The retroactive presence of the risen Jesus

Since what Jenson means often lies under the surface of his texts, it is important to find out and clarify first the underlying reasoning and meaning of his account. As Crisp points out, in Jenson's account it is not the Son without the flesh who is present in the Old Testament; it is Jesus of Nazareth. Yet it must also to be noted (as this section will show) that it is the risen Jesus Christ – critics like Crisp seem to miss this point – who is retroactively present in the history of the Old Testament Israel.

To grasp what Jenson means, it is helpful to start with Jenson's account of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, in which Jenson indicates the eschatological and transcendental character and claims that Jesus is now the personal eschatological reality by virtue of the resurrection. Jenson notes that the risen Jesus’ presence is quite elusive. When the disciples secretly gathered in a house and the doors were shut, Jesus ‘came and stood among them’.Footnote ⁶ In another episode, the risen Jesus came to the two disciples and walked with them on their way to Emmaus. They recognised him only when their encounter turned into a specifically eucharistic context, but then Jesus ‘vanished from their sight’.Footnote ⁷ In the post-resurrection narratives, it becomes obvious that Jesus’ bodily presence is not impeded by spatial restrictions, leading Jenson to conclude that the risen Jesus’ presence is not ‘subject to the regularities of this age’.Footnote ⁸ He is now ‘an inhabitant of the age to come’.Footnote ⁹ The risen Jesus’ presence ‘is elusive because he is . . . future’.Footnote ¹⁰ He is ‘in the appearance of the future’.Footnote ¹¹

Jenson takes one step further when he implies that the risen Jesus, as the eschatological personal reality, overcomes not only spatial but also temporal restrictions. For Jenson, the risen Jesus can be retroactively present to the times before his earthly lifetime by virtue of the resurrection. That is why Jenson speaks of the presence of the Son who ‘precedes his human birth without being simply unincarnate’.Footnote ¹² When Jenson mentions ‘the narrative pattern of being going to be born to Mary’ in his account of the pre-existence of the Son, it seems that as many readers understand Jenson refers to the whole community of Israel as ‘the Son’.Footnote ¹³ Importantly, however, Jenson does not overlook the divine and individual Son's presence in Israel.

In this regard, Jenson betrays a particular interest in the Shekinah phenomenon, which refers to ‘God as “settled” to and within Israel while not ceasing to stand over against Israel’.Footnote ¹⁴ Combining Shekinah theology with his christology, Jenson avers that the Shekinah figures display the homoousios relation with God the Father.Footnote ¹⁵ For instance, the angel of the Lord who appeared to Abraham is ‘a messenger “of” God who nevertheless refers to God in the first person’.Footnote ¹⁶ The Word of the Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’ Abram replied, ‘O Lord God . . .’Footnote ¹⁷ When Solomon dedicated the ‘place for thee to settle into . . .’, it was the Glory of the Lord that came to inhabit Solomon's temple as the answer to his prayer.Footnote ¹⁸ In Jenson's theology these Shekinah appearances are Christophanies, i.e. the pre-existence of the individual Son.

Now, at this point, it must be remembered that for Jenson this Son is never asarkos but ‘aggressively incarnate’.Footnote ¹⁹ In his account of the Shekinah, Jenson indicates ‘the fleshly, incarnational character of God's relation to Israel which makes the Christian claims about Jesus intelligible in the first place’.Footnote ²⁰ The angel of the Lord who appeared to Jacob wrestled with him; the Word of the Lord had conversations, took a walk and ate with Abraham; the Glory of the Lord in Ezekiel's vision ‘looked like a man’, Jenson claims, ‘because he was one’.Footnote ²¹ These episodes all reflect ‘the Lord's fleshly involvement with Israel’.Footnote ²² Who is this enigmatic and fleshly divine figure in the Shekinah phenomena? Jesus of Nazareth. Jenson states that in Ezekiel's vision ‘the man on the throne who shines with God's own glory, who indeed is God's Glory, must either be Jesus the Christ or something highly problematic’.Footnote ²³ ‘Who could the man on the throne be but He?’Footnote ²⁴

But how could it be that ‘someone born in 4 B.C. could . . . have spoken to and through Jeremiah or that someone who died in A.D. 30 could . . . have spoken through, say, the seer John’?Footnote ²⁵ Jenson gives a hint when he says, ‘Time, as we see it framing biblical narrative, is neither linear nor cyclical but perhaps more like a helix, and what it spirals around is the risen Christ’.Footnote ²⁶ This entails that ‘Ezekiel sees no abstracted or unidentified figure; he sees Jesus as the risen Christ’.Footnote ²⁷ To put the question differently, how could it be that ‘the incarnate Christ speaks in all Scripture’?Footnote ²⁸ For Jesus is risen. The risen Christ, the eschatological personal reality, can be present at all times – forward and backward – by virtue of the resurrection. Thus, this section has traced the theological reasoning implicitly operative in Jenson's doctrine of the pre-existence of the Son.

The grace of Christ on the Old Testament Israel

Understanding Jenson's meaning is one thing; substantiating his claim is another. How then can the idea of the retroactive presence of Jesus Christ be substantiated? How can we give more weight to his claim than critics do?

Here we briefly turn to Douglas Farrow's mariology, in which he explicitly argues for the retroactive grace of Christ upon Mary. Farrow appeals to an apostolic constitution issued by Pope Pius IX, saying, ‘The retroactive power of what God accomplishes in Christ is implied in the definition of Ineffabilis deus (1854) that “from the first moment of her conception the Blessed Virgin Mary was, by the singular grace and privilege of almighty God, and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of mankind, kept free from all stain of original sin.”’Footnote ²⁹ Mary's immaculate conception, Farrow says, wholly depends on divine grace. Importantly, it is ‘not another grace than the grace that is vouchsafed in Christ’, but that same grace, which is ‘retroactively operative. . . based . . . on the merits of Jesus Christ’.Footnote ³⁰ The logic of Farrow's mariology can be applied to anyone who lived before Jesus’ birth and received divine grace, although in no other case did it result in immaculate conception. If so, it may be argued the divine grace which they received can be no other grace but the grace of Christ, definitely rooted in his work – the cross and the resurrection. So construed, the grace of Christ that was bestowed on those who lived before Jesus’ birth must be retroactively operative on them. Thus, once it is admitted that divine grace in the time before Christ was still the grace of Christ, its retroactivity can be affirmed.

In this context, we may draw upon Karl Barth who suggests the concept of the ‘outward vector’ of the resurrection. For Barth, in some important sense Jesus ‘was made eternal in the resurrection and therefore always present in His resurrection’.Footnote ³¹ As Jesus is made eternal, he is present to all human beings in all ages, that is, ‘for every age from the days of His resurrection’.Footnote ³² Barth says, ‘The event of Easter Day is the removing of the barrier between His life in His time and their life in their times’.Footnote ³³ It is ‘the outward vector’ of the resurrection by which the first-century man is present to all other times.Footnote ³⁴ Along this line, we may construe another of Barth's concepts, Jesus as the contemporary of all human beings: ‘The man Jesus has his own time, but He also has more than that: Risen and exalted He is the Contemporary of all.’Footnote ³⁵ Here again the resurrection is closely related to Jesus’ transcendent presence. As Hunsinger puts it, ‘This transcendent aspect of bodily resurrection meant that the person of Jesus Christ – (and not without) his life-history and his saving work – had been elevated into eternity. It meant that he had been made the “Contemporary of all human beings.”’Footnote ³⁶

In light of this understanding of the ‘outward vector’ of the resurrection, we may take a further step and understand Barth's remark that Jesus is the contemporary of Israel. Barth states that Jesus ‘was in the midst of the fathers’, and that he was ‘a contemporary of Israel’.Footnote ³⁷ Barth indicates that ‘the promise and expectation of His coming make Him the Contemporary of Israel’.Footnote ³⁸ Jesus can be regarded as present among them, inasmuch as his coming is looked forward to in their prophecies. And yet he claims that the presence of Jesus in the Old Testament period is not to be reduced to ‘the clue to . . . or the preparation for the coming of the crucified and risen Jesus . . . – as though this were not an objective fact’.Footnote ³⁹ What kind of presence would it be? I take it that at this point there is room for the concept of the retroactive presence of the risen Jesus. If we understand the presence of Jesus as the contemporary of Israel in light of what Barth suggests with regard to the resurrection, a conclusion can be drawn out that the risen Jesus is present retroactively by the power of the resurrection, even though Barth does not unpack this idea in detail.Footnote ⁴⁰

We may also approach the question from a different angle, noting Barth's claim that ‘the new creation has taken place in the resurrection of Jesus Christ’.Footnote ⁴¹ It can be maintained here that the new creation that occurred in his resurrection includes the whole resurrection. T. F. Torrance enunciates this point: ‘In Christ the whole resurrection is already included in a decisive way. The New Humanity is already raised up in Christ. He is the corn of wheat which falling into the ground does not come up alone, but with a whole harvest of grain.’Footnote ⁴² Torrance is clear: ‘Our resurrection has already taken place and is fully tied up with the resurrection of Christ, and therefore proceeds from it more by way of manifestation of what has already taken place.’Footnote ⁴³ At this point, it can be inferred that his resurrection embraces the people of the Old Testament Israel within it. Abraham and his Old Testament descendants have been raised up in and with him. This entails that the salvific power of the resurrection is retroactively applied to them, stepping over the temporal boundaries. It coheres with Barth's notion of the ‘outward vector’ of the resurrection.

Simply put, if the Old Testament people are to be saved only by God's grace and if the grace is no other than that of Christ, definitely rooted in his works – particularly his death and resurrection, then it would be plausible to say that the grace of this first-century man is retroactively applicable to those who lived before the time of Jesus. And if the power of the resurrection can retroactively reach back to the people of Israel, then why not the risen Jesus himself, i.e. his fleshly presence? This is the point where Jenson's theology of the resurrection is distinct from that of others.

The reason why Jenson goes beyond other theologians’ account of the resurrection seems to lie in the fact that Jenson endorses the Lutheran christological axiom that finitum capax infiniti. But for Jenson the doctrine does not mean the ubiquity of the body of Christ by way of diffusion.Footnote ⁴⁴ While Jenson has added a temporal aspect to it, that does not entail a temporal diffusion of his body either, as we have seen.Footnote ⁴⁵ Rather, Jenson's suggestion can be put like this: the risen Jesus (i.e. Jesus in his new fleshly existence) can be anywhere he wills to be, overcoming spatial and temporal restrictions. Put differently, if the grace and power of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ can reach forward and backward in time, as Jenson claims, his bodily presence can be retroactively available to those who lived in the times before his earthly life. But would it be correct, one may ask, to attribute such a transcendental character to a human bodily presence, even if it is the risen Son's? Arguably, it would be better to do this than to attribute a kind of impotence to his risen body – an inability to transcend spatial-temporal bounds – as that would impugn his power in some degree.

Retrocausality in physics

To strengthen the concept of the retroactive presence of the risen Christ, we will look to modern physics, which suggests retroactivity in the physical world. I will claim that if retroactivity of certain physical entities in time is possible, as some leading scientists and philosophers argue, then there is no reason to think it would not be possible for the risen Jesus.

Robert Russell, a physicist and admirer of Jenson's long-time theological friend Wolfhart Pannenberg, indicates that there is a time-symmetric account in which ‘the present emerges out of an underlying combination of forward and backward causality’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Referring to James Maxwell's four equations, ‘which mathematically unified all that was known about electricity and magnetism’,Footnote ⁴⁷ Russell holds that there is a mathematical possibility that electromagnetic waves move backward in time.Footnote ⁴⁸ According to Russell, ‘Maxwell's equations can lead to the classical wave equation for E in the vacuum: δ²E/δt ² = c ²∇²E’ (where E is the electric field; t is time; c is the speed of light).Footnote ⁴⁹ This equation is invariant under time inversion, that is, ‘by the substitute of “-t” for “t”’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Russell applies the wave equation to the simple case of the sun: ‘The light from the Sun travels outwards in space and forward in time until it reaches the Earth some eight minutes later’.Footnote ⁵¹ But Maxwell's equations suggest that it is also possible to think of ‘light waves that arrive at Earth eight minutes before they are emitted from the sun’,Footnote ⁵² that is, ‘so-called advanced waves, which move outward from the source but backward in time, waves that move from the present into the past’.Footnote ⁵³

Having shown the mathematical possibility of retroactivity of the electromagnetic waves based on Maxwell's equations, Russell asks, ‘Is the time symmetry of electromagnetism merely a formality, an artifact of the equations, or could there really be “backward moving waves” in nature?’Footnote ⁵⁴ Can such phenomena be observed? At this point, Russell turns to John A. Wheeler and Richard Feynman's ‘fully time symmetric formulation of electromagnetism that explicitly included backward moving as well as forward moving electromagnetic waves’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Russell explains why such retroactivities are not observed in nature:

This means that ‘the backward moving wave . . . from the source and the forward moving wave . . . from the absorber cancel each other out, leaving no empirical evidence of light traveling backward in time’.Footnote ⁵⁷ (See Figure 1.) Finally, noting that the time-symmetric theories are widely applied to electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, gravity and cosmology, Russell states that the implications for retrocausality ‘might be consonant with the kind of eschatology that a theist such as Pannenberg supports’.Footnote ⁵⁸ We can add here that it would also be congruous with Jenson's idea of the retroactive presence of the risen Jesus.

Figure 1.

Forward moving and backward moving waves emitted by the charge at the origin and reflected by the absorber cancel to give only forward moving waves expanding outward from the charge (Russell, Time in Eternity, p. 344, figure 6.1)

Furthermore, a leading scientific philosopher, Huw Price, also argues for retroactivity in the physical world. He derives the idea of retrocausality from the intriguing physical phenomenon known as quantum entanglement. It can be described briefly as follows: let us assume that two particles interact and so are ‘entangled’ in a place, and then each particle is sent to two different laboratories (say, Alice's and Bob's). When Alice measures the behaviour of the particle sent from the source, the other in Bob's laboratory always behaves in correlation to Alice's.

Even though they are long distant apart (even light years apart), the results of the measurement of the two particles will be correlated. ‘The actual act of observation of one of the two particles influences the other one instantly, not matter how far away the other one is.’Footnote ⁶⁰ It seems that the two particles can ‘communicate’ each other instantaneously (and thus faster than the speed of light).

Albert Einstein was averse to the idea (he called it ‘spooky action at a distance’), because it seems to entail faster-than-light speeds and so it would imperil his theory of relativity. In order to avoid ‘spooky’ quantum entanglement, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen provided an alternative explanation (known as EPR for short), which postulates that there are ‘hidden variables’; that is, when the two particles interact with each other for entanglement at the source, they have already ‘shared some information’ on how they will behave in the future when they are respectively measured by Alice and Bob. Thus, Einstein's argument precludes the possibility of instantaneous ‘telecommunication’ between the two particles.

However, another physicist John Bell provided strong arguments against the EPR explanation. At this point, Price says, it is important to understand what Bell's argument (Bell's inequality) actually rejects. Even though it is commonly supposed that Bell's argument rejects Einstein's idea of ‘hidden variables’, Price argues that it is not the case: in fact, there would be hidden variables at the source, affected by something that has not been taken into consideration so far.

At this point Price brings the concept of time-symmetry into the discussion: ‘At the fundamental level, physics is almost entirely time-symmetric in the sense that if it allows a process to happen then it also allows the reverse process to happen (roughly, what we would see if we reversed a video of the first process).’Footnote ⁶¹ Price presents the idea of retrocausality in this context. We can explain what he means by returning to the story of the Alice and Bob's particles. When Alice measures her particle in her lab, Price explains, she

Thus, once retrocausation comes into play, the ‘spooky action at a distance’ can be explained without violation of Einstein's relativity – without positing faster-than-light speed.Footnote ⁶³ In effect, the tension between Einstein and quantum mechanics can be resolved, Price argues, by proposing the idea of retrocausation in time-symmetry.Footnote ⁶⁴

Back to our theological discussion: if, as Russell suggests with Feynman, electromagnetic waves can go back in time (or, as Price suggests, if some ‘information’ can be carried backward in time), it would be reasonable to think that physical retroactivity would be possible with respect to the physical and eschatological presence of the risen Jesus. I am not saying that the time-symmetric retroactivity is the same kind of movement as that of the risen Jesus. The subatomic physical realities still belong to this present age; the risen one to the age to come. Jesus’ retroactivity is correspondingly more radical, as it were, ‘more like a “wormhole” that starts in the eschatological future and ends in the present of the current creation’.Footnote ⁶⁵ His eschatological presence transcends the time of this age. This means, I take it, that he could be present to us in a faster-than-light fashion from his eschatological time. His eschatological divine light can exceed the speed of natural light. (Remember, on Price's account of retrocausation, retroactive subatomic particles do not exceed the speed of light. They propagate backward through time within the limitation of the speed of light.)

This construal of the transcendent presence of the risen one accords with the thought of Jonathan Edwards, whom Jenson quotes approvingly: the resurrected saints ‘“will be able to see from one side of the universe to the other,” since they will not see “by such slow rays of light that are several years traveling . . .” but by the light “emitted from the glorified body of Christ.”’Footnote ⁶⁶ In short, if retroactivity is possible with entities of this age, it maybe viewed as still more so with respect to the age to come, whose rays exceed the speed of natural light.

The growing block universe and the risen Jesus

But, one may object, doesn't time-symmetry theory entail the B-theory of time, in which all times are on an equal footing and temporally real?Footnote ⁶⁷ And doesn't it for that reason also demand the theory of the ‘block universe’?Footnote ⁶⁸ If that is the case, then one might say it would be incongruous with Jenson's theology, which favours the A-theory of time.Footnote ⁶⁹ Jenson is clear: ‘[T]heology must take the side of the A-theorists.’Footnote ⁷⁰ Indeed, it may appear that the kind of time-symmetry theology I have employed to support Jenson's theology is on a collision course with Jenson's conception of time. The question is: can a time-symmetry theory, which seems to entail the B-theory of time, be employed to support Jenson's conception of time, which akin to the A-theory of time? My contention is that it can.

We may think of two options, which can accommodate both Jenson's metaphysics of time and the time-symmetry theory: the ‘moving spotlight’ theory and the ‘growing block universe’ theory. The ‘moving spotlight’ theory operates on the B-theory of time and yet allows for the privileged status of ‘now’, as the A-theory does. According to the theory, ‘past, present and future events exist, but there is an objective property of presentness that moves through the block [of the universe] progressively “lighting up” different times’.Footnote ⁷¹ It is like a spotlight of ‘a policeman's bull's-eye traversing’ from the one end of a house to the other.Footnote ⁷² What is illuminated by this movement is the present. This theory makes room for Jenson's idea that the risen Jesus breaks into the time of the Old Testament, for it maintains that the past is temporally real. Also, it can embrace the theory of time symmetry, for the moving spotlight theory assumes the reality of the future, that is, the space-time from which some subatomic entities or information can propagate to the present. However, while it takes the passage of the present moment into consideration to some degree, the theory would probably not be satisfactory for Jenson, as it appears too deterministic for him, whose preference for the A-theory of time is rooted in his emphasis on the freedom of God in history, which liberates creatures from past conditions.Footnote ⁷³

We may then turn to the ‘growing block’ theory, according to which past and present are real, but the future is not. As time goes, the theory envisages, the slices of space-time are added to the total history of the universe.Footnote ⁷⁴ So the universe block grows. This theory accentuates the objective and dynamic reality of the present, which constitutes the forefront slice of the universe, and therefore tips the balance to the A-theory of time, which Jenson opts for. Like the moving spotlight theory, this theory can be employed for Jenson's idea of the retroactive presence of Jesus, as it posits the reality of the past.

But would this theory be compatible with the time-symmetry theory, given that it does not admit the reality of the future (of this age)? I think so. A time-symmetry theory can work within the framework of a growing block universe theory. The growing block universe theory is not a presentism that upholds the reality of the present passing moment alone. The theory of the growing block universe posits the reality of the past (and thus room for a particle to move back in time) and the growing temporal reality to the future (and thus room for a particle to move forward in time).

It should be noted here that in the growing block universe, it is possible that some subatomic particles exist ahead of ‘my’ or ‘someone else's’ time. To use the earlier entanglement story again, Alice's measurement is future in relation to someone's time who makes the two particles entangled at the source. (Let's say the ‘someone’ is Charlie.) And yet, it can be that the measured particle at Alice's lab already exists ahead of Charlie's present time, ready to affect the characteristic of the other particle at the source, which Charlie is presently dealing with. In this case, Charlie's present time is not at the fresh slice of the growing universe; Alice's particle's time at her lab is at or closer to the new slice. Put differently, ‘my’ present moment is not always at the front slice in the growing universe. As Russell points out, the present can be ‘relative and inhomogeneous’, depending on a point of reference, even in the growing block universe.Footnote ⁷⁵ Moreover, even if it is observed that a particle which affects a present particle at the source comes from a far distant future that is already real, it does not preclude a possibility that there is a further future that is non-existent beyond the time which the particle come from. So the time-symmetry theory does not necessarily lead to the complete block universe theory and is compatible with a theory of the growing universe.

Still there is another kind of time, required by Jenson's revisionary metaphysics: the transcendent time (or hyper-time) in which the risen Jesus dwells. As discussed earlier, it is not a time of this age but of the age to come. That is the eschatological time, i.e. the time of the Future. This time cannot be reached by prolongation of the temporal line/block of the past or the present.Footnote ⁷⁶ It can be reached only when the risen eschatos fully bursts into this time of the old creation and floods it with his eschatological power and presence.

But is this time of the risen eschatos, the A-series or the B-series? For Christianity, it is of paramount importance to confess that Jesus is now risen. It is not satisfactory just to affirm that the resurrection occurred later than the incarnation or the crucifixion. I do not think that the past of his birth and his crucifixion are on equal footing and equally temporally real as his resurrection is. If the crucifixion and the resurrection are equally real as the B-theorists would say, then it would be difficult to say that he has overcome death. It means then that it is crucial to uphold the objective moving reality of presentness (at least as in the moving spotlight theory), and to maintain that the present time runs in the time of the post-resurrection, not in the time of his birth or his crucifixion (even for Jesus’ divine consciousness). That now he is risen requires that his birth and crucifixion are past. Further, it cannot be thought that such a temporal perception would be merely an illusion to the divine consciousness – as B-theorists would argue – but firmly grounded in the reality, particularly, his bodily reality which experienced the nadir of the earthly life before but now radiates the glorious and eschatological effulgence. Such a construal stands in close affinity with the A-theory of time.