Robert Jenson Is Honored by Lutheran Forum

 

 Robert W. Jenson, died in 2017, age 87

Survivors of the ELCA merger of 1987 probably remember the toxic whale called Christian Dogmatics, 2 volumes, 1984. The nickname for the work was Braaten-Jenson, and one of my peers called it a "conservative book" because the other LCA-ALC theologians did not think God was an issue anymore.

I "bought" the Braaten-Jenson set so I could take notes and return it for cash. The authors denied and mocked - the Trinity, the Virgin Birth of Christ, the divinity of Jesus, the Atonement, and His Resurrection. 

When I returned the massive volumes, I told Fortress, "This is nothing but garbage." They replied, "It is being used in all our seminaries." Later, when the content became known, the seminaries reversed themselves about how much it was used.

Braaten, who is 93 and still publishing, wrote in Lutheran Forum about how brilliant they both were. Long ago, I said to the Augustana College librarian, "Betrand Russell seems to be living forever." She said, "He's got no place to go." 

The same might be said of Braaten, raised by missionary parents, fostered by the Lutheran World Federation, and adored by the apostates. The Left were wrenching their synods away from the Scriptures, Luther, and the Book of Concord. The pitiful LCMS, WELS, and ELS have followed, wagging their tails in hope of kind word from ELCA.

The big shift took place when British and American liberals covenanted together for a new King James Version. I have described that in The King James Version: Apostolic Texts Precise Translation versus Fraudulent Texts and Heretical Translations. The men who got behind the KJV Revision project were apostates who did everything possible to make that version - which failed utterly - to model their illusions, delusions, and lies. That was in 1870-1881.

Although rejected by almost everyone, the KJV Revision agenda continued and blossomed in the 1930s or so, as the rationalistic tendencies grew in Europe and then in America.

The laughability of Braaten, Jenson, and their crew is doubly fun. The younger and more radical set thought of their colleagues being too cranky and old, too aligned with the Left of the past. The second is that Braaten-Jenson ended up like the theologians they deposed, too ancient to be taken seriously in the youthful gay wokeness of the New Lutheran Church, ELCA. 

One can read Braaten-Jenson's tiresome faux-intellectual works and see the same old excuses and fables that arose from Halle University moving swiftly from Pietism to pure Rationalism. Karl Barth is mentioned in this issue of Lutheran Forum, but not Karl's Marxist bedmate and major writer for "Barth's" Dogmatics.

 "Either/Or - yes, that is the answer."

 "I hope you are writing this down!"

  "The existential threat to the core of our being, in the upper heights of the majesty and humility, regardless of our being-ness..."

 "Later with the footsies, Charlotte. Meine Frau will go shopping soon."

 "Ven did ve get so alt, Charlotte?"

 Hunsinger told the truth about Barth and his mistress, and some Evangelicals still adore the old coot. I met Hunsinger at YDS.

 That's a good one, Karl. You are like a Swiss fortune cookie, but stale.

 Karl! Off your meds again?

 Karl has his mistress next to him, his wife stage right, his very unhappy brother in the back.

 This is a highly regarded deposit of clever double-talk that only a seminary student can read without laughing out loud.