Brain, Michael. “The Evangelization of Metaphysics: Robert W. Jenson and the Barthian Critique of Religion.” Paper presented at the Annual Wesley Studies Symposium, Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto, Ontario, April 25, 2018. (MPEG-3; 29:49 min.) 1 00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:09.520 Okay, so metaphysics metaphysics would be a term no? 2 00:00:10.120 --> 00:00:14.180 So metaphysics is a term that's usually used to describe a higher order of 3 00:00:14.210 --> 00:00:20.040 discourse that explains the basic nature of reality. 4 00:00:21.640 --> 00:00:23.580 Good. Thank you. 5 00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:27.860 So metaphysics answers questions like, what does it mean to exist? 6 00:00:27.890 --> 00:00:29.340 What does it mean to be? 7 00:00:29.370 --> 00:00:32.460 Why is there something rather than nothing? 8 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:38.140 It also explains what's the nature, the ultimate nature of the physical universe? 9 00:00:38.170 --> 00:00:41.020 What are kind of the building blocks of reality? 10 00:00:41.050 --> 00:00:43.820 And it also explains questions like what is time? 11 00:00:43.850 --> 00:00:48.660 Those questions that you stay up late at night in bed thinking about. 12 00:00:48.680 --> 00:00:52.820 So, in other words, metaphysics is a way of interpreting reality. 13 00:00:52.850 --> 00:00:58.060 It is beyond what we can discern from the physical universe around us. 14 00:00:58.090 --> 00:01:00.260 It's a way of reading history. 15 00:01:00.290 --> 00:01:05.900 It's kind of like a lens through which we view every facet of our existence. 16 00:01:05.930 --> 00:01:08.410 Since Christianity has always claimed to 17 00:01:08.440 --> 00:01:13.040 hold the key to understanding history in the universe, its theology has often had 18 00:01:13.070 --> 00:01:18.050 to deal with such questions that fall under the category of metaphysics. 19 00:01:18.080 --> 00:01:19.770 Traditionally, the metaphysics of the 20 00:01:19.800 --> 00:01:24.020 Christian faith derived from Greek metaphysics, which were characterized by a 21 00:01:24.050 --> 00:01:30.100 struggle to apprehend being or substance as the basis of all reality. 22 00:01:30.130 --> 00:01:32.100 According to the Greek philosophers, 23 00:01:32.130 --> 00:01:37.290 everything consists in being a timeless, unchanging, impersonal reality, 24 00:01:37.320 --> 00:01:42.780 functioning as the first principle of all things set into motion by a first cause. 25 00:01:42.810 --> 00:01:46.420 This would be Aristotle's unmoved mover. 26 00:01:46.450 --> 00:01:48.490 So Greek converts to Christianity. 27 00:01:48.520 --> 00:01:51.060 When the Gospel went into the Greek world, 28 00:01:51.080 --> 00:01:54.160 they were faced with the challenge of learning how to talk about the God of 29 00:01:54.190 --> 00:01:59.100 Scripture and often using their Greek categories of thinking. 30 00:01:59.120 --> 00:02:00.570 And so they used their culturally 31 00:02:00.600 --> 00:02:03.460 inherited beliefs in forming statements about God. 32 00:02:03.490 --> 00:02:08.700 And as the Christian faith became established in the Greco Roman world, very 33 00:02:08.730 --> 00:02:14.140 soon these categories became entrenched in the way that we talk about God. 34 00:02:14.170 --> 00:02:16.420 But beginning in the Enlightenment, 35 00:02:16.450 --> 00:02:22.580 culminating in the 20th century, christian theologians began to question 36 00:02:22.610 --> 00:02:27.060 whether Greek metaphysics were useful for describing God. 37 00:02:27.090 --> 00:02:31.730 Increasingly, many found irregularities between the God that's depicted in the 38 00:02:31.760 --> 00:02:36.100 Bible and the God depicted by the Greek philosophers. 39 00:02:36.130 --> 00:02:43.260 This idea of a God as a timeless, non, historical, unchanging substance 40 00:02:43.290 --> 00:02:47.980 didn't really appear to be an accurate description of the God in Scripture who 41 00:02:48.010 --> 00:02:53.700 reveals Himself relationally with humanity through a particular group of people, 42 00:02:53.730 --> 00:03:01.280 through Israel, and then, most especially in a human life, in Jesus. 43 00:03:03.040 --> 00:03:07.760 So with the traditional concept of God becoming less and less credible in the 44 00:03:07.790 --> 00:03:12.400 modern world, theologians start trying to come up with different 45 00:03:12.440 --> 00:03:17.460 metaphysics, different ways of viewing God, and they usually resort to 46 00:03:17.490 --> 00:03:23.610 philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, 47 00:03:23.640 --> 00:03:28.220 and Wesleyans often were not exempt from this quest for a new God. 48 00:03:28.250 --> 00:03:34.480 Since the latter part of the last century, many scholars and theologians within the 49 00:03:34.510 --> 00:03:39.220 evangelical fold, often within Wesleyanism, have proposed so called 50 00:03:39.250 --> 00:03:45.300 openness theologies, also known as open theism free will, theism so. 51 00:03:45.320 --> 00:03:49.060 According to these theologies, god interacts with human beings on a personal 52 00:03:49.090 --> 00:03:55.660 level, allowing for a genuine relationship that's based on freedom of both parties. 53 00:03:55.690 --> 00:04:00.100 So for openness theologies, God and human beings must interact. 54 00:04:00.130 --> 00:04:05.780 And to interact freely, they have to be able to act freely as they choose. 55 00:04:05.810 --> 00:04:11.060 So this means not only that God does not determine the future. 56 00:04:11.080 --> 00:04:12.420 We might be able to agree on that. 57 00:04:12.450 --> 00:04:14.420 But they go further as to say that God 58 00:04:14.450 --> 00:04:19.140 also does not know the future with certainty, because for openness 59 00:04:19.160 --> 00:04:24.380 theologies, absolute foreknowledge means for ordination. 60 00:04:24.410 --> 00:04:26.780 If God absolutely knows the future, then 61 00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:30.060 everything is already fixed and there is no freedom. 62 00:04:30.090 --> 00:04:32.180 So God, while knowing all possible 63 00:04:32.210 --> 00:04:37.500 scenarios, the ones most likely to occur in his wisdom, he does not know with 64 00:04:37.530 --> 00:04:41.420 certainty what will result from free human actions. 65 00:04:41.450 --> 00:04:43.300 God allows for human freedom by 66 00:04:43.330 --> 00:04:47.860 surrendering absolute knowledge of the future, instead risking the accomplishment 67 00:04:47.890 --> 00:04:51.700 of his purposes in order to make room for human agency. 68 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:55.460 One book on openness theology is called The God Who Risks. 69 00:04:55.480 --> 00:05:01.620 God is taking this risk in being in relationship with humanity. 70 00:05:01.650 --> 00:05:03.780 Not all Wesleyans have been convinced. 71 00:05:03.800 --> 00:05:10.420 I don't think that it's been a majority view, because I think for a lot of 72 00:05:10.450 --> 00:05:16.380 Wesleyans, the omnipotence and the omniscience of God really are too steep a 73 00:05:16.410 --> 00:05:19.820 price to pay to get this relational view of God. 74 00:05:19.840 --> 00:05:24.060 But the question still remains what do we do with God? 75 00:05:24.090 --> 00:05:29.420 What do we do with this understanding of God that we've inherited? 76 00:05:29.450 --> 00:05:35.140 So with these questions in mind, my goal is for this study, is to recommend the 77 00:05:35.170 --> 00:05:40.020 theology of Robert Jensen, who's an American Lutheran theologian, 78 00:05:40.040 --> 00:05:43.700 and I want to recommend him as an alternative 79 00:05:43.730 --> 00:05:51.540 for us and as wesleans who struggle with the concept of God taken from the Greeks. 80 00:05:51.570 --> 00:05:53.900 So to demonstrate Jensen's usefulness for 81 00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:57.940 Wesleyan theology, this paper will examine Jensen's revisionary metaphysics. 82 00:05:57.960 --> 00:06:00.260 That's the term he used to describe his theology. 83 00:06:00.290 --> 00:06:02.620 And we'll get into that. 84 00:06:02.650 --> 00:06:07.740 But I'll compare Jensen's metaphysics with Karl Bart's critique of religion. 85 00:06:07.770 --> 00:06:08.540 Who? 86 00:06:08.570 --> 00:06:13.340 Carl Bart was the primary influence over Jensen. 87 00:06:13.360 --> 00:06:15.680 So although Jensen didn't address Wesleyan 88 00:06:15.710 --> 00:06:20.020 theology specifically, he says at one point that it appeared far too little in 89 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:23.380 his theology, and he said it was owing to his own ignorance of it. 90 00:06:23.410 --> 00:06:26.540 I think we can forgive Jensen for that. 91 00:06:26.570 --> 00:06:31.460 But capturing his theological vision by comparing him to Bart, I think reveals 92 00:06:31.480 --> 00:06:38.280 certain things that we can learn as Wesleyans from Jensen. 93 00:06:38.360 --> 00:06:42.340 So we'll start first with Bart. 94 00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:45.940 So, ever since the 17th century, enlightenment's thinkers have been calling 95 00:06:45.970 --> 00:06:51.140 into question the traditions and beliefs of Christianity, replacing ecclesial 96 00:06:51.170 --> 00:06:56.080 theology, dogmatic theology with studies into natural religion. 97 00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:58.580 The Christian religion in its traditional 98 00:06:58.600 --> 00:07:03.500 form was considered for Enlightenment thinkers, untenable for modern people of 99 00:07:03.530 --> 00:07:06.780 reason and the coming of the scientific age. 100 00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:11.660 Rendered superstitions of the past age of religion obsolete. 101 00:07:11.690 --> 00:07:16.300 Liberal or neoprotestant Christianity provided religion a brief recess from this 102 00:07:16.330 --> 00:07:21.480 relentless attack, maintaining that the message of Christianity could still be 103 00:07:21.510 --> 00:07:26.740 made palatable to modern people when it's rearticulated as a natural religion. 104 00:07:26.770 --> 00:07:31.940 That is, if we look at it on the basis of reason alone, then we can find some 105 00:07:31.970 --> 00:07:36.640 redeeming qualities that make Christianity still useful. 106 00:07:36.680 --> 00:07:38.940 So for the better part of the 19th 107 00:07:38.970 --> 00:07:43.420 century, though, these Enlightenment critiques continued, liberal Protestantism 108 00:07:43.450 --> 00:07:48.780 still gave Christianity a pride of place in the west. 109 00:07:48.800 --> 00:07:55.560 So in the late 19th century, though, this guy, Ludwig Feuerbach, his critique of 110 00:07:55.590 --> 00:08:00.100 religion marked a turning point in religion in the west, and it kind of 111 00:08:00.130 --> 00:08:04.220 ended this hopeful reign that liberal Christianity gave. 112 00:08:04.250 --> 00:08:10.100 Feuerbach asserted that all religion, even the natural religion of liberal 113 00:08:10.130 --> 00:08:15.380 Christianity, was merely a reflection of human thoughts, feelings, rationality. 114 00:08:15.410 --> 00:08:20.460 According to Firebach, religion is the projection of the highest human attributes 115 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:24.620 and values onto this objectivity, and we call this objectivity God. 116 00:08:24.650 --> 00:08:29.700 So we take our own thoughts and feelings and we impose it on God, 117 00:08:29.730 --> 00:08:33.980 and then we receive ourselves again by worshipping this God. 118 00:08:34.010 --> 00:08:36.660 But really, Firebach was an atheist. 119 00:08:36.690 --> 00:08:38.700 He was a materialist. 120 00:08:38.730 --> 00:08:40.500 He wasn't averse to all religion. 121 00:08:40.530 --> 00:08:42.940 But he maintained that, I quote, 122 00:08:42.970 --> 00:08:45.540 consciousness of God is self consciousness. 123 00:08:45.560 --> 00:08:49.020 Knowledge of God is self knowledge. By his god. 124 00:08:49.050 --> 00:08:51.620 Thou knowest the man and the man by his God. 125 00:08:51.650 --> 00:08:53.980 The two are identical. 126 00:08:54.010 --> 00:08:58.260 So religion for Firebach is nothing more than a human construct. 127 00:08:58.280 --> 00:09:00.060 It's something that we've made up ourselves. 128 00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:02.820 So religion doesn't involve any grand 129 00:09:02.850 --> 00:09:05.380 metaphysical claims about the world itself. 130 00:09:05.410 --> 00:09:08.500 It's just saying our own values. 131 00:09:08.530 --> 00:09:13.940 It's only speaking what we think and our own attitudes. 132 00:09:13.970 --> 00:09:18.740 And this was a surprising development for many. 133 00:09:18.770 --> 00:09:22.580 Firebox critique of religion was picked up by the young Carl Bart. 134 00:09:22.610 --> 00:09:24.940 This is a young picture of Bart. 135 00:09:24.970 --> 00:09:28.220 Bart was utterly disillusioned by liberal 136 00:09:28.250 --> 00:09:32.260 Christianity, which he was very well schooled in. 137 00:09:32.290 --> 00:09:34.380 But he was disillusioned because he found 138 00:09:34.410 --> 00:09:37.340 that it was useless for his task of preaching. 139 00:09:37.370 --> 00:09:42.860 He found he couldn't preach the Bible with liberal Christianity. 140 00:09:42.890 --> 00:09:47.020 So what made Bart's work most shocking 141 00:09:47.050 --> 00:09:55.300 was his use of Firebox Firebox ideas to launch an insider critique on religion. 142 00:09:55.320 --> 00:10:00.840 Liberal Christianity, according to Bart, was exactly as Firebox said it's, the 143 00:10:00.870 --> 00:10:03.940 projection of human values onto the divine. 144 00:10:03.970 --> 00:10:08.900 Modern theology, in other words, failed to say anything positive about God at all 145 00:10:08.930 --> 00:10:13.980 because it was simply a reflection of our own beliefs. 146 00:10:14.010 --> 00:10:18.460 However, unlike Firebach, Bart was a Christian. 147 00:10:18.490 --> 00:10:20.940 Bart believed in God, and he maintained 148 00:10:20.970 --> 00:10:23.620 that the God of the Bible does in fact exist. 149 00:10:23.650 --> 00:10:31.420 And he stands above all human constructions, all human ideologies. 150 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:33.620 He was a Christian with a concern to 151 00:10:33.650 --> 00:10:39.140 assert the reality of the one true God over all human religious constructions. 152 00:10:39.170 --> 00:10:44.500 So Bart initiated this critique in his commentary on Romans, 153 00:10:44.530 --> 00:10:48.980 and he calls religion, quote, the last and most inevitable human possibility. 154 00:10:49.010 --> 00:10:52.660 He says it's the culmination of humanism. 155 00:10:52.690 --> 00:10:56.860 In contrast to religion, grace is the divine possibility. 156 00:10:56.890 --> 00:11:01.780 It originates from the free act of God over against humanity. 157 00:11:01.810 --> 00:11:08.300 So religion is the highest attempt for human beings to reach God on their own. 158 00:11:08.330 --> 00:11:14.540 But since it's a human act, it's rendered obsolete by grace. 159 00:11:14.570 --> 00:11:17.420 Bert still said that. 160 00:11:17.440 --> 00:11:19.460 I quote him, the corrupt tree of sin must 161 00:11:19.490 --> 00:11:22.940 not be identified with the possibility of religion. 162 00:11:22.970 --> 00:11:26.300 Paul says in Romans Seven, what shall we say? 163 00:11:26.330 --> 00:11:27.980 Is the law sin? 164 00:11:28.010 --> 00:11:29.300 By no means. 165 00:11:29.330 --> 00:11:33.860 So Bart, with Paul, says, religion is not sin because although it's a human 166 00:11:33.890 --> 00:11:38.020 possibility, even though these are human things that we're doing, 167 00:11:38.050 --> 00:11:41.940 it shows us that there's a divine reality that confronts the world. 168 00:11:41.970 --> 00:11:45.540 It's showing us that there is a reality called God. 169 00:11:45.570 --> 00:11:50.260 But the problem with liberal Christianity was that it substituted divine grace for 170 00:11:50.290 --> 00:11:52.940 human religion as the essence of the faith. 171 00:11:52.970 --> 00:11:57.740 So religion itself, rather than God, became the subject of theology. 172 00:11:57.770 --> 00:12:03.160 And so in this way, by doing this, religion could only be idolatrous. 173 00:12:03.840 --> 00:12:05.940 And the critique of religion that Bart 174 00:12:05.970 --> 00:12:09.740 initiated, it made its way into his later theology. 175 00:12:09.770 --> 00:12:12.100 In the Church Dogmatics, Bart contrasts 176 00:12:12.130 --> 00:12:17.260 human religion with the revelation of God, which presents a curious dilemma. 177 00:12:17.290 --> 00:12:21.560 Revelation is grace, so that is it's something that comes to us from God, it's 178 00:12:21.580 --> 00:12:23.900 something that's coming from God's direction. 179 00:12:23.930 --> 00:12:26.820 But we also have to say that God's 180 00:12:26.850 --> 00:12:30.580 revealing of Himself takes place in the realm of human experience. 181 00:12:30.610 --> 00:12:32.900 In other words, God 182 00:12:32.930 --> 00:12:39.540 reveals Himself and that's his initiative, but we still experience it here. 183 00:12:39.570 --> 00:12:41.500 So as such, we have to say that the 184 00:12:41.530 --> 00:12:47.580 revelation of God, Bart says, is hidden within human religion. 185 00:12:47.610 --> 00:12:52.060 But how are the two related religion and revelation? 186 00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:54.060 Liberal Christianity since the 19th 187 00:12:54.080 --> 00:12:58.380 century had been claiming that religion explains revelation. 188 00:12:58.410 --> 00:13:03.220 For Bart, however, revelation had to be identical with God himself to avoid 189 00:13:03.250 --> 00:13:07.860 placing something over and against God that's above him. 190 00:13:07.890 --> 00:13:10.060 So without denying that revelation takes 191 00:13:10.080 --> 00:13:16.840 place in our midst, bart maintained that revelation must explain religion 192 00:13:17.320 --> 00:13:20.500 and it has to be superior to all human religion. 193 00:13:20.530 --> 00:13:21.740 Revelation. 194 00:13:21.760 --> 00:13:24.020 For Bart, we're not just given facts about God. 195 00:13:24.050 --> 00:13:30.460 Revelation isn't just us receiving little facts about God in revelation, it's 196 00:13:30.490 --> 00:13:33.900 actually God Himself giving his entire self to us. 197 00:13:33.930 --> 00:13:38.940 So it's not just mere facts, it's actually God Himself coming to us. 198 00:13:38.970 --> 00:13:44.020 So for this reason, religion can't explain revelation, since 199 00:13:44.050 --> 00:13:50.440 revelation is God Himself as he manifests Himself to us. 200 00:13:50.880 --> 00:13:56.220 And so the solution for theology was to 201 00:13:56.250 --> 00:14:02.500 move beyond religion and to be able to reassert God's freedom and 202 00:14:02.530 --> 00:14:10.040 power over his revealing Himself to us and freeing those things from human ideas 203 00:14:10.070 --> 00:14:15.200 that we tend to make up ourselves and then we place them onto God. 204 00:14:16.040 --> 00:14:18.020 So Bart's critique of religion was 205 00:14:18.050 --> 00:14:22.140 immensely influential over 20th century Protestant theology. 206 00:14:22.170 --> 00:14:26.660 His rebuke of human attempts to access the divine reality drove this a strong 207 00:14:26.690 --> 00:14:31.180 reaction in 20th century to liberal Protestantism. 208 00:14:31.210 --> 00:14:35.580 And as a remedy to these failures as he saw them, bart sought to redefine 209 00:14:35.610 --> 00:14:40.180 Christian theology according to the history of Jesus Christ. 210 00:14:40.210 --> 00:14:44.300 How God has revealed himself through Jesus. 211 00:14:44.330 --> 00:14:48.300 This project inspired a lot of 20th century figures, actually. 212 00:14:48.330 --> 00:14:51.440 But Jensen in particular is the one that 213 00:14:51.470 --> 00:14:59.540 we'll look at today, jensen took up this task of critiquing religion. 214 00:14:59.570 --> 00:15:04.180 To Jensen took this up as inspiration for his theology. 215 00:15:04.210 --> 00:15:11.300 So we'll get into Jensen alpha and Omega was Jensen's first book. 216 00:15:11.330 --> 00:15:13.820 This was developed from his doctoral dissertation. 217 00:15:13.850 --> 00:15:16.060 And the problem that he discusses in his 218 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:21.260 dissertation was the problem of time and eternity in modern theology. 219 00:15:21.290 --> 00:15:24.620 So in the modern period, human beings 220 00:15:24.650 --> 00:15:30.060 became increasingly aware of the fact that each human being inhabits a very specific 221 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:34.860 social, historical and geographical location. 222 00:15:34.890 --> 00:15:42.440 And as we just heard from Tim's presentation, 223 00:15:43.400 --> 00:15:48.500 the problem was this matter of truth, that truth tends to develop over time. 224 00:15:48.530 --> 00:15:50.420 This is this idea known as historical 225 00:15:50.450 --> 00:15:55.700 consciousness, this fact that we're located in a really particular place. 226 00:15:55.730 --> 00:15:57.380 So with the rise of historical 227 00:15:57.410 --> 00:16:01.540 consciousness, people began to find a disconnect between the truths of history 228 00:16:01.570 --> 00:16:05.940 and the universal truths of reason and religion. 229 00:16:05.970 --> 00:16:10.940 So in short, the problem for many modern thinkers and I think for a lot of people 230 00:16:10.970 --> 00:16:15.940 today in our culture is that one can't move from the fact of 231 00:16:15.970 --> 00:16:20.500 certain historical claims that happened to someone in the first century Jesus, 232 00:16:20.530 --> 00:16:24.700 however historically accurate those events might be. 233 00:16:24.730 --> 00:16:27.780 We can't move from that to then come up 234 00:16:27.810 --> 00:16:33.940 with this grand overarching scheme of what the entire universe is like, who God is. 235 00:16:33.970 --> 00:16:37.460 We can't logically make that step. 236 00:16:37.490 --> 00:16:39.540 We can't find the link between these two. 237 00:16:39.570 --> 00:16:42.300 And so for modern thinkers, this isn't obvious. 238 00:16:42.330 --> 00:16:45.340 It isn't obvious that when we look at this 239 00:16:45.370 --> 00:16:50.440 human life of Jesus, that we actually see God. 240 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:53.540 Historical occurrences for modern people 241 00:16:53.570 --> 00:16:57.660 cannot indicate universally binding ideas about what the world is like. 242 00:16:57.680 --> 00:16:59.600 So the central question for theology is 243 00:16:59.630 --> 00:17:04.400 how the historical events of Jesus can have importance for all people, which is 244 00:17:04.400 --> 00:17:06.700 what we are claiming when we preach the gospel. 245 00:17:06.730 --> 00:17:09.980 We're claiming that Jesus has significance for all of us. 246 00:17:10.010 --> 00:17:15.420 So with this background in mind, Jensen's basic question is to ask how does God rule 247 00:17:15.450 --> 00:17:19.010 and involve himself in history, in our history? 248 00:17:19.040 --> 00:17:21.620 In what sense does God himself have a history? 249 00:17:21.650 --> 00:17:25.620 So to find these answers, Jensen plunged into Karl Bart's theology. 250 00:17:25.650 --> 00:17:27.620 Jensen concluded from his study that 251 00:17:27.650 --> 00:17:33.290 because of Jesus Christ's nature as both God and a human being and because of his 252 00:17:33.320 --> 00:17:39.050 preexistence with God before creation, that God himself in his eternal 253 00:17:39.080 --> 00:17:45.380 transcendent being, he must be linked to history in some way. 254 00:17:45.410 --> 00:17:47.530 That if God became a human being, that 255 00:17:47.560 --> 00:17:51.500 somehow God's eternity must find its way into history. 256 00:17:51.530 --> 00:17:54.620 So that when one looks at this historical 257 00:17:54.650 --> 00:18:00.530 life of Jesus and we see Jesus life, that one's not just looking at one human 258 00:18:00.560 --> 00:18:04.940 life, but we're actually viewing the eternal God himself. 259 00:18:04.970 --> 00:18:10.770 So this claim blows this entire modern dichotomy out of the water that historical 260 00:18:10.800 --> 00:18:15.940 truths can't say anything about eternal truths. 261 00:18:15.970 --> 00:18:20.010 The central claim of the gospel is that the union of God and humanity in Jesus 262 00:18:20.040 --> 00:18:23.770 Christ bridges the gap between our world and the being of God. 263 00:18:23.800 --> 00:18:26.250 God can be known to the human race because 264 00:18:26.280 --> 00:18:33.530 Jesus Christ, God himself, embraces history, embraces time. 265 00:18:33.560 --> 00:18:36.330 So this means for Jensen that Christianity 266 00:18:36.360 --> 00:18:39.180 offers a radically different approach to the world. 267 00:18:39.210 --> 00:18:43.240 He insists that we have to develop a Christ centered metaphysics, quote, a 268 00:18:43.240 --> 00:18:45.500 vision of our lives and the world we live it in. 269 00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:47.220 Which will be an explication of the 270 00:18:47.250 --> 00:18:51.810 Gospel's concrete meaning for the understanding of existence. 271 00:18:51.840 --> 00:18:56.660 Since Jesus Christ is both divine and human, history itself as a whole and our 272 00:18:56.690 --> 00:19:02.660 own lives in the world around us take on a whole new shape. 273 00:19:02.690 --> 00:19:08.760 Our lives today are impacted by the entrance of God in the world. 274 00:19:09.400 --> 00:19:13.770 And so Jensen's subsequent work tends to 275 00:19:13.800 --> 00:19:19.220 go on the same line of trying to overcome human ideas about God. 276 00:19:19.250 --> 00:19:24.290 He links this back to Bart's critique that we can't impose human systems onto God. 277 00:19:24.320 --> 00:19:28.940 That to see what God is like, we have to look only to Jesus. 278 00:19:28.970 --> 00:19:31.570 And so Jensen, 279 00:19:31.600 --> 00:19:36.560 throughout the rest of his theology is seeking to conform all talk about God to 280 00:19:36.590 --> 00:19:38.980 the reality of the Gospel as revealed in Jesus. 281 00:19:39.010 --> 00:19:43.980 I skipped over that part for our time. 282 00:19:44.010 --> 00:19:48.240 So in his systematic theology we see 283 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:54.250 some of the mature reflections that Jensen has on these things. 284 00:19:54.280 --> 00:19:59.200 Jensen claims that the whole of my systematics is in one aspect and effort of 285 00:19:59.230 --> 00:20:04.250 revisionary metaphysics aimed at allowing one to say things about God 286 00:20:04.280 --> 00:20:11.360 that Scripture seems to require but that inherited metaphysics inhibit. 287 00:20:15.360 --> 00:20:20.290 And so Jensen cites Bart as one of his main sources. 288 00:20:20.320 --> 00:20:24.460 But what were Jensen's revisionary metaphysics, as he calls them? 289 00:20:24.490 --> 00:20:27.660 So I'll offer a brief outline. 290 00:20:27.690 --> 00:20:29.900 So the first is that all Christian talk 291 00:20:29.930 --> 00:20:34.940 about God must take into consideration the specific reality of the Gospel. 292 00:20:34.970 --> 00:20:37.770 For Jensen, God is identified as, quote 293 00:20:37.800 --> 00:20:40.980 the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 294 00:20:41.010 --> 00:20:43.940 This is who God is. 295 00:20:43.970 --> 00:20:48.380 So like Bart, Jensen sought to conform all theological discourse to the life history 296 00:20:48.410 --> 00:20:53.700 of Jesus his death, his resurrection and his coming glory. 297 00:20:53.720 --> 00:20:55.700 However, since the life history of Jesus 298 00:20:55.720 --> 00:20:59.530 is a temporal life lived in human history, then the Gospel raises metaphysical 299 00:20:59.560 --> 00:21:03.330 questions about the nature of God and his relation to time. 300 00:21:03.360 --> 00:21:05.840 If God is Jesus Christ, then our 301 00:21:05.870 --> 00:21:12.700 metaphysics must allow for a God who can be identified by events in time. 302 00:21:12.730 --> 00:21:15.250 So there's a series of implications. 303 00:21:15.280 --> 00:21:19.420 The first is that the God of the Gospel must be triune. 304 00:21:19.450 --> 00:21:24.010 Jensen actually says that father, Son and Holy Spirit is the proper name of God. 305 00:21:24.040 --> 00:21:26.680 That this is how God's identified it's. 306 00:21:26.710 --> 00:21:29.090 Like our name, my name is Michael. 307 00:21:29.120 --> 00:21:31.140 That's how you identify me in the world. 308 00:21:31.170 --> 00:21:37.220 Well, you identify God because he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 309 00:21:37.250 --> 00:21:43.220 Secondly, if God is triune and he's revealed in Jesus temporal life then 310 00:21:43.250 --> 00:21:48.940 God can't be defined as immune to time which was characteristic of Greek 311 00:21:48.970 --> 00:21:57.570 metaphysics, which Christian theology has had has tended to continue to repeat. 312 00:21:57.600 --> 00:22:01.540 Because time is the place of change and along with it suffering and pain. 313 00:22:01.570 --> 00:22:03.540 And anxiety for the Greeks. 314 00:22:03.570 --> 00:22:05.860 God has to be removed from those things. 315 00:22:05.890 --> 00:22:08.570 But if Jesus human life, including his 316 00:22:08.600 --> 00:22:13.500 death, is included in the eternal being of God, then God can't be immune to time. 317 00:22:13.530 --> 00:22:16.140 Rather, God must possess a time of his 318 00:22:16.170 --> 00:22:19.860 own, what Jensen calls divine temporal infinity. 319 00:22:19.890 --> 00:22:24.420 There's a word to put in your sermon for Sunday. 320 00:22:24.450 --> 00:22:29.140 I'll quote him here any eternity is some transcendence of temporal limits. 321 00:22:29.170 --> 00:22:33.050 But the biblical God's eternity is not the simple contradiction of time. 322 00:22:33.080 --> 00:22:35.940 But what he transcends is not. 323 00:22:35.970 --> 00:22:43.460 But what he transcends is having any personal limitation in having time. 324 00:22:43.490 --> 00:22:48.290 What he transcends is any limit imposed on what he can be by what he has been except 325 00:22:48.320 --> 00:22:54.290 the limit of his personal self identity that is, his being Trinity. 326 00:22:54.320 --> 00:23:01.090 So the true God is not eternal because he lacks time, but because he takes time. 327 00:23:01.120 --> 00:23:03.860 So for Jensen, God's being is not separate 328 00:23:03.890 --> 00:23:08.290 from our world, but he takes on time through his incarnation in Jesus Christ. 329 00:23:08.320 --> 00:23:11.740 So this leads us to the relation of human time in God's eternity. 330 00:23:11.770 --> 00:23:13.700 And I tried to come up with a chart. 331 00:23:13.730 --> 00:23:15.740 This isn't Jensen approved. 332 00:23:15.770 --> 00:23:21.940 So this is kind of how I've seen how it works out. 333 00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:25.780 Divine temporal infinity provides us with two senses that we can understand time. 334 00:23:25.800 --> 00:23:27.500 There's two different types of time. 335 00:23:27.530 --> 00:23:29.540 So first there's our time. 336 00:23:29.570 --> 00:23:32.570 There's this everyday progression of historical events. 337 00:23:32.600 --> 00:23:36.140 It's this progression from past, present, future. 338 00:23:36.170 --> 00:23:38.780 It's this cause and effect sequence. 339 00:23:38.810 --> 00:23:41.330 It's how we experience time. 340 00:23:41.360 --> 00:23:43.460 But the gospel teaches that God himself 341 00:23:43.490 --> 00:23:51.020 has time and that God's time is actually what creates ours. 342 00:23:51.050 --> 00:23:54.420 So Jensen calls this triune time or God's time. 343 00:23:54.440 --> 00:23:56.420 Created time is real and fully possesses 344 00:23:56.450 --> 00:24:00.570 its own nature, but it's enveloped and constituted by God's time. 345 00:24:00.600 --> 00:24:02.380 So created time is linear. 346 00:24:02.410 --> 00:24:04.860 There's a movement from past to future, right? 347 00:24:04.890 --> 00:24:07.290 This is our time here, right? 348 00:24:07.320 --> 00:24:08.860 So it begins at creation. 349 00:24:08.890 --> 00:24:11.140 We're going through and we have new creation. 350 00:24:11.170 --> 00:24:12.740 There's a definite end. 351 00:24:12.770 --> 00:24:15.620 There's this linear sequence. 352 00:24:15.650 --> 00:24:17.810 But time isn't just that. 353 00:24:17.840 --> 00:24:20.140 The real meaning of time is the fact that 354 00:24:20.170 --> 00:24:25.020 the Father stands at the beginning, the Spirit stands at the end. 355 00:24:25.050 --> 00:24:28.700 And the Son exists as the present of God. 356 00:24:28.730 --> 00:24:32.140 And so because the Son is also Jesus 357 00:24:32.170 --> 00:24:38.050 Christ, he's a human being, what the Son does is he gathers all of our time. 358 00:24:38.080 --> 00:24:40.420 He gathers everything that we are, 359 00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:42.260 everything that the world's ever going to be. 360 00:24:42.290 --> 00:24:47.290 And he takes it up into the life of God, takes it up into the triune God. 361 00:24:47.320 --> 00:24:53.140 And so this is what theologians will call participation in God. 362 00:24:53.170 --> 00:24:56.020 And this is how Jensen sees this as happening. 363 00:24:56.040 --> 00:24:57.920 And it's interesting, he actually throws a 364 00:24:57.950 --> 00:25:01.460 footnote in at his systematic theology at this point. 365 00:25:01.490 --> 00:25:03.290 He says that 366 00:25:03.320 --> 00:25:07.180 when he speaks about this transformation that we have, when we're finally brought 367 00:25:07.210 --> 00:25:11.700 up into God's life, which occurs at the end of our history once everything is 368 00:25:11.730 --> 00:25:15.740 concluded, he actually says, Wesleyans can take over from here. 369 00:25:15.770 --> 00:25:21.290 Because he says that he's not well versed in Wesleyan theology. 370 00:25:21.320 --> 00:25:25.180 But he says that they've been talking about this for a while. 371 00:25:25.210 --> 00:25:28.380 They can probably offer some insights. 372 00:25:28.410 --> 00:25:31.860 So this is just a rough sketch of his metaphysics. 373 00:25:31.890 --> 00:25:35.500 So I'll end with just some lessons that we can learn from it. 374 00:25:35.530 --> 00:25:38.860 First, metaphysics is unavoidable. 375 00:25:38.890 --> 00:25:40.980 That is, the reality of the gospel calls 376 00:25:41.010 --> 00:25:45.700 us to make definite statements about God and what the world is actually like. 377 00:25:45.730 --> 00:25:51.090 And so he recognized that if the Christian faith tells a story about who God is and 378 00:25:51.120 --> 00:25:56.020 what the world is, and if this applies to every single person that we encounter, 379 00:25:56.050 --> 00:26:01.020 then we have to be engaging in an interpretation of all reality. 380 00:26:01.050 --> 00:26:06.380 We must be doing a metaphysics, although nothing we ultimately say is 381 00:26:06.410 --> 00:26:10.260 going to match up to God and the full truth of who he is. 382 00:26:10.290 --> 00:26:14.960 Yet we're called to make this because we are making these claims about God. 383 00:26:15.040 --> 00:26:20.260 Second, Jensen says that it's not about finding the right type of metaphysics. 384 00:26:20.290 --> 00:26:24.800 And sometimes Christian theologians have tended to do this. 385 00:26:25.040 --> 00:26:30.290 We say, okay, we need this, so let's go to this philosopher or this idea and then 386 00:26:30.320 --> 00:26:35.160 let's use that as the thing that is organizing how we read Scripture. 387 00:26:35.400 --> 00:26:37.520 And on this point, I think Jensen has a 388 00:26:37.550 --> 00:26:42.020 lot to teach us with openness theology sometimes. 389 00:26:42.050 --> 00:26:46.660 There are a lot of good points that openness theologies have brought up. 390 00:26:46.690 --> 00:26:48.420 That open theism has brought up. 391 00:26:48.450 --> 00:26:53.460 But I think what we learn from Jensen is that 392 00:26:53.490 --> 00:26:59.380 they falter in that we tend to project our notions of time onto God and to assume 393 00:26:59.410 --> 00:27:06.020 that if we experience time as the fact that we can't know the future and that 394 00:27:06.050 --> 00:27:09.740 we're going along with time and experiencing time. 395 00:27:09.770 --> 00:27:11.980 If we're experiencing the future as 396 00:27:12.010 --> 00:27:17.380 something unknown to us, we know the possibilities, but we don't know it fully. 397 00:27:17.410 --> 00:27:23.160 They tend to presume that time entails the same thing for God's being. 398 00:27:23.320 --> 00:27:30.570 But my question is, has this open theism tended to start from a concept of human 399 00:27:30.600 --> 00:27:36.020 freedom or a concept of what time is and then imposed it onto God? 400 00:27:36.050 --> 00:27:39.140 Or does God have a time of his own? 401 00:27:39.170 --> 00:27:42.420 Does he experience time different than we do? 402 00:27:42.450 --> 00:27:45.420 And should we actually be looking to God 403 00:27:45.450 --> 00:27:50.050 to see the meaning of time and then we apply it to ourselves? 404 00:27:50.080 --> 00:27:53.180 So we ask God first what it is. 405 00:27:53.210 --> 00:27:57.140 But finally, Jensen's argument is that the Christian 406 00:27:57.170 --> 00:28:01.940 faith itself is a metaphysics and our goal is to interpret life through the gospel. 407 00:28:01.970 --> 00:28:07.140 And so, yeah, relevancy. 408 00:28:07.170 --> 00:28:12.980 I guess this brings up for me the question of relevancy of the gospel. 409 00:28:13.010 --> 00:28:15.480 And I think sometimes we take relevancy to 410 00:28:15.510 --> 00:28:22.500 mean we need to take the gospel and make it fit the world around us. 411 00:28:22.530 --> 00:28:24.700 But our goal, I think, as ministers of the 412 00:28:24.730 --> 00:28:29.290 gospel is not to take the gospel, make the gospel relevant by altering it according 413 00:28:29.320 --> 00:28:34.980 to the world around us and then imposing that on the gospel. 414 00:28:35.010 --> 00:28:37.520 But rather to take our own ideas, to take 415 00:28:37.550 --> 00:28:41.760 our own philosophies, to take our own understandings of life, and to see them in 416 00:28:41.790 --> 00:28:44.420 the Gospel, to see them in the biblical story. 417 00:28:44.450 --> 00:28:47.740 How do we view ourselves in Jesus history, 418 00:28:47.770 --> 00:28:52.460 and how do we help people to see all things in the light of the Gospel? 419 00:28:52.490 --> 00:28:55.500 How do we help everyone to see what life 420 00:28:55.530 --> 00:28:59.460 in the world is truly like by looking to Jesus? 421 00:28:59.480 --> 00:29:01.460 So in some, our goal is not to make Jesus 422 00:29:01.490 --> 00:29:07.080 fit our stories, but to locate ourselves in his story. 423 00:29:07.400 --> 00:29:11.780 So, yeah, just to conclude, one of Jensen's central claims for his theology 424 00:29:11.810 --> 00:29:15.700 is that it would be a theology for the ecumenical church. 425 00:29:15.730 --> 00:29:18.020 He wants it to apply to all Christians. 426 00:29:18.050 --> 00:29:20.330 He wants to speak to that. 427 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:23.740 And so as Jensen works continue to kind of 428 00:29:23.770 --> 00:29:30.460 make waves and start to be examined, I think Wesleyans will be impoverished if 429 00:29:30.490 --> 00:29:33.940 we neglect some of the insights that he offers. 430 00:29:33.970 --> 00:29:37.620 And so his theology is written for the church universal, and I think that 431 00:29:37.650 --> 00:29:42.460 Wesleyans could really find a way of appreciating his work. 432 00:29:42.490 --> 00:29:44.120 So thank you.