The One, the Three and the Many

This study examines what is often called the crisis of modernity, with reference not only to modernity but to modern culture in general.

This study, based on the Bampton Lectures delivered in the University of Oxford in 1992, examines what is often called the crisis of modernity, with reference not only to modernity but to modern culture in general.This study offers a theological analysis of, and response to, the modern world, and is at once a theology of culture and of creation. In the first half of the book, Gunton expounds some of the distinctive and often contradictory features of modern culture. It emerges that modern culture, far from being unique in its difficulties, reflects similar inadequacies in ancient thought. The distinctive pathos of modernity is to be found in one unique feature, namely the displacement of God that is a mark of all realms of life. The roots of the problem are sought beyond the Enlightenment, where they are often located, in the combination of platonism and Christian theology which dominated medieval Christian thought. At the heart of the matter is a deficient - because of an inadequately trinitarian - understanding of creation and creation's God. The second half of the book develops a powerful theology of creation where due weight can be given to both universal and particular, both society and the individual.