There is still a fair flow of publications from those who studied under Colin Gunton at Kings College London. I have been meaning to introduce each of these to you properly, but the months slip by, so here is a short list.
Justyn Terry‘s The Justifying Judgement of God: A Reassessment of the Place of Judgement in the Saving Work of Christ, in which Karl Barth plays a fair role, has just appeared from Paternoster.
Peter S. Oh‘s Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Karl Barth’s Analogical Use of the Trinitarian Relation examines Barth on analogy, and suggests that another look at Kierkegaard, from whom Barth learned his antipathy to analogy, would show that analogy is intrinsic to a theology of persons, and then goes on to develop this insight into a whole ecclesiology. It has an introduction by Christoph Schwöbel. Tough conceptual stuff, but the theological gain is real enough.
Then coming from T&T Clark in May 2007 is Iain Taylor‘s Pannenberg on the Triune God.
Colin Gunton‘s own The Barth Lectures edited by Paul Brazier, and also introduced by Christoph Schwöbel, is out from T&TClark in July, as is Alan Spence‘s Incarnation and Inspiration: John Owen and the Coherence of Christology.
(Have you Gunton readers seen Hans Schaeffer Createdness and Ethics: The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Ethics in the Theology of Colin E. Gunton and Oswald Bayer ?)
Then two very important books from two friends of mine who studied Christian Ethics under Michael Banner
Brian Brock‘s Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics is now out from Eerdmanns. Christian Scripture and the Christian community are in some kind of constitutive relationship (yes, apparently this is still news for the ethics crowd) then comes a good review of the best of recent theological-hermeneutical literature (Webster, Watson…), then finally Augustine, Luther and Brian Brock himself guide us the psalms, and in the hands of these masters our education really begins. Theology comes from worship and serves worship.
Very soon we will see Christopher Roberts‘ Creation & Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in and for the Moral Theology of Marriage. I used to wonder why Chris was so concerned to show that marriage unites two people of different gender. Well I now I see why. In the last week in the UK I have heard just one or two Roman Catholic spokesmen quietly inform the British government and people that marriage – this man-woman covenant thing – is not a creation of the state, and may not be be re-defined on the whim of a government. Marriage – the union of two people of different gender is not only the foundation of all human society (and therefore of the state) but is the very premise of human being as such.
Brock and Roberts. I have been pilfering ideas from these two for years. For instance, I had no idea about the totus Christus until Brian pointed it out to me in Augustine. Nothing has been the same since.
And Michael Banner himself (now Dean of Chapel at Trinity, Cambridge) is one of the best kept secrets of British theological ethics. His Brief History of Ethics, unlikely to be brief, and might just be major, is out from Blackwells in the autumn.
