the doctrine of God as Trinity
1. Use your interpretation of Jenson’s understanding of the doctrine of God as Trinity to enter into conversation with and interpret at least two of the three figures we’re investigating in section 3: Augustine, Francis, Day.
Jenson’s theology is one that can be simply described as Tritarian. Jenson’s book entitled the “Story and promise” illustrates his view about trinity. The book carries that there is no distinction between the God the father and God the son. Jensons doesn’t see any difference in the eternal God and God who personified himself that is Jesus Christ. This view brings up one critical aspect about trinity. The aspects is time. jenson’s stipulate that characterizing God or trinity as timeless is unbiblical (Jenson, 1995). Secondly Jenson states that defining the nature of God as timeless is incompatible with the story of creation of the universe. In other words jensons stipulates that God is not a being that is immune to time as many people think. From jenson’s perspective God has a history which has a beginning and end. This history encompasses the story of creation and salvation. Given that there is no significant difference between God the father and Jesus Christ it implies that it’s the trinity which was involved in creation that was also involved in personification for the purpose of saving the human beings. This means that God new from the beginning that man would fall and He would save him hence had set time to do it. This clearly show that trinity is not time immune (Jenson, 1997).
Entering into a conversation with Augustine carrying the ideas of jenson several similarities between the two theologians are evident. Augustine in his book took first rejects the idea of human immortality which was widely embraced by Egyptians as well as Greeks. On the issue of creation Augustine takes the view that God created everything in a simultaneous manner. Augustine negates the fact that God created the world in 7 days and instead he asserts that the 7 days time available in genesis is just a logical framework. To be precise the theologian argues that the 7 days is a typical logical framework and not an actual time frame or passage of time. This shows a departure of thinking on the concept of time pertaining the trinity between the two theologians.
The foundations or reference of Augustine’s argument is found in Sirach 18:1 which states that “He created all things at once”. According to Augustine this is enough evidence that the number of days presented in Genesis were non-literal. Additionally, Augustine have the idea that the creation process is beyond human comprehension hence arising the need of translation. This view when taken discussed in a conversation entailing the jensons ideas about trinity shows a deviation in thinking. Jenson asserts that trinity is creation and thus the notion that God is omnipresent or he is everywhere.
