Reading the books of Colin Gunton, you can't help but be struck by the number of footnotes that begin 'I owe this point to ...' and the such like. Colin was a theologian, at least from 1988 onwards (the beginning of the Research Institute in Systematic Theology), who believed and practised theology in a community and his work demonstrates that he was not a theologian alone in an 'ivory tower'. The list of those that are publically named by Colin in footnotes represent internationally renowned theologians, as well as others, who were students at King's:
Tom Smail, Andrew Mackintosh, Lyle Dabney, Bruce McCormack, Alan Torrance, Stephen May, Trevor Hart, Brian Brock, Martin Wendte, Ian McFarland, Steve Holmes, Justyn Terry, Michael Harrison, T. F. Torrance, Paul Metzger, Douglas Farrow, Christoph Schwöbel, John Milbank, Robert Jenson, Luke Bretherton, Rufus Burton, Demetrios Bathrellos, Shirley Martin, Kelly Kapic, Bruce Marshall, Francis Watson, Murray Rae, John Colwell, Douglas Knight, Jeremy Thomson, Mark Butchers, David Adams, Alan Spence.
Colin was a humble man, who was more than willing to hear the thoughts of others, both contemporaries and those junior to him. Colin was unafraid of acknowledging the help of others in the theological task, in fact, you could say he appreciated and welcomed their insights and comments. If there is much to learn from Colin's theology, there is also much to learn from the way Colin did theology.
The two books of sermons (Theology as Preaching and The Theologian as Preacher) also reveal that for Colin, the task of the theologians was also to serve the church and to enable it to better follow Christ. The systematic theology department at King's were regularly found on a Sunday in their local church preaching and leading worship (I owe this point to Douglas Knight!). As Steve Holmes says in his introduction to The Theologian as Preacher, 'it mattered, decisively, to [Colin] not just that he was connected to some vague metaphysical ecclesial entity but also that he was in active membership of a local church ...' (p.xi).
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