Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes

by Colin E. Gunton

In his latest book Colin Gunton -- one of the foremost systematic theologians writing today -- addresses the complex question of God's attributes: or the defining characteristics of the deity. As Gunton makes clear, after nearly two thousand years of discussion there seems to be little clarity about how the identity of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit relates to the kinds of things that have been, and are, said of the kind of being that God is. Theologians often seem to have been content with a list of intelligible, but often abstract terms, as to 'the contents of our idea of God.' And for Gunton, the doctrine of the divine attributes seems often to have been approached using the wrong method developing the wrong content; and even, when that has not been the case, treating things in the wrong order. As the author shows, this has much to do with what has become a tangled web of the relations between Greek and Hebrew discussions and characterisations of the topic. In this book he attempts to disentangle these threads as individually and carefully as possible. Successive chapters on the problems of the 'tangled web'; the nature of theological language; and the difference that the Trinity might make to the discussion succeed in developing one of the most coherent and intellectually stimulating pictures of the divine attributes to have been published in recent times. The author's many admirers will find this book mandatory reading, as will all serious students and teachers of systematic theology and Christian doctrine.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy

174 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

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

[Liam Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this after a Doctrine of God subject heavily influenced by this book.

Gunton observes that the Christian theological tradition of constructing a sense of God's being via abstraction from and negation of creation has more to do with Athens than Jerusalem. He posits that the more biblical approach is to cut with the grain of Scripture by building a doctrine of God upon the foundation of God's narrated acts within his creation. Scripture shows us what God does; our understanding of who he is should be determined by inquiring into these acts in creation, not by abstracting away from them.

I'm currently halfway through reading von Harnack's History of Dogma, so I found it particularly interesting to see a Helenization thesis deployed not by a 19th-century liberal but by a 21st-century post-Barthian. Of particular interest to me is Gunton's desire to preserve the language of the attributes of the Christian tradition as much as possible after having demonstrated their meaning in light of God's activity. Gunton does this, particularly in Chapter 7, 'Attribute and Action', which I anticipate I will return to in the future. This struck me due to its difference in approach to a thinker like McCormack, who, while pursuing a similar project, is more than willing to dispense of terms he doesn't see scripture attest to.

As another review has observed, this book's greatest strength and weakness is the same: its brevity. In my mind, Gunton's argument would be strengthened if he dedicated more space to developing his exegetical observations. I was left wanting more!

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's strength and weakness are one and the same: its short size. The essays are small enough that they focus on the main topic at hand and he rarely loses the reader, but one often feels that Gunton's points are underdeveloped and tempt the reader to draw some dangerous conclusions about Gunton's theology. For example, he gives a great critique of some dyothelitic proposals (e.g., if will is a faculty of nature, does this make Jesus's will an object? If so, dyothetletism runs into huge problems), but seems rather blase on rejecting a major church council.

Gunton's thesis is this: Much of Western (and Eastern!) theology uses language about God that makes it hard to affirm the Covenantal, Hebraic language in the biblical narrative. For example, all of our use of God's attributes are negative in structure. We negate and with each negation we become more abstract and are eventually left with something like Aristotle's god. His chapter on pseudo-Dionysius is worth the price of the book (I paid $3 for mine!). The problem and proposal being critiqued is not just an epistemological one: on Ps-Dionysius' account the more one abstracts God, the closer to union with God one attains. This is, as Gunton notes, precisely the opposite of Philippians 2: Jesus became quite concrete in language and existence and as a result, we know the being of God.

This book might seen as a closeted Eastern slam against Western scholasticism. It is not. Gunton evaluates Damascene and Palamas and notes the same problem there: Palamas accepts the Western problematic. Like them, he denies we know the being of God; we just know his energies. It is true, Gunton observes, that we know God through his actions, but contra Palamas, we know his being through the actions of the incarnate Word, through the human career of Jesus.

In a brilliant, if somewhat too brief, conclusion, Gunton sees God's being as Being-in-Act. If God is love, is not love in the context of communion and act? And so on.

[Taylor Rollo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gunton's critique of "traditional" theology of God has a few helpful points and calls to theologians, but overall it is more of a caricature of the theology of God handed down to the church. Then his alternative makes too much of human ability to interpret God's actions as revealing of His being, and in doing so he smugglers in his (and Karl Barths) presuppositions of interpretation, which is, ironically, much similar to what he accuses traditional theology of doing.

[Joseph Sverker]

I do admire Gunton's ability to write succinctly and to the point and yet with such depth. It is easy to get fooled by the appearance of this book, because it's briefness might imply an easy read. This is not always the case though because it is sometimes quite advanced philosophically and assumes a fair bit of theological knowledge. Having said that I think it can be read by most people with an interest in theology. And it probably should be read by those people because it is quite unique in its critique of negative theology. It does a very good job to make you at least think twice about the validity of negative theology. It is of course not enough to simply say that negative theology is neoplatonic, but Gunton really shows what the problems with the neoplatonism are together with negative theology. I like in particular how he shows the false modesty that underlies the apophatic way. For those drawn towards mysticism in Christianity should certainly read this book just to make sure that the mysticism is biblical.

[G Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book... a couple of brief observations... Gunton proves here, again, that he can communicate to the masses... that is, he can communicate clearly, succinctly and accessibly... ALL that said, for a book about "acts" (i.e. personal) it is staggeringly "abstract" (i.e. impersonal). In the end, while this book has some very helpful insights, it shows what theology has become in the West... a mental excersize - NOT a concrete-relational encounter with the Trinitarian, Covenantal Yahweh.

[Blake Reas · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was some interesting nuggets here and there, but it seems to me that he lumped all "negative" theologians into one big group and did not bother to tease out the nuances. His point is well taken that Christians should start with the Trinitarian nature of God as revealed in Scripture, but it seems to me that many in the Reformed community have been doing that for quite some time.