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Toward an understanding of the eschatological presence of the risen Jesus with Robert Jenson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2018
Abstract
This article will attempt to demonstrate the plausibility of Robert Jenson's account of the Son's existence before his earthly lifetime by arguing that the retroactive presence of the risen Jesus is what Jenson means, and by reflecting on the relationship between the way that grace and power of Christ reaches to the people of Israel and the concept of retrocausality in physics. This article restricts its discussion to the presence of the risen Jesus in the economy, leaving aside the question of the eternity–time relation, on the grounds that one may constructively engage with Jenson's account, regardless of his or her view of eternity.
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References
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4 For Jenson, the pre-existence of the Son means his presence in the Old Testament period, or, more precisely put, his presence before his earthly life. It does not denote his pretemporal existence, for Jenson has jettisoned this concept along with that of atemporal eternity.
5 Hunsinger, ‘Review Essay’, p. 178; Molnar, Paul D., Faith, Freedom, and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance and Contemporary Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2015), p. 225.Google Scholar
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7 Luke 24:51; ST 1:197.
8 ST 1:197.
9 Ibid.
10 Jenson, Robert, God After God: The God of the Past and the God of the Future, Seen in the Work of Karl Barth (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), p. 158.Google Scholar
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13 Ibid. Jenson himself indeed says, ‘Jesus Christ, the God-man “pre”-exists himself . . . to the pre-existence of Jesus Christ there belongs among other factors his pre-existence in and as the nation of Israel. For Israel also is the human Son.’ Jenson, Robert W., ‘Christ as Culture 1: Christ as Polity’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 5 (2003), p. 326 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Many readers and critics believe at this point that Jenson has diffused the presence of the eternally begotten and pre-existent Son and replaced it with the people of Israel. See e.g. Gathercole, Simon, ‘Pre-existence and the Freedom of the Son in Creation and Redemption: An Exposition in Dialogue with Robert Jenson’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005), pp. 44–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crisp, God Incarnate, p. 72; Nicol, Andrew, Exodus and Resurrection: The God of Israel in the Theology of Robert W. Jenson (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2016), p. 100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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17 Gen 15:1–6; cf. ST 1:79.
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19 ST 1:139.
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38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Barth himself briefly says, ‘[God's] declaration [of reconciliation] has a retroactive force’ which took place in the resurrection. Barth, CD IV/3.1, p. 298.
41 Ibid., p. 300.
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43 Ibid., p. 37.
44 Jenson states, ‘Thus Brenz replies to the obvious objection to his claim that Christ's body is ubiquitous: “We do not attribute to his body extension or diffusion in space, but elevate it beyond . . . all location”’ (ST 1:204).
45 Cf. Farrow, Ascension Theology, p. 292.
46 Russell, Robert, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), p. 341.Google Scholar
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48 Ibid., p. 343.
49 Ibid., p. 342.
50 Ibid., p. 343.
51 Ibid., p. 342.
52 Ibid., p. 343.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Wheeler, J. A. and Feynman, R. P., ‘Interaction with the Absorber as the Mechanism of Radiation’, Review of Modern Physics 17 (1945), p. 156 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wheeler, J. A. and Feynman, R. P., ‘Classical Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle Action’, Review of Modern Physics 21 (1949), p. 424 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cited in Robert Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction, p. 343, n. 68.
56 Russell, Time in Eternity, p. 344.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., p. 347.
59 Price, Huw, ‘Einstein and the Quantum Spooks’, in Stewart, C. and Hewitt, R. (eds), Waves of the Future (Sydney: Science Foundation for Physics, 2005), p. 229.Google Scholar
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62 Ibid., p. 233.
63 It does not lose Einstein's other assumptions either: the locality and realism. Ibid., pp. 225–6.
64 For his proposal, Price draws upon a Parisian physicist, O. Costa de Beauregard, who proposed ‘Alice's choice could affect Bob's particle indirectly . . . if the effect followed zigzag path, via the past. Alice's choice could affect her particle “retrocausally”, so to speak, right back the common source, in turn correlation Bob's particle with Alice's choice (and vice versa)’. (Huw Price and Ken Wharton, ‘Disentangling the Quantum World’, Entropy, 17 (2015), p. 7754). He could not publish his paper until his thesis supervisor allowed, because he thought his student's idea ‘strange’. Later, the supervisor relented ‘only when Feynmann published a famous paper describing positrons as electrons zigzagging backwards in time’ (Price and Wharton, ‘Disentangling the Quantum World’, p. 7754).
65 Robert Russell said this in an email to me. I must thank him for his kind reply and this insight.
66 Edwards, Jonathan, Miscellanies, 926 quoted in Robert Jenson, America's Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 182.Google Scholar
67 The B-theory of time holds that such temporal indexicals like ‘now’ and ‘today’, as well as the passage of time, are not grounded in reality but merely a subjective illusion.
68 The ‘block universe’ is often described as B-theorists’ vision of the reality, in which ‘the dimensions of space and the dimension of time combine to form an unchanging four-dimensional whole’: Poidevin, Robin Le, ‘Time and Freedom’, in Dyke, Heather and Bardon, Adrian (eds), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), p. 539 Google Scholar. In that theory, the whole history of the universe is determined and complete.
69 In the A-theory of time, the passage of time is not merely a subjective perception but an objective reality.
70 Jenson, ST 2:33, n. 17.
71 Miller, Kristie, ‘Presentism, Eternalism, and the Growing Block’, in A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, p. 347 Google Scholar. The moving spotlight is formulated in Skow, Bradford, ‘Relativity and the Moving Spotlight’, Journal of Philosophy, 106 (2009), pp. 666–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
72 Broad, Charlie, Scientific Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1923), p. 59.Google Scholar
73 For Jenson, the Spirit as the freedom of God ‘liberates each successive specious present from mere predictability, from being only the result of what has gone before’ (ST 1:66).
74 Proponents of this theory include Broad, C. D., Scientific Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1923)Google Scholar; Tooley, Michael, Time, Tense, and Causation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Forrest, Peter, ‘General Facts, Physical Necessity, and the Metaphysics of Time’, in Zimmerman, D. (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 137–54Google Scholar.
75 For Russell's argument for ‘a relational and inhomogeneous temporal ontology’, see Robert Russell, Time in Eternity, pp. 123-93. This amounts to a new flowing time interpretation of special relativity. Importantly, it is not necessary to postulate that the forefront temporal slice is straight. It could be wiggly.
76 Jenson, God After God, p. 165: ‘A true future is thus no mere possible rectification of one or another shortcoming of the present.’