for us. Thus, the conceptual cause of Anfechtung hidden in the reformers’ doctrine has been removed in Barth’s reformulation: “The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel.”61 Accordingly, there is only “Yes” in Jesus Christ for humans; God’s “No” is borne by God himself. Jesus Christ as God’s only will is God’s Yes for us. For “[t]he wrath of God, the judgment and the penalty, fall, then, upon Him. And this means upon His own Son, upon Himself.”62

Jenson closely follows Barth’s reconfiguration of the double decree, sha...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgement
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: God’s Decision upon His Being
• Chapter 2: God’s Bodily Being
• Chapter 3: God in the Jewish Flesh
• Chapter 4: The Two in the One Israelite Body
• Chapter 5: God’s Being in the Word-Torah
• Chapter 6: God’s Spirit
• Conclusion
• Bibliography