Robert Jenson
Robert Jenson | |
---|---|
Born | Robert William Jenson August 2, 1930 Eau Claire, Wisconsin, US |
Died | September 5, 2017 Princeton, New Jersey, US | (aged 87)
Spouse | Blanche Rockne (m. c. 1954) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Cur Deus Homo?[1] (1959) |
Doctoral advisor | Peter Brunner[2] |
Influences | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Theology |
Sub-discipline | Systematic theology |
School or tradition | Lutheranism |
Institutions | |
Doctoral students | Colin Gunton |
Notable works |
|
Influenced | Roger E. Olson[9] |
Robert William Jenson (August 2, 1930 – September 5, 2017) was a leading American
Student years
Jenson was born on August 2, 1930, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.[2] He studied classics and philosophy at Luther College in the late 1940s, before beginning theological studies at Luther Seminary in 1951. Due to a car accident he missed most of his first-year seminary studies, and during that year he immersed himself in the works of Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard. Jenson began reading historical-critical scholars like Hermann Gunkel and Sigmund Mowinckel, and as a result he became deeply interested in the biblical texts and in the theological significance of the Old Testament.
At Luther Seminary, Jenson was assistant to the renowned orthodox
After seminary, Jenson taught in the department of religion and philosophy at Luther College from 1955 to 1957, before moving to Heidelberg for doctoral studies in 1957–1958. Though he had planned to write his dissertation on Bultmann, his supervisor, Peter Brunner , advised him to work on Karl Barth's doctrine of election. Thus Jenson worked on Barth's theology at Heidelberg, and he also studied nineteenth-century German theology and philosophy, partly with the help of the new Heidelberg lecturer, Wolfhart Pannenberg. He also attended a seminar there with Martin Heidegger (and, during a later visit to Heidelberg, with Hans-Georg Gadamer). Even more significantly, at Heidelberg he became friends with another young Lutheran scholar, Carl Braaten, who would later become his "chief theological companion"[12] and his most important theological collaborator.
Early career
Jenson's doctoral dissertation (revised and published in 1963 as Alpha and Omega) was completed in
Jenson finally left Luther College to spend three years as Dean and Tutor of Lutheran Studies at
From Oxford, Jenson returned to America in 1968 and took up a position at the
), which led him to develop a creative new proposal for trinitarian theology in The Triune Identity (1982).Further, as a result of his encounter with Anglicanism at Oxford, Jenson was appointed to the first round of Lutheran–Episcopal ecumenical dialogue in 1968. This was the beginning of his long involvement with the
Later career
After two decades of teaching at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Jenson moved in 1988 to the religion department of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He was joined in Northfield by his friend Carl Braaten, and together they founded the conservative Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology in 1991. The founding of this center marked a new period of intensive ecumenical involvement for Jenson: with Braaten, he organized numerous ecumenical conferences and began publishing the theological journal Pro Ecclesia, where he remained a senior editor until his death.[15]
Jenson continued to teach at St. Olaf College until 1998, when he retired and took up a position as Senior Scholar for Research at the Center for Theological Inquiry in
Jenson died in his home in Princeton on September 5, 2017.[17]
Works
Authored works
- Cur Deus Homo? The Election of Jesus Christ in the Theology of Karl Barth (Heidelberg doctoral dissertation; 1959)
- Alpha and Omega: A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth (1963)
- A Religion Against Itself (1967)
- God after God: The God of the Past and the God of the Future, Seen in the Work of Karl Barth (1969)
- The Knowledge of Things Hoped For: The Sense of Theological Discourse (1969)
- (with Carl E. Braaten) The Futurist Option (1970)
- Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel about Jesus (1973)
- (with Eric W. Gritsch) Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Writings (1976)
- Visible Words: The Interpretation and Practice of Christian Sacraments (1978)
- The Triune Identity: God According to the Gospel (1982)
- Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel about Jesus (1983)
- America's Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (1988)
- A Large Catechism (1991)
- Unbaptized God: The Basic Flaw in Ecumenical Theology (1992)
- Essays in Theology of Culture (1995)
- Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God (1997)
- Systematic Theology: Volume 2: The Works of God (1999)
- On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions (2003)
- Song of Songs (2005)
- (with Solveig Lucia Gold) Conversations with Poppi about God: An Eight-Year-Old and Her Theologian Grandfather Trade Questions (November 2006)
- Ezekiel (2009)
- Canon and Creed (2010)
- Lutheran Slogans: Use and Abuse (2011)
- Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation (edited by Stephen John Wright) (2014)
- A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live? (2016)
Edited works
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Christian Dogmatics, 2 vols. (1984)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) A Map of Twentieth Century Theology: Readings from Karl Barth to Radical Pluralism (1995)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Either/Or: The Gospel or Neopaganism (1995)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) The Catholicity of the Reformation (1996)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Reclaiming the Bible for the Church (1996)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) The Two Cities of God: The Church's Responsibility for the Earthly City (1997)
- (edited with Oswald Bayer and Simo Knuuttila) Caritas Dei: Beiträge zum Verständnis Luthers und der gegenwärtigen Ökumene: Festschrift für Tuomo Mannermaa zum 60. Geburtstag (1997)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (1998)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Marks of the Body of Christ (1999)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Sin, Death, and the Devil (1999)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Church Unity and the Papal Office: An Ecumenical Dialogue on John Paul II's Encyclical Ut Unum Sint (2001)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) The Strange New World of the Gospel: Re-Evangelizing in the Postmodern World (2002)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Jews and Christians: People of God (2003)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) The Last Things: Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Eschatology (2003)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity (2003)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) The Ecumenical Future (2004)
- (edited with Carl E. Braaten) Mary, Mother of God (2004)
Notes
References
Footnotes
- ^ Jenson 1959.
- ^ a b Verhoef 2012, p. 106.
- ^ East 2011, abstract; Verhoef 2012, p. 106; Verhoef 2013, p. 1.
- ^ a b Hinlicky, Paul R. (September 14, 2017). "Robert Jenson and the God of the Gospel". The Christian Century. Chicago. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
- ^ Verhoef 2013, p. 1.
- ^ Nicol 2016, p. 96.
- ^ Schlesinger 2016, p. 198.
- ^ Jenson 2007, p. 49.
- ^ Olson, Roger E. (November 7, 2017). "American Lutheran Theologians I Have Known". Roger E. Olson: My Evangelical Arminian Theologian Musings. Patheos. Retrieved December 5, 2019.
- ^ Bruce, Matthew J. Aragon (September 12, 2017). "Because God Is: A Tribute to Robert W. Jenson (1930–2017)". Christianity Today. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
- ^ Jenson 1997, p. v.
- ^ Jenson 1973.
- ^ Jenson 2007.
- ^ Braaten 2011, p. 6.
- ^ "Robert Jenson, Theologian Revered by Many of His Peers, Dies at Age 87". The Christian Century. Chicago. September 13, 2017. Retrieved July 3, 2018.
- ISSN 1047-5141. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
- ^ Braaten 2018, p. 3.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-1-60899-487-8.
- ISSN 1540-6385.
- East, Brad (2011). The Believers Church and the Triune God: How the Trinitarian Theology of Robert W. Jenson Critiques and Supplements the Ecclesiology of John Howard Yoder (M.Div. thesis). Atlanta, Georgia: Emory University. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
- Jenson, Robert W. (1959). Cur Deus Homo? The Election of Jesus Christ in the Theology of Karl Barth (doctoral thesis). Heidelberg, West Germany: Heidelberg University. OCLC 34656808.
- ——— (1973). Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel About Jesus.
- ——— (1997). Systematic Theology. Volume 1: The Triune God. New York: Oxford University Press (published 2001). ISBN 978-0-19-514598-4.
- ——— (2007). "A Theological Autobiography, to Date". Dialog. 46 (1): 46–54. ISSN 1540-6385.
- Nicol, Andrew W. (2016). Exodus and Resurrection: The God of Israel in the Theology of Robert W. Jenson. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-5064-1683-0.
- Schlesinger, Eugene R. (2016). "Trinity, Incarnation and Time: A Restatement of the Doctrine of God in Conversation with Robert Jenson". Scottish Journal of Theology. 69 (2): 189–203. S2CID 170834025.
- Verhoef, Anné H. (2012). "Robert W. Jenson (1930– ): A Dramatic Teleology of Creation". In Conradie, Ernst M. (ed.). Creation and Salvation. Volume 2: A Companion on Recent Theological Movements. Zürich: LIT Verlag. pp. 106ff. ISBN 978-3-643-90137-8.
- ——— (2013). "The Relation Between Creation and Salvation in the Trinitarian Theology of Robert Jenson". HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. 69 (1). ISSN 2072-8050.
External links
- Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology
- List of online publications
- David Bentley Hart, "The Lively God of Robert Jenson", First Things (October 2005)