The God of the Gospel: Robert Jenson’s Trinitarian Theology

261 Pages·2013·1.305 MB·English

by  Scott R. Swain

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STRATEGIC INITIATIVES IN EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY
God
The of
Gospel
the
Robert Jenson’s
Trinitarian Theology
SCOT T R. SWA I N
♦
InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
Email: [email protected]
©2013 by Scott R. Swain
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity
Press.
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Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001
by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover design: Cindy Kiple
Images: Resurrection by John Armstrong. Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.
ISBN 978-0-8308-8430-8 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-3904-9 (print)
The divine being and life and act takes place with ours, and it is only
as the divine takes place that ours takes place. To put it in the sim-
plest way, what unites God and us men is that he does not will to be
God without us, that he creates us rather to share with us and there-
fore with our being and life and act his own incomparable being and
life and act, that he does not allow his history to be his and ours ours,
but causes them to take place as a common history. That is the special
truth which the Christian message has to proclaim at its very heart.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:7

CONTENTS
♦
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1 The Question Stated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2 The State of the Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
PART ONE: Robert Jenson on the Gospel’s God . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3 The Way of God’s Identity According to the Old Testament . . . . . . 77
4 The Way of God’s Identity According to the New Testament . . . . . . 96
5 The Triune Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
PART TWO: Toward a Catholic and Evangelical Account
of the Gospel’s God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6 “A Father to You”: God’s Fatherly Self-Determination
in the Covenant of Grace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
7 Immanuel: The Son of God’s Self-Identification
with Humanity in the Incarnation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
8 “Deluged with Love”: The Spirit and the
Consummation of Trinitarian Fellowship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
9 Grace and Being: Bruce McCormack on the Gospel’s God . . . . . . . . . 208
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
10 Concluding Reflections on the Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
♦
T
his book took much longer to complete than I had originally en-
visaged. What was to be a light revision of my doctoral dissertation
written under the supervision of Kevin Vanhoozer at Trinity Evan-
gelical Divinity School in 2002 has turned out to be a completely new
book, only distantly related to its ancestor dissertation. In bringing
the present study to publication at last, I have a lot of people to thank.
A number of friends and colleagues read the manuscript, either in
part or in its entirety, and offered thoughtful suggestions for im-
provement. These include Michael Allen, Keith E. Johnson, Mat-
thew Levering, Fred Sanders, Darren Sarisky, Dan Treier and Kevin
Vanhoozer. I am especially indebted to George Hunsinger in this
regard, who provided numerous helpful comments along with his
encouraging commendation.
I am grateful to John Webster for graciously sharing with me
the manuscript of his 2007 Kantzer Lectures. John is the supreme
contemporary exemplar of dogmatic theology in a (shall we call
it?) Reformed and Thomistic key, and an encouragement to many
of us who aspire to fulfill the theologian’s vocation faithfully and
intelligently.
Several persons associated with Reformed Theological Seminary
in Orlando, Florida, also deserve recognition. Michael Farrell, our
8 THE GOD OF THE GOSPEL
associate librarian, provided assistance in securing books and articles
through interlibrary loan. Jonathan Dyer and Alexander Kirk as-
sisted me at different points along the way in preparing the bibliog-
raphy and proofreading the manuscript. Jennifer Redd produced the
indexes with characteristic skill. Here I should also thank Don
Sweeting, president of RTS, Orlando, and Ceci Helm, my assistant,
who each in different ways promote and protect significant periods
of time for research and writing so that I can complete projects like
this one.
And then there are the good folks at IVP. Gary Deddo’s original
interest in a book addressing persons and topics not widely discussed
by evangelicals guaranteed that this study would see the light of day.
Michael Gibson and Brannon Ellis, my two editors, helped me re-
fine the structure and flow of my argument so that I could make my
case as clearly as possible. I am grateful as well to the editorial advi-
sory board of IVP’s Strategic Initiatives in Evangelical Theology for
their willingness to include this book in that series.
Finally, I want to thank my wife, Leigh, and our four children,
Carly, Sophie, Josiah and Micah, for the ways they daily fill my life
with joy and encourage me in my calling. Nearly eleven years ago, I
dedicated my dissertation to Leigh. I am happy to dedicate this, its
offspring, to her now.
“To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor
and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Tim 1:17).