Starter Discussion Paper

Foundationalism, Non-foundationalism, and Colin Gunton’s Proposal of ‘Open Transcendentals’

Delivered at the SST Annual Conference, 2005

Nathaniel A. Suda


Introduction

Despite the fact that some bemoan discussions of theological method, the discussion is there and needs to be addressed. It needs to be addressed not as some kind of prolegomena to the theological task, but because wrapped up in it are critical judgements about the nature of God and the structure of created reality. Gunton took part in this discussion frequently and fervently, but he never called it theological method – he called it ontology. What follows is Gunton’s contribution to the question ‘What is the basis for knowledge?’. First we start with his description of foundationalism and non-foundationalism with particular reference to the Enlightenment. Second we explore a few Christian doctrines by which Gunton lays the groundwork for an alternative response. Third we discuss Gunton’s proposal of ‘open transcendental’. Finally, fourth we respond and conclude.

Foundationalism and Non-foundationalism

Colin Gunton is well known, rightly or not, as not being always the most charitable reader of the history of Christian theology. Parts of his writing have something of a Harnackian ring to them; like Harnack he thought that early in the history of Christian theology things, to put it mildly, took an unfortunate turn. Harnack of course thought the unfortunate turn was the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Gunton thought the turn was not developing it enough.

It is a theme which appears consistently throughout Gunton’s writing: that by an underdeveloped concept of interpersonal Trinitarian relationships, much of Christian theology failed to adequately explain the relationship between the one God, the three divine persons and the human creation, with the result that theology had a strong drive towards monism. Simply, everything became subsumed in the eternal, one God. Gunton’s early book Enlightenment and Alienation[1] is where this thesis first begins to take shape, and in that book another characteristically Guntonian thesis emerges. That thesis is, contrary to what has so often been the judgement by the church, the Enlightenment was a great blessing to theology. The Enlightenment succeeded in exposing an inadequacy of the form Christianity had taken: “its tendency to elevate the one above the many and make the eternal appear the enemy rather than the fulfiller of time.”[2] With the Enlightenment came another way of looking at the world, and in particular a way of speaking of human subjects, with the prerogative to an independence and freedom proper to themselves. However, as the rest of the title, ‘and Alienation’, suggests, the move was not altogether to be applauded. In sharing the basic convictions of its predecessors, the Enlightenment set about to find a more adequate basis transcendentality than could be found in God. Kant despaired of the attempt to find transcendentality in the outside world, and so turned to the conceptual framework of the mind. In doing so he exacerbated two problems in the tradition:

1.) through rational unification of everything he created a new kind of emphasis on the one
2.) he divided science, ethics and aesthetics, just as Plato and Aquinas fragmented truth, goodness and beauty

The failure, Gunton says, was in exposing a weakness in its “renascent Hellenism” such that its “putative new certainties . . . collapsed under the weight of their own inadequacies”[3]. The Enlightenment set out to show the particular freedom of the individual human mind, but ended up burying any concept of individuality in a monolithic concept of reason and truth. But this time the issue was further compounded by the introduction of a new kind of alienation and fragmentation, rehearsed so well in the classic problem of ‘god and other minds’.

Post-modernism rejected the Enlightenment quest and “adopted a pluralism of indifference”[4], but as is often pointed out, it was really modernity all over again. Post-modernity “is in effect an imperious claim for truth which abolishes all other truth by a form of homogenization. It is, despite appearances, a form of universalism”[5]. The Enlightenment thought Christianity was mistaken in direction, but not in form; post-modernism thought the presupposition both held, that there is some kind of unifying structure to reality, was bankrupt. Post-modernity questioned if the whole process of a search for universal truth was mistaken.

The quest of the Enlightenment never really died out, but has found a renewal in more recent discussions on foundationalism and non-foundationalism. Generally speaking, foundationalism “holds that a discipline’s claim for rationality and truth must be based on some broadly accepted intellectual foundations, established by universal and certain reason”[6]. The rational and the empirical compete for foundational status, but at least in some camps, neither approach succeeded in delivering what it promised – “there are no certain and indubitable set of concepts, no certain and agreed reports of sense experience”[7].

Gunton was dissatisfied with most, if not all foundational attempts at describing the world, not on strictly epistemological grounds, which is where the battle is often fought, but on ontological grounds. It was a flawed ontology of the human which gave engine to the attempt to relate truth and human rationality in the forms we have described. Gunton sets out the issue well in a passage on Descartes:

“The ontological question is the question about what kind of entity is the human, and has traditionally been answered in terms of a duality: of matter and spirit, body and soul, or the like; most radically perhaps in Descartes’ famous dualism of intellectual mind and mechanical body. In Descartes, the ontological dimension is apparent: the human constitution reflects the dual structure of the universe as matter and (divine) idea. Mind, the godlike part of the person, is able by virtue of its equipment with innate ideas to comprehend by the use of pure reason the rational structure of the machine.”[8]

In an ontological framework of this sort, we almost always find some kind of distinction between divine and human reason, but what is to be noted is that this distinction is one of distance, not difference. Human reason is often described in like terms as divine reason, but like the light shining from a candle, is dimmer the further removed from the source.

In theological and philosophical discussions, foundationalism often finds incarnation in naturalism. Sometimes the defence given by theology is a counter-foundationalism; think for instance of various forms of creationism. However, the approach often given more respect in intellectual circles is non-foundationalism. In parallel fashion to the reflex of post-modernity to modernity, non-foundationalism is a reflex to foundationalism and argues “that the basis and criteria of rationality are intrinsic to particular human intellectual enterprises, which should not have imposed upon them in a procrustean way the methodologies which are appropriate for other forms of intellectual life.”[9] This creates various attractions to a theologian burdened by requests to appeal to an empirical (naturalist) truth. Again, there is some measure of value in such an approach, particularly in its attempt to take seriously the ability for particulars to be veracious. However, Gunton rejects non-foundationalism more swiftly than foundationalism. He writes that not only do they attempt to construct a barrier to outside critique, but they “run the risk of the rank subjectivism into which their extreme representatives have fallen. Theologically speaking, they evade the intellectual challenge involved in the use of the word ‘God’.”[10]

Doctrinal Explorations

Earlier we suggested that the root of the problem by Gunton’s analysis lay in ontology. In contrast to the various kinds of ontology which use the dualism of material and non-material as the basic term, Gunton begins his reading of ontology in the personal relations of the Trinity. Drawing heavily here on the Cappadocians and John Zizioulas, Gunton understood

“God as a communion of persons, each distinct but inseparable from the others, whose being consists in their relationship with one another . . . [the] three persons are for and from each other in their otherness. They thus confer particularity upon and receive it from one another. That giving of particularity is very important: it is a matter of space to be. Father, Son and Spirit through the shape – the taxis – of their inseparable relatedness confer particularity and freedom on each other. That is their personal being.”[11]

This notion of person which is the dynamic of otherness and relation is conceptually and ontologically primitive in Gunton’s thought – by that we mean it is not simplistic, but is a kind of primary building block for all further understanding of God and the world. Therefore it is very easy for Gunton to extend this notion of person to human beings. The taxis of human being as personal is explained with great reference to the doctrine of creation, incarnation and eschatology.

On the doctrine of creation, Gunton writes:

“What is the outcome when we turn in the light of such a doctrine of God to the theology of creation? Creation becomes understood as the giving of being to the other, and that includes the giving of space to be: to be other and particular . . . the world’s otherness from God is part of its space to be itself, to be finite and not divine. But it as such also echoes the Trinitarian being of God in being what it is by virtue of its internal taxis: it is, like God, a dynamic of beings in relation.”[12]

The most basic of all Gunton’s assertions on the doctrine of creation is that that which was created was ‘very good’. It is ‘very good’ insofar as God willed creation by an act not bound by external necessity, and so as an ‘other’ distinct from God and created by him it has its own ‘relative independence’ and suitability for veracity.

The Incarnation plays a leading role in this scheme as a kind of final vindication of the value of material existence. Because Christ became incarnate and assumed the limits of time and space, we can understand those limits to be a defining feature of human existence, and also good and proper to our human life. God’s processes are to be worked out in time and space, and each is integral to the other.

Therefore eschatology features prominently. Similar to Irenaeus, Gunton argued that creation was a project. Creation was created good, destined to perfection. Wishing to contrast his own position form the Reformed doctrine of the eternal decrees, Gunton writes:

“[B]ecause the Holy Spirit offers it, perfected, to the Father through the Son, the goodness of its extension in time is shown to be part of its essence. The eternity of the creator and the time of the creature meet in the incarnation, where in human time the ground of human time appears and its end anticipated.”[13]

The perfection of the created world is not the same as God’s own perfection; perfection as it applies to creation refers to the coming to fullness of God’s purposes of creation, that which is ontologically other yet in relation with Him. The process of perfection takes place in time, but is only realized at the end of time by the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father.


Open Transcendental

We have spend some time outlining Gunton’s doctrines of the Trinity, creation, incarnation and eschatology because in Gunton’s mind it is only by wrestling with these doctrines that both unity and plurality of being can be brought into relation. A renewed task for transcendentals must confront the fragmentation of truth, goodness and beauty which was a feature of past attempts. In Gunton’s writing there is a heady symbiotic relationship between the doctrines mentioned and what he calls an ‘open transcendental’:

“An open transcendental is a notion, in some way basic to the human thinking process, which empowers a continuing and in principle unfinished exploration of the universal marks of being . . . it is also to find concepts whose value will be found not primarily in their clarity and certainty, but in their suggestiveness and potentiality for being deepened and enriched, during the continuing process of thought, from a wide range of sources in human life and thought.”[14]

Gunton compares his own proposal to that of Coleridge’s notion of idea. Gunton summarizes the notion of idea as “not static, but dynamic, and are not abstracted or generalized so much as ‘given by the knowledge of [the] ultimate aim’ of something. They are ontological rather than merely regulative in character, but that does not mean than they are easily apprehensible.”[15] These passages bring out the strong linguistic connections to other of Gunton’s doctrines, especially eschatology. So therefore, when Gunton defines open transcendentals as full of ‘suggestiveness and potentiality for being deepened and enriched during the continuing process of though’ and as ‘knowledge of [the] ultimate aim of something’ his is cashing out an eschatological concept. The created order, remember, is an eschatological movement towards perfection.[16] The conceptual links with the doctrine of creation are also evident in his mention that they are ‘in some way basic to the human thinking process’, i.e. Gunton is suggesting a framework of created reality which is ontologically proper to created beings as created beings. Both the eschatological and protological comparisons are based on the possibilities of thought suggested by the incarnation of Christ.

While modelled on the Trinity, that doctrine is not a transcendental; the order of our world is not Trinitarian in the sense that we might look around and see a mathematical triad in our beings and relations.[17] Rather the structure of the Trinitarian relations, as disclosed economically, suggests that our world has a similar structure proper to it, and can be known. In Gunton’s words: “The expectation is that if the triune God is the source of all being, meaning and truth we must suppose that all being will in some way reflect the being of the one who made it and holds it in being.”[18] The transcendentals, the concepts by which we can explore the structure of our world are relationality, particularity, and temporality.

Gunton distinguishes his position from foundationalism primarily in saying that the certainty with which foundationalism and similar projects operate is mistaken. The program is then for non-foundationalist foundations. Gunton notes that may sound like “a characteristically English quest of a middle way”[19], but retorts the underlying intellectual question is too important to be construed in that way. Gunton says his project is something like a quest for foundations, but with the important proviso that it is a quest “engaged in by fallible, finite, and fallen human beings”[20] In other words, “if we are finite and fallible human beings, should we not rather seek for a concept of truth that is appropriate to our limits, both in capacity and in time and space? For something that can be believed short of absolute certainty?”[21]

So therefore, an open transcendental is a notion by which created being can be explored, and is suggestive in revealing truth of the created order. This order and our ability to relate to it are based on the nature of Trinitarian relations, yet our relationship to it is always defined by our ontological status as fallible creatures. Therefore, our knowledge must always be recognized as fallible, and like all forms of knowledge, based on a fiduciary claim. Open transcendentals are not static, but commiserate to God’s project of creation subject to an inner dynamic, pointed towards an ultimate aim.

Response

Gunton’s proposal of open trancendentals is interesting to say the least. A number of very positive features should not escape notice. First is the way in which Gunton takes what is ordinarily an epistemological discussion, and places it inextricably in a discussion of ontology. Gunton is by no means the first or only thinker to lament the dualism of mind and body or similar terms, and recognize the disastrous effect that scheme has had on a personal and interpersonal level. By making ontology the controlling concept and not one later brought into the discussion, Gunton is able to speak of both otherness and relation without recourse to dualism. He has done so by associating an understanding of ontology so closely which the doctrine of creation, which in turn must be understood Trinitarianly, and especially Christologically, that the creator-creature relationship becomes primary. In the years ahead, the ways in which Gunton gave the doctrine of creation such energy and theological robustness should not be overlooked.

We have indicated the strong Christological emphasis in Gunton’s concept of ‘open transcendentals’. Despite some comments to the contrary, Christology is absolutely central to Gunton’s theological project. Speaking of Irenaeus, but in so doing disclosing his own position, Gunton writes:

“The basis of Irenaeus’ affirmative attitude to the whole created order is Christological. If God in his Son takes to himself the reality of human flesh, then nothing created, and certainly nothing material, can be downgraded to unreality, semi-reality or treated as fundamentally evil, as in the Manichaean version of Gnosticism.”[22]

Indeed, whenever Gunton needs to make a major theological move, he does so almost exclusively by appealing to Christology, and then nearly always to the incarnation. It is here we must voice a concern. As we have said before, on Gunton’s account God created the world by the Son and Spirit and pronounced it ‘very good’, destined to be perfect in the eschaton. The incarnation of Christ in human materiality further confirmed, contra Plato that truth and history are positively related. There are various permutations and subtleties to that argument, but with very few and less significant exceptions the doctrine of the incarnation, which is where Gunton concentrates so much of his Christological discourse, becomes a kind of confirmation of the goodness of the world, and a place to explore further ramifications along the same vein. There is a serious problem in using the incarnation in this way, and this is one of the most significant flaws in Gunton’s theological project. The problem in using the incarnation to dispel thoughts of “God’s embarrassment of a close involvement in matter” and support the Genesis judgement of ‘very good’ is that the doctrine of the incarnation does no work. It breaks no ground. What can be said about the incarnation has already been said in the doctrine of creation. There is in Gunton’s thought a certain eliding of the nature of the incarnation as creation-affirming and the incarnation as intentful mission whereby Christ came into the world to put to death the state of affairs whereby we are bonded to death. It seems that by suggesting the first, and so emphasising the eschatological vision for humanity Gunton believes he has sufficiently introduced the second.

Relative to the notion of open trancendentals, the symptom we find is that references to the cross and resurrection are present by their absence. When we turn to the open transcendentals to explore the nature of reality, it is hard to recognize how these concepts can be related, and even more importantly worked out in the Christian life in relation to the work accomplished by Christ in his death and resurrection. Gunton often protested that he treated these themes in The Actuality of Atonement[23], but it is hard to see how they exercise a determinative effect on the large portion of his thought.

We must ask why Gunton never talked about at any length or strength the ascension or post-resurrection appearances. These events would suggest even more strongly God’s positive esteem and relation to material creation, and further they give wide latitude to introduce themes of holiness and discipleship – themes which otherwise fall out almost completely in ontological discussions. Perfection – in the sense Gunton used the word, should be described in terms of holiness and discipleship, and brought into the ontological discussion a bit more fully. The incarnation on the other hand, should be described as a kind of renewed protology as intentful mission, which would lend great resources to the doctrine of recapitulation which Gunton loved so well.

Conclusion

Briefly then, by way of conclusion, we can say Gunton has opened doors to advance the discussion of foundationalism. We agree fully with Gunton that the quest for foundations is right and proper, and also that the most appropriate way to pursue that quest is through the doctrines of Trinity, creation, Christ, and eschatology. However, our seeking of knowledge of the structure of our reality, and the use of reason in theology can never venture far from the cross.




[1] Gunton, Colin. Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985.
[2] Gunton, Colin. The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993., p. 130
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid. p. 131
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid. p. 132
[7] Ibid.
[8] Gunton, Colin. ‘Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the Imago Dei’. Persons, divine and Human. King's College Essays in Theological Anthropology, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992. p. 47
[9] Gunton. The One, the Three and the Many. p. 133
[10] Ibid. p. 134
[11] Gunton. ‘Trinity, Anthropology’. p. 56
[12] Ibid.
[13] Gunton, Colin. The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1998. p. (look on yellow pad)
[14] Gunton. The One, the Three and the Many. p. 142-3
[15] Gunton. The One, the Three and the Many. p. 143
[16] It should be remembered that while Gunton drew many ideas from Hegel, their positions should not be confused. Of Hegel Gunton writes: “The theological root of the development is that for Hegel God is so displaced into time that time looses its own proper being” ibid, p. 87. The most significant difference for Gunton was how each described transcendentality.
[17] Here Gunton’s comment on the vestigia trinitatis is instructive: “By being used as a kind of transcendental in the past the doctrine of the Trinity has been misused, so that ingenious minds have been led on a quest for vestigia trinitatis, traces of Trinity in created being. These have usually taken the form of patterns of threeness in the world which has been supposed to reflect the Trinity, but which have, by reason of their essentially impersonal nature and by calling attention to the mathematics of the Trinity, had the effect of obscuring the real possibilities for a relational ontology inherent in the doctrine.” Ibid, p, 144 n. 23.
[18] Ibid. p. 145
[19] Ibid. p. 134
[20] Ibid. p. 135
[21] Ibid. p.135
[22] Gunton. The Triune Creator. p. 52
[23] Gunton, Colin. The Actuality of Atonement. A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition, Edinburgh: T & T Clark