This presentation takes up a perennial question of contemporary systematic theology: What of the nature of the Creator/creature distinction? To do so, it sets two theologians in dialogue: Robert Jenson and John Webster. Working in the wake of Karl Barth, each deploys the doctrine of the Trinity as a guide to address contemporary deficiencies and assign it the tasks of identifying God and characterizing the Creator/creature distinction. Though for Webster and Jenson the doctrine of the Trinity provides the foundation of dogmatics, the contours of their respective doctrines differ both materially and formally.
For Robert Jenson, God’s identification with Jesus Christ requires a thoroughgoing revision of theological metaphysics. Jenson radicalizes convictions learned from Barth. For Barth, God discloses himself in the acts of historical self-revelation. For Jenson, God identifies himself with and by these historical events. God’s trinitarian life is constituted by the events whereby he makes himself known. Even more, God’s eternity now includes God’s temporality and finitude. The radical self-giving of God in Christ governs the distinction between God and creatures. The ordering of Jenson’s account moves from God’s intimate relation to creatures to God’s distinction from creatures. This ordering is non-negotiable.
For John Webster, God’s immanent perfection is the principle of God’s transitive acts. In this, Webster operates with a different understanding of God’s actuality, not as the totality of existence and essence, but as an ordered, asymmetrical relation between theology and economy. Whereas Jenson maintains that “the plot of the biblical narrative … is the final truth of God’s own reality,” Webster grounds the divine missions in the divine processions. God is distinguished absolutely from creation—yet humanity is intimately related to him. Resultantly, the God-creature relation is ‘mixed’: ontologically constitutive on the side of creatures (i.e. real) but ontologically non-constitutive (i.e. non-real) on the side of God.
I conclude by considering how each theologian contributes to a proper understanding of the Creator/creature distinction. Both Webster and Jenson define the character of God’s distinction from creation out of a doctrine of God: God-with-us determines us-with-God. The two figures also represent diverging paths of trinitarian theology ‘after’ Karl Barth. Jenson is a sort of unbridled Barthian—he represents a rigorous and lavish application of Barth’s instincts; Webster is a Barthian with a seatbelt—principled and restrained. Barth’s formative influence, then, does not lead to a confluence but a parting of the ways. On the one hand, Jenson raises questions regarding God’s aseity and independence. Binding God’s immanent life to the economy, Jenson risks undermining the distinction which permits and sponsors divine freedom. On the other hand, Webster’s account raises questions regarding dogmatics’ conceptual architecture. Whereas Jenson’s theological idiom is transparent to the scriptural language, Webster’s late-career austerity risks jeopardizing the echo of Scripture altogether.