I've been reading Rowan Williams' Christ the Heart of Creation and I wonder how, given this series on Jenson, you might respond to Williams' brief engagement with Jenson. (Particularly in Williams' use of "condition" language.) In critiquing Jenson he writes: "But a discussion like Jenson's nonetheless underlines just the problems that Calvin sought to address. If there is something in the eternal divine life as such that is a necessary condition for the identification of the 'second divine identity' as Jesus of Nazareth, however abstractly this is allowed, we cannot say simply that there is an *exhaustive* identity between Jesus of Nazareth and the second divine Person such that the absence of one would mean the absence of the other...Even if we follow Jenson's complex model of Jesus's realized human sonship as something we must 'project' forwards and backwards on to the horizon of God's life, we still have a question about whether the filial form of divinity is inextricably part of what it is to be God, rather than something *decided upon* by God; and on this issue Jenson seems to be with the majority view in classical Christology, allowing for some *extra*, even if absolutely nothing can be said of it (except, presumably, that it is whatever is the necessary condition for Jesus being Jesus, for Jesus being the particular human individual he was/is."
Wow. Haven't gotten around to this one from Williams yet. Though, JDW's article reviewing it on Fr. Al's blog (Against Asymmetrical Christology: A Critical Review of Rowan Williams’s ‘Christ the Heart of Creation’) has been very useful for me over the years.
This was extremely helpful! And shows me that Chris already answered this in part 2 of these reflections. Williams is using a Calvinist framework that begins with abstract natures (Wood’s helpful language if “logic of nature), rather than the logic of Christ’s hypostasis, which is the coincidence of good opposites. What Bonhoeffer means by the who vs. how questions.
Williams is right about this, I believe: Jesus is the heart of creation. But that acclamation makes no good sense apart from a neo-Chalcedonian Christology!
I loved Williams’s insistence that there is no rivalry between the infinite and the finite, but I was sensing there was still some rivalry in his account of the Son and the man Jesus, but couldn’t nail it down. Wood’s review brought it into sharp focus. (For the record, I still think Williams did a better job summarizing Jenson’s account of time/eternity than McCormack did in his most recent book where he claims that Jenson has no trinity in protology lol.)
Ok, I’ve listened to this three times- why? Because I want to wrap my head around the things I don’t understand fully, because there are pieces of it I need to make note of, and because what Chris loves about Jenson I am ecstatically moved by. It is luminous good news💛
Thank you for these. Your hermeneutical skill with Jenson, and Jenson himself, are so valuable for making rigorous theology transmute itself--by "divine alchemy"--into the life giving and transforming proclamation of the Gospel!
“He does not suffer the fact that he suffers” -- so beautiful and so helpful. Listening to this a second time, it’s illuminating much of what I think Julian of Norwich is saying in her Revelations (and which have perplexed me), re Jesus’ conversations with her about His suffering.
As I listened to this I kept thinking about the intricacy of creation. The book Some Assembly Required talks about how complex DNA is but also how structures are repeated across creatures. An Immense World talks about the amazing variety of ways animals perceive the world.
I've been reading Rowan Williams' Christ the Heart of Creation and I wonder how, given this series on Jenson, you might respond to Williams' brief engagement with Jenson. (Particularly in Williams' use of "condition" language.) In critiquing Jenson he writes: "But a discussion like Jenson's nonetheless underlines just the problems that Calvin sought to address. If there is something in the eternal divine life as such that is a necessary condition for the identification of the 'second divine identity' as Jesus of Nazareth, however abstractly this is allowed, we cannot say simply that there is an *exhaustive* identity between Jesus of Nazareth and the second divine Person such that the absence of one would mean the absence of the other...Even if we follow Jenson's complex model of Jesus's realized human sonship as something we must 'project' forwards and backwards on to the horizon of God's life, we still have a question about whether the filial form of divinity is inextricably part of what it is to be God, rather than something *decided upon* by God; and on this issue Jenson seems to be with the majority view in classical Christology, allowing for some *extra*, even if absolutely nothing can be said of it (except, presumably, that it is whatever is the necessary condition for Jesus being Jesus, for Jesus being the particular human individual he was/is."
Wow. Haven't gotten around to this one from Williams yet. Though, JDW's article reviewing it on Fr. Al's blog (Against Asymmetrical Christology: A Critical Review of Rowan Williams’s ‘Christ the Heart of Creation’) has been very useful for me over the years.
Have you read it?
No! But thanks for the heads up!
https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2019/08/04/against-asymmetrical-christology-a-critical-review-of-rowan-williamss-christ-the-heart-of-creation/
This was extremely helpful! And shows me that Chris already answered this in part 2 of these reflections. Williams is using a Calvinist framework that begins with abstract natures (Wood’s helpful language if “logic of nature), rather than the logic of Christ’s hypostasis, which is the coincidence of good opposites. What Bonhoeffer means by the who vs. how questions.
Williams is right about this, I believe: Jesus is the heart of creation. But that acclamation makes no good sense apart from a neo-Chalcedonian Christology!
I loved Williams’s insistence that there is no rivalry between the infinite and the finite, but I was sensing there was still some rivalry in his account of the Son and the man Jesus, but couldn’t nail it down. Wood’s review brought it into sharp focus. (For the record, I still think Williams did a better job summarizing Jenson’s account of time/eternity than McCormack did in his most recent book where he claims that Jenson has no trinity in protology lol.)
Ok, I’ve listened to this three times- why? Because I want to wrap my head around the things I don’t understand fully, because there are pieces of it I need to make note of, and because what Chris loves about Jenson I am ecstatically moved by. It is luminous good news💛
❤️
Thank you for these. Your hermeneutical skill with Jenson, and Jenson himself, are so valuable for making rigorous theology transmute itself--by "divine alchemy"--into the life giving and transforming proclamation of the Gospel!
“He does not suffer the fact that he suffers” -- so beautiful and so helpful. Listening to this a second time, it’s illuminating much of what I think Julian of Norwich is saying in her Revelations (and which have perplexed me), re Jesus’ conversations with her about His suffering.
As I listened to this I kept thinking about the intricacy of creation. The book Some Assembly Required talks about how complex DNA is but also how structures are repeated across creatures. An Immense World talks about the amazing variety of ways animals perceive the world.