Jenson has a say

Since I posted a lengthy summary of David Hart’s sharp critique of Robert Jenson, it’s only fair to note that Jenson disputes Hart’s account of his theology. In a review in Pro Ecclesia, Jenson claims that Hart “seriously misrepresents me,” though he adds that they have “anyway come to a meeting of the minds.”

He ends the review as well by posing a dilemma for Hart’s understanding of apatheia. He summarizes Hart’s position (in a Barthian idiom) by saying that it is true that “in Israel and Jesus, God goes personally forth into the far country, takes the form of a slave, is crucified, and rises; and that these happenings do not affect God.” This is so because incarnation, cross, and resurrection are “already accounted for in God’s eternal inner-triune distancing and return, in his eternal innter-triune self-giving and return, and in the ‘always already triumphant triune love.”

Jenson wonders whether Hart means that the history of salvation is “somehow actual in triune eternity,” and if so, how? On the one hand, he could say that it is actual in triune eternity because of an eternal decision – and Hart comes out Barthian. Or, the actuality of salvation history in the Trinity might lead in a the direction of a “standard Neo-Platonist,” which Hart is at pains to avoid. Jenson faults Hart for considering only two alternatives: Either God changes, or history is a “manifestation” of God. Is there some other alternative, in which God does not change but in which history does in some sense “constitute” His glory?

I suspect that Hart is able to deal with these questions with a simple appeal to God’s transcendence, a key theme of his book. Sure, salvation history in some way is eternally actualized in the life of the Triune Persons, but between that eternal actualization and the history of redemption there is the “analogical interval” between the Triune Creator and creation. This is hardly “standard Neo-Platonism,” precisely because it assumes that God is truly transcendent.

But I also wonder if the problematics that Jenson poses here (including the question of whether Hart’s rendition actually captures the way Scripture tells the story of God) could be re-nuanced by following up Jim Jordan’s suggestion that the Bible is not just about redemptive history, but also about maturation and holy war – a triple history instead of a single one. It seems that saying the story of the maturation and glorification of man is easier to locate in the inner-triune life than a story of redemption from sin. They have the same structure of self-gift and glorification, of division and reunion (as, eg, prior to sin, Adam went into “deep sleep” and was divided in two so as to be reunited in one flesh with Eve).