chapter 1
Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine
Does Augustine lie at the heart of certain problems in contemporary theology? Does Augustine, the fount of much of Western theology, bequeath to the West a theological tradition destined for failure? While this may at first sound improbable or overstated, Colin E. Gunton of King’s College (University of London) argues persuasively that key weaknesses in contemporary Western thought—modernism in particular—are the result of old issues, very old issues. Gunton is surely accurate in affirming the magnitude and significance of Augustine’s place in the history of Western thought. Hans von Campenhausen assesses Augustine as follows:
Augustine is the only church father who even today remains an intellectual power. Irrespective of school and denomination he attracts pagans and Christians, philosophers and theologians alike by his writings and makes them come to terms with his intentions and his person. He also has an abiding indirect influence, more or less modified and broken, as a conscious or unconscious tradition in Western churches, and through them in the general heritage of culture.1
Stanislaus J. Grabowski offers no small praise: “The name of St. Augustine is undoubtedly the most outstanding in the annals of the patristic age. He towers above all the Fathers who have preceded him, and casts a shadow upon all who have come after.”2 If such praise be true, can Augustine also be the font of some of the key errors in Western thought? Is Augustine a major source of our contemporary malaise?
The doctrines of the Trinity and creation are central to Gunton’s concerns, and Gunton is not alone in affirming the centrality of such doctrines. David S. Cunningham has recently written, “Many of the difficulties that Christian theologians have faced, as they have attempted to shore up various structures of the faith over the past several centuries, can be traced in part to the faulty construction (or in some cases, the complete absence) of this all-important keystone [i.e., the doctrine of the Trinity].”3 Thomas Torrance similarly argues that the Trinity is not a peripheral doctrine of the Christian tradition to be included at the end of one’s theological studies. Rather, the Trinity is at the very heart of the Christian gospel: “the very essence of the Gospel and the whole of the Christian Faith depend on the centrality and primacy of the relation in being and agency between Jesus Christ and God the Father.”4
For Gunton, at the heart of contemporary problems is a truncated or confused gospel, which errs in its understanding and articulation of the Trinity and creation. Indeed, Gunton affirms William Morris’ notion that “Modernism began and continues wherever civilisation began and continues to deny Christ.”5 As one works through Gunton’s writings, this same theme continues to appear. Gunton’s The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, given as the 1992 Bampton Lectures, is the best work for understanding Gunton’s thesis regarding the far-reaching effects of confusion relating to the doctrine of God. In this volume the problem of the One and the Many provides the schematic background upon which Gunton works. The One and the Many is a recurring problem in the history of philosophy. Is reality primarily One (e.g., Parmenides), or is reality primarily Many (e.g., Heraclitus)? There is little agreement or consensus regarding a settlement to this perennial issue.6 For Gunton, the issue of the One and the Many provides the conceptual backdrop upon which to understand the development of Western thought. In one sense, Western thought is the question of the One and the Many. How does this relate to our thesis in this work? In short, Gunton’s position is that in the West the One has prevailed over the Many. The “victory” of the One is not just an accidental or peripheral issue, and its cause is not foreign to Christian thought. Indeed, at the heart of the One’s victory in the West is one of the key figures in Western thought—St. Augustine. Indeed, Gunton traces the primacy of the One to St. Augustine. Hence our title, the failure of Augustine. While Augustine serves as a hero for many Christians, Gunton laments the legacy of Augustine, and this antipathy toward Augustine shows up in the vast majority of Gunton’s writings. Augustine errs in positing an “unknown substance supporting the three persons.”7 The One is so emphasized that the Many are virtually made superfluous. Thus Gunton can write that with Augustine’s construal of the Trinity, we are led to “an essentially singular deity for whom community is epiphenomenal or secondary.”8 With Augustine we are left with “some unknown and unknowable substance underlying the economy.”9 Augustine simply lacks the “conceptual equipment” to avoid such heresies as Arianism and modalism, and therefore the Western tradition has struggled with such heresies (particularly the latter).10 We have erred in our understanding of God, and according to Gunton we strayed from the best paths largely due to the thought and impact of Augustine. We are now reaping the consequences in realms as diverse as the theological, ecclesiastical, cultural and political spheres.11 That is, central to contemporary difficulties, theological or otherwise, is a confused understanding of God. We might say that for Gunton confusion in modern life is in direct proportion to confusion in our understanding of God. Let us try to make Gunton’s point perfectly clear. Gunton offers two main complaints against Augustine which succinctly summarize Gunton’s position.
First, Gunton contends that Augustine’s attempt to fuse neoplatonic and Christian categories resulted in a dualism between the sensible and the intelligible, and between the material and the ideal, and in effect “neutralized” the concept of “relational being” which Gunton holds was “made possible by the homoousion.” That is, Nicaea’s homoousion had opened up a new way of conceiving of “being,” and Augustine’s dualism in effect had no room for such a concept. Augustine’s failure to appropriate the Nicene conceptual advance led to three key developments: (1) the concept of person was undermined. Thus, the primary emphasis is on essence or being rather than person. (2) The unity of God was stressed at the expanse of plurality. Or, we might say, the One was gaining its victory over the Many. This was in effect a trend toward modalism, for the “real” God is One, where “the real being of God underlies rather than consists in the three Persons.”12 (3) Consistent with Augustine’s Platonism, the material world was disparaged. Hence, the doctrine of creation was marginalized, and the Incarnation was “reduced to a timeless point, so that the importance of the human and historical Jesus was minimized.”13
Second, Augustine squandered the Cappadocian ontology, which affirmed that God is “a sort of continuous and indivisible community.”14 Augustine sought trinitarian analogies in the human mind, pushing social, ecclesiastical and practical considerations to the periphery. Also, by seeing trinitarian analogies in the mind, Augustine failed to draw (or at least emphasize) the conceptual connections between the “internal,” “transcendent,” or “immanent” Trinity and God’s work in creation and redemption. Thus, in the Western tradition, “God” could be dealt with in theological treatises, say with treatments of omniscience, omnipotence, timelessness, etc., with little necessary reference to the work of Son and Spirit in creation and redemption—again, this is due to a tendency to emphasize the oneness of God at the expense of the threeness of God. Or better put, Augustine, and the West in ...