Theological Fragments: Robert Jenson on contact with the Word

“There is no need to embark on the endless preliminary of first persuading men to return to the convictions of their fathers, so that next we may show them how they fail to measure up to these convictions, so that finally we may speak of God’s mercy. We can speak without needing to appeal to these now shaky bridges between Christ and ourselves. We need no bridges at all between Christ and ourselves, these or any other. Our relation to God’s revelation of himself in His Son is not something apart from our ordinary lives as human doers and sufferers. It is not something which comes second, so that we are first involved in our history and the history of our world–and then faced with the choice of whether also to become involved with God’s Word. The message of the Church does not need to create a point of contact with human life. The Word is that “other” over against whom human life is lived.”

(Robert Jenson, Alpha and Omega, 147)