Robert W. Jenson

The God of the Past and the God of the Future

God after God

The Works of God (Systematic Theology, Volume 2)

Systematic Theology: Volume 2

This volume begins with an extended discussion of Jenson's methodology, and addresses questions on the nature of the Christian God, including the classic christological and trinitarian questions.

Volume 1: the Triune God

Systematic Theology

This book presents a bold venture in theology, combining a presentation, explanation, analysis, and reinterpretation of trinitarian language. Rejecting the assumption that traditional trinitarian discourse is useless in an age of cults and sects, Jenson points to a profound and provocative renewal of trinitarian piety and reflection understood as a remedy for spiritual desolation and powerlessness. Proceeding on the premise that any radical analysis of the formula ÒFather, Son, and Holy SpiritÓ must work from biblical statements, Jenson investigates the significance of two biblical identifications of God: ÒGod is whoever freed us from EgyptÓ and ÒGod is whoever raised Jesus from the deadÓ. In opposition to the notion that God is to be understood simply as timeless being, Jenson shows how the memory of God's acts and the presence of God in Christ leads to a hope for the future based on the promise of the spirit.

God according to the Gospel

The Triune Identity

Carl E. Braaten

Since the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), orthodox Christianity has confessed Mary as "Theotokos, "Mother of God." Yet neither this title nor Mary's significance has fared well in Protestant Christianity. In the wake of new interest in Mary following Vatican II and recent ecumenical dialogues, this volume seeks to makes clear that Mariology is properly related to Christ and his church in ways that can and should be meaningful for all Christians. Written with insight and sensitivity by Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant scholars, these seven studies inquire into Mary's place in the story of salvation, in personal devotion, and in public worship. Contributors: Carl E. Braaten Lawrence S. Cunningham Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald Beverly Roberts Gaventa Timothy George Robert W. Jenson Jaroslav Pelikan David S. Yeago

Mary, Mother of God

How does the church understand the relation between its Scripture and its creedal formulations? No one is more qualified to address that question than Robert W. Jenson, who shows how canon and creed work together and interact and that neither is an adequate or sufficient to guide Christian faith without the help of the other. His book will enable contemporary interpreters and teachers, pastors, and laity to deal with the questions and tensions that are always present as the church seeks to hold canon and creed together.

Canon and Creed

Volume 2 treats atonement, the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, the sacraments, justification by faith, and eschatology.

Christian Dogmatics

The authors of this collection hold that America is now a new mission field where the gospel is in a life-and-death struggle with a plurality of pagan options that have insinuated themselves into the culture.

The Gospel Or Neopaganism

Either/or

Simo Knuuttila

Oswald Bayer

Beiträge zum Verständnis Luthers und der gegenwärtigen Ökumene : Festschrift für Tuomo Mannermaa zum 60. Geburtstag

Caritas Dei

Volume 1 discusses dogmatics, the Trinity, the identity of God, creation, sin, and Christology.

At the time of his death in the autumn of 2017, Robert W. Jenson was arguably America's foremost theologian. Over the course of a career spanning more than five decades, much of Jenson's thought was dedicated to the theological description of how Scripture should be read-what has come to be called theological interpretation. In this rapidly expanding field of scholarship, Jenson has had an inordinate impact. Despite its importance, study of Jenson's theology of scriptural interpretation has lagged, due in large part to the longevity of his career and volume of his output. In this book, all of Jenson's writings on Scripture and its interpretation have been collected for the first time. Here readers will be able to see the evolution of Jenson's thought on this topic, as well as the scope and intensity of his late-period engagement with it. Where other twentieth-century thinkers rely on non-theological, secular methods of scriptural investigation, Jenson is willing to let go of "respectability" for the sake of a truly Christian theological interpretation. The result is a genuinely free, intellectually invigorating exercise in reading and theory from one of the greatest theologians in the last century.

Collected Essays on Scripture

The Triune Story

Jenson focuses on the overt sense of the book as an erotic love poem in order to discover how this evocative poetry solicits a theological reading.

Song of Songs

Eight recognized Christian thinkers show that while the forms taken by these diabolical forces may have changed under the conditions of modern life, the underlying realities remain the same. Thus politics can become demonic, power can promote death, and sin can be disguised as virtue. Far from being pessimistic, however, the authors affirm God's victory over these enslaving powers through the proclamation of the gospel and the sacraments of the church."--BOOK JACKET.

Sin, Death, and the Devil

While Christians and Jews have always been aware of their religious connections -- historical continuity, overlapping theology, shared scriptures -- that awareness has traditionally been infected by centuries of mutual suspicion and hostility. As this important volume shows, however, theologians and scholars of Judaism and Christianity alike are now radically rethinking the relation between their two covenant communities. "Jews and Christians" presents the best of this work, introducing readers to current attempts to construct a coherent Jewish theology of Christianity and a Christian theology of Judaism. Here are leading Christian and Jewish thinkers who have engaged in extensive conversation, who take each other's work seriously, and who avoid the pitfall common to Jewish-Christian dialogue -- watering down distinctive beliefs to accommodate both partners. Indeed, these pages show how the new theological exchange goes to the roots of that olive tree of which both Judaism and Christianity are branches, and the book as a whole represents post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian dialogue at the highest theological level. In addition to eight major chapters, "Jews and Christians" includes a moving testimony by Reidar Dittmann on his experience of the Holocaust and reprints the 2000 manifesto "Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity," followed by incisive Christian and Jewish responses. Contributors: Carl E. Braaten David B. Burrell Barry Cytron Reidar Dittmann David Bentley Hart Robert W. Jenson Jon D. Levenson George Lindbeck Richard John Neuhaus David Novak Peter Ochs Wolfhart Pannenberg R. Kendall Soulen Marvin R. Wilson

People of God

Jews and Christians

Alpha and Omega; a Study in the Theology of Karl Barth

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. This collection of twenty-two essays considers a broad range of themes that lie at the intersection of culture and theology: the arts, language, politics, and liberal education. One theme especially prominent in these pieces is the use of nihilism and its political manifestations as fascism as chief culture-diagnostic categories. Taken together, these compelling pieces offer important insight into where society has been, where it is today, and where it is headed.

Essays in Theology of Culture

This new addition to a series that enlists leading theologians to interpret scripture for the twenty-first century presents a theological exegesis of Jonah by esteemed theologian Robert Jenson.

Ezekiel

In today's postmodern culture many people are turning to religion, but they are not necessarily finding their way back to the church. Most unbelievers in America and other Western countries are post-Christians. Though baptized and brought up in a church, they no longer believe and practice the Christian faith. In such a time, the great challenge facing the church is "re-evangelization. This volume provides serious theological reflection on Christian missions within postmodern, post-Christian culture. Written by respected scholars representing the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox traditions, these chapters point out elements of the gospel that will help the church speak effectively to contemporary society, particularly in the United States. John Milbank examines the origins of postmodernity and suggests that belief in the incarnation will be accepted only when the church fully embraces (hetero)sexuality. Robert W. Jenson insists that the church must boldly uphold its distinctive beliefs in an otherwise pluralistic and relativistic age. David L. Schindler argues that our reductionist view of nature must be replaced with one that again sees God's presence in the world. R. R. Reno compares postmodernism's negation of truth claims to the weightless humanism of the Roman writer Petronius. Philip Turner maintains that Christians can effectively persuade others today only through their actions. Anthony Ugolnik believes that the gospel must now be de-familiarized in order to make it fresh once more. Todd E. Johnson traces the history of evangelism in America and locates a valid model for our time. Frank C. Sennquestions the rise of the seeker service, defending instead a traditional liturgy that emphasizes the Trinity. Carl E. Braaten works to recover the full power of the church's missionary calling. Suggesting startling approaches to Christian proclamation, this volume shows how the strange new word of the gospel can reawaken faith in the postmodern world.

Re-evangelizing in the Postmodern World

The Strange New Word of the Gospel

The theology of Karl Barth, the world-renowned German religious philosopher, has won the interest of intelligent laymen as well as clergymen, seminarians, and students. This book is an analysis of the way in which Barth describes the existence of Christ as the beginning and end of human history. From the dominant clichŽ of modern theology--ÒChristianity is an historical religionÓ--it untangles three questions which it then directs to Barth's writings: 1. To what end does God rule human history? 2. In what sense does God have a history and what is the relation between His history and ours? 3. What does the Christian assertion that Jesus, an historical event, is the meaning of life, say about the meaning of reality? Through investigation of these questions, Alpha and Omega presents Barth's theology as an answer to the challenge presented by the loss of man's ancient belief in an eternal and unchanging framework and in a goal of life. The Church must speak to man as it þnds him. Today it cannot assume that man already believes in Òjustice,Ó Ògoodness,Ó and ÒGod.Ó Christianity must learn to present Jesus Christ, in his unadulterated historical reality, as the meaning of man's life. Alpha and Omega shows that Barth's development of a proclamation in which Christ's life is seen as the unconditional goal of the history of creation, in which to live means to become Christ's brother and share in His story, is one of theology's few live possibilities--if not the only one.

A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth

Alpha and Omega

Eugene Korn

Covenant and Hope centers around two main themes in Jewish-Christian dialogue: "Covenant, Mission, and Relation to the Other" and "Hope and Responsibility for the Human Future." In the first section scholars from both faiths analyze the idea of covenant, how it determines their religious commitments, behavior, and theology, and how their covenantal theology shapes their relations with people outside their religious communities. The second section focuses on the foundation for religious hope, how belief in the future can be nourished, and on our practical and philosophic responsibility to work for a better human future.

Robert W. Jenson

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