(L to R: Douglas Knight, Robert Jenson, John Colwell, Steve Holmes)
Today was a great day, with four good papers on Colin Gunton's theology, lots of good conversation and memories of Colin. Robert Jenson talked us through some of the theological choices Colin made. Right from Becoming and Being (1978) Colin said no to classic theism (supernatural, timelessness, chain of being) and no to Hartshorne in favour of Barth. Colin chose the Cappadocians over Augustine and also Barth. Colin chose to say that the eternal Son is always Jesus of Nazareth. Colin chose to define his christology through his doctrine of the Spirit (learnt from John Owen). Jenson suggested that although perhaps Colin's critique of Augustine ultimately was over-done, Colin was still right to make it.
John Colwell's paper took us a journey through Colin's references to and paper on ecclesiology. Colwell argued for a ecclesiological hesitation in Colin's theology which ultimately ended up as pneumatological occasionalism, by which Colwell means that Colin did not want to claim to much for the church. So from 'time to time' the church is the body of Christ when the Spirit, but not always. Colwell argued that a theology of promise (like that which he develops in his own work) can allow us not to fall into ecclesiastical nestorianism (the belief that Christ and the church are unrelated).
Steve Holmes' paper traced Colin's trinitarian development showing how early on the doctrine of the Trinity did not play a major part in Colin's thought. However from his inaugural lecture as Professor of Christian Doctrine in 1985 onwards we see an increasing trinitarianism to Colin's theology (the inaugural lecture can be found in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology). The inaugural lecture introduces the words 'person' and particularity', which became very important concepts in his theology, in addition to the concept of mediation, which first appears in the 1990 Didsbury Lectures and then the 1993 Warfield Lectures, from which point onwards it is a major dimension to Colin's theological work. Steve argued that Colin's theology sought to answer two questions: how do we speak of God? to which he answered, God is triune, which led to the second question, what difference does the Trinity make? Steve ended by commenting that Colin had taught him how to do theology, although he was increasingly finding himself taking different positions to Colin, especially with regard to Augustine and Aquinas.
Douglas Knight's paper argued for the importance of theology - Christian doctrine - in the church witnessing to the world and the university and how Colin was the kind of theologian who did precisely that. Colin's theology can be described as a sustained treatise on the doctrine of God for God's sake. Douglas argued that the theology of the kind that Colin was doing, i.e Christian doctrine, remains vital (for the sake of the church's witness) and we need to find more places for it to happen.
It was good to see the likes of Brian Brock (University of Aberdeen), Nigel Wright (Spurgeon's), Neil Macdonald (University of Roehampton), Terry Wright (Spurgeon's), Simon Perry (Bloomsbury Central Baptist) Tom Kraft (T & T Clark), Lincoln Harvey (KCL), Alan Spence and Tom Smail as well as others.
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