One of the benefits of a slim book, apart from economy of shelf space in a crowded study, is the ease with which it can be re-read, especially if first time round it was annotated. You'd think previous pencil footmarks and annotated fingerprints would be a distraction - it is if someone else did them. For me they always make me wonder why I thought that important enough to underline, annotate, not want to forget; and also to ask do I still think that? Colin Gunton's Christ and Creation, 126 pages of lucid reflection on two alpine doctrinal themes, is well worth re-reading, as I've just discovered.
Freedom is not an absolute, but something exercised in relation to other persons, and that means in the first instance that it is the gift of the Spirit of God over against us, God in personal otherness enabling us to be free. It is in our relatedness that we are free or not, and this is true of all human life. (p55)
The self-emptying of the eternal Son in the incarnation and passion is an expression of the love of the triune God worked out in the structures of fallen time and space. (p88)
The church is thus the community where fallen forms of relationship are invalidated and outgrown; are unlearned through the grace of God and the work of the Spirit. It is important to remember that what is involved is not instant transformation, but a reordering of teleology or directedness. (p110)
Freedom, kenosis and community - now there are three areas crying out for serious consideration as validating criteria for Christian community which exists for the purposes of witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Comments