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Truth, Tragedy and Compassion: some reflections on the theology of Donald MacKinnon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
To read Donald MacKinnon’s theology with the presupposition that he was a systematic theologian must be a great disappointment. Reading MacKinnon leaves one with the impression that his work is rather unfinished, yet this is its quality. Embodied in his work is the belief that any system cannot in the end do justice to the realm of irreducible fact. There is a sustained rigour in his writing which is so deep as to give the reader the sense that MacKinnon is involved in an interrogation so penetrating as to be at times harrowing in its execution. George Steiner, quite rightly, speaks the word ‘sombre’ of MacKinnon’s work, but I think ‘interrogative’, with the accent on the restless even painful questioning of MacKinnon’s genius to be the better description. If MacKinnon can be said to have a method it is Baconian. The question rather than the thesis is the cutting edge of his theology. There is a Barthian insistence about his thought which wants to put all understanding, all subjectivity to the question in order to disclose a deeper level: the subjective must give way to the ontological. Implicit in his writings is the belief that to be a theologian is to be a realist: to be sensitive to the limits of understanding, to let God be God.
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- Copyright © 1997 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 MacKinnon, D., ‘On the Notion of a Philosophy of History’, Borderlands of Theology)', Lutterworth Press, 1968. p. 163Google Scholar.
2 MacKinnon, , ‘The Problem of the ‘System of Projection’ appropriate to Christian Theological Statements’, Explorations in Theologyl Vol. 5. SCM Press, 1979. p. 71Google Scholar.
3 MacKinnon, ‘Order and Evil in the Gospel’, Borderlands of Theology, p. 95.
4 MacKinnon, ‘Atonement and Tragedy’, Borderlands of Theology, p. 101,
5 This phrase derives from Michael lgnatieff's book entitled The Needs of Strangers, Vintage, 1994. p. 64. In its original context, the phrase derives its meaning from lgnatieff's discussion of Augustine's City of God.
6 MacKinnon, ‘Atonement and Tragedy’, p. 101.
7 MacKinnon, , ‘Kenosis and Establishment’, The Stripping of the Altars, London and Glasgow, 1969, p. 33Google Scholar.
8 MacKinnon, ‘Lenin and Theology’, Explorations. p. 20.
9 MacKinnon, ‘Kenosis and Establishment’, p. 32.
10 MacKinnon, The Problem of Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 140.
11 MacKinnon, ‘Ethics and Tragedy’, Explorations, p. 186.
12 MacKinnon, ‘Subjective and Objective Doctrines of the Atonement’, Prospect for Theology: essays in honour of H. H. Farmer, ed. F. G. Healey, Nisbet, 1966. p. 175.
13 MacKinnon, ‘Order and Evil in the Gospel’, p. 93.
14 MacKinnon, ‘The Conflict Between Realism and Idealism’, in Explorations, p. 164.
15 Kerr, F., ‘Idealism and Realism: an old controversy dissolved’, Christ, Ethics and Tragedy, ed. Surin, K., Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 18Google Scholar. Rowan Williams' ‘Trinity and Ontology’ from the same volume was a source of great illumination. My debt to this fine essay will be apparent to any one who is acquainted with it.
16 MacKinnon, ‘The Conflict Between Realism and Idealism’. p. 161.
17 MacKinnon, ‘Philosophy and Christology’, Borderlands of Theology, pp. 62–63.
18 George Steiner, Review of Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, Times Literary Supplement, 19 May 1995, p.7.
19 MacKinnon, ‘Lenin and Theology’, p. 22.