Robert Jenson and the spirit of it all: or, you (sometimes) wonder where everything else went

Abstract

Three aspects of Robert Jenson's theology are investigated and then related according to their common pneumatological implications. First Jenson's neo-Barthian doctrine of revelation is considered as it leads him to an immediate or near-immediate relation of the being and act of God. This puts particular tensions on how he maintains the ontological distinction between creator and creation. Second, the same tension is found repeated in the way Jenson rejects the notion of divine timelessness. In bringing the being of God into history, and time into the being of God, he eventually calls the Father, Son and Spirit the ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ of the triune life. These tensions are heightened even further in the third section. With his characteristic concept of ‘narrative causality’ Jenson attempts a constructive recovery of Hegelian categories by suggesting the ‘End’ – as brought about by the Spirit-‘Outcome’ of God – is that ‘sublation which is itself not sublated’. The article concludes without entering the specifically Hegelian controversy, rather with more simple questions about the doctrinal integrity of Jenson's eschatology.