Fertile Soil in a Barren Land: A Desert Odyssey for the Soul Book

In 1999 I watched M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. While the film was enjoyable throughout, it was not until the final chapter that one's understanding of the film was made complete. I believe this is an apt comparison to the late Colin Gunton's book A Brief Theology of Revelation. While each chapter has much to offer, it is not until the final chapter which attempts to defend a positive position on a theology of revelation that the previous chapters begin to stand together as a cohesive whole.



Gunton's beginning - or should I say ending - premise is that ultimately it is God's self-revelation that yields creaturely knowledge of God. Unlike Karl Barth who tends to subsume revelation into Christology, Gunton's understanding of revelation is thoroughly Trinitarian. Contra Barth who understands God the Father as the revealer and the Son as revelation, for Gunton "the mediatory office of the Spirit is to point to, and in that sense, reveal the son; that of the Son to reveal the Father" (p. 122). Gunton flips Barth's priority in revelation. Further, for Gunton, revelation is a second order doctrine. Revelation is an epistemological doctrine that provides content to the saving acts of God. In and of itself, revelation is not grace. Instead, revelation mediates the knowledge of grace. As indicated earlier, this knowledge is a Trinitarian knowledge. However, there are various forms or mediators of revelation. It is these mediators of revelation that form the first five chapters.



First, Gunton defends the propositional character of revelation. In this he denies this implies a static and impersonal character. For example the statement "I love you" is hardly static nor impersonal but dynamic and personal and yet altogether propositional.



Second, Gunton advances the argument that all types of things are revelatory. For example, it would be true to say that knowledge of an other be it a spouse, friend, or sibling comes only through the other "revealing" themselves to you as the object of revelation. In the I/thou encounter revelation occurs.



Third, Gunton attempts to advance a theology of nature. Gunton attempts to bridge the gap made recently famous in the debates on natural theology between Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. Gunton, like Brunner, believes that a real knowledge of God can come via creation. On this point he follows John Calvin in adding that his knowledge of God via creation can only come through the eyes of faith. We would be unable to find or see this knowledge "apart from the Bible and salvation in the Christ of whom it speaks" (p. 107).



Fourth, Gunton sets his eyes on the revelatory nature of Scripture. "Scripture is revelatory in that sense by virtue of the fact that it participates in those things - persons and events that we call revelation" (p. 108). In this regard Gunton stands very close to Barth in his understanding of the revelatory nature of Scripture.



Finally is the question of the authority of tradition. Using scientists such as Michael Polanyi and Albert Einstein Gunton defends the legitimacy of tradition as a mediator of revelation. Polanyi's quote is telling: "a society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition" (p. 89). That is to say, any knowledge is knowledge that has been transmitted from one person to the next, from teacher to pupil. However, Gunton is quick to recognize there is a firm difference in the place of tradition in natural science verses theological science. Where natural science is interested in reproducing and testing repeatable and observable events, theological science testifies to the significance of a once-for-all historical event that is inherently unrepeatable.



In the end, A Brief Theology of Revelation is a difficult but rewarding word that demands patience and diligence from the reader. As it is a reproduction from his 1993 Warfield lectures given at Princeton Theological Seminary, it could sometimes use greater fleshing out of the more technical concepts. At times this leaves the reader in great confusion (I can't imagine what it must have been like to be listening to the lecture without the luxury of going back and re-reading sentences and paragraphs). Still, pushing through the confusion is advised as the final chapter gives clarity the whole picture. In fact, I might even suggest reading the final chapter first and then proceeding back to the beginning of the book.