BOOK REVIEW:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Toward A Fully Trinitarian Theology . By Colin E. Gunton. London: T & T Clark, 2003. xviii + 240 pp. ISBN 0567089827.

This is a collection of essays gathered together and personally prepared by the author shortly before his death in May, 2003. Most have their origins in spoken lectures or addresses.  The first section of the book consists of essays grouped under the heading “The Triune God of Christian Confession” and focused on the doctrine of the Trinity proper, with particular reference to the ideas of Irenaeus, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Calvin, Thomas F. Torrance, and Robert Jenson.  The second section, under the heading “Triune Divine Action,” focuses on the further development of trinitarian interpretations of creation, the relationship of creation and redemption, the relationship of the Spirit and Jesus, atonement, the sacraments, the church, and eschatology. Running throughout the book is the central concern to restore the work of the Spirit to proper prominence in Reformed theology, as the trinitarian focus of the inseparability of God’s being and God’s action (pp. xiii, xiv), with an eye to the interrelationship of theology and life (p. 6).

Colin Gunton is at his best in doing “big picture” theological synthesis, and with this in mind, the first five chapters are perhaps the most effective and useful. Chapter 1 is particularly helpful in offering a compact but exceptionally profound and accessible summary of the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity for the Christian church. As such, it will be appreciated in a variety of teaching settings, in both the classroom and the congregation.

Several broad themes familiar to those who know Gunton’s life work are introduced here and emphasized throughout the collection. Augustine serves as the foil for a relational understanding of the Trinity that derives from Cappadocian roots and employs a perichoretic construal of the divinity unity. Following John Zizioulas, Gunton stresses the concept of the person as a unique contribution of trinitarian theology, and he works out the relational and communal implications of this concept for contemporary life with genuine pastoral wisdom. 

Irenaeus’s comment about the Son and the Spirit as the Father’s “two hands” is ubiquitous throughout the book, and serves as shorthand for Gunton’s own agenda for distinguishing their characteristic work. “The Son and the Spirit are God in action, his personal way of being and acting in his world” (p. 10).  The traditional Reformed category of “mediation” figures prominently in working out this claim. Gunton does not hesitate to attribute “particular forms of action to particular persons of the Trinity” (p. 28), frequently citing the precedent of Basil (pp. 30, 114), Gregory (p. 114), and Calvin (p. 28) in this regard. The characteristic mediating actions of the Son and the Spirit encompass creation, redemption, and final consummation.  All are “the action of God the Father. . .equally brought about by his two hands, the Son and the Spirit. . . . All is the unified action of the one God” (p. 80). The characteristic mediating work of the Son centers in freely obedient, responsive, sacrificial action: the full involvement of God in the material creation, with a focus on incarnation that extends through the cross and resurrection to the ascension.  The Spirit’s characteristic mediating activity is a particularizing emphasis that consists in enabling people and things to “be themselves through Jesus Christ.” The Spirit is the “perfecting cause” (Basil)—“the eschatological person of the Trinity” (p. 81), enabling the creation to fulfill its divinely intended purpose.  And yet the Spirit also perfects the divine communion by directing the life and love of God (and the church) relationally outwards towards the world in self-giving love (p. 86).

The more specialized essays in the book’s second section have their high points, including Gunton’s characteristically strong emphasis upon the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity for properly maintaining a sufficient theological distinction between the Creator and the creation (p. 93ff.).  The essay on “Atonement” settles helpfully in on the notion of “gift” and “the gracious will to self-giving” as the irreducible heart of the biblical metaphor of sacrifice (p. 188ff.). Finally, a remarkable concluding essay in Chapter 13 ties together eucharist, ecclesiology, ethics, and eschatology in the provocative proposal that treats shared meals and sexual intimacy as central aspects of our social being that lead to an “eschatology of church membership.”

Philip W. Butin
President and Professor of Theology
San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA