Trinity, Time, and Church: A Response to the Theology of Robert W. Jenson

by Colin E. Gunton (Contributor)

An engaging dialogue with a distinctive Christian theologian. With the recent publication of his two-volume Systematic Theology, Robert W. Jenson has established himself as a significant voice in contemporary Christian theology. In Trinity, Time, and Church leading scholars from around the globe critically engage the major themes of Jenson’s thought. These rich essays not only offer a solid introduction to Jenson’s work but also provide an overview of the contours of a meaningful Christian theology today.

Genres: Theology

331 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

Colin Ewart Gunton (1941-2003) was a British systematic theologian. As a theologian he made contributions to the doctrine of Creation and the doctrine of the trinity. He was Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College London from 1984 and co-founder with Christoph Schwoebel of the Research Institute for Systematic Theology in 1988. Gunton was actively involved in the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom where he had been a minister since 1972. He was arguably the most important British theologian of his generation.

Gunton's most influential work was on the doctrines of Creation and the Trinity. One of his most important books is The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity" (1993), and is "a profound analysis of the paradoxes and contradictions of Modernity." The One, the Three and the Many remains a "majestical survey of the western intellectual tradition and a penetrating analysis of the modern condition."

Reviews

[Jonathan Platter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Trinity, Time, and Church" is an apt triplet for engaging the theology of Robert Jenson. The subtitle of the book, however, would more appropriately be phrased "Responses to the Theology of Robert W. Jenson." But, back to the title itself, the triplet is a perfect summary of three central categories for Jenson. Trinity: the identity of the God whom Christians confess through their encounter with Jesus Christ. Time: the basic ontological category through which all existence is properly analyzed, including -- analogically -- God's own life. And Church: the created reality in which God's promised future is granted proleptically.

All of these aspects of Jenson's thought are interrogated, evaluated, and at times praised through the essays collected in this Festschrift, included several subtopics and supporting themes. There are moments when contributors rank Jenson among the greatest of history's theologians, at one point even claiming that for anyone aspiring to be a theologian, the required reading must include, alongside the patristics, Robert Jenson (Robert Louis Wilken, "Is Pentecost a Peer of Easter?," 177).

Like most festschrifts, some essays are better than others. For the most part, these essays are top-notch précis on aspects of Jenson's thought. Other essays, however, seem only loosely connected to Jenson's writing itself. For instance, Christopher Seitz offers interesting reflection on the vocalization of the tetragrammaton, which is now spelled "Yahweh," but on the whole provides little reason why this is a response to the theology of Jenson. An essay that should have been more helpful is Tuomo Mannermaa's on "Justification and Trinitarian Ontology." There was promise of appraisal of Jenson and the connection between these two terms (a theme I am very interested in), and yet Mannermaa instead provides more clarity on Luther -- claiming there is great similarity between Luther and Jenson -- than on Jenson's writing itself (the essay is still good, just less Jenson-driven than I had hoped).

On the whole, the essays are fitting tributes to Jenson and serve as a helpful companion to reading Jenson's writing. It is all very readable, and could be handled in an ad hoc manner if one simply wants to explore a topic from a Jensonian or Jenson-inspired perspective.