Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo

Having briefly stepped outside the internal critique the insight gained must be brought inside for internal use. David Bentley Hart cites a conversation with Jenson regard- ing his understanding of scripture which is important. Jenson understands his own argument as arising from his reading of scripture:

It is extremely easy to read Jenson merely as a representative of the Ger- man idealist tendency in modern dogmatics, and specifically as a dis- ciple of the greatest of the German idealists, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, in his early phase. But Jenson actually, it seems, takes his arguments from his own reading of Scripture; I have it on good au- thority (Jenson himself, to be exact) that Schelling’s thought has had no appreciable direct influence on Jenson’s at all.⁷⁸

In other words Jenson understands his use of scripture to be both foundational to and—by implication—in no way incompatible with his own project. The bridge by which this critique can be given internal warrant is by asking whether Jenson’s

⁷⁵Jeffrey,Luke, 288. ⁷⁶Ibid., 288.

⁷⁷Ibid., 289.

understanding of scripture gives his system internal warrant for the eccentricity of his reading. In other words, is there a control belief that has internal warrant to so shape his reading of scripture, which is itself meant to serve as the foundation? Within the text of God After God itself Jenson does not address his understanding of scripture. In his discussion of Barth, however, he makes clear that Barth’s own self-understanding is that his doctrine of the Trinity must be consonant with church tradition.⁷⁹That Jenson agrees with this fundamental assertion is implicit here and explicit by the time ofThe Triune Identity.⁸⁰Jenson is seeking to be faithful to church tradition, even in critically engaging with it.

It can, furthermore, be inferred that Jenson is not consciously seeking todistortscrip- ture. Insofar as he follows Barth in positioning scripture as thestarting pointfor his theology, this is done preciselybecauseany other method is distorting. This is explicit in his systematics:

“Internal biblical proof of the system that follows can therefore only be the system itself as it presents itself in the role of a general hermeneutical principle for Scripture taken as a single complex text, that is, as it marshals the structured whole of the Bible to its own systematic and argumen- tative purposes and just thereby displays or fails to display the coherent sense that the Bible itself is antecedently presumed to make.”⁸¹

Later on in the same text Jenson writes:

“All texts need a true community as interpreter; in the church, Scripture has just such a defender. … Every proposal of dogma, like every pro- posal of theology generally, must be tested against Scripture and existing dogma.”⁸²

A more equivocal witness appears, however, in his laterCanon and Creed. In what I take to be the fundamental thesis of the work Jenson argues that: “The community positioned to perceive what a scriptural text is truly up to is the church, and the

⁷⁹Jenson,After God, 97. ⁸⁰Jenson,Triune Identity.

⁸¹Jenson,Systematic Theology vol. 1, 33. ⁸²Ibid., 40.

creed is the set of instructions for discerning this agenda. The needed suspicious eye is the eye trained in the church to distrust all human religiosity, also as it may appear in Scripture.”⁸³ At this late stage in Jenson’s career, he asserts that the controlling categories for interpreting scripture are creeds (which he interprets as anti-religious), the church’s interpretation of scripture, and ananti-religious agenda.

As a Lutheran theologian, it is possible that the anti-religious agenda is being con- sciously used by Jenson to determine the ‘canon within the canon.’⁸⁴ Whatisclear from the wording above is that the anti-religious agenda is granted control over what is to be accepted from the scriptural text itself. Here is a control belief that governs Jenson’s reading of scripture which fits the pattern of Jenson’s reading we evaluated above.

Given the 41 year gap betweenGod After GodandCanon and Creedwe cannot simply read this statement as representing Jenson’s views in the former work. What is clear, however, is that the anti-religious agenda is already operative as a control belief in God After God.⁸⁵Does this, then, give Jenson internal warrant for his distorted reading of the Gospel accounts outlined above?

If we recall the shape of Jenson’s theology then we should see that the trinitarian structure of Jesus’ death and resurrectionisthe anti-religious centre of the scriptural narrative: ‘He is risen’ is the Gospel.⁸⁶By the logic of Jenson’s own system, therefore, the warrant for his anti-religious control belief mustcome fromthe narrative of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

It is clear, moreover, that Jenson is seeking to read this text without distortion: “we are not over-interpreting” he says.⁸⁷Indeed he uses fidelity to Scripture to evaluate other theological proposals.⁸⁸There is, therefore, noprima-facieinternal warrant for such a distortion of the text, and it is illegitimate on Jenson’s grounds.

⁸³Jenson,Canon and Creed, 81.

⁸⁴If this is true, an external critique of his thought could reject the adequacy of positing a ‘canon with the canon’ from an evangelical perspective.

⁸⁵And, indeed, before, see: Jenson,Religion Against Itself. ⁸⁶Jenson,After God, 157.

⁸⁷Ibid., 159.

⁸⁸See, for example, a recent book review Jenson evaluates a theological proposal based on the propriety of its scriptural interpretation, as well, interestingly, as the fidelity of its use of the Church fathers. Jenson, “Athens and Jerusalem”.

Having established this, we must now ask what control belief is operating in Jenson’s use of these texts. An answer presents itself on the very next page ofGod After God after his exegesis.