Introduction: Rewarding Patience

To say that Paul Dafydd Jones’s book rewards the reader’s patience sounds like a backhanded compliment; and having read the book I find myself wondering whether it should sound that way. This is an extremely rich and substantial book that takes its time, lingers thoughtfully but not pedantically on interesting points of detail, and allows its argument to unfold at the pace required to make it work. It rewards slow reading and rereading. It performs and calls forth the kind of patience that, Jones suggests at various points, is analogous to the patience of God the creator and even (in a prospect he teases for a future volume) to the patience that belongs to God in eternity. But saying that a book rewards patience makes it sound as if there is a problem with the book, or with the reader, or with the relationship between them; and that takes us to the delicate challenge Jones takes on in this book, namely, using the multifaceted, evolving, and “burdened” human virtue of patience, caught up as it is with experiences of suffering and structural evil, to do God-centered systematic theology.

The unity of form and content—a patient and patience-rewarding book about patience—gives me, I hope, an excuse to begin my response with some remarks on what kind of theology this is, and how it should be evaluated. I move on to ask some more substantial questions about what it means to attribute patience to God; and I end by picking up where Jones’s book ends, with Milton’s nineteenth sonnet, and a recent response to it that offers in my view some important challenges for how theologians think about patience.

Theology’s Responsive Freedom

Jones locates his project as an exercise in theology’s responsive freedom, the active practice of semper reformanda. For Jones, faith seeks understanding through, inter alia, serious play, conceptual and interpretive experiment, and the exploration of plausible hypotheticals (like for example the series of questions that starts off his discussion on page 10—“Might an acclamation of God’s patience serve as a point of departure for reflection in a new key?” [emphasis mine]). To say that Jones’s theology is playful is not, of course, to say that it is careless. It is always responsive and responsible—it is thinking after revelation, and it is oriented to and by the love of God and neighbor. However, theology in Jones’s hands is not inclined to look anxiously over its shoulder to check for the approval of the authorities—be they the great names of the tradition, or the modern methodology police.1 A theologian, says Jones in his extended introduction, “is always at liberty simply to get on with the business of trying to make sense of what God is doing and who God is” (47). His theological reason is “in an adventurous mood” (17). And Jones does, especially in the second half of the book, “get on with the business” of trying to make sense of God’s patience. He allows himself, and freely admits his intention, to breeze cheerfully past various arguments in which it would be very easy to get bogged down, most notably around divine causality.

It seems to me that the kind of questioning this theology invites is, not “why haven’t you covered this particular base?” but rather the various kinds of question appropriate to exploration. Why, positively, did you decide to go this way and what have you gained from it? What possibilities does it open up and what does it close off? This is the type of question I am attempting to develop in my response.

Why Take Up the Burden?

One of Jones’s key commitments is to think patience, as he repeatedly says, von Gott aus. This involves both a substantial dogmatic move, taking a cue from Barth and making patience a divine perfection—and a methodological move, making reflection on God’s patience the starting-point for all theological discussion of patience. The latter move is significant, in part, because Jones is acutely aware that patience is and has been a “burdened virtue,” commended and taught in ways that reinforce structures of oppression. Jones’s wager—and at this stage of the project it is mostly presented as just that, a wager—is that thinking and writing about patience anew von Gott aus can exert enough pressure on the “burdened” tradition of patience that the latter is reshaped in a more liberative and life-giving direction. Jones draws an interesting partial parallel between his project and that of Sarah Coakley, for whom the practice of contemplative prayer (itself described as “patient”) effects the reshaping of language as part of its reorientation of the believer.

Jones’s discussion of the “burdened” history of patience nudges me to ask the question, why bother? Or why attempt just this project? It’s a question, as I have suggested above, that Jones himself generously and courageously invites by the way that he sets his course. We could start with an initial hypothesis, in the mode of serious play: because we can and because we may, because neither the history of the world nor the history of theology is governed by the iron laws of necessity, and not every new development is the solution to a previously existing problem. In a created and graced world there is abundance, creativity, and surprise. So it is sometimes fine just to ask, in theology and anywhere else, what happens if I do this?—and to allow the project in due course to stand or fall by its outcomes. On the other hand, a non-necessary theological project is particularly vulnerable to challenges along the lines—given that we have identified some risks and pitfalls, why attempt just this project? What is the reasonably expected benefit, or on what grounds do we reasonably expect to receive a benefit, from reclaiming the language of patience?

God, Time, and Wrath

Jones occasionally drops hints about the answer to this question. I would like to know whether I am right in thinking that he believes a theology of patience to be a vital part of developing a theological response to the reality of the Anthropocene, and the dramatic consequent shifts in our understanding of time. I cannot help, for example, connecting the “impending but deferred unleashing of divine wrath” of the early texts on divine patience to which he adverts in the first part, to the present-and-future experience of the climate catastrophe as seen from the global North—of which Jones writes so powerfully and also almost apologetically on pages 524–25. I am specifically not asking Jones or any other theologian to collapse theology into autobiography, less still into therapy; we usually do not know why we do things, nor why we persist in doing things, and we certainly do not need to know why works were created in order to appreciate them. But—as a theologian who is very attracted by the experimental approach—I am struck by this gap or hesitation in a highly self-reflective and methodologically sophisticated project. How should we think about the contingency and contextuality of the paths we as theologians decide to follow, and how should this shape our understanding of systematics?

As an aside on a related point, I would love to see Jones’s work set in conversation with Ben Fulford’s recent book on Hans Frei, God’s Patience and Our Work (SCM Press, 2024). Frei’s work on biblical narrative is extremely important for Jones’s methods of biblical interpretation, but Fulford by contrast thinks through the substantive implications of Frei’s own theology of divine patience. Fulford seems to be especially helpful on one concern to which Jones adverts in his reflections on providence—the emergence of societies that “cannot be bothered, really, with the fuss of democratic deliberation”; Fulford argues for a patient and critically realistic Christian engagement with deliberative politics, in complex and conflicted societies, from a reading of history as the time and space of God’s patience with all of us.

More substantively, I am curious about the relationship between divine patience and divine wrath, and how both of them relate to divine justice. Jones presents a detailed and compelling reading of Calvin’s complex treatment of divine patience, and draws attention to the significance of the language of wrath in Calvin’s account of the atonement. On Jones’s reading, “the cross discloses something of God’s fury towards sin” (166); it is a decisive and complete divine “loss of patience,” in the light of which (but only in the light of which) believers can encounter their present sufferings as merciful chastisement rather than angry retribution. Jones treads carefully through this minefield, emphasizing how Calvin uses multiple images and frameworks to speak about the atonement, and resisting the temptation to give one of them the controlling hand. Later in the book (493), he cautiously rejects the “deferred outburst” framework in Tertullian—because that would mean that patience as expounded here wasn’t truthful. It seems, however, that divine wrath remains an important ingredient in Jones’s account of divine patience—specifically to express something that exceeds the judicial framework in an account of the dire consequences of sin or “waywardness”. Given the range of frameworks available for thinking both patience and the atonement, and the permission he has given himself to think critically and innovatively in relation to the tradition, I find myself wondering why divine wrath remains important to Jones—when it is so difficult to handle in Tertullian et al. and when one of his preferred interlocutors, Julian of Norwich, explicitly rejects it.2 One possibility is that it links to his fascinating reflections on God’s non-impeditio of creatures’ righteous “wrath”—against wrongdoers who go unpunished, against the continuing ill effects of sin, and against God for failing to do anything about it. Perhaps the “holy impatience” of those who cry out for justice has its correlate in God’s “fury” against sin? But is this the only way to coordinate the various parts—in the mode of exploration, why take this path rather than another?

In my final section I have taken the liberty of “serious play” with Jones’s text—thinking beyond what he has said or quoted, in an effort to bring something else to the theological consideration of patience.

Do Not Stand and Wait: Rereading Milton with a Contemporary Poet

“I feel and write. I do not stand and wait.”3

The contemporary Scottish poet Nuala Watt, in “On Her Partial Blindness,” responds to the sonnet by Milton that resounds in the background of much English-language thinking about patience—and that is quoted at the end of Jones’s book. Watt, from her experience of lifelong visual impairment, challenges Milton’s stark contrast between unimpeded and ceaseless activity—the angels that “post o’er land and water without rest”—and the inactivity of the poet who is forced to stand and wait. At the heart of Watt’s response to Milton is the reality of embodied everyday life and creativity, from and not despite the constraints of the particular disabled body and its social and familial context:

I’m neither banned nor blessed

but breathing here . . .

as I eat, sleep, kiss, swear, get children dressed.

The partially sighted (and, as she discusses elsewhere in her oeuvre, physically disabled or “squint”) poet moves at her own pace through the world; and as she does so, she feels and writes.

For Watt, writing herself into Milton’s sonnet entails making a space for herself and for people like her within the tradition. In a sense, though, Milton’s sonnet has already made the space, and the problem is that it is too wide. It is the gulf between the ceaselessly active angels and the passive man receiving blindness and inactivity as his fate. In writing back, Watt points out to Milton that the gulf is not unbridgeable, but is in fact where he, she and all of us exist. After all, even after his loss of sight, Milton also feels and writes. He moves through the world at a changed pace, he lives with the limits and affordances of his environment and of his own body—and he creates, among other things, this sonnet.

From this perspective, the patience that speaks to Milton in the middle of the sonnet might not simply be a personified human virtue, teaching him to endure a catastrophic loss. If we take a cue from Jones’s desire to link human and divine patience, as well as from Watt’s rewriting of her and Milton’s experience, we might hear more fully the theological shift at the heart of Milton’s poem—a reconfiguration of who God is in relation to human activity. On this reading, the voice of divine patience “prevents” the murmur of anxiety that is provoked by not being better, faster, more effective than one is. It turns out that God does not set a timetable that God’s creatures cannot keep up with; God does not “exact day-labour” or rush to judgment. The sonnet—on this reading—leaves off just as the poet finds himself in this puzzling new space, liberated from service to an impatient God.

I wondered at several points in Jones’s book whether the persistent difficulty he identifies within the tradition, of speaking about patience von Gott aus or even of bringing divine patience into the same frame as human patience, had something to do with the lingering and perhaps inevitable attachment of the tradition to divine action and creativity—unimpeded, “without rest”—as the model of what action should be. God exercises patience by holding back God’s action, creatures exercise patience by coping with the limits on their action or with the suffering that God’s action inflicts on them—or, in situations where they do have or think they have power, by occasionally holding back. And it is not very hard to see the gendered (and other) outworkings of this dichotomy of patience in the human sphere; husbands exercise patience by not hitting their wives, wives exercise patience by putting up with being hit. Jones sees very clearly how this innerworldly differentiation of types of patience burdens patience as a human virtue. I think one challenge he is up against, as the project proceeds, is how to give an account of divine patience that does not reinscribe, onto accounts of creaturely patience, the impossible fantasy of unimpeded action.

The main figure in Jones’s book who seems to cut across this dichotomy of patience—the patience of the one who acts and the patience of the one who suffers—is Julian. Julian, as Jones reads her, presents a vision of a God whose loving action unfolds at exactly the pace that frail and temporal creatures need, and who defines patience not as the holding back of power but as constancy of loving attention. I look forward, with appropriate patience, to the “unspooling” of this and other fascinating dimensions of the project.

Paul Jones’s book on patience is a tour de force and raises so many challenging and profound theological questions. For the purposes of this response, I am going to limit my attention to chapters 5 and 6 of this book which deal with God’s patience in relation to the doctrine of Providence. I approach this doctrine, and Jones’s engagement with it, from the perspective of my own field of trauma theology. In my response to Jones, I outline why the doctrine of Providence is so significant and troublesome in trauma theology before I indicate what is productive about Jones’s narrative of providence via God’s patience. I then draw out some particular issues and questions that I would like to pose to Jones out of this trauma-oriented engagement with his work.

The Significance of Providence in Trauma Theology

God’s providence is

his almighty and ever present power,

whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds

heaven and earth and all creatures,

and so governs them that

leaf and blade,

rain and drought,

fruitful and barren years,

food and drink,

health and sickness,

riches and poverty,

indeed, all things,

come to us not by chance,

but by his fatherly hand.

So states the Heidelberg Catechism. Underpinning many Reformed perspectives on the doctrine of Providence, we find here an image of Providence that applies not only to the positive but also the negative; sickness, poverty, drought, barrenness are as attributable to God as bounty, plenty, and blessings. These come to us “not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” These patriarchal forms of oppression are writ large and replicated throughout theology. This is the kind of language and understanding of God’s providential action in the world that many trauma survivors have inherited. This presents the trauma survivor (and in turn the trauma theologian) with a problem—in this theology of Providence, God is not just to blame for a traumatic experience (as Jones will go on to note) but God actively caused this by His fatherly hand. How does one continue to worship God after this? The flip side of this kind of doctrine of Providence is a form of toxic hope that promotes the endurance of oppression and suffering as some kind of good plan for one’s life. Having reimagined something of the doctrine of providence myself in The Dark Womb: Re-Conceiving Theology through Reproductive Loss,1 my aim here is to evaluate the extent to which Jones’s reimagining of providence through the lens of divine patience might work for the trauma survivor.

Deflationary Visions of Providence

I start my examination of the potential usefulness of Jones’s explication of providence by offering a heartfelt thanks for the use of feminine pronouns for God throughout the text. As a feminist theologian, I found this encouraging and helpful in recognizing that Jones is doing something new in this work. The naturalness of this usage is an example to other theologians, not necessarily working in feminist theology, that God’s pronouns can be decolonized from patriarchy. Other scholars may wish to pick up potential issues regarding patience and the connection with the feminine (and there certainly are feminist issues to raise here) but I found this use of feminine pronouns both provocative and powerful.

Jones argues for a “deflationary vision of providence.”2 This means, for Jones, that we must refuse to view providence as the interpretive key by which we unlock the mysteries of the everyday and make sense of the world around us. I heartily agree. In various church contexts to which I have belonged in the past, “words of knowledge,” “prophecies,” and “visions” were all common signs and wonders within the congregation and became a Christianized form of fortune telling (with little safeguarding or care for those who “received” these signs). Unlocking God’s plan for one’s life was longed for and often became an interpretive key to encountering God. But Jones reminds us that God’s ways are mysterious. I think this is a very good place to start.

Jones makes some startling and provocative statements in these two chapters on providence. He argues that “God alone is responsible for establishing the ‘means’ by which waywardness is realized, and God alone is responsible for declining to impede the litany of horrors to which the Bible in [sic] and creaturely history bear witness.”3 By “realized” here, Jones does not mean that God establishes means by which creatures come to understand and recognize their own waywardness, but rather that “God creates the conditions and capacities wherein creatures lose their way, disobey God, and despoil God’s good creation.”4 This is the consequence of God’s patience in letting “go” and letting “happen.” When understood in the context of Providence, this is an alternate way of figuring God’s relationship to horrors that befall people. It is not so much “by his Fatherly hand” as “due to Her commitment to Her people.” For the trauma survivor, this reimagining might permit enough scope for both accusation to be leveled at God and the potential future space for continuing to believe. This is such a necessary statement in trauma theology and it is a rare kind of theology that permits such an accusation to be leveled at God and yet that not be the end of the story.

In Jones’s model, God not only accepts the righteousness of this blame but requires the horrors enacted (in this case the traumatic experience perhaps) to be recorded. This providential patience is characterized by the gentle nudges God provides that enable the formation of the biblical text. Jones writes “accounts of waywardness and its consequences are encouraged by God, shaped by God, and embedded in the scriptural canon.”5 We might turn, for example, to the Book of Lamentations or the Book of Psalms where we find a bearing witness to trauma via the communities that have created the texts and their later generations. In post-traumatic remaking, the construction of a trauma narrative that is heard and believed by one who bears witness is profoundly powerful and an essential part of this remaking activity. Might we see some of the biblical text in the light of this trauma narrative, this witness? By virtue of preserving and authorizing these laments and cries of anguish, God demonstrates that She is willing to listen to us and legitimates our own accusations of blame and declarations of hopelessness. God Herself stirs, shapes, and preserves (in scripture) reports of anguish and trauma and protest in order that neither we nor She let Her off the hook.

This narrative of Providence and patience with regard to God’s involvement in waywardness offers a powerful option and outlet for the trauma survivor. It demonstrates a trauma narrative and form of witnessing that might be helpful in their own forms of remaking. And it allows for a blaming of God. It allows for anger and rage at God for what has happened which might be very cathartic. But alongside this preserving of trauma narratives of protest and lament, Jones argues that there is also a subtle action in which, even in the midst of trauma, God is limiting sin and engaging in the world to bring about Her purposes. She continues to disburse Her favor and blessings.

Uneven Distributions of Blessings

This is a good opportunity to turn to some of the questions this work has raised for me in the context of trauma theology. First, I ask: is the short-term suffering worth it? Toward the end of the chapters on patience, Jones argues that God’s patience (with humans and their waywardness) pays off in the long run. These subtle divine nudges broadly keep us on the right track and in line with God’s goals for us. Is the short-term suffering that is permitted, and for which Jones has allowed God to be responsible, worth it? This concept leans into some of the more toxic forms of hope in Christian theology that call for people to endure horrific circumstances. This theology can leave us with a God “perceived to legitimate domination of women and slaves in a paternalism that reigned throughout the created order.”6 Does the eschatological hope really pay off the shorter-term suffering, oppression, and domination? Even if we are permitted to accuse God of causing this? From the perspective of trauma theology, even if God’s patience pays off in the long run, is this really an acceptable answer to the short-term situation?

A second concern regards the distribution of blessings. Jones writes that “[I]n the face of wrongdoing, God just keeps on with the business of blessing.”7 Here Jones invokes the mysteriousness of God’s ways. There is a plan to the blessings that are bestowed (and presumably the ones that appear to be withheld) but this is beyond our scrutiny. I turn here to the work of Miguel De La Torre—Embracing Hopelessness.8 One of the chapters of this book is written in dialogue with Native American theologian George “Tink” Tinker of the Osage people. As he unpacks the Manifest Destiny narrative of the colonization of North America, we see an uneven (too light a word?) distribution of blessings. For the Euroamerican colonizers, they were blessed at every turn, given a “virgin” land and any genocides that took place were necessary for the achievement of God’s good plan. But to experience this from the Native American perspective is to see the shadow side of a perception of providence in which God’s providential activity comes with suffering, oppression, and death; it is not a narrative of progress toward salvation. For the white colonizers, this is salvation history writ large. For the Native peoples, this is devastation. Why aren’t blessings evenly distributed? Jones writes that God bends history in particular directions; as with ancient Israel, so with us. Can this patience theology of providence deal with the shadow side in which trauma resides?

Jones imbues God with non impeditio peccati. God’s patience means that She does not prevent sin.9 This non-prevention of sin honors the permission that is given to humans in which God lets be and lets happen. The result is that “God does not approve of what it is that those creatures intend and do.” This patient God does not approve and is slow to anger. Is not approving too mild a reaction? Is it sufficient to say God did not approve of the rape, the spiritual abuse, the coercive control? Disapproval seems an insufficient response to the horrors of trauma. God’s patience is persistent, subtle, and unshowy but it is also slow to anger. Why, the trauma survivor might ask, is God not furious and outraged at what has happened to me?

Conclusion

Jones has managed to give language to so much that I have been wrestling with in my own work in trauma theology. There is great theological courage in this vision of the patient God and a gift of scriptural language that is both legitimizing and righteous. God’s deliberate preserving of protest, anger, hopelessness, and accusation within the scriptural text is a helpful framing of the trauma narrative and one that enables real wisdom in the work of post-traumatic remaking. Jones encourages us to dial down our vision of providence. Perhaps that will be his answer to some of the questions I have raised. Perhaps I still need to reduce my expectations of making any kind of sense of the doctrine of Providence. I want God to be on the side of the trauma survivor. I believe that She is. And I look forward to Jones’s response that I might integrate much of his work into my own sense of the relationship between God and our experiences of trauma.

In this extraordinary volume, Paul Dafydd Jones sets out the first installment of a planned two-part account of patience. It is a theological work of exceptional learning and insight, and perhaps, above all, of purpose and energy. On the one hand, it might be classified as an essay in dogmatics, insofar as it involves detailed and serious exegetical reflection on Scripture, multiple soundings from across the Christian tradition, and reasoned construction of theological positions. Yet on the other hand, this essay deviates from a more traditional dogmatic presentation in several ways: it is explicitly and bracingly aware of past theological failure and of contemporary critical theory; it is deeply attentive to the present, to real life within the present, and to the quotidian within real life; and it speaks in a lively voice immediately recognizable as that of its author, constantly imaginative and exploratory, offering musings and asides with carefree openness, and—above all—driven by a sense of commitment and dynamism that forces the reader to attend to its theological constructions seriously.

The opening three chapters serve up a series of soundings of how patience has been handled across the history of Christian theology. These chapters do not purport any comprehensive overview, but seek rather to sketch the terrain that is at stake as it has been viewed and expounded by early generations of theologians. The following three chapters serve to think through the possibilities of locating and appreciating patience in relation to the doctrinal loci of creation and providence, and in each case broadly move from detailed exegesis of portions of Scripture through to construction of theological positions. At stake at each point for Jones is not only patience understood as human act, disposition, or quality, but also—indeed, primarily—patience considered as a divine act or perfection. The second installment will continue this pattern of exploring the place and significance of patience in relation to doctrinal loci, and consider patience in relation to Christology, pneumatology, and the Christian life. Jones hopes to conclude the account as a whole with a treatment of patience and the Trinitarian life of God.

In terms of the material, there is much here to appreciate. The diverse range of figures Jones canvasses—past and present, exegetical and theological—is deeply impressive, though there is evident a particular influence of the Reformed trajectory of thought from Calvin through Schleiermacher to Barth. The Ritschlian order of presentation, reflected in the pathway from theological problematic to dogmatic construction by way of exegetical reflection, is intuitive and illuminating. And the treatment of patience itself—particularly in respect of its contours as a divine quality—is insightful and provocative: the repeated language of God “holding history open”, “letting be” and “letting happen”, while still driving the world forward toward a better future and seeking and enabling the cooperation of human creatures in his purposes, becomes second nature by the close of the volume, and increasingly compelling as the exegetical and theological evidence mounts. All this, while Jones remains at every juncture aware of the ways in which patience—and with it, people—have been serially abused across the history of the tradition by means of inadequate and malformed accounts of the same; small wonder that he repeatedly acknowledges patience to be a “burdened virtue”.

There is a wide array of theological adjudications across this expansive text which I considered balanced and merited, and with which I was in full sympathy. At the same time, there were also moments at which I had hesitations regarding the method followed or the conclusions. In what follows, I sketch briefly three particular aspects of the text which provoked me to further thinking and more critical interaction.

First, there is the way in which Jones handles the Old Testament. From the outset, he is clear of the ineradicable importance of scriptural exegesis for constructive theology: the Scripture principle is alive and well in this text, as one might expect from its Reformed leanings (510). But Jones is no inerrantist, at one point advocating a desire (after the pattern of Hans Frei) to “take the text ‘as it comes’” and a practice of avoiding reflection on hermeneutical methodology (491), and in truth following this pattern implicitly throughout the text. Just this leads him, however, to treat the Old Testament with some Christological—and pneumatological—reticence, and he is deeply aware of doing so, offering two lengthy related reflections to defend this method (343–46 and 367–72).

The question at stake here is whether the New Testament can be effectively bracketed out of a Christian reading of the Old Testament in this way, and—if it is—whether Jones’s claim to be “principially Christocentric” is tenable. Clearly, the New Testament cannot be completely bracketed out, as Jones himself acknowledges. Instead, he notes, the Old Testament has to provide the context for understanding the New Testament, and should thus be considered on its own terms, such that the New Testament is seen to relate to the Old Testament both as continuation and as novum. The result, he suggests, is that, under the constancy of God, Scripture as a whole can be read as a drawn-out story, and a fairly relaxed attitude to the sequencing of dogmatic claims is possible.

One concern about this procedure might be rehearsed with reference to the words of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27). This text indicates the basic significance of the Old Testament, of course, but does so from a Christocentric viewpoint in which, far from occluding or bracketing out the references to Jesus Christ in those scriptures, his interpretation brings them front and central. With this now in view, there seems to be less reason to read those scriptures after the older fashion, as if one were a neutral. Indeed, at every point where the New Testament draws on Old Testament texts, it is to present and clarify that which is newly revealed. This practice presupposes continuity of a sort, of course, but may not entirely endorse a hermeneutic which returns to the former practice, a sort of “as if . . . not” maneuver. The Old Testament texts are thus never repeated for their own sake, as if they were of quasi-independent importance. It is a delightful move to suggest that his procedure of reading the Old Testament “as it comes” is itself an exercise in patience, deferring Christological and pneumatological claims; but a more thoroughgoing Christocentrism may not be entirely convinced, and may still sit slightly uneasily to Jones’s approach.

Second, there is the way in which Jones refers at a number of points to the “curve of grace” and the “arc of history” (116, 387), referring to the way in which God patiently guides—the word “control” seems to be sidelined—history over time and space. On the one hand, Jones offers a strong affirmation of the ongoing work of God in the present. God both elicits and directs creaturely actions that effect the will of God, even as Jones recognizes the difficulties of discerning or tracking that action with any measure of confidence (466). On the other hand, Jones is deeply aware of the very real questions that are posed to any account of providence by “surd-like events” and “moments of abject tragedy” that do not seem readily to fit within any such coherent scheme (232).

There are two interesting points which arise at this juncture. The first relates to the telos of the curve of grace, the arc of history. For Jones, it is the case that (one can at least hope that) “God drives the world forward, away from fallenness and toward a future in which blessings circulate unimpeded” (387). The question here might be boldly stated: is there any such forward movement? The second centers on the relation between the tragic and the providential, and the extent to which these can be brought together under any meaningful theological rubric. Here, Jones prefers a rather deflationary account of the doctrine of providence, or—at least—the invocation of a “greater degree of mystery” than some would like. And the question here might be simply: is this adequate?

The first point has at its heart the construal of progress in a theological idiom. And it might be contended that, in truth, it is not empirically clear that the world is becoming a better place or that people—let alone Christians in particular—are becoming more sanctified. In short, it is not empirically clear that the world is approaching perfection, not even slowly, let alone asymptotically. And if that is the case, then for all that God may be patiently guiding and directing, the result is not an arc or a curve but a flat-line—God is engaged in damage limitation with respect to sin, and all that can remedy this situation is eschatological interruption, not gradual improvement. The second point has at its heart the intelligibility of the doctrine of providence, given the very real difficulty of the horrors that take place in the created world each day. On that level, a degree of deflation and mystery seems wise. Yet there are potential costs here too: ceding the idea of divine control too readily might itself be a fraught theological move, as might be the move to suggest that the pathways of divine providence must eternally—and not just temporally, in the minds of sinful and limited creatures—remain a mystery. The direction and the extent of the providential activity of God remain difficult topics, about which Jones may yet have more to say in the further reflections of the second installment.

Third, there is the way in which Jones balances the dialectic of patience and impatience in the essay. It is clear, on the basis of the past “burdens” that accrue to human patience, that he will not encourage human patience without limits, as the Christian tradition has (selectively) recommended for much of its past: consistently, there is adverted the significance—and rightness—of a time for human impatience, for protest (296). This understanding of human patience is set in the second installment to be clearly illuminated by an understanding of divine patience and its workings. Yet as many of his soundings demonstrate, Jones also recognizes the ways in which the Christian tradition has affirmed the impatience of God, particularly in eschatological perspective.

The question at stake here is the status of this divine impatience in the thinking of Jones. On the one hand, he affirms the place of impatience in God, noting that this impatience will in the forthcoming volume fund a substitutionary account of atonement, centred on the cross as “God’s expression, and Christ’s reception, of righteous impatience toward sin” (191). The contours of divine impatience will thus be brought to bear on an account of reconciliation that is at least framed traditionally. On the other hand, he expresses impatience (!) regarding the traditionally held view that God’s patience will eventually, at the eschaton, cease (464), and that destruction (of at least some portion of humanity) will follow (497). And here, Jones embraces a rather non-traditional universalism.

Here, even more than in respect of the previous issue, there is a risk of treading upon ground that Jones has yet to fully explore. However, there are clear hints of the direction to be travelled, and just here one may have certain hesitations. First, it is not clear that Scripture affirms that the impatience of God only manifests itself on the cross, as if the latter were the only permissible outburst of divine impatience, nullifying and falsifying any other such expression. Indeed, reading Scripture “as it comes” across both Old and New Testaments might suggest various other episodes both in the history of Israel and in the early church in which God’s impatience was clearly both manifest and effective. Second, there are plentiful texts in Scripture where a plain reading of the Word does suggest that the patience of God has an eschatological end, at least in the case of some, and it would seem difficult simply to discount these without further reflection. And third, even if one were not to find these two points insurmountable—and in fairness, I would number myself as one such reader—one might hesitate regarding the degree of conviction and confidence with which a universalist eschaton is affirmed by Jones. It will be of interest to trace the development of this theme in the volume to follow.

These three issues are raised by way of pursuing conversation with regard to a project which I find to be both theologically heartening and deeply admirable. The former, because it demonstrates a willingness to pursue responsible systematic theology that recognizes the concerns of critical and marginalized voices; the latter, because despite being exegetically responsive, traditionally informed, and culturally aware, it does not content itself with ressourcement but ventures fresh, creative, and above all interesting proposals in respect of core doctrinal themes. I look forward to the second installment.