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Universal and Particular in Atonement Theology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Colin Gunton
Colin Gunton
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
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Extract

The unique philosophical problems of Christianity derive from the fact that it is not a philosophy, but a gospel. That is to say, its teaching and institutions are distinctively what they are by virtue of their relation to particular divine acts rather than because they are primarily a general teaching or philosophy. Whatever general teaching there is is rooted in particularities. It is not, then, difficult to come to a provisional understanding of the reference of the ‘particular’ in the title. Christianity as a particular religion, distinct from other religions and philosophies, is a distinctive way of appropriating what is believed to be salvation, deriving from a centre in a specific pattern of divine action. That centre, to be sure, gives rise to a range of conceptions of salvation sharing a family resemblance, but is none the less common to all those that are recognisably within the Christian fold.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 453 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

2 For an example of how the life and teaching of Jesus as recorded in the gospels appear to a sceptical secular mind, see Robinson, Richard, An Atheist's Values (Oxford University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

3 Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo II. xvi.

4 Ibid., I. xvi–xviii.

5 See Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, translation edited by Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., Vol. 2, Part 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957)Google Scholar, Chapter VII, ‘The Election of God’. It must be noted that the author does not accept that his position entails universalism, although many critics have argued that it does.

6 Feyerabend, Paul, Against Method. Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: Verso, 1978, 1st edition 1975)Google Scholar.

7 See Gunton, Colin, ‘No Other Foundation. One Englishman's Reading of Church Dogmatics, Chapter V’, Reckoning with Barth Essays in Commemoration of the Centenary of Karl Barth's Birth, edited by Nigel, Biggar (London: Mowbray, 1988), pp. 61–79.Google Scholar

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