Customer Reviews

The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity / The 1992 Bampton Lectures

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Gunton's thesis is that the doctrine of the Trinity, specifically in the concept of perichoresis, sheds light on the relational nature of all created reality and can serve as a conceptual model for the restoration of fragmented modern culture. In the perichoretic maintenance-in-tension of the one God and the three Persons, we find a model for a balanced integration of truth, goodness, and beauty in culture that is both unified and particular, coherent and true to diversity. As Gunton puts it (177): "But just as a unitarily conceived ultimate reality encourages fragmentation [reviewer note: i.e., by right, rebellious insistence on the reality and value of the particular], so by contrast a God conceived trinitarianly, a God who contains within himself a form of plurality in relation and creates a world which reflects the richness of his being, can surely enable us better to conceive something of the unity in variety of human culture."

The book is in 8 chapters (originally lectures), arranged, as Gunton notes explicitly (e.g., 130), chiastically: the problems described in chap.1 are resolved in chap. 8; the problems of chap. 2 are resolved in chap. 7; etc.

Part One: The Displacement of God

1. 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 is the Spirit. Towards a theology of the particular
8. The triune Lord. Towards a theology of the one and the many

Gunton's book is amazing. It covers a vast away of knowledge, but he has woven the strands together too well to notice at times. What he has done in essence is acknowledge the failings of Christianity that caused modernity to react so violently against it, but he has used this to champion a fuller, more Trinitarian concept of Christianity. The only caveat I place on this book is that it tends to be Western: it deals with the culture of modernity well, but one must always bear in mind this book does not deal directly with other cultures.

Colin Gunton hopes to show in The One, The Three, and The Many (OTM) that all the problems of the world would be solved if everyone could just understand the Christian doctrine of the trinity (thus "The Three"). This sounds so incredibly ambitious that it may look like I'm pitching a straw man, but Gunton thinks the trinity is so powerful that any attempt to downplay this feature of his argument would injure him more than my apparently overwrought summary does. For Gunton the trinity is humanity's only hope to establish genuine truth, morality, beauty, and unity in diversity.

I do not think Gunton makes his case.

First, OTM is a use-mention error. Even if Gunton is right that the concept of the trinity is 100% necessary to achieve unity in diversity, that would not imply the trinity actually exists. Trinity and god then are handy metaphors at best. Gunton seems to concede this near the end, and tries to retreat from ontology to transcendentalism. OTM is unparsimonious, though, because even the concept of the trinity is not necessary. The "universe" is a simpler metaphor for unity in diversity, and has the benefit of existing, so we can leverage it without resorting to superstition. Finally OTM is unscientific. Gunton thinks modernity has unleashed a legion of social ills that he hopes the Trinity will cure. But he fails to support this claim with empirical data.

When Gunton manages to wear the right outfit he is late to the party. He defends evolution on grounds that young-earth creationists have misunderstood Genesis chapters 1-2. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But it is incredible if not insulting to believe anyone is waiting around for a British theologian to uncover the true meaning of an iron age creation myth before believing that evolution is true. The rest of the world already knows evolution is a fact based on reason and hard evidence. Only a fundamentalist could benefit from this theological tap dance; and how many fundamentalists are going to read Colin Gunton?

I agree with Gunton that finding unity in diversity is a massively worthwhile goal, but I don't think violating Occam's razor will help us get there. Gunton is not unique on this count. Theologians in general seem to value existential impact more than parsimony or evidence. Which is why theology is a metaphysical free-for-all. But perhaps there are exceptions?