Here’s my best effort to summarize Robert Jenson’s take on God-and-time, written with faux-Jensonesque pithiness. Is God eternally and infinitely the eternal and infinite God that He is? Of course. He’s God. Is God dependent on creation for His fulfillment? Of course not. He’s God. The biblical God uniquely does not try to escape time. All other gods do; that’s what makes them gods. The world is what it is. History is what it is. No use worrying what might... Read more
Ask anyone who recognizes the name Anselm, and they will tell you that he was the formulator of a theory of the atonement in which God is an exacting accountant of honor. Damaged honor has to be restored; and, tallied up, the damaged honor proves infinite, and so demands infinite restoration. Anselm’s theory looks like that dreaded “classical theism” applied to the atonement. Abelard’s God seems a good big cuddlier, and “subjective” theories of the atonement seem more personable than... Read more
Jenseon writes: “The Crucifixion puts it up to the Father: Would he stand to this alleged Son? To this candidate to be his own self-identifying Word? Would he be a God who, for example, hosts publicans and sinners, who justifies the ungodly? The Resurrection was the Father’s Yes. We may say: the Resurrection settled that the Crucifixion’s sort of God is indeed the one God; the Crucifixion settled what sort of God it is who establishes his deity by the... Read more
Graced nature, yes. We are always already encountering God, of course. But not this: “Insofar as this subjective, nonobjective luminosity of the subject in its transcendence is always oriented toward the holy mystery, the knowledge of God is always present unthematically and without name and not just when we begin to speak of it.” Not this, and not just because it’s full of opaque Rahnerian diction. Not this, because: a) Is experience ever “unthematized”? and b) most extra-Christian religious experience... Read more
INTRODUCTION Modern atheists try to test God by their own moral and logical standards, and they think they are very, very clever. They are more evangelical than they know: Humanity’s trial of God is one of the central episodes of the Passion Narrative. THE TEXT “And those who had laid hold of Jesus led Him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled. But Peter followed Him at a distance to the high priest’s... Read more
The writer of Hebrews writes: “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews... Read more
In Gethsemane, it seems that Jesus is being “reconsolidated” as the original Adam. His helpers, the disciples, flee from Him, leaving Him along to face His Satanic attackers. Maybe, though, the typology works differently. Perhaps we are to see Jesus-and-disciples as forming an Adam, an Adam that has to be torn in two in the garden, so that a new Eve can emerge. Until Jesus has gone into the deep sleep of death, He and His disciples are still living... Read more
Matthew 26:36: Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane. The word “Gethsemane” means “wine-press of oil.” It’s built from the same Hebrew root as Gath-Hepher, “the wine-press of the well,” a city in the tribal area of Zebulun, the birthplace of Jonah, and Gath-Rimmon, the “wine-press of the pomegranate,” a town in Dan. One of the five cities of Philistia, the hometown of Goliath and later the home of David in exile, was “Gath,” which means simply “wine-press.”... Read more
Toby Sumpter pointed out parallels between Matthew 18 and 26, specifically on the issue of “stumbling blocks.” Jesus condemns those who put stumbling blocks in the way of little ones, and predicts that the disciples will stumble over Him on the night of His arrest and trial. One of the striking parallels is in the “woes” that Jesus pronounces in each passage. Jesus pronounces a “woe” against the ones through whom stumbling blocks come (18:7) and also a woe against... Read more
Jesus explains His arrest and the scattering of the disciples in terms of Zechariah 13:7-9, where Yahweh commands the sword, “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” This all happens at night (Matthew 26:31), the night that happens to be Passover. Scripture records an earlier night strike at Passover: “I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the... Read more
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