Enlightenment and Alienation by Colin Gunton

by Colin E. Gunton

IN THIS CRITIQUE OF THE LEGACY OF THE Enlightenment for Christian theology, Colin Gunton focuses on the concepts of truth, freedom, and faith. He argues that in these areas the emphasis of Enlightenment thought on knowledge which is observable and objective has alienated us from understanding or believing in whatever cannot be seen or scientifically deduced, and cut us off from reality, form ourselves, and form God. But the trinitarian structure of Christian belief contains within itself the resources to overcome this alienation and achieve an integrated perspective. Gunton finds in the doctrine of the Trinity--especially in Jesus Christ, in whom the mysterious and divine joined the physical and observable--a way to give validity both to scientific frames of thought and to religious belief.

Genres: Theology

Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1985

About the author

Colin Ewart Gunton (1941-2003) was a British systematic theologian. As a theologian he made contributions to the doctrine of Creation and the doctrine of the trinity. He was Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College London from 1984 and co-founder with Christoph Schwoebel of the Research Institute for Systematic Theology in 1988. Gunton was actively involved in the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom where he had been a minister since 1972. He was arguably the most important British theologian of his generation.

Gunton's most influential work was on the doctrines of Creation and the Trinity. One of his most important books is The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity" (1993), and is "a profound analysis of the paradoxes and contradictions of Modernity." The One, the Three and the Many remains a "majestical survey of the western intellectual tradition and a penetrating analysis of the modern condition."

Reviews

[Joseph Sverker · Rating 4 out of 5]

2015: This book shows on Gunton's creative thinking in my mind. He argues well for how enlightenment has wrongly separated sense and reason and how that leads to an alienation between the self and the world. He also shows why this is a bad thing. He starts to work out the idea of freedom as freedom in relation rather than autonomy and there is strands of the importance of the relational for knowledge.


2008(?): This is a fantastic an enlightening read (yet not alianatin). Gunton presents a strong case for the failures of the Enlightenment and that something got lost on the way. Although, he doesn't want to simply go back in history, but rather take the postives out from the Enightenment and show a way forward, particularly by using Polanjy's epistemology.