Panel: NARRATIVES BEYOND METAPHYSICS: POSSIBILITIES OF ORDER IN HERMENEUTICAL THEOLOGY



452.5 - NARRATIVE IDENTIFICATION AND THE MYSTERY OF GOD IN ROBERT JENSON'S THEOLOGY

AUTHORS:
Moe K.E. (VID Specialized University ~ Stavanger ~ Norway)
Text:
Robert Jenson's theology constitutes a rigorous challenge to the classical negations of traditional metaphysics, such as atemporality and impassibility. This, he argues, reduces the biblical narrative to mere "clues about God." Jenson challenges this notion by arguing that God is identified by and with the biblical narrative. Critics, however, worry that Jenson collapses the divine into history, thereby obscuring the distinction between creator and creation. This paper investigates whether Jenson successfully distances himself from a mystical and metaphysical deity while preserving divine aseity. To accommodate the identification of God by and with narrative, Jenson rethinks traditional divine atemporality by replacing it with the concept of divine "temporal infinity" giving priority to the future for determining the divine past and present. Consistent with narrative identification, temporality is not considered an ontological defect, and so God is not diminished by involvement in historically contingent events. I argue that for Jenson this is possible because he locates the distinction between creator and creation in distinct modes of divine and creaturely futurity. If God's nature is not understood with reference to a metaphysical hierarchy, how does Jenson account for God's aseity? And how can this be integrated with God's temporally contingent narrative identification? In considering these questions, I argue that Jenson relocates divine mystery to the understanding of God's identity as an event and that this is consistent with divine aseity. I end by considering whether Jenson's narrative identification of God is successful as an alternative to mystical theology by comparing his understanding of God to the apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite. I argue that Jenson's theology risks merely relocating divine mystery from being to event rather than providing an alternative, raising questions about the limits of narrative identification.