Jenson and a lack of sleep make for quite a headache...
In praise of Robert Jenson’s On Thinking the Human, Robert Wilkin wrote “Jenson’s mind makes stimulating company.” He should say what he means. What he meant to say, I think, was “Jenson’s mind makes for humiliating company.” Or maybe that was just my experience. No one has pointed out the desperate inadequacy of my cognitive capacities more poignantly than Jenson. Even the subtitle of his book, “Resolutions of Difficult Notions,” is a subtle and humbling jab at my intellect. Perhaps Jenson and I define “resolution” differently; because, the last time I checked, resolutions were meant to leave you with more comfort concerning a difficult question than you had before. Mostly, after reading each chapter, I felt not comforted, but dizzy.
This being said, I will humbly submit some of the important theological themes I was able to glean from this challenging and profound book. For Jenson, the resolutions to these difficult notions—death, consciousness, freedom, reality, wickedness, and love—are often much simpler than his maddening cogitations on each topic might suggest. In each case, Jenson does not hesitate to square with the epistemological and existential problems relating to each notion. For instance, treading mental territory that few of us are familiar with, Jenson arrives at the seemingly absurd but in the end obvious conclusion that it is impossible to “think death”:
From my point of view, my corpse is not, as in the third person, the fact of the person’s –my—non-existence. What for me would be the fact of my non-existence would be the absence of my consciousness. But it is precisely the termination of my consciousness that seems impossible to think.[1]
It is exactly this kind of conundrum that has bred a common loathing for philosophy and theology; and yet, it is a vital question of the human experience. It would seem that Jenson recognizes this irony as his writing is flavored with a coy understanding that not everything can be an existential crisis. Sometimes, says Jenson, we just live. Not surprisingly then, Jenson’s resolutions are more often than not rooted in Christian Trinitarian worship and sacrament. And, as we shall see, we often think too hard. The resolution is right beneath our collective nose.
Jenson starts pessimistically, it would seem. After opening with a mind-numbing discussion of the metaphysical possibility of conceiving one’s own death, Jenson offers no rest for the weary as he then delves into the milieu of Heidegger’s thought. However fearsome the philosophical threat may seem, Jenson offers hope in the face of death that is grounded in the fellowship of the Trinity, and more particularly, our participation in it. By virtue of Jesus’ death and Resurrection, says Jenson, the Christian can face death. It is not we who die, but Christ. Thus, death is not death at all: “Thus the cessation of my being for my consciousness is participation in a mutual consciousness in which cessation and being each constitute the other.”[2] What follows is an insightful and trying discussion over the nature of consciousness predicated on Aristotelian understandings of actuality and potentiality. Once again, the question is menacing, but the solution lies in a simple trust in Christ. For Jenson, we can never truly recognize our own consciousness unless we are participants in the divine life—more specifically the communion of the saints, the Church.[3] Perhaps the paragon example for Jenson’s methodical madness—the reduction of dizzying philosophical pontification to refreshingly simple resolutions—is his treatment of free will and determinism. After traversing the thought of both Augustine and Luther regarding free will and criticizing Enlightenment thinking on human freedom, Jenson again returns to the Triune God, without whom we can never truly be free. It is within this context that Jenson can arrive at the fresh perspective about empirical epistemology: our perceptions just are as “We see, hear, touch, and taste what we see, hear, touch, and taste, and that is all there is to be said about the matter; our percepts are not caused by something we do not see, taste, touch, or hear.”[4] Here again is a brilliant example of the theological precision with which Jenson artfully cuts through irrelevant abstraction and philosophical minutia to arrive at the concrete reality of the matter. In similar fashion, Jenson deconstructs the faulty assumptions that wickedness, in Aristotelian terms, must be either substantial or accidental to humanity. As Jenson demonstrates, concluding that wickedness is fundamentally one or the other results in disastrous theological ramifications.[5] Ultimately it would seem that sin is both substantial and accidental, or it is neither, a tertium quid of sorts; thus, the only way that we may be “cured without being eradicated” is, again, by the work of the Triune God.[6] Just as participation in the divine life is the only way that we may be cured without being eradicated, likewise we may only love without killing or being killed through God. Jenson here modifies Buber’s “I/Thou” relation by adding a third party to the equation. By virtue of this intervention from the outside—which, for Jenson, is manifest in the Holy Spirit—we are able to truly love, free from the temptation to dominate and the fear of being dominated.[7] An excellent example of this love, demonstrated through real availability, is Christ himself manifest in the Eucharist. It is this embodied love that constitutes the criterion for not only true Christian experience, but for all of reality.[8] All throughout, worship is essential to authentic interaction with reality.
Though this meager survey does great injustice to its magnificent efforts, On Thinking the Human proves a provocative treatise that demonstrates why Jenson is considered the champion of Pro Ecclesia methodology. He is honest enough to grapple with difficult human notions and existential crises yet wise enough to realize that any hope of resolving these puzzling elements of our shared existence rests in the life of the Triune God.
[1] Robert Jenson, On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 2.
[2] Jenson, On Thinking the Human, 12. This being said, I do have concerns over what Resurrection means for Jenson. Does he mean a real, bodily, ontological resurrection? I am unable to tell. Can anyone interpret the following passage? “Resurrection does not mean that my life starts up again. It means that the life I have lived is eternally presented and interpreted within the community of God, for whom death is no barrier to life, in whom being concluded is no barrier to conscious participation in love” (13).
[3] “…what is it to be conscious? It is either to be one identity of the living triune God or to be one of the community for which this God makes narratively structured space in his life. That is to say, it is to participate in the life of the people of God, remembering that this participation need not be affirmative or immediate” (30).
[4] Ibid, 51.
[5] For a more in depth discussion see 63-65. Jenson essentially demonstrates that a theology that treats sin purely as accidental to human nature results in mainline liberalism, a context in which redemption means little or nothing. Conversely, an overly substantial treatment of sin tends to demonize human nature and body resulting in self-loathing in extreme cases, a phenomenon which has been known to occur in hyper-fundamentalist contexts.
[6] Ibid, 72.
[7] Ibid, 81-82.
[8] Ibid, 57.
This being said, I will humbly submit some of the important theological themes I was able to glean from this challenging and profound book. For Jenson, the resolutions to these difficult notions—death, consciousness, freedom, reality, wickedness, and love—are often much simpler than his maddening cogitations on each topic might suggest. In each case, Jenson does not hesitate to square with the epistemological and existential problems relating to each notion. For instance, treading mental territory that few of us are familiar with, Jenson arrives at the seemingly absurd but in the end obvious conclusion that it is impossible to “think death”:
From my point of view, my corpse is not, as in the third person, the fact of the person’s –my—non-existence. What for me would be the fact of my non-existence would be the absence of my consciousness. But it is precisely the termination of my consciousness that seems impossible to think.[1]
It is exactly this kind of conundrum that has bred a common loathing for philosophy and theology; and yet, it is a vital question of the human experience. It would seem that Jenson recognizes this irony as his writing is flavored with a coy understanding that not everything can be an existential crisis. Sometimes, says Jenson, we just live. Not surprisingly then, Jenson’s resolutions are more often than not rooted in Christian Trinitarian worship and sacrament. And, as we shall see, we often think too hard. The resolution is right beneath our collective nose.
Jenson starts pessimistically, it would seem. After opening with a mind-numbing discussion of the metaphysical possibility of conceiving one’s own death, Jenson offers no rest for the weary as he then delves into the milieu of Heidegger’s thought. However fearsome the philosophical threat may seem, Jenson offers hope in the face of death that is grounded in the fellowship of the Trinity, and more particularly, our participation in it. By virtue of Jesus’ death and Resurrection, says Jenson, the Christian can face death. It is not we who die, but Christ. Thus, death is not death at all: “Thus the cessation of my being for my consciousness is participation in a mutual consciousness in which cessation and being each constitute the other.”[2] What follows is an insightful and trying discussion over the nature of consciousness predicated on Aristotelian understandings of actuality and potentiality. Once again, the question is menacing, but the solution lies in a simple trust in Christ. For Jenson, we can never truly recognize our own consciousness unless we are participants in the divine life—more specifically the communion of the saints, the Church.[3] Perhaps the paragon example for Jenson’s methodical madness—the reduction of dizzying philosophical pontification to refreshingly simple resolutions—is his treatment of free will and determinism. After traversing the thought of both Augustine and Luther regarding free will and criticizing Enlightenment thinking on human freedom, Jenson again returns to the Triune God, without whom we can never truly be free. It is within this context that Jenson can arrive at the fresh perspective about empirical epistemology: our perceptions just are as “We see, hear, touch, and taste what we see, hear, touch, and taste, and that is all there is to be said about the matter; our percepts are not caused by something we do not see, taste, touch, or hear.”[4] Here again is a brilliant example of the theological precision with which Jenson artfully cuts through irrelevant abstraction and philosophical minutia to arrive at the concrete reality of the matter. In similar fashion, Jenson deconstructs the faulty assumptions that wickedness, in Aristotelian terms, must be either substantial or accidental to humanity. As Jenson demonstrates, concluding that wickedness is fundamentally one or the other results in disastrous theological ramifications.[5] Ultimately it would seem that sin is both substantial and accidental, or it is neither, a tertium quid of sorts; thus, the only way that we may be “cured without being eradicated” is, again, by the work of the Triune God.[6] Just as participation in the divine life is the only way that we may be cured without being eradicated, likewise we may only love without killing or being killed through God. Jenson here modifies Buber’s “I/Thou” relation by adding a third party to the equation. By virtue of this intervention from the outside—which, for Jenson, is manifest in the Holy Spirit—we are able to truly love, free from the temptation to dominate and the fear of being dominated.[7] An excellent example of this love, demonstrated through real availability, is Christ himself manifest in the Eucharist. It is this embodied love that constitutes the criterion for not only true Christian experience, but for all of reality.[8] All throughout, worship is essential to authentic interaction with reality.
Though this meager survey does great injustice to its magnificent efforts, On Thinking the Human proves a provocative treatise that demonstrates why Jenson is considered the champion of Pro Ecclesia methodology. He is honest enough to grapple with difficult human notions and existential crises yet wise enough to realize that any hope of resolving these puzzling elements of our shared existence rests in the life of the Triune God.
[1] Robert Jenson, On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 2.
[2] Jenson, On Thinking the Human, 12. This being said, I do have concerns over what Resurrection means for Jenson. Does he mean a real, bodily, ontological resurrection? I am unable to tell. Can anyone interpret the following passage? “Resurrection does not mean that my life starts up again. It means that the life I have lived is eternally presented and interpreted within the community of God, for whom death is no barrier to life, in whom being concluded is no barrier to conscious participation in love” (13).
[3] “…what is it to be conscious? It is either to be one identity of the living triune God or to be one of the community for which this God makes narratively structured space in his life. That is to say, it is to participate in the life of the people of God, remembering that this participation need not be affirmative or immediate” (30).
[4] Ibid, 51.
[5] For a more in depth discussion see 63-65. Jenson essentially demonstrates that a theology that treats sin purely as accidental to human nature results in mainline liberalism, a context in which redemption means little or nothing. Conversely, an overly substantial treatment of sin tends to demonize human nature and body resulting in self-loathing in extreme cases, a phenomenon which has been known to occur in hyper-fundamentalist contexts.
[6] Ibid, 72.
[7] Ibid, 81-82.
[8] Ibid, 57.
posted by ryan tafilowski at 2:19 PM
3 Comments:
you punk, you're totally ahead of me now. and this is long so i'll read it some day when i have time. but i'm sure it's good so well done.
Joke is on you. I think death like all the time.
-Marko
I love marko's comment. You goth!
Well, the good news is that if you don't get the Barthians, or someone who read a lot of Barth, sometimes, this isn't your fault but the fact that you were not caught up in their language. And remember that their language was indirectly informed by Hegel, who is read in Hell when someone talks back to Beelzebub when they are taking a "break" from suffering in their vat of boiling lard.
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