Systematic Theology Quotes

“The order of a good story is an ordering by the outcome of the narrated events; its animating spirit—precisely here the word is unavoidable—is the power of a self determinate future to liberate each specious present from mere predictabilities, from being the mere consequence of what has gone before, and open it to itself, to itself as what that present is precisely not yet. The great metaphysical question on the border between the gospel and our culture's antecedent theology is whether this ordering may be regarded as its own kind of causality...The immediate question is at once more specific and foundational: Is there such causation in God? Is his life ordered by an Outcome that is his outcome, and so in a freedom that is more than abstract aseity The theology of Mediterranean antiquity thought there could be nothing like that in God; the gospel supposes that there is.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God

“God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God

“Indeed, fully reliable love can only he the resurrected life of one who has died for the beloved ones. Contemporary society speaks much of 'unconditional' love, and is always disappointed. If I commit myself in love, I may die of it. If I do not, my love remains uncertain; if I do, it is lost—unless I rise again. When the gospel proclaims actual unconditional love, it proclaims a specific, individual love, the love that is the actuality of the risen Jesus. No one else can love unconditionally as does the Lord; not even the church can so love her members or they one another.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God

“Perhaps we may summarize relevant study by saying that a sacrifice is any prayer spoken not only with language but also with objects and gestures, so that these latter are like the verbal prayer 'offered.' The New Testament's particular use of sacrificial language to interpret the Crucifixion and the life of faith moreover obliterates a common distinction between the offerer and what is offered: a sacrifice as offered by Christ—or by his saint—is 'the giving-over of oneself out of love.. . ,”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God

“Perhaps we may summarize relevant study by saying that a sacrifice is any prayer spoken not only with language but also with objects and gestures, so that these latter are like the verbal prayer 'offered.' The New Testament's particular use of sacrificial language to interpret the Crucifixion and the life of faith moreover obliterates a common distinction between the offerer and what is offered: a
sacrifice as offered by Christ—or by his saints—is 'the giving-over of oneself out
of love.. . ,”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God

“Can stories as stories be true of reality other than that posited in the storytelling itself? Can Aristotle's criterion of a good story apply to nonfiction, as he himself did not think it did?”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God

“Since the biblical God can truly be identified by narrative, his hypostatic being, his self-identity, is constituted in dramatic coherence. The classic definition of this sort of coherence is provided by Aristotle, who noticed that a good story is one in which events occur “unexpectedly but on account of each other” [Poetics 1452a3], so that before each decisive event we cannot predict it, but afterwards see it was just what had to happen.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God

“Any pattern of thought that in any way abstracts God ‘himself’ from this person [Jesus], from his death or his career or his birth or his family or his Jewishness or his maleness or his teaching or the particular intercession and rule he as risen now exercises, has, according to Nicaea, no place in the church.”
― Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God