Matt Jenson | Biola University (original) (raw)
Papers by Matt Jenson
Not that principles in and of themselves are objectionable. What is objectionable is their abstra... more Not that principles in and of themselves are objectionable. What is objectionable is their abstraction from real relationships and re-insertion into contexts without sufficient regard to those relationships. 15 To take two, brief examples, consider the current disparagement of 'multi-national corporations', which are often deemed simply 'bad' in light of their exploitative practices. Undoubtedly, this is the case for many, maybe most of these corporations. But the questions which should be asked are not whether such a monolithic entity as the 'multi-national corporation' is 'bad' but how businesses can practice generous, empowering practices with their employees, vendors and customers, particularly in developing countries. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, consider the critique of the 'inequity' of affirmative action policies which are said to unfairly privilege the historically disadvantaged. Besides the obvious question of whether 'fairness' is anything like a strict synonym for 'justice' or 'righteousness' (and the related question of whether, if they are not synonyms, 'fairness' should be pursued at all), an abstract principle of 'fairness' completely fails in attempts to construct a to participation in his own divine nature.'25 In a sermon on Psalm 81 preached at Carthage during the winter of 403-4, he speaks of deification as something which ought not seem incredible in light of the 'more incredible' incarnation of the Son of God.26 But he still seems at times to use a Christ-of-the-gaps method, whereby Augustine to a great extent knew who God is and what constitutes our relationship to him from his reading the 'books of the Platonists'.27 It is as if Christ fills out the content of Platonic participation and Platonic understandings of God. But does Christ not radically redefine both participation and the God in whom we participate?28 Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that, in reading Augustine's work carefully, one is impressed by his efforts to think more and more scripturally and Christianly over the years. God intends for his good creation to live in eternal dependence on him, but a dependence which allows for, or rather establishes and sustains creaturely flourishing. Augustine can call God 'that light which would make man himself a light if he would set his heart on it.'29 Setting our hearts on 'that light' is akin to adhering to God. As we set our hearts on the light, it illuminates us. We see clearly in this light, and this 'seeing clearly' involves both a well-lit room and corrected vision. That is, we are both brought into the light and, precisely by being in the presence of the light and setting our hearts on it, are ourselves made lights. In the presence of the light and the healing of our sight we begin to see things around us for what they really are. We come to know that we are always already in the midst of relationships, for instance; and we come to see those to whom we relate in the right light. It is precisely in this renewed vision that we become lights. It is not pushing Augustine too hard at this point to say that, in recognising (this being a type of metanoia) our relationally-constituted identities and coming to know those 25 See IX.xv.360-361: '[T]he multitude of the blessed is made blessed by participation in the one God...And that Mediator in whom we can participate, and by participation reach our felicity, is the uncreated Word of God, by whom all things were created...God himself, the blessed God who is the giver of blessedness, became partaker of our human nature and thus offered us a short cut to participation in his own divine nature. For in liberating us from mortality and misery...[he brings us] to that Trinity...In the lower world he was the Way of life, as in the world above he is the Life itself.' 26 See the translation of Augustine's sermon in Casiday, 'St. Augustine on Deification: His Homily on Psalm 81', 28. 27 See Book VII in Augustine, Confessions. 8 Two examples of how Christ does more radically redefine our participation in God are of note: William Mallard writes that the 'shift in agency from the man participating "upward" to Go participating "downward" is quite enough to say a cornerstone of thought has changed for Augustine. A unique "downward" initiative of singular divine agency could not emerge within Augustine's strictly philosophical milieu...' (Mallard, 'The Incarnation in Augustine's Conversion', 88-9; cited in Meconi, 'The Incarnation and the Role of Participation in St. Augustine's Confessions') Bonner notes that Augustine uses Platonism in arguing that 'man's being depends upon his participation in God; but Augustine develops this theologically by appealing to Scripture to argue that man's sanctity depends upon his participation in God'. (Bonner, 'Augustine's Conception of Deification', 379) Civic foundations: two standards and two loves Augustine book-ends Book XIV with two characterizations of the two cities. In the opening of the book, he writes: There is, in fact, one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of those who choose to live by the standard of the spirit. The citizens of each of these desire their own kind of peace, and when they achieve their aim, that is the kind of peace in which they live. The two cities, both of which desire some sort of peace, are to be distinguished with reference to the standards by which they live. Augustine is quick, particularly given the broader intellectual climate of his day, to denounce any interpretation of 'flesh' that would lead to a denigration of materiality/5 He points out that in Galatians 5:19-21, Paul refers to a list of 'works of the flesh' which include works concerned with 'sensual pleasure' as well as 'those which show faults of the mind'."' 'Flesh', then, is not equivalent to human physicality, but a synecdoche in which the part represents the whole." Augustine rejects both Platonist and Manichean anthropologies in light of their inability to call created physicality 'good'/8 Augustine censures the carnality of a 'cult of the soul' as well as a 'revulsion from the flesh' as attitudes 'prompted by human folly, not by divine truth.' In response, Augustine affirms that the flesh is 'good, in its own kind and on its own level."9 In addition to his affirmation of the central Christian tenet of creationthat what God creates is, by definition, good-Augustine speaks of a peculiar creaturely goodness ('in its own kind') which is to be viewed in relation to some other realities ('on its own level'). We will return to these in due course. At the close of Book XIV, in a passage with which we opened this chapter, Augustine puts the distinction even more starkly: We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact, the earthly city glories in 34 XIV.i.547. 35 Augustine's full rejection of Manichean dualism, including its notion that an evil counter-deity created matter, which now imprisons sparks of the divine and needs to be escaped, is never far away in Augustine's accounts of anthropology and evil. 36 XIV.ii.549. 37 XIV.ii.550. 38 Contra McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine ofJustification, 198. 39 XIV.v.554. We leave aside the question of whether Augustine's substance dualism is a compelling so far as they are natural.6' Augustine never swerved from those aspects of his early theological commitments which were forged against the Manichees, particularly his complete rejection of their metaphysical dualism. Since God has created all things good, anything which is, is good. Consequently, any evil is not natural, that is, not according to nature as God created it. Since evil is not natural, Augustine will just as forcefully claim that evil is not, that it has 61 XII.vii.479-480. 62 73 Macqueen, 'Contemptus Dei', 246. 74 Macqueen, 'Contemptus Dei', 243. 75 We recall Augustine's distinction between things which are good (or wise or loving, etc.) in themselves versus things which are good by participation, which is a central rule for negotiating the ontological difference between Creator and creature for Augustine. 76 XIV.iii.552. 77 Though note that Augustine ascribes this statement to 'God' rather than 'Christ': 'So when man lives by the standard of truth he lives not by his own standard, but by God's. For it is God who has said, "I am the truth.'" (XIV.iv.552) 78 'By contrast, when he lives by his own standard, that is by man's and not by God's standard, then inevitably he lives by the standard of falsehood.' (XIV.iv.552) 79 XIV.iv.552.
More than one person has joked over the years that Evangelical believers do not have an ecclesiol... more More than one person has joked over the years that Evangelical believers do not have an ecclesiology. In one sense, that is absurd: Evangelical churches (especially if you include Pentecostals in that group) are some of the fastest-growing, most vibrant churches in the world. Evangelicals are proclaiming the gospel, praising the Lord, reading the Bible, and loving the poor. But there is a case to be made that the Evangelical devotion to the mission of the church has left Evangelicals with little time to reflect on the church itself. In this collection of essays, first given at annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, the authors take time to reflect on the nature of the church in an Evangelical context, asking after the way in which it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/faculty-books/1310/thumbnail.jp
Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology
In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk gives language to what has become a cross-discip... more In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk gives language to what has become a cross-disciplinary consensus—that our bodies and minds are profoundly, often surprisingly, involved with one another, and that traumatic events often mark people for life. In this article, I ask after the implications of this contemporary consensus for the resurrected body, in light of traditional claims about the body's perfection and persistence of identity in the resurrection. I widen the focus to include various ways in which the body might keep the score. In addition to trauma, I consider martyrdom, disfigurement, and disability. Whatever else it may mean, bodily resurrection must entail the completion of one's earthly life. In light of this, while there will be no debilitating signs of sin and death, it seems reasonable to suppose there may be salutary and doxologically oriented reminders of sin and death in the resurrected body.
ACADEMIC SERVICE Spring 2011, Fall 2012Chair, Morgan House, Torrey Honors Institute 2009-2011 Cha... more ACADEMIC SERVICE Spring 2011, Fall 2012Chair, Morgan House, Torrey Honors Institute 2009-2011 Chair, Torrey Faculty Hiring Committee Spring 2009 Member, Theological Imperatives on Diversity Task Force 2008-2009 Member, Coalition of the Willing (regarding biblical and theological integration) Fall 2008 Co-Chair, School of Arts and Sciences Steering Committee 2007-2008 Member, Coalition of the Intercultural Willing 2006Faculty Advisor, Torrey Honors Institute’s Urban Plunge
International Journal of Systematic Theology
Pro Ecclesia
At the end of his career, Karl Barth went on a lecture tour of America, giving a series of lectur... more At the end of his career, Karl Barth went on a lecture tour of America, giving a series of lectures on the nature of "evangelical theology." He begins the lectures by describing "evangelical" theology as a modest, free, critical, thankful, and happy science. 1 Evangelical theology takes its cues from the gospel, resolutely steering a course toward God as he revealed himself in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is what makes evangelical theology scientific-its consistent attention to its object. What makes this science theological is that its object is ever subject, Lord even in our investigation of him. Thus theology is a form of discipleship, a Nachdenken which is Nachfolge. Evangelical theology's modesty, freedom, criticism, gratitude, and joy all follow from the breathtaking fulfillment of God's covenant with humanity in Christ; given that Jesus has paid it all, we need and must only respond with our own echoing affirmation. Christ has set us free (Gal 5:1), and "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). In what could easily pass for a summary of Barth's theology, he explains: "The freedom of which we talk is God's freedom to disclose himself to men, to make men accessible to himself, and so to make them on their part free for him. The one who does that is the Lord God, who is the Spirit." 2 The realm in which he does that is the church.
Cultural Encounters, 2008
International Journal of Systematic Theology
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2015
Cultural Encounters, 2013
Cultural Encounters, 2013
Journal of Reformed Theology, 2008
Scottish Journal of Theology, 2005
Scottish Journal of Theology, 2008
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2011
... 4 Oswald Bayer, Freedom in Response. Lutheran Ethics: Sources and Controversies, trans. ... 5... more ... 4 Oswald Bayer, Freedom in Response. Lutheran Ethics: Sources and Controversies, trans. ... 52 Theology the Lutheran Way, p. 24. 53 Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001), p. 73. 54 ...
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2009
Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between 'Someone' and 'Something', trans. Oliver O'Donov... more Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between 'Someone' and 'Something', trans. Oliver O'Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 255pp. £47.00/$85.00 It has become something of a truism in theological anthropology to foreground humanity's essentially relational character. The welcome wreckage of solipsistic anthropologies has seen scholars and students jumping off the Titanic of individualism into a sea of relationality. With the shortage of lifeboats, however, some have floundered. That is, the reappropriation of relational categories in accounts of humanity has suffered at times from an over-zealous, uncritical embrace.
Not that principles in and of themselves are objectionable. What is objectionable is their abstra... more Not that principles in and of themselves are objectionable. What is objectionable is their abstraction from real relationships and re-insertion into contexts without sufficient regard to those relationships. 15 To take two, brief examples, consider the current disparagement of 'multi-national corporations', which are often deemed simply 'bad' in light of their exploitative practices. Undoubtedly, this is the case for many, maybe most of these corporations. But the questions which should be asked are not whether such a monolithic entity as the 'multi-national corporation' is 'bad' but how businesses can practice generous, empowering practices with their employees, vendors and customers, particularly in developing countries. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, consider the critique of the 'inequity' of affirmative action policies which are said to unfairly privilege the historically disadvantaged. Besides the obvious question of whether 'fairness' is anything like a strict synonym for 'justice' or 'righteousness' (and the related question of whether, if they are not synonyms, 'fairness' should be pursued at all), an abstract principle of 'fairness' completely fails in attempts to construct a to participation in his own divine nature.'25 In a sermon on Psalm 81 preached at Carthage during the winter of 403-4, he speaks of deification as something which ought not seem incredible in light of the 'more incredible' incarnation of the Son of God.26 But he still seems at times to use a Christ-of-the-gaps method, whereby Augustine to a great extent knew who God is and what constitutes our relationship to him from his reading the 'books of the Platonists'.27 It is as if Christ fills out the content of Platonic participation and Platonic understandings of God. But does Christ not radically redefine both participation and the God in whom we participate?28 Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that, in reading Augustine's work carefully, one is impressed by his efforts to think more and more scripturally and Christianly over the years. God intends for his good creation to live in eternal dependence on him, but a dependence which allows for, or rather establishes and sustains creaturely flourishing. Augustine can call God 'that light which would make man himself a light if he would set his heart on it.'29 Setting our hearts on 'that light' is akin to adhering to God. As we set our hearts on the light, it illuminates us. We see clearly in this light, and this 'seeing clearly' involves both a well-lit room and corrected vision. That is, we are both brought into the light and, precisely by being in the presence of the light and setting our hearts on it, are ourselves made lights. In the presence of the light and the healing of our sight we begin to see things around us for what they really are. We come to know that we are always already in the midst of relationships, for instance; and we come to see those to whom we relate in the right light. It is precisely in this renewed vision that we become lights. It is not pushing Augustine too hard at this point to say that, in recognising (this being a type of metanoia) our relationally-constituted identities and coming to know those 25 See IX.xv.360-361: '[T]he multitude of the blessed is made blessed by participation in the one God...And that Mediator in whom we can participate, and by participation reach our felicity, is the uncreated Word of God, by whom all things were created...God himself, the blessed God who is the giver of blessedness, became partaker of our human nature and thus offered us a short cut to participation in his own divine nature. For in liberating us from mortality and misery...[he brings us] to that Trinity...In the lower world he was the Way of life, as in the world above he is the Life itself.' 26 See the translation of Augustine's sermon in Casiday, 'St. Augustine on Deification: His Homily on Psalm 81', 28. 27 See Book VII in Augustine, Confessions. 8 Two examples of how Christ does more radically redefine our participation in God are of note: William Mallard writes that the 'shift in agency from the man participating "upward" to Go participating "downward" is quite enough to say a cornerstone of thought has changed for Augustine. A unique "downward" initiative of singular divine agency could not emerge within Augustine's strictly philosophical milieu...' (Mallard, 'The Incarnation in Augustine's Conversion', 88-9; cited in Meconi, 'The Incarnation and the Role of Participation in St. Augustine's Confessions') Bonner notes that Augustine uses Platonism in arguing that 'man's being depends upon his participation in God; but Augustine develops this theologically by appealing to Scripture to argue that man's sanctity depends upon his participation in God'. (Bonner, 'Augustine's Conception of Deification', 379) Civic foundations: two standards and two loves Augustine book-ends Book XIV with two characterizations of the two cities. In the opening of the book, he writes: There is, in fact, one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of those who choose to live by the standard of the spirit. The citizens of each of these desire their own kind of peace, and when they achieve their aim, that is the kind of peace in which they live. The two cities, both of which desire some sort of peace, are to be distinguished with reference to the standards by which they live. Augustine is quick, particularly given the broader intellectual climate of his day, to denounce any interpretation of 'flesh' that would lead to a denigration of materiality/5 He points out that in Galatians 5:19-21, Paul refers to a list of 'works of the flesh' which include works concerned with 'sensual pleasure' as well as 'those which show faults of the mind'."' 'Flesh', then, is not equivalent to human physicality, but a synecdoche in which the part represents the whole." Augustine rejects both Platonist and Manichean anthropologies in light of their inability to call created physicality 'good'/8 Augustine censures the carnality of a 'cult of the soul' as well as a 'revulsion from the flesh' as attitudes 'prompted by human folly, not by divine truth.' In response, Augustine affirms that the flesh is 'good, in its own kind and on its own level."9 In addition to his affirmation of the central Christian tenet of creationthat what God creates is, by definition, good-Augustine speaks of a peculiar creaturely goodness ('in its own kind') which is to be viewed in relation to some other realities ('on its own level'). We will return to these in due course. At the close of Book XIV, in a passage with which we opened this chapter, Augustine puts the distinction even more starkly: We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact, the earthly city glories in 34 XIV.i.547. 35 Augustine's full rejection of Manichean dualism, including its notion that an evil counter-deity created matter, which now imprisons sparks of the divine and needs to be escaped, is never far away in Augustine's accounts of anthropology and evil. 36 XIV.ii.549. 37 XIV.ii.550. 38 Contra McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine ofJustification, 198. 39 XIV.v.554. We leave aside the question of whether Augustine's substance dualism is a compelling so far as they are natural.6' Augustine never swerved from those aspects of his early theological commitments which were forged against the Manichees, particularly his complete rejection of their metaphysical dualism. Since God has created all things good, anything which is, is good. Consequently, any evil is not natural, that is, not according to nature as God created it. Since evil is not natural, Augustine will just as forcefully claim that evil is not, that it has 61 XII.vii.479-480. 62 73 Macqueen, 'Contemptus Dei', 246. 74 Macqueen, 'Contemptus Dei', 243. 75 We recall Augustine's distinction between things which are good (or wise or loving, etc.) in themselves versus things which are good by participation, which is a central rule for negotiating the ontological difference between Creator and creature for Augustine. 76 XIV.iii.552. 77 Though note that Augustine ascribes this statement to 'God' rather than 'Christ': 'So when man lives by the standard of truth he lives not by his own standard, but by God's. For it is God who has said, "I am the truth.'" (XIV.iv.552) 78 'By contrast, when he lives by his own standard, that is by man's and not by God's standard, then inevitably he lives by the standard of falsehood.' (XIV.iv.552) 79 XIV.iv.552.
More than one person has joked over the years that Evangelical believers do not have an ecclesiol... more More than one person has joked over the years that Evangelical believers do not have an ecclesiology. In one sense, that is absurd: Evangelical churches (especially if you include Pentecostals in that group) are some of the fastest-growing, most vibrant churches in the world. Evangelicals are proclaiming the gospel, praising the Lord, reading the Bible, and loving the poor. But there is a case to be made that the Evangelical devotion to the mission of the church has left Evangelicals with little time to reflect on the church itself. In this collection of essays, first given at annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, the authors take time to reflect on the nature of the church in an Evangelical context, asking after the way in which it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/faculty-books/1310/thumbnail.jp
Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology
In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk gives language to what has become a cross-discip... more In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk gives language to what has become a cross-disciplinary consensus—that our bodies and minds are profoundly, often surprisingly, involved with one another, and that traumatic events often mark people for life. In this article, I ask after the implications of this contemporary consensus for the resurrected body, in light of traditional claims about the body's perfection and persistence of identity in the resurrection. I widen the focus to include various ways in which the body might keep the score. In addition to trauma, I consider martyrdom, disfigurement, and disability. Whatever else it may mean, bodily resurrection must entail the completion of one's earthly life. In light of this, while there will be no debilitating signs of sin and death, it seems reasonable to suppose there may be salutary and doxologically oriented reminders of sin and death in the resurrected body.
ACADEMIC SERVICE Spring 2011, Fall 2012Chair, Morgan House, Torrey Honors Institute 2009-2011 Cha... more ACADEMIC SERVICE Spring 2011, Fall 2012Chair, Morgan House, Torrey Honors Institute 2009-2011 Chair, Torrey Faculty Hiring Committee Spring 2009 Member, Theological Imperatives on Diversity Task Force 2008-2009 Member, Coalition of the Willing (regarding biblical and theological integration) Fall 2008 Co-Chair, School of Arts and Sciences Steering Committee 2007-2008 Member, Coalition of the Intercultural Willing 2006Faculty Advisor, Torrey Honors Institute’s Urban Plunge
International Journal of Systematic Theology
Pro Ecclesia
At the end of his career, Karl Barth went on a lecture tour of America, giving a series of lectur... more At the end of his career, Karl Barth went on a lecture tour of America, giving a series of lectures on the nature of "evangelical theology." He begins the lectures by describing "evangelical" theology as a modest, free, critical, thankful, and happy science. 1 Evangelical theology takes its cues from the gospel, resolutely steering a course toward God as he revealed himself in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is what makes evangelical theology scientific-its consistent attention to its object. What makes this science theological is that its object is ever subject, Lord even in our investigation of him. Thus theology is a form of discipleship, a Nachdenken which is Nachfolge. Evangelical theology's modesty, freedom, criticism, gratitude, and joy all follow from the breathtaking fulfillment of God's covenant with humanity in Christ; given that Jesus has paid it all, we need and must only respond with our own echoing affirmation. Christ has set us free (Gal 5:1), and "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). In what could easily pass for a summary of Barth's theology, he explains: "The freedom of which we talk is God's freedom to disclose himself to men, to make men accessible to himself, and so to make them on their part free for him. The one who does that is the Lord God, who is the Spirit." 2 The realm in which he does that is the church.
Cultural Encounters, 2008
International Journal of Systematic Theology
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2015
Cultural Encounters, 2013
Cultural Encounters, 2013
Journal of Reformed Theology, 2008
Scottish Journal of Theology, 2005
Scottish Journal of Theology, 2008
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2011
... 4 Oswald Bayer, Freedom in Response. Lutheran Ethics: Sources and Controversies, trans. ... 5... more ... 4 Oswald Bayer, Freedom in Response. Lutheran Ethics: Sources and Controversies, trans. ... 52 Theology the Lutheran Way, p. 24. 53 Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001), p. 73. 54 ...
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2009
Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between 'Someone' and 'Something', trans. Oliver O'Donov... more Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between 'Someone' and 'Something', trans. Oliver O'Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 255pp. £47.00/$85.00 It has become something of a truism in theological anthropology to foreground humanity's essentially relational character. The welcome wreckage of solipsistic anthropologies has seen scholars and students jumping off the Titanic of individualism into a sea of relationality. With the shortage of lifeboats, however, some have floundered. That is, the reappropriation of relational categories in accounts of humanity has suffered at times from an over-zealous, uncritical embrace.