From Modernism through Postmodernism to Apocalyptic

I think it would be fair to say about my fifty years in academic theology in the tradition of Luther that I have been a partisan of the twentieth century renewal of Trinitarianism in the path trod by Barth, Jngel, Pannenberg, Moltmann, Jenson, Dalferth, Schwbel, and many others.In terms of Lutheran theology, this has meant making explicit the Trinitarian-Christological backbone of the doctrine of justification, indeed refocusing justification on the personand-work of the incarnate Son Jesus Christ.Because justification is about the cross-achieved and Easter-vindicated righteousness of Jesus Christ, it can be lavished upon the ungodly without remainder, in the act inviting faith.This refocusing appeals particularly to Luther's "joyful exchange," for which the crucified-but-risen Christ must be bodily present to save.This refocusing on the self-donating Christ in turn requires a renewed articulation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, not as a ghostly cipher for an otherwise absent Christ but rather the distinct divine agent who is at work in believers just as he worked in the man Christ.To articulate such robust Trinitarian personalism depends not merely, however, on a reiteration of the received Western doctrine of the Trinity, but rather a penetrating, albeit immanent, critique of it, especially its unholy dependence on metaphysical doctrines of divine simplicity.In place of metaphysical simplicity, it is the "monarchy" of the Father which safeguards divine unity and transcendence, just as this theological function requires a much more robust doctrine of the fatherhood of God, namely, Patrology.