Customer Reviews

The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition

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As an engineer, I found Gunton's writing style verbose, unconcise and difficult to read. Frequently, I had to read sentences several times just to understand what he was saying grammatically. Even after understanding him grammatically, I often felt like he was describing a fuzzy and unclear periphery to his theology, rather than describing the core of it explicitly. I have read more scholarly books that are presented much better.

The book primarily draws on the works of other people, and Gunton highlights aspects of their ideas as he sees fit. However, I was left at the end of each chapter still waiting for any real content from the author. It seemed dry and tedious, with no useful insight.

To his credit, Gunton seeks to deal fairly with the views he investigates. It often seemed that he devoted much time to relatively minor points, while when it came to important aspects of doctrine he glossed over them with words like "obviously...", "clearly..." and "the fact that...". He certainly does not outlay a cohesive view of the atonement in a logical manner. In some cases, his logic seemed circular - e.g. that the words used to describe the atonement are themselves defined by it.

There was little consideration given to recent scholarly developments, which he often simply glossed over with phrases suggesting they were wrong and needed to be "defended against". There is only limited use of Scripture, but even when used it is often out of context and somewhat glossed over to provide superficial evidence in his discussion.

I found nothing new in this book, and would not recommend it.