God's time, our time

ROBERT W. JENSON recently retired as senior scholar at the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton. He and longtime colleague Carl Braaten founded the journals Dialog and Pro Ecclesia and the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. He has taught at Luther College, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Oxford University and St. Olaf College. His many books include America's Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (1988), the two-volume Systematic Theology (1997; 1999), On Thinking the Human (2003) and, most recently, a commentary on Song of Songs for the Interpretation Bible Commentary series. We spoke with him about changes in the theological landscape and issues facing the church.

How has the field of theology changed in terms of topics or method since you first entered it in the mid-20th century? What gives you hope and what discourages you?

One great change: I went to Germany to study for the doctorate because that was still where the action was. Just imagine: my rigorosum--the sudden-death oral exam--was conducted by Gerhard von Rad, Gunther Bornkamm, Hans von Campenhausen, Peter Brunner and Edmund Schlink. Now the United States is the center.

Another: the Americanization Of theology has had both good and bad consequences. A bad one is a typically American scholarly and speculative individualism; in theology diversity is often a good thing, but entrepreneurship is not.

Still another: when I began to study, the historical-critical way of reading scripture--and indeed of reading the documents of the tradition--reigned alone. It has finally become apparent that historical-critical reading of scripture simply cannot sustain spiritual life, and efforts are under way to recapture the figural reading of the older tradition. The question is: can this be done without jettisoning the benefits of historical-critical work? I think it can.

As to encouragement, I am greatly encouraged by the appearance of a remarkable middle generation of fine theologians and exegetes, mostly in Britain and this country. As to discouragement, the great blockade between theology and the practice of the churches is still in place.

The notion that Christians are declared righteous for the sake of Christ has been a central part of Lutheran theology and most Protestant theology. Yet with the influence of Eastern Orthodoxy on the one hand and various Anabaptist influences on the other, this "forensic" or "juridical" understanding of justification is being questioned. At the least, many Protestants are bringing justification and sanctification closer together. What do you make of these trends? Do Protestants need to rethink their understanding of justification?

All Christian theologians teach that we are declared righteous for the sake of Christ. It is the declared that opens conflicting possibilities. Catholics and others have accused Protestants of so construing God's declaration as to make it a judicial fiction--in my view, with considerable reason. But the way to fix that is not, I think, by bringing justification and sanctification closer together, since making the distinction in the first place only displays the problem. At least for the initial great Protester himself, God's declaring us holy and his making us actually holy are the same act done by the same means.

That is, I think the "Finnish school" of Luther interpretation has it right, whether or not it was materially influenced by Orthodoxy. According to Luther according to the Finns, what happens "by faith" is that Christ himself, whose oral and sacramentally enacted word is his personal presence, comes by the reception of this word so to inhabit the believer that Christ and the believer make one ,moral person. To repeat the Finns' signature Luther quote, in ipsa fide Christus adest, "in faith as such Christ is just there." We are made righteous "by faith apart from works" not because God chooses to ignore the fact of missing works, but because as inhabited by Christ we in fact are already truly righteous, before we ever get around to doing works. Thus God's declaration that we are righteous solely for Christ's sake is a judgment rather than a legal ruling. It may be worth noting that America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, had more or less the same doctrine.

The Finnish insight's ecumenical consequences are considerable. For the major instance so far, the Joint Declaration on Justification between the Catholic Church and world Lutheranism would probably have been rejected by Rome except for the influence on the final draft of the Lutheran bishop of Helsinki.

As for myself, through much of my life I tried to figure out Luther on the assumption that Luther interpretation on the lines of Gerhard Ebeling was veridical. I am glad to be delivered from that sisyphean task.

In the 20th century, theologians showed a renewed interest in the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet these theologians continue to struggle with categories derived from Greek metaphysics--an unchanging God, etc. What do you see as the main issues in articulating the Trinity for our time? How would you seek to revivify the place of the Trinity not only in theology but in Christian life?