Impassibility and Triumph

In the first volume of his Systematic Theology , Jenson notes that the reason why the church has been “lured” by impassibility is the conviction, which Jenson emphatically affirms” that God is “not subjected to created time’s contingencies” and that no “aspect of history could be outside the Lord’s control.”

The issue for Jenson is not whether this is true. He affirms it. The question is ” How does God transcend time’s contingencies?” and Jenson’s answer, as always, is to avoid “metaphysical” accounts and point to the gospel. God doesn’t transcend time’s contingencies and transcend suffering by avoiding them but by gaining victory of them.

Jenson writes, “God the Son suffers all the contingencies and evils recorded in the Gospels, and concludes them by suffering execution. God the Father raises him from the dead; nor do we have any reason to think of this act as dispassionately done. So and not otherwise the Father triumphs over suffering. God the Spirit is the sphere of the triumph. And ‘triumph’ is the precise word: the Father and the Spirit take the suffering of the creature who the Son is into the triune life and bring from it the final good of that creatures, all other creatures , and of God. So and not otherwise the true God transcends suffering – whatever unknowably might have been.”