T&T Clark Handbook of Colin Gunton

Andrew Picard, Murray Rae, Myk Habets, Andrew Picard, Murray Rae, Myk Habets

• Verlag: T&T Clark
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567673398
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Theology & Religion
• Thema: Theology

The T&T Clark Handbook of Colin Gunton is a theological companion to the study of Gunton's theology, and a resource for thinking about Gunton's importance in modern theology. Each of the essays brings Gunton's depth to a broad range of contemporary theological concerns. The volume unveils cutting-edge Gunton scholarship for a new generation and at the same time enables readers to see the timely significance of Gunton today. Each of the essays not only introduces readers to key themes in the Gunton corpus, but also provides readers with fresh interpretations that are fully conversant with the contemporary theological problems facing the church. Designed as both a guide for students and a reference point for scholars, the companion seeks both to outline the frameworks of key Gunton debates while at all times pushing forward fresh interpretative strategies concerning his thought.

PART ONE

Theological themes

CHAPTER ONE

Gunton on revelation

PAUL LOUIS METZGER

INTRODUCTION

Colin Gunton’s novel doctrine of revelation bears import for so many other doctrines in his theology. This chapter will first position the doctrine of revelation in Gunton’s work in terms of its distinctive qualities in relation to other models of revelation; second, delimit its merits in proper relation to other doctrines; and third, highlight its overarching import for Gunton’s entire theology. In conclusion, brief consideration will be given to the relevance of Gunton’s doctrine of revelation including mediation in addressing the perennial challenge posed by Gnostic thought forms.

A NOVEL DOCTRINE OF REVELATION

What is revelation according to Gunton, and how is it different from other models of revelation? In short, in Gunton’s mature thought, revelation centres on God the Father’s saving activity of the whole creation through the mediation of the Son and Spirit. It will prove instructive to position Gunton’s doctrine of revelation on the theological spectrum in dialogue with Avery Dulles’s classic Models of Revelation.¹

Dulles provides five models of revelation: revelation as doctrine, history, inner experience, dialectical presence and new awareness.² He readily acknowledges and seeks to safeguard his fivefold typology from the assumption that ‘every living theologian can be neatly pigeonholed within one and only one of the five types’. He adds, ‘Some of the greatest modern theologians have developed highly personal positions that are difficult to classify.’³ Moreover, even when viewed as representative of the models, it should be noted that the models do not reflect them in all their specificity, as Dulles’s intent is to move from ‘the particular to the universal’ or ideal.⁴ With these caveats in mind, one could make a case for Gunton’s position being a unique combination and creative synthesis of the doctrinal, historical and dialectical. Gunton would be averse to ‘revelation as inner experience’ and would lack appreciation for ‘revelation as new awareness’ given his attentiveness to the theme of mediation.

In what follows, brief consideration will be given to the dialectical, historical and doctrinal, in that order. Then a short account will be given of Gunton’s suspicion of revelation as inner experience. The following statement in Gunton’s A Brief Theology of Revelation will prove instructive for the comparison:

The centre [of Scripture] is not divine self-identification, but divine saving action. Thus it is preferable to say that revelation is first of all a function of that divine action by which the redemption of the creation is achieved in such a way that human blindness and ignorance are also removed. To that extent the doctrine of revelation should be understood to be a function of the doctrine of salvation.⁵

For Gunton, divine self-identification or self-disclosure is not the principal focus of revelation but, rather, God’s saving action. Gunton takes issue with Ronald Thiemann’s claim in Revelation and Theology that revelation should be construed in some manner as ‘a function of the doctrine of God’.⁶ In claiming that revelation plays a functional role in the economy of salvation, Gunton does not intend to ‘limit’ revelation but to ‘delimit’ it, that is, ‘to centre it on the saving action of God in Christ who is the mediator also of creation’.⁷ As will be noted shortly, revelation as a function of salvation signifies for Gunton a Barthian approach.

Just prior to his account of Thiemann, Gunton specifies,

that the primary content of the Christian gospel is not a doctrine of revelation, but doctrines of creation, salvation and life in the church. All these suggest in different ways the limits which our concept must keep if the faith is not to be reduced to knowledge, or the conditions for theology confused with that of which we must speak.⁸

In a footnote at this juncture, Gunton references Barth in a cautionary tone: ‘That is why there is always some truth in accusations that Barth reduces Christianity to revelation. He does not, but gives too many hostages to fortune in making it so prominent that it always threatens to usurp the place of the mistress of the house.’⁹ In later lectures, which were posthumously published as Revelation and Reason, Gunton argues that a Barthian approach entails viewing revelation as ‘a function of the doctrine of salvation’.¹⁰ In this same context, Gunton references Thiemann again as privileging revelation as a function of the doctrine of God rather than viewing revelation as a subject of ‘independent interest’. While Thiemann’s approach is ‘in some ways’ Barthian, as revelation is connected to the doctrine of God, more is required. Going further, Gunton makes ‘a more general Barthian point’, claiming that ultimately ‘revelation is a function of the doctrine of salvation’.¹¹

It is certainly true that one finds in Barth a significant emphasis on divine self-identification or divine self-disclosure. But there is more, namely, transformation. Dulles draws attention to this transformative aspect of revelation in his association of Barth with the ‘revelation as dialectical presence’ model. The latter involves ‘a powerful, transforming word’.¹² Dulles goes on to say that ‘since revelation comes through the word’ for representatives of this model such as Barth, ‘its proper form is Christ, the Word in person’.¹³

However, Christ does not stand alone. Take, for example, the well-known claim: God reveals God by God.¹⁴ Dulles unpacks this threefold dynamic of revelation involving the Father, Son and Spirit in this way:

Revelation, according to Barth, is never complete with the objective element of God’s self-disclosure through his Son, for the fact of that disclosure is not apparent without the subjective transformation by which the Holy Spirit renders us capable of acknowledging what has happened. ‘Therefore this receiving, this revealedness of God for us, is really itself revelation.’¹⁵

Barth gives attention to God’s reconciling work and sees revelation as reconciliation: ‘To the extent that God’s revelation as such accomplishes what only God can accomplish, namely restoration of the fellowship of man with God … revelation is itself reconciliation.’¹⁶

Like Barth, Gunton champions the saving activity rather than self-identification of the God who saves as the focal point of revelation. And yet, Gunton would never discount God’s self-identification in divine saving action. Divorcing God’s self-identification from divine saving action, or dismissing the former as irrelevant, could easily give rise to the charge of modalism and undermine the divine activity in creation as truly representing God as triune. Gunton would seek to avoid the modalist charge and threat at all cost, as will be highlighted later in this chapter.

For all their similarities, there are (at least) three emphases in Gunton where he distances himself from Barth with a bearing on the doctrine of revelation. They are: first, an emphasis on the particularity of the divine persons in relation to the divine essence; second, the humanity of Jesus in relation to God; and third, the work of the Holy Spirit.¹⁷ All three of these points relate to the theme of mediation and leave their impact on the doctrine of revelation.

These items will be addressed more fully in the following section on the doctrine of revelation’s relation to other doctrines. Due to spatial limits, attention will only be given at this juncture to Jesus’ historical, temporal reality in relation to the Spirit. According to Gunton, Barth failed to maintain ‘the full temporal reality of the revelation event’. He had ‘a persistent tendency … to contaminate the temporality of revelation with a conception of revelation as timeless theophany’.¹⁸ John Webster weighs in on Gunton’s criticism of Barth on Jesus’ humanity and connects it to Gunton’s judgement of the deficient role of the Spirit in constituting Jesus’ humanity in Barth’s corpus:

Barth – on Gunton’s reading – allows his Christology to be dominated by the efficient causality of the Word, thereby eclipsing Jesus’ humanity as an historical enactment, grounding it in advance in its unity with the divine Word and so, in effect, undermining it as an achievement in time. Once again, this weakness is to be traced to a deficient pneumatology. Barth compacts divine action and the humanity of Christ together, so that ‘incarnation’ becomes ‘immanence’, with the result that Jesus’ freedom and identity as agent in space and time are compromised.¹⁹

For Gunton, it is certainly the case that God reveals God by God. However, Jesus’ humanity also participates in revelation, in a manner that adds to the revelation of God. Barth would write later of the ‘humanity of God’,²⁰ but for Gunton, it is also necessary to speak of the humanity of the man, something which Barth could not do.²¹

Speaking of humanity and history, consideration now turns to revelation as history. One of the representative figures of this position according to Dulles is Wolfhart Pannenberg.²² Pannenberg is critical of those like Barth whom he believes separate salvation history from universal history. Revelation takes place within the history...