The sanctified disciplines of the Church represent a far more sophisticated hermeneutics than is available to our secular colleagues. The Church is the communion sanctified by the Spirit for the world, and the saints and teachers are sanctified for the church, and so dedicated to the task of keeping the church distinct from the world – for the world’s sake. The Church must hear its own sanctified teachers, and it must teach what it receives from them. The Church is the mediation, spiritually discerned and received, that the Spirit provides by which we can be brought to Christ. The teaching of Church, its saints and teachers, must be taught for its own sake. It must also be offered to the public arena, and examined and tested there. On occasion the Church can learn some lesson from the world in the gospel that it had neglected. The church needs the university to test its teaching, and the university needs the huge ambition of the Christian doctrine of man in order to raise the ambition of the humanities.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit – Colin Gunton and the doctrine of God
