andygoodliff

Forthcoming Books on Colin Gunton's Theology

The Theology of Colin E. Gunton edited by Lincoln Harvey (T & T Clark, June 2010)

In The Theology of Colin E. Gunton, a number of contemporary theologians from across the world critically engage with the work of this influential British theologian. Gunton’s handling of the gospel of Jesus Christ is celebrated, key doctrines critically examined, and his contribution to the ongoing theological task carefully evaluated. Contributors address key issues at the centre of Gunton’s understanding of the Christian gospel, thereby enabling readers to appreciate how Gunton’s fundamental analysis of the relation between God, creation and Jesus Christ impacts the church’s ongoing task of faithful theological enquiry.

In this volume of essays, contributors explore Gunton’s constructive thinking on a range of doctrinal topics, as well as critically analyze Gunton’s theological method and use of the Christian tradition. As such, this collection of essays provides the Christian theological community with its first wide-ranging and carefully argued examination into the influential work of Colin E. Gunton. [The chapters by Robert Jenson, Steve Holmes and John Colwell were originally given at the 2007 day conference on Gunton]
 
Table of Contents

DOUGLAS FARROW, 'Foreword'

LINCOLN HARVEY, ‘Introduction’

ROBERT W. JENSON, 'A Decision Tree of Colin Gunton's Thinking'

JOHN WEBSTER, 'Gunton and Barth'

STEVE HOLMES, 'Towards the Analogia personae et relationis: Developments in Gunton’s Theology of the Trinity'

ALAN SPENCE, 'The Person as Willing Agent: Classifying Gunton's Christology'

PAUL CUMIN, 'The Taste of Cake: Relation and otherness with Colin Gunton and the strong second hand of God'

LINCOLN HARVEY,  'The Double Homoousion: Forming the Content of Gunton's Theology'

JOHN E. COLWELL,  'Provisionality and Promise: Avoiding Ecclesiastical Nestorianism?'

PARASKEVÈ (EVE) TIBBS, 'Created for Action: Colin Gunton’s Relational Anthropology’

JUSTYN TERRY, 'Colin Gunton's Doctrine of Atonement: Transcending Rationalism by Metaphor'

TERRY J. WRIGHT, 'Colin Gunton on Providence: Critical Commentaries'

BRAD GREEN, 'Colin Gunton and the Theological Origin of Modernity'

CHRISTOPH SCHWOEBEL,  'The Shape of Colin Gunton's Theology. On the Way towards a Fully Trinitarian Theology'

The other book is Spirit and Sonship: Colin Gunton's Theology of Particularity and the Holy Spirit by David Hohne (Ashgate, January 2010)

This book weaves together an interpretation of Christian Scripture with a conversation between Colin Gunton and Dietrich Bonhoeffer concerning the role the Holy Spirit plays in shaping the person and work of Christ. The result is a theological description of human personhood grounded in a sustained engagement with, and critique of, Gunton's theological description of particularity - a topic central to all his thinking.

In the course of the conversation with Bonhoeffer the book also offers one of few broad assessments of his work as a systematic theologian. In bringing together the work of two important modern theologians, this book explores both the possibilities of theology generated from Christian Scripture and the central importance of the doctrines of Christ and the Trinity in understanding what it means to declare someone or something unique. [This is a version of Hohne's PhD Cambridge thesis surpervised by David Ford]

Contents

Introduction

Establishing an exegetical description

Establishing a theological alternative

The spirit enables sonship

The spirit opens sonship

The spirit preserves sonship

Conclusion

The Choir makes me happy!

The best thing on british television the last four weeks must be BBC2's The Choir: Unsung Town. As Maggi said last week this is a story of Gareth Malone 'creating community out of all kinds of singing situations, from top experts to very average beginners. He is a total inspiration.' This was a good news story, a story of transformation ... people - young and old - from a mainly working-class estate in hertfordshire gathering together to sing and finding something much more. It didn't feel over-edited and it didn't feel contrived ... of course, each episode had that will-they-triumph-over-the-odds-type feel ... but like Jamie Oliver's channel 4 ministry of food series ... it got me thinking, why isn't the church (it was CofE minister who wrote to Gareth that initiated his unsung town project) involved more in these kinds of projects?

Mark Driscoll makes me angry!

Steve recently wrote about trying to understand Mark Driscoll, and was more generous than I could be, especially after reading the utter rubbish and appalling words he's written about women ... how does his wife put up with him? Halden has collected quite a few of the awful theology that Driscoll sprouts here - it comes with a warning that it will make you angry too!

The Politics of Discipleship

I find that Graham Ward is not an easy person to read. My knowledge of French philosophers is limited and he writes in a fairly dense way (like others associated with the radical orthodoxy movement). So I was pleasantly surprised by his latest book The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens (Baker, 2009). I've been able to understand (more or less) 75% of it! The book is a sequel to his earlier work Cities of God (Routledge, 2000) and Culture Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge, 2005), but also part of the J. K. A. Smith edited series The Church and Postmodern Culture, which is aimed a broad, nonspecialist audience - so why it is more readable than Ward's previous work.

The book is divided into 2 halves: 'world' and 'church'.  The 'world' section is brilliant. Three chapters on democracy and the shift to postdemocracy; globalization; and postsecularity and the new visibility of religion. A very helpful survey and description of what is taking place in the western world, engaging with a wide range of sources, including J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and Brett Ellis, Amercian Psycho. The 'church' section I found more disappointing. There were some interesting bits, especially the reflections on the city and the struggle for its soul (if you're in a city centre church well worth reading), but where I wanted it to be more grounded and practical, it remained at what felt a fairly detached argument level.

This is a book definitely worth reading and I look forward to where the project goes next and it continuing to written for a broad audience.

New Book by John Colwell Coming Soon ...

Why Have You Forsaken Me? A Personal Reflection on the Experience of Desolation by John Colwell (Paternoster, December 2009)

In this powerful book on the experience of desolation John Colwell focuses on Psalm 22, read in the light of his own struggle with bi-polar disorder and the Christian belief that God the Son suffered in his humanity, to offer existential-theological reflections on the experience of God-forsakenness. The author writes, My concern in writing this book and in reading this psalm is to reflect on the felt experience of God-forsakenness, my own and that of Christ in the light of this psalm; to explore the theological and spiritual significance of this felt experience for myself, for Christ, for Christians generally. If this exploration proves to be helpful to me or to others then obviously I am glad, but I am not writing this book to be helpful but rather to be truthful (and perhaps hopeful). This is a personal journey of reflection with a psalm which I invite you, the reader, to share if you will.

This book is a gift to anyone who has been touched by the darkness of bi-polar illness. Colwell's willingness to write honestly about his illness will be an aid for those struggling with the condition, but even more important is his use of the psalms and attention to Jesus way of dereliction to locate how such illness is not pointless. This is a book that needed to be written. But only someone like John Colwell could write it. --Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School, USA

It is a well-known fact that the Church doesn't do depression. Melancholy just doesn't sit comfortably with our sanguine view of spiritual progress. Thank God, however, that John Colwell has the guts to attend to this erroneous state of affairs and offer us a spirituality that embraces the wintry as well as the sunny seasons of our lives. --Ian Stackhouse, Team Leader, Guildford Baptist Church, England

If the best theology is attentive to Scripture, focused on Christ, and meaningful for human life in all its messiness, then there are few better examples than this new book by John Colwell. --Steve Holmes, Lecturer in Theology, University of St Andrews, Scotland

Rev Dr Goodliff

Not me ... maybe one day. My dad, Paul today passed his viva and completed his doctorate.  I'm really proud of him. His thesis title was Contemporary Baptist Theologies of Ministry and Ordination: A Theological and Empirical Study of Change, Continuity and Sacramentalism . It will be hopefully published in the future.

MTh, F&U, etc

Feel like I'm making some little breakthroughs on the argument of my MTh dissertation , which I decided to submit in April and not the end of September (i.e. a few weeks time). I know generally what I've wanted to say for a while, but was struggling to structure into an argument and not be merely descriptive. I've still got most of the words to write (only 20,000), but hopefully it should be easier now. I'm looking at british baptist theologies of the child.

I was at the Baptist Union's faith and unity executive today - one thing we were looking at was a paper on a working theology of ministry, which will come (all being well) to BU Council in November. It's a good piece of work and might even mean Baptists might be able to agree something theological! More on that in November.

After reading Paul's post here, I've ordered Graham Ward's new book The Politics of Discipleship (Brazos, 2009).

I've also been enjoying Kester Brewin's posts on a plea for Christian piracy, based on his greenbelt talk and Third Way article.

Rowan Williams asked how do you balance being accesible and yet not being banal

I thought this was an interesting exchange from a recent conversation between Ian Hislop and Rowan Williams. (transcript by Ruth Gledhill). The whole conversation is worth reading.

Ian Hislop: .... How do you balance that attempt to be of the age, to be accessible, and yet not be banal.

Archbishop of Canterbury: The point is often being confident enough about what you are inviting people into, which is not simply an entertainment but a journey and process of change. ....I went with the family to Taize for a few days in the summer.... one of the things I shall remember for a long time is the sound of 5,000 teenagers being quiet. That was an environment that didn't make any concessions to entertaining anyone. It assumed that if you were there, you wanted to be taken a bit deeper. That's the crucial thing.

IH: I remember being told by my teenagers that Church was boring and thinking, good it's meant to be boring. You need a lot more boring in your life and in the middle of it, you'll find something.

ABC: I have to confess that has been in the past one of my regular confirmation sermons. Get used to it. It's not always going to be fun. Life isn't always going to be fun and there's something to be said for sitting things out.

IH: This particularly applies to young people...there is a tendency to assume they have no attention span....

ABC: We set our assumptions and expectations very low.... It's a downward spiral.

IH: Keeping it simple may not be good enough, enriching enough.

ABC: That's right. While I hope that I don't set out to be boring in church - shut up everyone! -  I also hope that when I stand up and perform the liturgy, I am doing something that is not just reflecting to them what they already know and what they feel comfortable with. That somehow there is a journey forward to be undertaken. We expect people to grow.... if we don't provide an environment where people grow we only have ourselves to blame. Very often what the Church past and present has been in danger of doing is offering people a thinned down experience whereas I would like to say it is utterly the opposite.

Forthcoming Books for 2010

Christian Doctrine (SCM Reader) by Murray Rae, Stephen Holmes and Lindsey Hall (February 2010) - This is a sequel of sorts to The Practice of Theology: A Reader by Colin Gunton, Murray Rae and Stephen Holmes.

Belief, Practice and the Church: Unattended Moments by Martyn Percy (Ashgate, May 2010)

Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness by Luke Bretherton (Wiley-Blackwell, January 2010)

The Blackwell Companion to the Nineteenth Century Theologians edited by David Fergusson (Wiley-Blackwell, March 2010) - I think this is a project that Colin Gunton was editing before he died in 2003. If its the same one, Colin I think was writing the chapter of Scheleiermacher and Stephen Holmes was writing the chapter on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, amongst others.

Introducing Christian Ethics and Christian Ethics: An Introductory Reader by Sam Wells and Ben Quash (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)

Secularization and Its Discontents by Rob Warner (Continuum, March 2010)

Jesus Christ: Understanding the Son of God by Nigel Wright (BRF, November 2010)

Christ the Key by Kathryn Tanner (Cambridge, February 2010) - these were originally the 2007 Warfield Lectures

IJST, October 2009 (issue devoted to Calvin)

Editorial: Calvin amongst the Systematicians? - Stephen R. Holmes

From Calvin to Gillespie on Covenant: Mythological Excess or an Exercise in Doctrinal Development? - Carl Trueman

Union and Communion: Calvin's Theology of Word and Sacrament - Michael S. Horton

Imputation as Attribution: Union with Christ, Reification and Justification as Declarative Word - Mark C. Garcia

John Calvin's Soteriology: On the Multifaceted 'Sum' of the Gospel - J. Todd Billings

A Mirror for God and for Us: Christology and Exegesis in Calvin's Doctrine of Election - David Gibson

'Deny Yourself and Take up Your Cross': John Calvin on the Christian Life - Randall C. Zachman

Reviews

Paul D. Molnar  reviews Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election: A Systematic-Theological Comparison – By Matthias Gockel

Mike Higton reviews Christology in Cultural Perspective: Marking out the Horizons – By Colin Greene

Rick Elgendy reviews Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire – By William T. Cavanaugh

Christopher Holmes reviews Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer's Theological Ethics in Context – By Heinz Eduard Tödt