Systematic Theology, Volume I: The Triune God

Systematic Theology, Volume I: The Triune God. By Robert W Jenson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. x + 244 pp. $49.95 (cloth).

Throughout his productive career, Robert Jenson has been concerned with the Doctrine of God. Beginning with God after God (1969) through Unbaptized God: The Basic Flaw in Ecumenical Theology (1992), Jenson has engaged in creative and thought-provoking discussion of the nature and identity of the Christian God. As presented in his previous seminal work The Triune Identity: God according to the Gospel (1982), Jenson has sought to identify the God of Jesus Christ who is known paradigmatically in the gospel accounts of Scripture. In other words, Jenson eschews any starting point for theology other than the narrative of Scripture. In this regard, he is a faithful student of Karl Barth whose theology was the subject of his dissertation at Heidelberg.

With the publication of The Triune God, Jenson brings his theological thought into the form of a two-volume systematic theology. This volume is the first half of his systematics; Volume II, The Works of God, has not been published yet. This first volume has three parts: Prolegomena, The Triune Identity, and The Triune Character. The first part treats the nature of systematic theology and the norms for making a theological judgement. It concludes with a chapter on "The Identification of God," and this chapter introduces the second part: Jenson's discussion of the Triune identity of the Christian God. As will be explained below, this second part includes chapters on how God is to be identified, and what this identification means for our understanding of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit. The third part deals with the Christological continuum of Jesus's nature and mission, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. In light of all that has preceded, Jenson then returns to the question of God's being. The last chapter of the book, "Our Place in God," takes up how humans know God and how we are to live into the trinitarian life. This chapter paves the way for the second volume of Jenson's systematics.

In writing this systematic theology, Jenson sets out to write theology for what he calls the true church. This is the undivided church of the creeds. Recognizing that this true church presently does not exist, he contends that theology should serve the expectant existence of such a church. In this way, his systematic theology is an effort in ecumenical theology. However, he does not swim in the mainstream of ecumenical theology. He does not believe that continuing efforts of "convergence" will lead to the one church. Rather, Jenson holds out for an act of God. By this, he certainly means that God will have to make the one true church. Also, theology can play its part by getting God right: theology needs to expound the proper understanding of God. Along the way in his exposition of the Christian God, Jenson relies on a variety of theological patterns that cut across denominational lines and across periods of theological history. For Jenson, this is the God narrated by Scripture, and who is identified by and with the Exodus of Israel and the Resurrection of Jesus.

This last sentence condenses two guiding themes of Jenson's present work. First, he habitually includes the God of the Hebrew Bible in his explication of the Christian God. For him, the God of Jesus Christ is the God of Israel. The God who brought about the event of the Exodus is the God who raised Jesus from the dead. The second theme emerges from the first. God not only brought about the events of the Exodus and the Resurrection; God is identified by and with these events. Jenson seeks to understand the God who can be identified by these events and is identified with these events. God is not to be identified in any other way than by the formative events of God's people narrated in Scripture.

Jenson develops his theology of the Trinity from what he calls the "dramatic coherence" of Scripture. (In using the category of drama and dramatic coherence to speak of the Trinity, Jenson acknowledges the complementary work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, p. 55, n. 86). In other words, the trinitarian narrative of Scripture shows us who God is; the story of God identifes God. According to Jenson, the God identified by God's story is the Trinity because this story evidences three dramatis dei personae. The persons of God are identified by and with the dramatic coherence of Scripture. One such coherence is between the Exodus and the Resurrection. The Trinity can be identified by and with events because God's being is event. In the chapter, "The Being of the One God," Jenson states "the one God is event; history occurs not only in him but as his being" (p. 221). Since events happen to something or someone, and someone enacts an event, events of salvation happen because God is the eternal eventful Trinity: "God is what happens between Jesus and his Father in their Spirit" (p. 221). It follows for Jenson that God is also person, decision, and conversation. Again, the Trinity is identified by what happens between the divine persons as revealed in the dramatic coherence of Scripture. Whenever dissonance occurs between traditional speculation about the nature and existence of God and the narrative of Scripture, Jenson adjusts the speculation to the narrative. Concerning the problem of how to speak of the Father as both the God of Israel and one identification of the God of Israel, and that this problem becomes the solution, he states: "This is sometimes the way of theology: to take a plain phenomenon of the gospel's narrative that causes difficulty in certain connections and remove the difficulties by adjusting not the narrative but the connections" (p. 124). It must be said that for Jenson the primacy of narrative does not tame theological thinking. On the contrary, the discipline of narrative challenges theology to express what is given, instead of only expressing what is a priori perceived as expressible.