The One, the Three and the Many is arguably Gunton's most important book. It's perceptive and theological analysis of the ills of modernity and its suggested response found in doctrines of the Trinity and Creation is brilliantly argued. Its a book I've revisited many times over the last few years to listen to its wisdom and richness of thought.
It is a book of two halves. The first four chapters each 'take a sounding in different aspects of the ideology and practice of modernity', which enable or provide the 'framework for the second and constructive phase of the project' (4). The shape of the book is 'chiastic, because the reconstruction takes its orientation from the final chapter of the first part' (5) and so on.
PART ONE THE DISPLACEMENT OF GOD
I From Heraclitus to havel. The problem of the one and the many in modern life and thought
2 The disappearing other. The problem of the particular in modern life and thought
3 A plea for the present. The problem of relatedness in modern life and thought
4 The rootless will. The problem of meaning and truth in modern life and thought
PART TWO RETHINKING CREATEDNESS
5 The universal and the particular. Towards a theology of meaning and truth
6 'Through whom and in whom ...' Towards a theology of relatedness
7 The Lord who is the Spirit. Towards a theology of the particular
8 The triune Lord. Towards a theology of the one and the many
This book is hard to summarize because it's argument is densely described, although with great clarity of expression. What I'm trying to say is it is difficult to do it justice - in other words get a copy and read it. A short attempt at summary would say that modernity is a reaction against Christianity - partly because Christian theologians failed to articulate a properly trinitarian doctrine of God and doctrine of creation - and has resulted in the disengagement from, and displacement of, God, the destruction of the particular in favour of homogeneity, a loss of time which is ultimately alienating and disruptive to our humanity, and lastly a loss of meaning and truth - resulting in fragmentation (this is postmodernism, what Gunton defines as 'modernity come home to roost', 124).
In face of modernity Gunton argues for a rehabiliation and reinvoigoration of the concept of truth, that avoids the foundationalism of modernity and also non-foundationalism, and instead favours 'non-foundationalist foundations: to find moments of truth in both of the contentions, namely that particularity and universality each have their place in a reasoned approach to truth' (134). This is to be found in the rediscovery of 'transcendentals' (defined as 'those notions which we may suppose to embody "the necessary notes of being" ... which have their being in the fact that God has created the world in such a way that it bears the marks of its maker', 136) and how they 'emerge from the doctrine of the Trinity' (149). The transcendentals that Gunton suggests, trinitarianly developed, are three: perichoresis, substantiality, and relationality. Perichoresis 'offers a way of articulating the oneness of things without derogating from their plurality' (212). Perichoresis 'envisages close relatedness' but not to 'the detriment of particularity' (169), so 'everything in the universe is what it is by virtue of its relatedness to everything else' (172). Perichoresis thus is the antithesis of homogeneity. Substantiality helps us give due weight to the status of particulars. That is, Gunton claims, 'everyone and everthing is what it uniquely is as a hypostatic being; as we are often told, no two blades of grass are alike' (203). This is about holding on to the many without being consumed by the one. Substantiality, that is developed from the doctrine of the Trinity, offers a way of speaking of particulars relationally: 'people and things ... are [..] to be understood as substantial beings, having their own distinct and particular existence, by virtue of and not in face of their relationality to the other' (193-194). Finally relationality speaks of our 'free relation-in-otherness' (229), by which Gunton means, as God is, we are 'beings-in-relation'.
I say again this is a book well worth reading. You can find a review of the book here.
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