On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions

Currents in Theology and Mission, April, 2005 by Daniel M. Bell, Jr.

On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions. By Robert W. Jenson. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003. xii and 86 pages. Paper. $16.00.

In this deceptively short book, Robert Jenson takes up six notions that we need when discussing ourselves as human: death, consciousness, freedom, reality, wickedness, and love. Although we need them, Jenson notes, they persistently resist being thought satisfactorily. This is the case, he argues, because they are all notions from which we cannot gain sufficient distance in order to reflect upon them. That is, the selfinvolved character of our reflection hinders thought.

To take one example, our reflections on death inevitably fail because they become accounts of the continuation of consciousness in death, which is really but a mode of life and not an image of death at all (p. 2). I simply cannot think my death. For each notion, Jenson's resolution is found in the same place: the Triune God. Only when we think the human in light of the Trinity do we find our path illuminated. Only when we begin to think through our deaths and consciousness and freedom and so forth, beginning from the Son's death and divine freedom and so forth, do we transcend the aporias that otherwise plague our efforts at thinking the human.

This is a deceptively short book because time must be spent with it, the intricacies of the argument must be savored, if one is to follow Jenson's lead toward theological resolution of these difficult notions. It is not an easy read (particularly the philosophical critique and setting of the issues), but the time spent is rewarded.

Of course, not all of Jenson's resolutions will prove finally persuasive to all readers. The decisively theological and particularly Trinitarian character of this thought may rile some. And even among those who find his theological vision persuasive, there are grounds for disagreement. For example, at least to this reader the question remains open as to whether his effort to articulate a theo-logic of moral equivalence that distinguishes ordinary wickedness from radical evil runs afoul of his classic Augustinian commitments.

The inevitable disagreements notwithstanding, Jenson's little book is a rich resource for thinking theologically about difficult notions of the human.

Daniel M. Bell, Jr.

Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary

Columbia, South Carolina