The relation between creation and salvation in the Trinitarian theology of Robert Jenson

Abstract

This article explored the relation between creation and salvation as acts of God in the theology of Robert Jenson, an American Lutheran theologian. This is important due to Jenson’s growing importance as theologian and because of the current importance of ecotheology (and related themes that were implicated by the relation between creation and salvation). Jenson’s theology is an effort to tell God’s particular story and it can be described as a Trinitarian, narrative and eschatological theology. His starting point is that God’s eternity must not be understood as timeless (this is unbiblical and incompatible with the story of creation and redemption) and that creation (space and time) takes place somehow within the being of God. Jenson qualified this ‘withinness’, but also emphasised that creation is an intelligible whole, a history with an intended end. It is important for him that God’s story – a story of dramatic coherence – is not separated from our own and creation’s story. Within this understanding of God’s story (as dramatic coherence), creation found its own dramatic teleology because salvation also includes creation. Creation is therefore not subjected to pointlessness any longer, but will find its final place within God. The implication of this is that we must value creation much more and act with more responsibility towards it. According to Jenson we must enjoy creation in an aesthetic fashion and delight in creation as a whole because of its dramatic teleology.