Book Review: "The Doctrine of Creation" by Gunton (2004)

The Doctrine of Creation by Gunton

About the author

The author of the book “The Doctrine of Creation”, Colin Ewart Gunton was a British methodical theologian. He has presented a lot of work on the subject of creation, being a theologian, portraying a set of guidelines for the belief in creation. Further, he has also contributed to explain the three ways in which God is seen is Christianity; as the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. He has quite a theological background; he has been a professor at King College, London for the subject of Christian Doctrine. He was also the co-creator of the Research Institute for Systematic Theology. The author had been a minister in the United Reformed Church, UK; he was possibly the most eminent British theologian among his cohort. Beside “The Doctrine of Creation”, Gunton has written other books as well on a similar subject, one of which is “The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity”. This book is a philosophical examination of the inconsistencies and challenges of modernism, taking into account the cerebral customs and traditions prevalent in the West.

Introduction

For Colin Gunton, the doctrine of creation is the introductory and the most vital element of spirituality and mysticism. The opening content of the book contains the analysis and examination of the intimately disheveled doctrines of creation and divine intervention. The doctrine of creation has its worth in the Christian divinity because of various grounds; God is the producer of all as it is avowed in the dogma, and humans play in the theatre which is creation.

Gunton promotes that the faith about the creations of God and His sustainability to maintain those creations encountering all the intricacies of the world, is not a tangential premise of biblical mysticism, rather it is apparently the elementary premise. An even more significant fact for Gunton is that the doctrine of creation is able to evocatively tackle the ethnic catastrophe, this world grants us with. The only appropriate way to respond to these critical circumstances is to endorse the basics of the doctrine of creation, in such a manner, so as to exhibit its coherent practicability. The world should be seen in such a way that our humanly state is enlightened in our living the life; this can be done by embarking the doctrines of creation and divine intervention collaboratively.

Gunton presents the rationalization of his revision in the doctrine of creation so as to rectify the flaws that arose as a result of Platonism, Augustine and Origen and of course by the negligence of the basics of doctrine. This work of Gunton analyses the contents of the doctrine of creation as well as its linkage with the interrelated doctrines, comparing it with the libretto and the customs of the church. It also assesses the notable areas where differences exist for Gunton's outlook towards the doctrine of creation.

The Doctrine Outlined

The Doctrine of Creation ...