358 - The Knowledge Of Things Hoped For: The Sense Of Theological Discourse

The Knowledge Of Things Hoped For:
The Sense Of Theological Discourse
By Robert W. Jenson
243 pp. New York, Oxford University Press, 1969. $5.75.

This book deals with issues which are of central importance for Christian theology today, and brings to bear on them the thought of a remarkably numerous and diverse group of theologians and philosophers, including Origen, Aquinas, Wisdom, Austin, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Pannenberg, and many others. Unfortunately the exposition of the author's own position is often fragmentary, unpersuasive, and unclear. I also doubt that the book constitutes a really important contribution to the study of the other writers discussed; certainly it does not make an important contribution to the study of the writers on analytic philosophy of religion, with whom I am more familiar than with some of the others.

In a nutshell, Professor Jenson's theory about the sense of theological discourse appears to be that there is no God but the man Jesus of Nazareth, and the assertion that Jesus is God means only that the events culminating in our deaths will constitute the dramatically appropriate conclusion of Jesus' story and of ours. We ought not to speak of God as a being "out there" or "way-in-there" (p. 237 f.). All our statements about God ought to be, "at least implicitly, informative statements about the man Jesus of Nazareth and what He has done and will do" (p. 237)

"Thus, all theological utterance can be compressed in the convertible sentence 'God is Jesus' or 'Jesus is God…. (p. 140). What does this sentence mean? "To tell Jesus' story as the story about God is to tell it as narrative of the climax and denouement of my story and your story" (p.140). " 'Jesus is Lord' predicts that a series of events dramatically

359 - The Knowledge Of Things Hoped For: The Sense Of Theological Discourse

appropriate as the conclusion of the story of Jesus, as already known to us," will involve us in such a way as to "be the dramatically appropriate issue also of each of our lives" (p. 149).

I want to enter an objection, first, to Jenson's analysis of the concept of God, and second, to his treatment of eschatology. His analysis does not agree with the place that the concept of God occupies in my life (and, I suspect, in his). For instance, what rationale will Jenson offer for the practice of prayer, which he evidently does not propose to abandon (p. 234)? What sense is there in talking to God, if the existence of God is supposed to be only a fact about the dramatic appropriateness of Jesus' story and ours? My objection can also be stated in less personal terms. The word "God," used as Jenson urges us to use it, seems to be quite superfluous. If all we want to say is that the story of Jesus is (or will be) rightly seen as the climax and denouement of the stories of our lives, surely that can be said (as clearly as it can be said at all) without using the word "God." Jenson says (quite rightly) that we have to face the possibility "that once we . . . dig out the actual meaning of one of our uses of words, we will no longer be interested in that use" (p. 4). 1 think that would probably be the appropriate reaction if we should discover that we have been using the word "God" in accordance with what I take to be Jenson's proposals.

Professor Jenson sees eschatology as the key to the sense of theological discourse. Yet rather than contributing to the clarity and intelligibility of theological affirmation, what he says about eschatology is in various respects misleading, and unclear or inconsistent. He holds that Christian assertions about God are informative because they predict certain future events which, "if they take place, will be emphatically public and will verify in the most intersubjective way desirable the assertions of faith's confession that Jesus is Lord" (p. 148). This is extremely misleading. Jenson might appropriately say it if he meant that Christian theology predicts that Jesus will be seen riding on the clouds one day, in full view of thousands of startled observers. With appropriate qualifications, he might properly say it if he meant something about a world which we shall literally experience together after death. In fact, he plainly does not mean anything of the sort, in view of the antisupernaturalist tone of his work. The events predicted, if I understand him correctly, are simply events culminating in our deaths, but otherwise unspecified, which will constitute the dramatically appropriate conclusion of Jesus' story and of ours (see pp. 154 and 240).

Now the dramatic appropriateness or inappropriateness of an event is certainly a "public" fact about it in the sense that any observer of the event, and not only the person to whom it happened, is in a position to

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form some independent opinion on the question of its appropriateness (or at least may be in such a position if lie has enough information about other publicly observable events). But dramatic appropriateness or inappropriateness is not a "public" fact in the same way as the score of the final game of last year's World Series. The score of a professional baseball game is a matter of public record which can be checked in many different ways; and we confidently expect that all diligent and reasonable investigators of the subject will come to agree about what the score was. The dramatic appropriateness of a series of events, however, is notoriously the sort of thing about which persistent disagreement can be expected often to occur among reasonable men. An assertion of dramatic appropriateness cannot be verified "in the most intersubjective way desirable." According to Jenson's account, if we follow it closely, Christian affirmations about God are apparently to be classified with aesthetic appraisals, rather than with reports and predictions of baseball scores and election results. And it is a controversial question among philosophers whether aesthetic appraisals are informative (and if so, in what respects).

It is also misleading, in my judgment, that Jenson speaks so often of the events predicted by Christian theology as "acts of Jesus." He is able to do this only because he regards dramatic appropriateness as the criterion of personal identity. "If a series of events fits Jones's story as so far written, then the doer of those events is Jones" (pp. 151-152). 1 don't think many analytic philosophers will look with favor on this very briefly defended thesis about the much-discussed topic of personal identity. (It is analytic philosophy's standards for conceptual investigation which Jenson seems to be trying to satisfy.)

Professor Jenson also has some intolerably obscure things to say about what will happen to us when we die. He disapproves of talk "about some 'survival' after death" (p. 154). If we talk, as Jenson thinks we must, of something coming after death, that must only be an affirmation of "a particular existential qualification of death" (p. 240). We need "language about after death" because death will be an event in which Jesus will call us and we will answer (and this call and answer will not be a private experience). This is a "final word-event" which "will never end. It is the end" (p. 240). What on earth (or in Heaven, for that matter) does this mean? If I am answering, then either I have not yet quite died (and we do not need "language about after death"), or else I have died and have survived or come to life again in some fairly straightforward sense. Or are "word-event" and "answer" being used in some strange sense in which the event of my death (which is not, strictly speaking, an action on my part) counts as a word-event and an answer? I am genuinely puzzled as to whether Jenson thinks that some very special

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experience awaits us at death. These are questions about which he has no right to be coy or obscure, given the central place of eschatology and death in his analysis of theological discourse.

In fairness to Jenson, I should note that he has some things to say, particularly in his long chapter on hermeneutics, that struck me as both interesting and very likely correct. I have concentrated, however, on the issues that I think are most important.

Robert Merrihew Adams
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan