Gunton on Divine Providence

Terry was kind enough to email me his paper on Gunton's theology of divine providence, and gave me permission to post it here. Questions, comments, and critiques are very welcome!




Destined for Perfection: Divine Providence in the Theology of Colin Gunton


Introduction
According to John Calvin, ‘nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by [God].’[1] As God holds strict rule over events in creation ‘according to a sure dispensation’, there is no such thing as a chance or a fortuitous occurrence, even if to us that seems to be the case.[2] Though this theological determinism suggests that all things essentially unfold from an initial act of God, Calvin’s emphasis – and that of the Reformed tradition that followed him – falls on God’s constant effecting of things: God is the first cause of each instance, not the first cause of some chain of instances. He is not some abstract power standing aloof at creation’s primeval edge, but rather is intimately and continually involved with it.

Nonetheless, the idea of an all-determining God seems to conflict with the idea of a genuinely free creation: if God decrees all things, then surely creation is not as free as it appears. Calvin himself wrestled with this problem: his plea to ‘give attention to the secondary causes in their proper place’[3] is an attempt to hold together the apparent contradiction between a sovereign God and an ostensibly free creation. The problem, says Colin Gunton, is that Calvin ‘equate[d] the concepts of contingency and chance’,[4] meaning that he ‘is able to give a more satisfying account of the universal providential care of God than of the correlative thesis that human agents are responsible for their actions.’[5] Gunton further notes that here in Calvin’s thought there is ‘little substantive part played by Christ and the Holy Spirit.’[6] For Gunton, the issue of determinism centres on the relation of the eternal God to creation’s temporality[7] and is ‘best avoided’ by focussing instead on the way in which the Father acts in the world by his Son and Spirit.[8]

If, as Gunton suggests, theological determinism arises from a unitarian conception of God, then the appropriate response is to bring an explicitly trinitarian leaning to the doctrine of providence. Gunton does this without distancing himself too far from his Reformed heritage. My aim here, then, is simply to explore his thoughts on the matter in a little more detail and to advocate it, admittedly with a reservation, as a way forward for future discussions.

Creation, the Project of God
One of the claims of a truly Christian doctrine of providence is that the universe is not ‘closed’ to God’s interaction. Enlightenment-era mechanistic conceptions depicted the universe as a vast machine running according to its pre-programmed laws rather than to God’s personal involvement. However, post-Newtonian physics allows for more flexibility, and so Gunton argues that there is no reason why God, a ‘spiritual’ being, cannot interact with ‘material’ beings – not least because he is the one who gives being to all things.[9] Gunton writes, ‘Thus the creator’s love – his energy at work through the mediating action of the Son and the Spirit – not only made the universe… but also shows itself in the day to day upholding and directing of what has been made.’[10] This, at its most elementary level, is how God’s providence may be understood, and Gunton stresses that divine action does not violate the natural order. ‘God’s action… may be conceived to shape the day to day life of the world, even sometimes miraculously – in anticipation of its eschatological destiny – without violating that which is “natural”, because what is natural is that which enables the creation to achieve its promised destiny.’[11] All this means that, for Gunton, the conventional distinction between general and special providence must be understood in the light of God’s overall providential purpose: that creation – human and non-human – is redirected to its proper goal through the life of the incarnate Son of God.[12]

Mention of a goal or a destiny reveals Gunton’s idea that ‘creation is a project – that is to say, it is made to go somewhere… Creation is that which God enables to exist in time, and is in and through time to bring it to its completion, rather like an artist completing a work of art.’[13] Gunton thus denies the common view within Western theology that creation’s original perfection was absolute. In doing so, he does not mean that creation was flawed, as though it was the faulty product of some demiurgic figure. Rather, creation’s perfection was relative, having ‘a temporality and directedness to an end which is greater than its beginnings’;[14] in much the same way, we would consider a newborn baby to be ‘perfect’ even though we expect it to mature over time.[15] To understand creation as a project means to see God creating not ‘a timelessly perfect whole, but… an order of things that is planned to go somewhere; to be completed or perfected, and so projected into time.’[16]

All this gives creation an ‘eschatological orientation’; the act of creation was ‘not simply the making of a world out of nothing, not even that world continually upheld by the providence of God, but the making of a world destined for perfection.’[17] Gunton notes from Genesis 1:28 that even prelapsarian creation needed to be subdued if it was to reach its destiny: we ‘must be aware that creation is not yet completely as God would have it be; that in eschatological perspective there is something still to do, and that this involves at least the overcoming of a measure of continuing disorder or at least absence of what we can call eschatological order and freedom.’[18] For Gunton, this is no problem, for ‘[t]he world is of such a kind that it requires obedient human activity to enable the achievement of that for which it was created. Creation is perfect – “very good” – but remains to be perfected, in part by faithful human action.’[19] Needless to say, the fall – which Gunton describes succinctly as ‘a rebellion against God’s gracious promise’[20] – affected creation’s direction towards its proper goal; but still the fall does not thwart God’s purposes – it simply requires him to work in a different way, a way that reconciles as well as directs. God’s ‘providence takes shape in a fallen world which God purposes both to continue to uphold, and, indeed, to perfect, so that providence takes the form both of conservation and of a movement towards redemption.’[21] Insofar as the fall is a cancer that spreads through time and space, this redemption also is worked out similarly.[22] Accordingly, salvation must be understood not as ‘a going back to something already achieved’, that is, to a creation in its prelapsarian condition,[23] but ‘the achievement of the original purpose of creation. It only then takes the form of redemption… because of sin and evil.’[24] Providence, then, inasmuch as it refers to God’s action in created time and space, is historical;[25] but this interaction of the divine with the created itself poses an important problem, that of mediation.

God’s Two Hands
Though Gunton refuses to accept any theology that has traces of pantheism,[26] that is, traces of anything that confuses God with creation, he also rejects conceptions of God’s relationship with the world that deny his real and actual involvement with it. However, as God and creation are not to be identified, there is still the question as to how the two do relate. The problem is one of mediation, which ‘denotes the way we understand one form of action – God’s action – to take shape in and in relation to that which is not God; the way, that is, by which the actions of the one who is creator take form in a world that is of an entirely different order from God because he made it to be so.’[27] A properly trinitarian theology is the only way to resolve this problem, Gunton argues, for it presupposes ‘that God the Father is related to the world through the creating and redeeming action of Son and Spirit, who are, in Irenaeus’ expression, his two hands.’[28] Christ’s resurrection from the dead is the spur for thinking about divine action in christological and pneumatological terms, as this shows both God’s freedom to act ‘in and toward’ creation and that its ‘fate or destiny… is in some way bound up with Jesus of Nazareth.’[29] Consequently, christology and pneumatology invite further discussion of matters such as providence and redemption;[30] they ‘encourage us to conceive God as personally involved in the creation, not simply a machine-maker operating “from without.”’ Gunton qualifies this by saying that he means ‘without’ in the sense of ‘other’,[31] for though God is ‘creator and not creation’, he is also ‘one who in Christ becomes part of that creation, freely involved within its structures, in order that he may, in obedience to God the Father and through the power of his Spirit, redirect the creation to its eschatological destiny.’[32]

Accordingly, creation’s redirection occurs only in Christ. Citing Colossians 1, Gunton contends that ‘the redirection of creation to its end finally takes shape only in so far as Jesus Christ makes “peace by the blood of the cross”, and thus only as the particular historical figure who can die upon the cross.’[33] That this is so is due to Christ’s status as both creator and a human: ‘Because he is Christ the mediator of creation, he is of universal significance. But because he is Jesus of Nazareth, who lived, taught, acted as the agent of the eschatological kingdom, suffered, died and was raised, his universal significance is realised in a particular way’, as the one in whom redemption is achieved.[34] This redemption is not a divine extraction from fallen reality but reality’s christological transformation; as such, ‘the atonement is seen to be that historical action in which, by overcoming in the human activity and suffering of Jesus the enemies of creation’s true flourishing, God enables the creation to achieve that which was purposed for it, the reconciliation of all things in Christ.’[35]

Connected with this is the idea of election, whereby God’s conserving, redemptive action occurs through the particular instances of calling people – or a people – to his service in time and space. First, God ‘provid[es] for the fulfilment of his purposes’ by calling Abraham to be the one through whom he will bless all others, even though this calling itself is unremarkable: essentially, God tells Abraham ‘to leave home and go somewhere else.’[36] From Abraham, this providing continues through Isaac, Jacob and then the nation of Israel proper, until the meaning of Israel’s election finally is realised in Jesus Christ.[37] ‘In him,’ Gunton writes, ‘God’s providence becomes particular in a decisive and personal way. The offices of the prophets, priests and kings of Israel, those through whom God variously called and held Israel to her vocation, are concentrated in him, so that he is the one in whom providence now finds its primary focus.’[38] Indeed, the New Testament often sees Christ as developing and fulfilling various Old Testament themes and images, Genesis 22’s account of God’s provision of a ram an excellent case in point.[39] Christ’s ministry – which ‘must be understood as God’s personal action in his world’[40] – indicates, therefore, that providence ‘takes shape historically’ and ‘embraces… all creation’, as God works out the world’s destiny ‘in and through time.’[41]

There seems, therefore, to be a link between the project of creation and humanity: if humanity fails to keep at-one-ment, the project likewise fails. That Jesus is the image of God both divine and human means that he alone is able to mediate God’s saving action and thus rescue the project from disaster.[42] Gunton describes the life of Christ as both human act and ‘an act of the eternal God, which is, so to speak, stretched out in time.’[43] God is pleased not only to be involved economically in creation’s affairs,[44] but also to allow his own action to be subject to the creaturely limitations of time and space insofar as this grants space to creation to be itself.[45] As creation is to be perfected, God allows things to take their course; temporality ‘is not a defect of being, but part of its goodness.’[46] Human life in particular demonstrates this diachronic perfecting: ‘by its very nature… [it is] directed to a completion that takes time. And so divine action centred in the death of Jesus is action which is fully appropriate to human fallenness and to its need of time in order to be itself. For the cross,’ Gunton continues, ‘is where God engages with the human condition as it actually is, respecting both its temporal structures and the nature of those who are in need of being redirected to their proper course.’[47] True redemption ‘consist[s] in enabling things to come to their due perfection in and through the process of time’.[48]

Providence, then, must first be interpreted as God’s action in Christ. ‘Divine providential action takes place in a world which can be perfected only through the death of the mediator of creation on the cross of Calvary… [T]he death and resurrection of Jesus is the model for all providential action, as those acts which enable the world to become itself by action within, and over against, its fallen structures.’[49] Yet Christ’s work cannot be understood in isolation; the eschatological tone and direction of providence is safeguarded by the Spirit’s activity in tandem with the Word. According to Gunton, the Spirit is ‘the upholder of the everyday’,[50] the one who ensures that ‘there is summer and winter, seedtime and harvest’; but he does so only through ‘the one in whom all things were and are created.’[51] Similarly, insofar as providence is God’s action in Christ, the Spirit forms a body for the Son in Mary’s womb, enables the incarnate Son’s obedience that leads him to the cross, raises him from the tomb and calls a people to act as a witness to others.[52] Everything that the human Jesus is and everything he does in obedience to his Father is through the power of the Spirit. This work of the Spirit is seen especially in Christ’s resurrection, for ‘[t]he one who breathed into Adam the breath of life now raises the second Adam to new life’; the Spirit is ‘the Lord and giver of life, and this means both the everyday life of the mortal and the transformed life of the one whose mortality has put on immortality.’[53] Thus the Spirit, in the Word, both sustains creation and ensures that it heads towards the destiny God has for it. Following Basil of Caesarea, Gunton contends that ‘the distinctive function of the Spirit is to perfect the creation, and we can interpret this as meaning to bring to completion that for which each person and thing is created.’[54] If creation is a project, its completion is realised only insofar as the Spirit ‘liberates things and people to be themselves, as, paradigmatically, the Spirit’s leading enabled the human Jesus to be truly himself in relation to God the Father and the world.’[55] Indeed, ‘the Spirit’s peculiar office is to realise the true being of each created thing by bringing it, through Christ, into saving relation with God the Father.’[56] Though the Son unifies creation as the one in whom all things hold together, the Spirit is the one who ‘maintains the particularity, distinctiveness, uniqueness, through the Son, of each within the unity.’[57]

Freedom, Divine and Human
However, as with all theologies of providence, there remains the question of creaturely freedom: may creation avoid God’s perfecting action should it so choose? Gunton’s starting point for a discussion of freedom is the act of creation itself. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo shows that God is not compelled to create; that creation exists at all is due to God’s sovereign decision to create. Nonetheless, creation is made ‘free according to its own order of being’,[58] and this freedom itself is a gift from God.[59] Though Gunton affirms both God’s sovereign freedom[60] and creaturely, limited freedom, he is keen to stress that issues of freedom do not revolve around a battle of wills. For humanity, freedom is not an absolute; it is ‘a mediated relation to other people and the world which is the realm and object of free human action. Our freedom… is in part mediated to us by our fellow human beings and by God.’[61] In particular, freedom ‘is that which I do with my own particularity, that which enables me to be and do what is truly and distinctively myself’; it is ‘that which others do to and with my particular being, in enabling me to be and do, or preventing me from being and doing, that which is particularly myself.’ Consequently, ‘[i]f we are free, it is in large measure because others enable or empower us to be free.’[62] This conception of freedom is primarily relational and not volitional: essentially, the relationship between God and creation is characterised not by a battle of wills but by divine grace, which is ‘best understood as a mode of God’s action towards, or relatedness to, the creature and not as some kind of substance that God imparts to the creature.’ Thus it is ‘not something reserved for sinners, … but the fundamental form of God’s relation to the creature.’[63]

In our fallen world, God’s grace manifests itself in at least two ways. First, ‘speaking christologically, we can say that the grace of God is the action of God in Christ meeting sin and evil with a particular form of action, namely that paradigmatically shown in the death of Jesus on the cross, but also in the ministry of Jesus.’[64] Secondly, speaking pneumatologically, ‘we can say that by relating human beings to the Father through the Son, the Spirit is the one who graciously liberates people and things to be themselves.’[65] For Gunton, divine grace is that free action of God that enables him freely to relate benevolently towards his creation and permits and constitutes it in its own freedom to act similarly.[66] Grace may only be grace in relation to another; the idea of community is vital, for a person is who he or she is only by virtue of his or her relations to others within that community,[67] in much the same way as the three persons of the Trinity are who they are only in relation to one another.[68] Though the particularity of the individual is realised in community, ‘it must be free community in the sense of being unconstrained and entered into voluntarily.’[69] Gunton stresses that freedom enabled by divine action is still ‘the exercise of the free human will. But it is a will whose direction is given shape by the patterns of relation in which it is set… Only in relation to God and to others can we be particularly who and what we are, and therefore only so can we be free.’[70] Crucially, divine action is gracious action that ‘does not deprive the [creaturely] agent of personal integrity, but constitutes it in its freedom, and thus in turn makes possible gracious forms of human action.’[71]

Given the relational nature of freedom, Gunton is careful to base his theology of providence specifically in God’s triune action in the world rather than on attributes such as power and foreknowledge. ‘That is to say, we should consider providence not in its meaning as seeing in advance but as providing for. The reason is that a stress on foreknowledge is difficult to disentangle from suggestions of determinism.’[72] Gunton argues that ‘a conception of providence centring on act rather than knowledge… leave[s] room for the free “space” between one thing and another.’[73] Insofar as God’s two hands are involved in redirecting creation to its proper destiny, divine action ‘enables something to move from an uncompleted or unsatisfactory present to a completion that is destined, but not fully determined in advance.’[74] Although creation will be perfected, the specific path it takes towards that perfection is less than sure. To explain providence, Gunton likens God to ‘a great playwright’ who ‘will “create” characters which then to an extent create themselves.’ These characters ‘take on their own life within the imagination of the author’[75] even as the play itself ‘conform[s] to the immanent or intrinsic development of character and plot.’[76] Thus Gunton concludes that God’s ‘pen does indeed write the story, but in such a way as to allow the characters to develop according to its and their intrinsic logic.’[77] Central to this story is the incarnation. ‘A christological structuring of divine providential action understands it in the light of the one who became human, identifying with the world’s structures in order to reshape them to their eschatological destiny.’[78] For Gunton, salvation through incarnation ‘indicates contingency but not “pure” chance… There is nothing outside God’s ordering activity. But that divine determining is not deterministic, because the action of the Spirit defines the kind of order that there is, or can be.’ As such, ‘[p]rovidential action is thus that which enables particular human actions and worldly events to become what they will be.’[79]

How, then, should we understand providence? Gunton himself offers two definitions. First, it is ‘that activity, mediated by the two hands of God, which at once upholds the creation against its utter dissolution and provides for its redemption by the election of Israel and the incarnation of the one through whom all things were made and upheld, and to whom, as the head of the church (Colossians 1:18), in the Spirit all things move.’[80] Thus its meaning may be summed up, secondly, as ‘conservation in eschatological perspective. God’s providential purposes are realised only eschatologically, and that means, first of all, only through time; the creation needs time to be and become itself.’[81]

Concluding Observations
As the aim of this essay is to suggest that Gunton’s approach to providence should positively inform future discussions of the doctrine, it seems somewhat inappropriate to attempt a critique. Nevertheless, I do have a reservation about Gunton’s choice of metaphor to describe God’s providential action and what it may imply about that action. Let me be clear: I have a reservation, not a fully developed criticism, for Gunton’s account of providence clearly is based on Scripture insofar as it follows its depiction of Israel’s calling and so on. It is disappointing, therefore, to see Gunton employing non-biblical metaphors of divine agency, such as ‘a great playwright’. Though I do not think it sensible or right to label Gunton a determinist, my suspicion is that his choice of metaphor here shows him not to have quite escaped the more traditional Reformed conceptuality of God’s sovereignty as something that determines or controls all that happens.[82]

According to Gunton, God is like a playwright. Although the playwright pens the material, the plot and characters themselves develop according to the play’s intrinsic logic; but does the playwright retain the ‘sovereignty’ to start again from scratch if the play unfolds in a way not conducive to him? Importantly, the playwright needs to make a decision as to whether he will attempt to salvage – and, indeed, can salvage – anything from a wayward plot and non-responsive characters so that the play ends up resembling something like that which he envisaged originally. The ambiguity in Gunton’s thought emerges if we ask these same questions of the divine playwright, for a playwright surely does retain control of his play and determines all that happens in it.[83] Even if the plot and characters do develop according to the play’s intrinsic logic, they cannot do so without the actual penmanship of the playwright; and so they are determined to do all that they do. It is legitimate, therefore, to ask whether Gunton can truly escape a conceptual framework of theological determinism, given his choice of metaphor. Gunton’s theology of providence mostly sidesteps the often-perceived conflict between divine and creaturely freedom by insisting that freedom concerns, for example, a human person’s right relations with God and with other creatures rather than that person’s ability to choose freely. Essentially, the chief problem with the playwright metaphor is that it contradicts this relational notion of freedom by dropping the matter of God’s providence as that sovereign, christological reorientation of creation; instead, it reaffirms the idea that God’s sovereignty is little more than an opportunity for him to flex his volitional muscles. Sadly, it is little more than a non-trinitarian sound bite unnecessarily injected into what is otherwise a thoroughly trinitarian doctrine of providence.[84] This is regrettable, given that Gunton has implied – often quite strongly! – that determinism is something ‘best avoided’.[85]
Despite this reservation, there is still much to be commended in Gunton’s theology of providence, not least the absence of any aggressive echoes of more conventional debates on the matter. As is common in Reformed theology, Gunton, too, does not sever the link between providence and election;[86] but whereas traditionally providence serves election insofar as it is the execution of God’s plan in time to save a set number of elected humans, Gunton’s emphasis is on the whole of creation being transformed – perfected – to praise its creator.[87] Driving Gunton’s thought here is a conviction that the whole of creation, human and non-human alike, is good: not only did God design it to flourish and to mature by his action, but in doing so he approved of the specific spatio-temporal form given to his creation. The idea that God has specially predestined a group of humans for this privilege is not, for Gunton, a true interpretation of Scripture. Furthermore, that creation is creation and not God does not prevent God from involving himself with its affairs; the universe is not ‘closed’ to his activity. In fact, Gunton greatly stresses that God really is involved in creation because divine action is not primarily sovereign power – though God is sovereign – but the work of his two hands, the Son and the Spirit. This, and not that of the playwright, is surely Gunton’s key metaphor, for it shows that God’s providential activity is God’s triune activity, focussed in the life of the Son.

My desire, then, is that Gunton’s focus on God’s trinitarian action within the whole of creation should inform any future theologies of providence. Gunton’s achievement is twofold. He plays down those aspects of God’s sovereignty that cannot first be elucidated with reference to Christ and the Spirit, something I think he achieves with astonishing consistency.[88] From this, we see that he has set the foundation of a new, trinitarian conceptual framework that, despite his own lapses, may well lead to non-deterministic doctrines of providence. No doubt Gunton would have said even more about providence had he lived to publish his planned works on systematic theology; that he did not lends a certain poignancy to this essay’s closing quote, selected for its expression of hope and trust in God’s providence: ‘God has time for us, and goes at his own time, but also at ours. He will give us time to complete what he wants us to achieve, which may not be what we hope or plan to do. That is why we can live freely as his people in the time he has given us to do what he wants us to complete in our particular life-spans, however long or short.’[89], [90]
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:16:3, translated by Ford Lewis Battles, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press 1960, p. 201
[2] Institutes, 1:16:4, p. 203; 1:16:9, p. 208
[3] Institutes, 1:17:6, p. 218
[4] Colin E Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1998, p. 151
[5] The Triune Creator, p. 152
[6] The Triune Creator, p. 152
[7] The Triune Creator, p. 85
[8] The Triune Creator, p. 86
[9] The Triune Creator, pp. 175-176
[10] The Triune Creator, p. 176
[11] The Triune Creator, p. 176
[12] ‘General providence is a name for that activity by which God is conceived to hold in being the order of creation: maintaining the order and teleology of the human and non-human realms. By contrast, particular and special providence are ways of speaking of saving or redemptive acts directed to restoring the right order, or, better, directedness, of creation.’ (The Triune Creator, p. 176)
[13] The Triune Creator, p. 12
[14] Colin E Gunton, ‘Atonement and the Project of Creation: An Interpretation of Colossians 1.15-23’, in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (second edition), Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999 impression, pp. 180-181
[15] Colin E Gunton, The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 2002, p. 19
[16] ‘Atonement and the Project of Creation’, p. 181, italics original
[17] Colin E Gunton, Christ and Creation, Carlisle: Paternoster Press 1992, p. 45
[18] Colin Gunton, ‘The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters: The Holy Spirit and the Created Order’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 4 (2002), p. 192; cf. The Christian Faith, p. 29. For an excellent, book-length elaboration of similar ideas, see G K Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, Leicester: Apollos 2004.
[19] ‘The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters’, p. 192
[20] The Christian Faith, p. 29
[21] The Christian Faith, p. 29
[22] The Christian Faith, p. 63
[23] ‘Atonement and the Project of Creation’, p. 180
[24] Christ and Creation, p. 94
[25] The Christian Faith, p. 30; The Triune Creator, p. 84
[26] If Gunton has an objection to evolutionary theory, for example, it is that all too often the processes of evolution displace God’s providence; evolution must be seen as divinely directed. See The Triune Creator, pp. 186-188; cf. p. 38.
[27] The Christian Faith, p. 5
[28] Colin E Gunton, ‘Relation and Relativity: The Trinity and the Created World’, in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (second edition), Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999 impression, p. 142
[29] The Triune Creator, p. 23
[30] The Triune Creator, p. 10
[31] Elsewhere, Gunton suggests that whilst ‘the incarnation of the eternal creating Word in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, betokens God’s freedom of action within the material world, … the Spirit’s sovereign action is the mark of God’s freedom toward or over against it – from outside, so to speak’ (The Christian Faith, p. 10, italics original). Assuming that he uses ‘from outside’ in the sense of referring to God’s transcendence, Gunton appears to indicate that the incarnation shows God’s intimacy with the world whilst the Spirit’s action demonstrates his lordship. If so, I would query the need to distinguish the different ways of divine mediation so acutely; the Spirit’s action is surely just as intimate as that of the Son.
[32] The Triune Creator, p. 24
[33] ‘Atonement and the Project of Creation’, p. 183
[34] ‘Atonement and the Project of Creation’, p. 186
[35] ‘Atonement and the Project of Creation’, p. 187
[36] The Christian Faith, p. 30
[37] The Christian Faith, p. 31
[38] The Christian Faith, p. 31
[39] The Christian Faith, p. 31
[40] The Christian Faith, p. 79
[41] The Christian Faith, p. 32
[42] ‘Atonement and the Project of Creation’, pp. 185-186
[43] The Triune Creator, p. 84
[44] cf. Colin E Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 reprint, p. 164
[45] cf. The Christian Faith, p. 5: ‘It is noticeable that in the Genesis account God does not say: “Be”, but “let there be”. This is distinctive in maintaining a balance between the command and the being of that which is established. There is a greater stress on what we might call the giving of space to be to a reality that is other than God. The world is not simply a function of God’s action… but that action creates something that has its own unique and particular freedom to be.’
[46] Colin E Gunton, ‘Christ the Wisdom of God: A Study in Divine and Human Action’, in Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Essays Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology, London: T&T Clark 2003, p. 136; cf. p. 141
[47] ‘Christ the Wisdom of God’, p. 136, italics original
[48] ‘Christ the Wisdom of God’, p. 142
[49] The Triune Creator, p. 190
[50] The Triune Creator, p. 177; cf. ‘The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters’, p. 193
[51] The Triune Creator, p. 177
[52] cf. The Triune Creator, p. 171
[53] ‘The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters’, p. 198; cf. The Triune Creator, p. 23
[54] The One, the Three and the Many, p. 189
[55] The Triune Creator, p. 184
[56] The One, the Three and the Many, p. 189
[57] The One, the Three and the Many, p. 206
[58] ‘Relation and Relativity’, pp. 142-143
[59] ‘Relation and Relativity’, p. 143
[60] For Gunton, divine freedom is demonstrated by the incarnation: ‘that God creates the world through Christ, through the one who became flesh, implies that God is able to come into relation with the world while remaining distinct from it. It therefore bespeaks freedom in the relations of God to the world’ (Christ and Creation, pp. 76-77)
[61] Colin E Gunton, ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, in Colin E Gunton (ed.), God and Freedom: Essays in Historical and Systematic Theology, Edinburgh: T&T Clark 1995, p. 121
[62] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 122
[63] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 126
[64] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 128, italics original
[65] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 128
[66] cf. ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 133
[67] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 131
[68] cf. The One, the Three and the Many, p. 164
[69] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 132
[70] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 132
[71] ‘God, Grace and Freedom’, p. 133
[72] The Triune Creator, p. 191, italics original
[73] The Triune Creator, p. 183
[74] The Triune Creator, p. 184
[75] The Triune Creator, p. 192; The Christian Faith, p. 6
[76] The Christian Faith, p. 6
[77] The Christian Faith, p. 64
[78] The Triune Creator, p. 192
[79] The Triune Creator, p. 192
[80] The Triune Creator, p. 192
[81] The Christian Faith, p. 36
[82] The problem of the interaction between divine and human freedom is, of course, a crucial element for any theology of providence if one wishes both to hold that God is sovereign and creation is free. My own view is that the biblical notion of God’s presence serves as a far better explanation of providence than any metaphors that parallel creaturely actions with God’s actions; see my ‘How is Christ Present to the World?’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005), for further comment.
[83] Of course, the playwright does not exercise the same kind of ‘sovereignty’ over the play’s interpretation!
[84] There are further elements of determinism in other writings. As God directs the creation towards perfection, ‘everything that happens is already the result of divine action, so that everything is the action of God’ (Christ and Creation, p. 90, italics added). Elsewhere, citing Psalm 31:15, Gunton writes, ‘That is above all an expression of trust in the providence of God: that all our times, whenever, whoever, wherever, we are, are subject to God’s overruling’ (Colin E Gunton, Theology Through Preaching: Sermons for Brentwood, Edinburgh: T&T Clark 2001, p. 45).
[85] The Triune Creator, p. 86; see also, for example, Gunton’s later comment that Jonathan Edwards ‘introduced disturbingly determinist elements into his own Reformed heritage’ (The Triune Creator, p. 154, italics added).
[86] Arguably, Gunton’s chapter on providence in The Christian Faith would in others’ works be a chapter on election!
[87] See, for example, Christ and Creation, p. 96.
[88] I would argue that Karl Barth’s doctrine of providence, often taken as christological, fails to reach the same heights as Gunton’s thought on the matter.
[89] Theology Through Preaching, pp. 47-48
[90] I wish to thank John Colwell, Lincoln Harvey and Nate Suda in particular for their comments on this paper, which was also presented to the Research Institute in Systematic Theology at King’s College, London in July 2005.