Continuity from the future

In the first volume of his Systematic Theology , Jenson argues that the Spirit is the guarantor of the church’s continuity over time: “it is God the Spirit who sustains the gospel’s and so the church’s self-identity through time,” but this means that “that identity cannot be mere historical continuity with the church’s very beginning.”

Why not? The Spirit, Jenson says in a characteristic phrase, “is precisely God as the power of the future, God as his own and our transforming outcome.”  Thus, “if it is the Spirit who sustains the gospel’s and the church’s self-identity through time, then that identity is primarily anticipation of an end and just so perpetuation of a beginning, anticipation of the ‘eternal gospel’ and just so reiteration of a historic message.”

Much to like about that, but especially the fact that, in Jenson’s theology, this works out both as continuity with and respect for tradition and its formulations but also openness to the breaking-out of the boundless Spirit.