Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics Quotes

“There is and can be no greater offense to the way all of us now manage our lives, than the forgiveness of sins. Also the Church has much difficulty with it. On the one hand, if we are all ok in any case, there is nothing to forgive; “acceptance” is not the same as “forgiveness.” “Accept yourself as you are” is not the same as “I forgive you,” and assuredly not as “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, I absolve you of your sin.” In the mainline churches, and it seems increasingly in the evangelical churches, forgiveness is taken for a matter of course; but then it is not forgiveness.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“Absent God and faith in God, the good, the beautiful, and the true become seemingly independent—and thereupon possibly competing notions.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“Once the devil is identified, he is too laughable to be taken seriously, but we have to know in what direction to throw the inkwell.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“To the way in which the Western Church most often talks about God, the fact of the Incarnation has made far too little difference; most of what we say could equally well be said if God’s Logos were that immaterial mirror and Jesus simply a great prophet or rabbi—or beach-boy guru. And that God and that Jesus are indeed fundamentally uninteresting.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“Therefore to fully understand we must expand it: “God is not—but ought to be.” “God is not—yet.” Is this not the true content of our bereavement?”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“Those who reject the gospel now usually do so not because they find it necessary to disbelieve in God, but simply because the whole matter seems insignificant. Indeed, there is the suspicion that many who say they believe find this possible just because it makes so little difference anyway. The word “God” is empty for us, that is, it is dead.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“An ideology is an excuse to cling to the past, an excuse for not living. It is a screen thrown up to hide again that totally unpredictable future which the modern experience has unveiled.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“An ideology is—and this is its defining characteristic—a screen of words created to conceal the lack of a meaning in life.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation

“When the gods are gone we will create idols—and if metaphysics are unbelievable we will believe ideologies. We will cling to Nazism or religious fundamentalism or “liberalism.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation