The Freedom of God: A Study in the Pneumatology of Robert Jenson

by James Daryn Henry

Publisher:

Fortress Academic

, 2018

The Freedom of God wrangles with the unfolding legacy of Christian theologian Robert Jenson and presents the first in-depth study of his teaching on the Holy Spirit. It is a specialist monograph that will entice those with interest in academic theology, systematics, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century Christian thought, especially the post-Barthian historicist electionism and the post-Rahnerian immanent and economic trinitarian project conversations. Devoted readers of the works of Robert Jenson, scholars of pneumatology, third-article theology, or pentecostal/renewal movements, practitioners of liberation theology, and supporters of ecumenical theology will all be particularly gripped by the analysis developed in this work. As a text, the Freedom of God could find a home in graduate seminars, seminary classrooms, and in classes for advanced undergraduates for those studying Jenson as a way into systematic theology and contemporary Christian thought or in any thematic/doctrinal courses on the Holy Spirit or the Trinity.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Part I: The Work of the Spirit
Chapter 1: The Spirit and the People of God
Chapter 2: Some Gifts of the Spirit
Part II: The Person of the Spirit
Chapter 3: The Identification of the Spirit
Chapter 4: The Spirit in the Divine Life
Part III: The Spirit as Freedom
Chapter 5: The Horizon of Classical Pneumatology
Chapter 6: The Horizon of Modern Trinitarian Theology
Chapter 7: The Horizon of Liberation Theology
Conclusion

Praise for The Freedom of God

Whatever one makes of Jenson’s trinitarianism, there is no doubt that Henry’s volume is an indispensable addition to a growing body of research on one of Anglophone Lutheranism’s most important figures.

Jenson’s work deserves far more engagement than it has previously received and Henry’s contribution toward such provides another window into the developing theology of one of America’s most constructive theologians of the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

This is a book that certainly knows what it wants to say and the implications, but it’s written with a balanced voice and an openness to multiple perspectives that is truly irenic. . . . Although it is subtitled “a study in the pneumatology of Robert Jenson,” the book is actually best read as a constructive contribution to pneumatology in its own right. It presents a powerful case for charitable “triangulating” theology, and reading it would bear fruit for anyone working on pneumatology or trinitarian theology. . . It will certainly be an important book for graduate students and academic theologians.

Henry’s book provides not only a masterful analysis of Jenson's treatment of the Holy Spirit, but a theological and ethical foundation for global dialog across religious traditions and cultures. The implications of Henry's work for fruitful ecumenical and intercultural discussion are profound and exciting.

This is a welcome addition to the growing number of scholarly engagements with of one of America’s most original and creative theologians, Robert W. Jenson. In the first full-length study of Jenson’s pneumatology, Henry masterfully unpacks Jenson’s view of the Spirit as “freedom in God’s own life” and makes a compelling case for its capacity to mediate between traditional interpretations of the Spirit’s procession and more contemporary emphases on the Spirit’s economic activity of mission and liberation.

In this brilliantly conceived and elegantly written book, Daryn Henry celebrates, defends, critiques, and enriches Robert Jenson's central characterization of the Spirit as the freedom of both God and creation. Henry succeeds not only in his stated objective of demonstrating the generative power of Jenson's pneumatology for modern theological discourse, but also in establishing his own credentials as a creative and methodologically sophisticated theological voice.

Product Details

• Title : The Freedom of God: A Study in the Pneumatology of Robert Jenson
• Author: Henry, James Daryn
• Publisher: Fortress Academic
• Publication Date: 2018
• ISBN: 9781978700406

About James Daryn Henry

James Daryn Henry is visiting scholar in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.