Colin Gunton (1940-2003)

Colin Gunton died at the height of his powers, leaving nevertheless a large body of writing and a remarkable cadre of graduate students and deeply influenced colleagues and former colleagues, centered around King's College (London), where he spent his entire teaching career. It is not too much to say that, through his books and the people he influenced, he has been the leading agent of a transformation of the British theological landscape. Where once biblically and systematically driven theology had been a rarity, it is now found across the academic and ecclesial spectrum, as often as not in the person of a King's graduate.

When Gunton died, he left the draft of the first volume of a projected three-volume systematic theology. Colleagues plan to edit and publish this volume, which even as a torso displays a systematics that is, indeed, as Jonathan Edwards once said of his own-also unrealized-project, a theology "on a new plan," clinging to the scripturally told divine economy with a tenacity not previously shown by even the most emphatic enemies of foundationalism. Gunton's scholarly interests were also on a different plan, giving serious attention to figures of English theological history often regarded as marginal or even eccentric, such as Edward Irving or John Owen.

Just before his death, Gunton was awarded the earned D.D. by the University of Oxford, where he had taken his three previous degrees. Also just before his death, King's College had decided to make him a fellow of the college, its highest honor, which was then awarded posthumously.

Robert W. Jenson, Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, NJ

Copyright Theology Today Apr 2004
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