My Review of Joshua McNall’s A Free Corrector (on Colin Gunton and Augustine)

My review of Joshua McNall’s A Free Corrector: Colin Gunton and the Legacy of Augustine has now been published in Regent’s Reviews 7:2 (2016). Here’s my concluding paragraph:

While not an exhaustive account, McNall’s research provides enough evidence to convince that Gunton did mishandle Augustine’s writings and the responses to them while seeking to prove a point. This mishandling arose from Gunton’s decision to focus on certain texts at the expense of others, and his failure to accommodate the contexts in which they were written. But McNall also provides evidence that such misconstruals helped Gunton to craft an Irenaen approach to a theology of creation that promises its own theological afterlife. So aside from its clear value to students of Gunton and Augustine, A Free Corrector may also be regarded more generally as an insightful case study on how to interpret responses to a person’s intellectual impact, and on how any misreadings (deliberate or otherwise) might still inspire and contribute to good theology. If so, then McNall’s study should lead its readers to a greater appreciation of the legacies of both Gunton and Augustine.