Colin Gunton and his Trinitarian Theology from Above compared to Adventism

by koot van wyk Seoul South Korea 4th of February 2009

Source: Graham McFarlane, "Gunton's Impact" Catalyst 27 (2001): 2ff.

http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=15575864&postID=116282815844098375

Short Biography of Gunton

"After completing his MA, Gunton began his doctoral work under the direction of Robert Jenson. This degree took six years, understandably due to the fact that he began teaching only two years into his doctoral program as he became Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at King's College London in 1969. His dissertation was a study of the doctrine of God in the thought of Charles Harshorne and Karl Barth, which was completed in 1973. Gunton later became an Associate Minister of the Brentwood United Reformed Church in 1975, a position which he held until his passing"

"Gunton was appointed Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Kings College in 1980, and in 1984 became Professor of Christian Doctrine, later becoming the Dean of Faculty from 1988-1990. He also served as Head of the Department of Theology & Religious Studies from 1993-97. Gunton founded and directed the Research Institute in Systematic Theology which drew distinguished scholars and many graduate students from around the world. In 1992 he delivered the Bampton Lectures at the University of Oxford[1] and delivered the Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993. He also co-founded the International Journal of Systematic Theology with John Webster and Ralph de Colle in 1999"

Source from "http://www.theopedia.com/Colin_Gunton"

Back to the Future Trend

Two scholars who argued for a return to the old paths are:

R. E. Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World [Baker, 1999]), R.E. Webber states that before the church learns to be contemporary, it must learn to be historical.

D.H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants [Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1999]).

Why do people get more conservative again? Due to post-modernism since 1980 and also because of establishmentarianism of the evangelical constituency.

Gunton is of the opinion that most modern challenges to theology has older faces to it and that if we study the history of tradition we should be able to identify the exact trends earlier in history. Says Knight about Gunton "Gunton argued that the challenges to theology were themselves ‘theologies’, impoverished and disguised, but traceable by the historian, and identifiable as the returning fall-out from earlier crises. We should revisit the history of the tradition to identify where such ‘theologies’ have previously come to the surface, for such moments tell us about the deeper currents of the metaphysics on which Western thought continues to move".

Critique of evangelicalism

D. Wells’ critique of evangelicalism—namely, that "what orthodoxy had and what contemporary Evangelicalism so often lacks is a theology at its centre that defines the faith and prescribes the sorts of intellectual and practical relations it should establish in the world" (Wells, No Place for Truth [Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1992] 96).

The above two books is an attempt of rediscovering their identity again.

C. E. Gunton of King's College, University of London is also a back to the old days theologian

When Gunton came to the University, its systematic theology was very liberal but within the two decades, 1980-2000, he has turned things around.

The result of his rejection of liberalism is that his department started to attract undergraduates and post-graduates from around the world.

Strength of Gunton: Methodology and Theology

What is Gunton's strength is his methodology since he operated with a strong Barthian Theology and also Hartshorne. He developed a descriptive theology instead of a prescriptive theology as that of Louis Berkhof. His theology is more open-ended and fluid.

Trinitarian Theology

Gunton's theology is trinitarian, based on the personal revelation of God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Colin Gunton's book is The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991).

Gunton deconstructed the Trinitarian Theology. Soon we will see that what Gunton did is to uphold the trinitatian theology very strongly but then to turn it into a Deus ex machina or instrument through which all humanistic problems can be solved, on social, political and other levels. The first part is according to SDA thinking very commendable but the second application of that Theology touch too much on pluralism and ecumenism and also liberation theology. We will look at examples below.

Gunton has developed his Cappadocian insights in such a way that at times the logical leap from his system is a logic that lands automatically in the lap of the logic of relations- like those of Charles Peirce.

Says Gunton: "if God is truly God, he must be eternally what he shows himself to be in time." This is very true and SDA's find the same words before Gunton in the work of Edward Heppenstall, a Systematic Theologian and a Seventh Day Adventist.

van wyk notes:

1. We need to ask ourselves if God did not showed Himself already?

2. God showed Himself many times in the Old Testament and New Testament and the incarnation was the best revelation on which all other revelations is based or centered.

Over against an Augustinian emphasis on the unity he emphasizes: "God is being in communion"; God's being is always already a "being-in-relation." Karl Rahner also criticized the unity concept of Augustine earlier. Ellen White in Patriarchs and Prophets 1902: 405 said that "It is through the agency of the Holy Spirit that God communicates with man; and those who deliberately reject that agency as satanic, have cut off the channel of communication between the soul and Heaven."

The trinitarian view of Gunton "allows us to talk about the One and the Many without making them mutually exclusive opposites. The trinity is the grammar of plurality which opens the freedom of two parties, by which God and Man may both be free, and freely together. One major change in the culture of theology is a greater readiness to understand that freedom may be given by limits and definitions, not defined merely in absolute opposition to all definition, particularity and constraint. Humans are now free for one another, not to be free from one another" (Knight about Gunton's concept of Mediation). SDAs will agree with limitation to these ideas since ecumenism and pluralism has this deficit, that it simplifies the doctrinal differences as mute aspects that are secondary and some other self-asserted task is made primary.

van wyk notes

1. Seventh Day Adventist scholars like Raoul Dederen of Andrews University has looked critically at the book by the Catholic Jesuit scholar Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come translated and introduced by Edward Quinn (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974) in R. Dederen, "Karl Rahner's The Shape of the Church to Come: A Review Article in AUSS vol. 14 no. 1 (1976): 217-225.

2. Dederen shows that Rahner is interested in ecumenism (220-221).

3. Dederen also shows that Rahner is interested to argue for a more declericalized church in which the priest is the legitimate leader or eucharistic leader of his community (220).

4. The pope's function would be in future to bring about unity among churches (Rahner 1974: 104-105).

5. What SDAs find good in Rahner, is his concept that the church is a little flock: "We are a little flock in society and we shall become a much smaller flock, since the erosion of the preconditions of a Christian society within a secular society still continues and thus takes away the ground more and more from a traditional Christianity" (Rahner 1974: 31 in Dederen 1976: 221).

Just like Barth, Gunton said that understanding the being of God we will understand ourselves and the world. He said we should understanding God first, only then, "can we come to learn what kinds of beings we are and what kind of world we inhabit."

Gunton rejecting Modernity in 1983

Gunton follows a Barthian priority of things and thus rejected "modern theologies like Hegel's and Schleiermacher's" that pursue knowledge of God through the portal of human consciousness and experience only. Rahner was able to criticize Augustinian thinking but at the same time he employed Hegel's system to reconstruct his trinitarian theology.

Source: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1992/v49-3-bookreview1.htm

About this rejection Douglas Knight said in "From Metaphor to Mediation: Colin Gunton and the concept of mediation" about Gunton "In ‘modernity’ we were being offered the familiar gnostic ingredients re-warmed; these ingredients did not make an intellectual alternative [for Gunton], being composed of nothing more than breathless excitement." Especially in the book Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (Eerdmans, 1983) Gunton took modernity to task.

Theology from above is the theology of Karl Barth that emphasizes transcendental theology. Theology from below is a humanistic emphasis and it is found in the theology of Rudolph Bultmann et al. Gunton made the point that "Just as there is no talk of man without God, so there is no account of God except as he has made himself known and continues to control his own appearing and our knowledge of it" (Knight on Gunton).

Gunton's idea that God both distinguishes himself from his work, and identifies his work with himself.

"Making this distinction and identification is his work, and our knowledge of it is his work too. The distinction between God and world is not obvious (it is no transcendental deduction): it is a function of the grammar of God's work. We are not able lay out this grammar flat before us to see it all at once, or make it available to ourselves as method, for it is personal, is himself the person of God. The concept of person demands that we refuse to put first the question of God or man. Just as method is not prior, the question of ‘either-or’ (..God or man) is not methodologically prior to the answer ‘both-and’ (God, and man). As long as we insist in talking only on the basis of a divine-human dichotomy, we have not understood that persons are imago Dei, they are God's image of God - that they are God's ongoing work, and are therefore presently only readable as such by God, and by us inasmuch as our knowledge is his work." (Knight on Gunton)

Torah is both witness and law (Gunton)

In Gunton's view "the Law is what God and Israel say and do together. The Torah must understood as witness and as law, that is as both record and as the rules deduced from that record by God and Israel, the two witnesses together" (Knight on Gunton).

Image of God is personhood and plurality and freedom is its goal (Gunton)

According to Gunton "The image of God - personhood - is not intrinsic to man - it is not his property - but the function of the work of the Father, Son and Spirit. It is their work, and plurality and freedom are its goal" (Knight on Gunton).

Atonement and the court of law language (Gunton)

In his book Actuality of Atonement, Gunton talks about the atonement, which involves talking about justice and the lawcourt. "Anselm is the chief exponent of the language of the lawcourt. ‘God is the one to whom certain obligations are due: ‘to sin is the same thing as not to render his due to God’ It is God to whom these certain obligations are due, but we must spell out a little further that because they are due to God the Creator they are due also to his creatures - not because creatures have a right, but because it is the will of their Creator that these creatures grow up into the estate he intends for them" (Knight). These ideas are very similar to those expressed by Ellen White in her five classical books: Conflict of the Ages series (1898-1914).

God is not without servants or speech (Gunton)

In Gunton's view, "God is alone, and distinct from Israel, and God is with Israel and a member of Israel" (Knight on Gunton). It is a double statement. This again is typically that one finds in the works of Ellen White.

Gunton's view that God is in harmonious relation to his creation

"The lawcourt represents the condition of crisis caused by the appearance of a gap in the fabric of being. ‘Anselm's argument depends upon a particular conception of justice. He holds that God cannot simply overlook breaches of the universal law.’ Such breaches are missing person-fabric which God supplies and fore-gives. God sees what is lacking and responds by supplying what is missing. The two acts are one: the missing fabric is noticed - there is judgement and wrath - and supplied. ‘The ‘plausibility structure’ supporting Anselm’s work is the belief in a divine universal order in which God, man and the creation are to be in harmonious relation" (Knight on Gunton).

Gunton feels that God cannot just overlook sins

"A God who simply remitted penalties would not be God. God defends the poor against those who articulate law and history to their disadvantage. Though he is a king, his power is not ‘absolute’, but federal (asymmetrically reciprocal): God does not give mercy to one by robbing another of justice" (Knight on Gunton). Edward Heppenstall has expressed the same ideas for Adventism in Christ our High Priest (1976) [available online].

Gunton feels that Adam is sinful measured from the eschaton where he will be perfect

"All Adam's stock lies under sin only because Adam is judged from an eschaton in which he will be holy. A thoroughly theological definition measures sin from the telos, against what the people of God will become" (Knight on Gunton). Actually, in Adventist thought Adam is sinful in the light of the Living Torah, the character of God. By beholding Jesus, the Creator, man sees his own imperfection. The comparison is thus not to himself later but to the Perfection of Christ in the Torah Life.

Sacrifice of animals has been replaced by a sacrifice of thanks and praise (Gunton)

Gunton developed the concept of doxological ontology. In praising God we sacrifice to God.

God does not replace the earlier actions but vindicates it

In Gunton's view "The climax of God's work is the triumph of all God's preceding work, not the supersession and replacement of failed earlier attempts by later successful ones. What comes last does not replace but sets in place all that has gone before, and what went before is vindicated by this climax" (Knight on Gunton).

Sacrifice of Christ is an assymetrical giving and receiving

Says Gunton "‘God the Father ‘gives’ up’ his only Son, allows him to be delivered into the hands of sinful men. Jesus lays down his life, and.. offers his humanity, made perfect through suffering to the Father. so it is with the Spirit. As the gift of the Father he is the aparchai, first fruits, of the perfecting action of God in Christ. Although, under the conditions of the Fall, the sacrifice of Jesus must take the form of spilling of blood, that aspect is not of the essence of sacrifice, which is rather to be found in the notion of gift. It is the Father's giving of the Son, the Son's giving of himself to the Father and the Spirit's enabling of the creation's giving in response that is at the centre… It is as a dynamic of giving and receiving, asymmetrical rather than merely reciprocal, that the communion that is the triune life must be understood" (op. cit. Knight on Gunton). The mathematics involved in Gunton concept on sacrifice can already be found in the works of Ellen White in her Conflict of the Ages series (1898-1914). Examples were already cited on this topic.

Gunton and relational ontological theology

Metaphor is a transfer language in Gunton thinking that reveals "hidden features of the human condition by carrying over meaning from one sphere of reality to another" (op. cit. Knight on Gunton). Other scholars have argued that metaphor is myth (Bultmann), political symbols (George Caird), empathetical and imaginary elect community language (N. T. Wright, Stephen Fowl). Gunton is together with Ortony and Soskice here on his definition. Gunton felt that "metaphor is an intrinsic feature of all human language…" (op. cit. Knight on Gunton).

Gunton criticizes Robert Jenson that he lacks interest in the sinlessness of Jesus

Jenson was his teacher for his doctoral.

Gunton differs from Jenson and Pannenberg on the separation of human and divine space

"To Gunton they [Jenson and Pannenberg] appear to have erased the (transcendental) difference between the two cities. Gunton's demand for a transcendental definition of the difference between the human and divine is in danger of being secured by man's definition of the world as the place where God is not, and thus the definition of sin becoming one with the sin of the definition. Jenson and Pannenberg treat space in terms of God's action, and thus in something like the terms of honour and linguisticality that I have been using here" (Knight on Gunton). According to Knight, the world is a cradle and a harness in which we are kept safe. We are secured in our own self-deceit and despite that to bring us to His own end.

van wyk notes:

In Adventism this will not be said of all humanity but only those who respond to the Revelation of God, be it in the Word of God or in Nature throught the Holy Spirit, a norm that does not open up shamanism as lawful or right but that some may have discovered thanks to the Holy Spirit the truths of the Word of God without reading the Word of God.

Gunton changed things at the Department

When he took up his teaching there, he instated a post-graduate context of discussing once a week where they come to listen to a lecture by an academic and then for two or three hours discuss the paper.

Brilliant students attended: Gunton, Metropolitan Zizioulas, Stanley Hauerwas, Robert Jenson (his doctoral supervisor). Also Graham McFarlane was his student.

Four publications started from these seminars:

Gunton, Persons, Divine and Human: King’s College Essays on Theological Anthropology (T. & T. Clark, 2000);

Gunton, Trinitarian Theology Today (T. & T. Clark, 1995);

Gunton, God and Freedom: The Doctrine of Creation (T. & T. Clark, 1997); and

Gunton, On Being the Church: Essays on the Christian Community (T. & T. Clark, 199

9)

van wyk notes:

1. One should take note of his book Theological Anthropology since a question we need to raise is what is the connection between Textual Ontology and Theological Anthropology?

2. Secondly, the Deus ex machina complaint evolved from this anthropological focus. 3. In reality, Gunton became the spokesperson for the Vatican II constitution that is shaped on the US constitution and in turn employed and embodied in the United Nations Charter.

Is there anything wrong? Theologically yes and we will have to look at it.

Gunton's Publications also changed things

Gunton wrote not only for his own evangelical audience but also for outsiders. Secondly, Gunton was creative in applying his science to contemporary issues. It is this second point that is the greatest criticism we can levy against him.

van wyk notes:

1. To apply your science to contemporary issues is not a problem but one needs to ask what the deciding norm is for ethics in each case.

2. To lock the Bible out as irrelevant is to fail in theology.

3. It will not be good to insist on the Bible for the Trinitarian position and then to undo the Bible for contemporary issues.

Gunton and Contemporary issues

Gunton had to ability to look at deviant theological processes both from a positive and negative angle. One can see this in two books:

Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology (Marshall Morgan & Scott, 1985)

Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, The 1992 Bampton Lectures (Cambridge, 1993)

In both books, he denounced the Enlightment and Modernism but he also tries to defend its criticism.

Gunton had a problem with the Enlightment and with Modernism but not with Post-Modernism.

Gunton and his theological style

Gunton, Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1983),

Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition (T. & T. Clark, 1988).

In this second work, Gunton applies his criticism of Modernity to the death of Christ.

Gunton also created a journal: International Journal of Systematic Theology.

Gunton and his ideas on Creation

Gunton developed a thought on the Creation and its relation to the Creator in two books.

Gunton, Christ and Creation (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1993),

Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1998).

Gunton and his Applicationism

Gunton was wellread in the fathers of the church, modern scholars and he was not afraid to criticise epistemological altars and shows their fallacies. One of his students thinks that it was calvin, then Owen and then Barth and then Gunton.

Instead of using the terms divine transcendence and immanence he prefers to speak about God's 'otherness' and 'relation' in the last chapter of The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991).

Gunton was impressed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He presented favorable ideas on Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991).

Gunton and his ideas on Act and Being

In a book by Gunton, Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002, Gunton looked at issues regarding the attributes of God from two angles: theological tradition and his own programmic proposal.

Since these issues are intertwined with Hebraic and Hellenic thoughts, the result according to Gunton is a "predominance of the negative" and also a "sub-Christian doctrine of God".

Scholars problem is that they are more interested to say what God is not, rather than to say what He is, according to Gunton.

"Instead of beginning with attributes such as holiness and love—as revealed in the economy of salvation—theologians have instead started with abstract attributes such as simplicity, impassibility, or oneness, which are originally rooted in Greek thought"

Source: Christopher Ganski Theology Today 2004

http://www.ptsem.edu/Publications/psb/vxxvn3/v25n3p353.htm

By focussing on the abstract attributes scholars throught the centuries have muted the economic ones of love and holiness.

Gunton felt that the preoccupation of scholars with the negative started as early as Pseudo -Dionysius. The negative analysis of Dionysius was transmitted through tradition to Thomas Acquinas with his doctrine of analogy. His Hellenic inheritance can be seen in his use of abstract and cosmological language. Scholars of the Bible could not fully grasp the impact of the Biblical doctrine on these concepts due to these terminological jargon.

Similar to claims by Bowman that we see in the Barr-Bowman debate, Gunton also said that "Greeks appear to stress a theology of divine being, Hebrews of divine action."

Gunton insist that the Bible should be used to talk about the topic and he used the scholar Duns Scotus to do so. "Working from Scotus's doctrine of univocity, Gunton believes that we can make real theological claims about the attributes simply based upon God's revelation in salvation history" (Ganski 2004).

Gunton stats with the Trinity as basis and then proceed with a Barthian notion that there cannot be a conflict between God's Being and God's Acts. Says Gunton and Barth, "God is what he does and does what he is." SDA's can relate very well with this point.

"We ought to allow holiness, justice, mercy, and love—all attributes revealed in the trinitarian economy and exemplified in different ways in each of the persons—to be the starting points for theological reflection. At this point it would be easy to assume Gunton simply rejects the philosophically inspired attributes; rather, Gunton reverses the order of their treatment and allows the emphasis to fall on the economically derived attributes: the communicable attributes (love, holiness, mercy) condition the incommunicable (omnipotence, simplicity, infinity). Gunton recognizes the theological wisdom behind attributes such as simplicity and impassibility; these secure the integrity of the economic attributes" (Ganski 2004).

According to Ganski, Gunton is building on a project of thinking that started in the nineteenth century and thus his views on the attributes of God are not really new (Ganski 2004).

In Adventism, the work of Ellen G. White has outlined this balance between the Being and Act of God long before Barth or Gunton. In Desire of Ages White says: "He [Christ] pitched His tent by the side of the tents of men, that He might dwell among us [Act], and make us familiar with His divine character and life [Being]" (Ellen White Desire of Ages 1898: 23 [online available]).

Gunton used by scholars to design a model for engagement of culture

In an MA thesis, William H. Shaw has used Colin Gunton as a rolemodel for engagement in culture. His Thesis were: The trinitarian theology of Colin Gunton a contribution to the development of an interpretive tool and model for the theological engagement of culture (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2000).

Gunton's last book (one of them)

Gunton prepared a collection of essays of lectures or addresses and put them together in book form before his death. It is the book, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Toward A Fully Trinitarian Theology . By Colin E. Gunton. London: T & T Clark, 2003.

Source: http://reformedtheology.org/SiteFiles/Fall2005/Review_Gunton.html

Part I Triune God of Christian Confession Essays

In this part he focused on the doctrine of the Trinity and referred to the ideas of Irenaeus, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Calvin, Thomas F. Torrance and Robert Jenson, his teacher.

Part II Triune Divine Action

Here he focuses on the development of interpretation on the trinity and creation, the relationship between creation and redemption, the relationship of the Spirit and Jesus, the atonement, the sacraments, the church, and eschatology.

His main attempt is to restore the work of the Spirit to a proper prominence in Reformed Theology.

Big picture theological synthesis

One of the talents of Gunton is said to be that he is able to produce a big picture theological synthesis. It means that he knows many systems and concepts of scholars and is able to explain ideas well within their different contexts. Seventh Day Adventism is known to be "big picture theologians". They like to place their own concepts in a context of other theologican ideas to establish their own position and to distance their own position from others or align with those who are close to their own thinking.

Gunton explained the meaning of the doctrine of the trinity for the Christian church. It is a summary.

Augustine is important for a relational understanding of the trinity that came from Cappadocian roots. There is a perichoretic construal of the divinity unity.

Gunton follows John Zizioulas and also stress the concept of the person as a unique contribution of trinitarian theology. He worked out the relational and communal implications of this concept for everyday contemporary life. It is here that one may have to put on brakes to the concepts of Gunton. It is at this point that the design may turn into a human or humanistic design with a Gunton attached transcedental etiquette. One has to be careful here. One has to look for more detail here with caution. If the concept of the person of the Trinity, three but one, serves to superficial concepts of pluralism yet one in goal, then one has to be alert. Ecumenism and pluralism are horses of a different ride than Biblical themes.

Gunton, like Irenaues claims that the Son and Holy Spirit are the hands of God

The Son and Spirit are God in action, his personal being and acting in his world (Gunton 2003: 10).

Just like Ellen White in the Victorian Age for Adventism, Gunton does not hesitate to allocate particular forms of action to particular persons of the Trinity. That means, if the Old Testament says, Spirit, it is the Holy Spirit.

Gunton cites Basil (Gunton 2003: 30, 114), Gregory (Gunton 2003: 114), Calvin (Gunton 2003: 28). The mediating actions of the spirit involves: creation, redemption and final consumation. SDAs can fully associate with these ideas of Gunton since the same were already said by Ellen White.

Gunton feels that all the actions of the Son and Spirit are equally the actions of the Father, since all is unified action of the one God (Gunton 2003: 80). This concept is very SDA since their inception and is fully explained by Ellen White. In DA 1898: 352, 669 White says that the Spirit is the representative of Christ.

For Gunton the characteristic mediating work of the Son centers in freely obedient, responsive, sacrificial action: the full involvement of God in the material creation, with a focus on incarnation that extends through the cross and resurrection to the ascension.

SDA's holds a similar view as Gunton here.

EGW in AA says that Christ is Creator (AA 1911: 471); and that "Christ's sacrifice in behalf of man was full and complete. The condition of the atonement had been fulfilled. The work for which He had come to this world had been accomplished. He had won the kingdom" (AA 29).

The Spirit's characteristic mediating activity is to help people to be themselves through Jesus Christ. This concept is also very similar in Adventism. Ellen White in DA 1898: 341 said that the Holy Spirit imparts a sound mind; and quickens all the faculties DA 1898: 250, 251, 478. A pure humanism will emphasize that one should be yourself, but it would cancel the work of Jesus or the Spirit in this regard. That is pure Buddhism and not Christianity. One would expect Heidegger and Bultmann as well as Wittgenstein to be in this category of leaning to Buddhistic affinities. In the attempt to be all comprehensive and all incorporative they loose out on their own identity and align with what is non-Christian. Is anything wrong with that? Yes, selfishness has many faces and unless one is a converted Christian understanding the Messiah of the Old Testament and New Testament in the work of Jesus Christ fully and the work of the Spirit, one will always be limping or deviant in behaviors.

The Spirit is the perfecting cause (says Basil) the eschatological person of the Trinity (Gunton 2003: 81), enabling the creation to fulfill its divinely intended purpose. Adventism as represented by Ellen White in DA 1898: 108 said citing 2 Thessalonians 2:8 "At the second advent of Christ the wicked shall be consumed 'with the Spirit of His mouth,' and destroyed 'with the brightness of His coming'. Gunton continue to say that the Spirit also perfects the divine communion by directing the life and love of God (and the church) relationally outwards towards the world in self-giving love (Gunton 2003: 86, see Bulletin of the Institute for Reformed Theology Fall 2005 vol. 5 at #1). This concept of Gunton finds echoes also in Adventism and in the earlier work of Ellen White. In her book Acts of the Apostles 1911: 343 she says: "Moved by the Spirit of God, they 'first gave their own selves to the Lord' [2 Corinthians 8:5], then they were willing to give freely of their means for the support of the gospel." In Adventist view, the help that is extended to reach out to the world is not just a humanistic outreach. Unless it is coupled with the gospel or support for the gospel the whole exercise fail its energy.

Ellen White said in Acts of the Apostles

"Under the Holy Spirit's working even the weakest by exercising faith in God, learned to improve their entrusted powers and to become sanctified, refined, and enobled" (EGW AA 1911: 49-50 [available online]).

In the second part dealing the Triune Divine Action, Gunton emphasized that the proper understanding of the Trinity doctrine helps one to theologically distinguish between the Creator and Creation (Gunton 2003: 93ff).

He explained about Atonement that sacrifice really means gift and gracious will to self- giving (Gunton 2003: 188ff). In Ellen White's book Acts of the Apostles 1911: 339 she said that "The spirit of liberality is the spirit of heaven. This spirit finds its highest manifestation in Christ's sacrifice on the cross. In our behalf the Father gave His own- begotten Son; and Christ, having given up all that He had, then gave Himself, that man might be saved. The cross of Calvary should appeal to the benevolence of every follower of the Saviour. The principle there illustrated is to give, give."

In chapter 13 of this book Gunton brings together the eucharist, ecclessiology, ethics, and eschatology in a provocative proposal: shared meals and sexual intimacy are allocated as central aspects of our social being that lead to an eschatology of the church membership (see Philip W. Butin, "Bookreview" Bulletin of the Institute for Reformed Theology Fall 2005 vol. 5 at #1).

Gunton's other books

Gunton, Revelation and Reason: Prolegomena to Systematic Theology, edited by Stephen Holmes and Paul Brazier (T&T Clark, 2008)

Gunton, The Barth Lectures, edited by Paul Brazier (T&T Clark, 2007)

Gunton, The Theologian As Preacher: Further Sermons from Colin E. Gunton, edited by Sarah J. Gunton and John E. Colwell (T&T Clark, 2007)

Gunton, Theology Through the Theologians: Selected Essays, 1972-1995 (T&T Clark, 2004)

Gunton, Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes (Eerdmans, 2003)

Gunton, The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Blackwell, 2001)

Gunton, Intellect and Action: Elucidations on Christian Theology and the Life of Faith (T&T Clark, 2000)

Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Eerdmans, 1998)

Gunton, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. (Cambridge, 1996)

Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge, 1993)

Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (T&T Clark, 1991)

Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition (Eerdmans, 1989)

Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay Towards a Trinitarian Theology (Eerdmans, 1985)

Gunton, Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (Eerdmans, 1983)

Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (Oxford, 1978)

Source: http://www.theopedia.com/Colin_Gunton