'At once believing and enlightening': The systematic theology of Robert W. Jenson as dramatic resolution to the problem of modernity

This essay offers a fresh interpretation of the systematic theology of the American theologian Robert W. Jenson, describing his distinct brand of "postliberal" theology. Imitating the virtues of Jonathan Edwards as a theologian "at once believing and Enlightening," this essay explores how Jenson moves beyond liberal theology by reversing its usual procedure. Jenson refuses to accommodate Christian vision and morality to modernity's wisdom. But he equally refuses to reject modernity's wisdom. Rather, Jenson accommodates modern wisdom, specifically the legacies of Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel and Nietzsche, into a robustly Christian framework.;The theological integration of distinctly modern and Christian points of view will be demonstrated with respect to Jenson's participation in a modernist tradition of hermeneutics as expressed by Hans-Georg Gadamer. For Jenson, the conversation between traditions, resulting in what Gadamer called a "fusion of horizons" converges on the question of the death of one's hopes. The essay will first trace out Jenson's account of the Christian tradition's hope in the triune God's triumph over death, which issues in the missionary mandate to continually reinterpret the gospel so that it may be grasped as the universal resolution to every human struggle with death. Then, the essay will describe Jenson's account of modernity as an ongoing pursuit to achieve self-transcendence, terminating in what Jenson calls "the antinomy of hope." Modern life is about an ongoing struggle to keep life open to new possibilities, yet rooted in the guiding story of a community. And to do so in a way that avoids both the threats of totalizing metaphysics and nihilistic emptiness.;Jenson's systematic theology will then be read as a hermeneutical attempt to dramatically integrate these two traditions. Jenson reinterprets the church's doctrines of the Trinity and the church so that the God of the gospel can be grasped as the dramatic resolution to the tensions at the heart of modernity's narrative. Jenson's theology then is not about offering an alternative vision to those living in the modern world, but as hopeful reinterpretation of that world.