Robert W. Jenson - Böcker

In 2008, preeminent theologian Robert Jenson delivered his last set of lectures, "Can These Bones Live?: An Introduction to Christian Theology", at Princeton University. Adam Eitel, Jenson's teaching assistant at the time, recorded and transcribed the twenty-three lectures in the series. Jenson and Eitel have since worked together to revise and prepare these lectures for publication in order to share the atmosphere and immediacy of Jenson's classroom. A Theology in Outline gives an overview of Christian theology as well as an introduction to Jenson's thought. Each chapter treats a major doctrine in Christianity--God, Israel, Resurrection, the Trinity, Creation, and Sin, among others. Unlike Jenson's previous work, this book is influenced by his recent interest in Biblical exegesis. He frames the whole series as a response to an exegesis of the question, "Son of man, can these bones live?" from Ezekiel 37:3. He considers whether the story that God lives with his people can continue, and if the Christian faith itself has become a valley of dry bones. The lectures provide a single sequence of illustrative conversations for the purpose of introducing beginners to Christian theology. Moreover, A Theology in Outline marks the genuine development in Jenson's thought--a unique work unto itself.

At the time of his death in the autumn of 2017, Robert W. Jenson was arguably America's foremost theologian. Over the course of a career spanning more than five decades, much of Jenson's thought was dedicated to the theological description of how Scripture should be read-what has come to be called theological interpretation. In this rapidly expanding field of scholarship, Jenson has had an inordinate impact. Despite its importance, study of Jenson's theology of scriptural interpretation has lagged, due in large part to the longevity of his career and volume of his output. In this book, all of Jenson's writings on Scripture and its interpretation have been collected for the first time. Here readers will be able to see the evolution of Jenson's thought on this topic, as well as the scope and intensity of his late-period engagement with it. Where other twentieth-century thinkers rely on non-theological, secular methods of scriptural investigation, Jenson is willing to let go of "respectability" for the sake of a truly Christian theological interpretation. The result is a genuinely free, intellectually invigorating exercise in reading and theory from one of the greatest theologians in the last century.

The author argues that Jonathan Edwards was very much a figure of the Enlightenment, having thoroughly absorbed the thought of Newton and Locke. Unlike most other Americans, however, Edwards was also a discerning critic of the Enlightenment. He was able, therefore, to use Enlightenment thought in his theology without yielding to its mechanistic and individualistic tendencies. Jenson sees Edwards's understanding as a radical corrective to what commitment to the Enlightenment later wrought in American life, religious and otherwise. He argues that weaknesses in the common American faiths (a trivial evangelicalism or a deistical secularism) can be remedied by a recovery of Edwards's vision, and that weaknesses in American public moral discourse could likewise be remedied by a reaffirmation of Edwards's God as the source and goal of all human existence.

Recent studies of Jonathan Edwards have assessed his views only as a historical phenomenon. In this book, Jenson examines his views not only by their originality or power or historical fruitfulness, but by their intention of truth, asking not only `Why was Edwards great?' but `Was Edwards right?'.

The full systematic theology which Jensen begins with The Triune God: Systematic Theology I promises to be the capstone of his long and distinguished career as a theologian. Jensen begins this first of two volumes with an extended discussion of the nature and norms of theology. He then devotes the bulk of the volume to the identity and being of the biblical God, including classic christological and soteriological questions most systems take up elsewhere.

Systematic Theology is the capstone of Robert Jenson's long and distinguished career as a theologian, being a full-scale systematic/dogmatic theology in the classic format. This is the second and concluding volume of the work, and considers the works of God, examining such topics as the nature and role of the Church, and God's works of creation.

The Triune God, together with the second volume, The Works of God, develops a compendious statement of Christian theology in the tradition of a medieval summa, or of such modern works as those of Schleiermacher and Barth. Theology, as it is understood here, is the Christian church's continuing discourse concerning her specific communal purpose; it is the hermeneutic and critical reflection internal to the church's task of speaking the gospel. This volume and its successor are thus dedicated to the service of the one church of the creeds; it is for no particular denomination or confession.

Systematic Theology is the capstone of Robert Jenson's long and distinguished career as a theologian, being a full-scale systematic/dogmatic theology in the classic format. This is the second and concluding volume of the work. Here, Jenson considers the works of God, examining such topics as the nature and role of the Church, and God's works of creation.

How does the church understand the relation between its Scripture and its creedal formulations? No one is more qualified to address that question than Robert W. Jenson, who shows how canon and creed work together and interact and that neither is an adequate or sufficient to guide Christian faith without the help of the other. His book will enable contemporary interpreters and teachers, pastors, and laity to deal with the questions and tensions that are always present as the church seeks to hold canon and creed together.

Robert Jenson offers a systematic theologian's careful reading of the Song of Songs. Jenson focuses on the overt sense of the book as an erotic love poem in order to discover how this evocative poetry solicits a theological reading. Jenson finds a story of human love for God in this complex poetic book and offers a commentary that elucidates and inspires.