Public Administration Revealed: A Trinitarian Approach 
 
by 
 
Maria Antonieta Reyes 
 
 
 
 
A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of 
Auburn University 
in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the Degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
 
Auburn, Alabama 
December 8, 2012 
 
 
 
 
Keywords: Trinitarian Theology, Theology, Political Theory, Public Administration Theory 
 
 
Copyright 2012 by Maria Antonieta Reyes 
 
 
Approved by 
 
Murray Jardine, Professor of Political Science 
Steve Brown, Associate Professor of Political Science 
Linda Dennard, Professor of Political Science 
Cathleen Giustino, Associate Professor of History  
 
 
  
 ii 
 
 
 
 
 
Abstract 
 
 
 This is an attempt to offer a window into the good that government can do through new 
possibilities beyond the practical and economical. Public administration theory has been moving 
away from its original narrow, scientistic, technocratic orientation, but has yet to develop a solid 
grounding for a more humanistic, participatory model. This situation can be understood better by 
placing it within the context of contemporary political theory, which addresses the crisis of 
modernity, making us aware of our inability to make moral and political sense of our human 
capacities because of the limited materialistic ontology and positivistic epistemology that 
developed in the modern age. Recent debates within political theory point toward developments 
within theology as providing possible alternatives to the modern worldview, and this dissertation 
will examine and apply the systematic theology of Colin E. Gunton to this end.  Gunton revises 
classical Christian theology, specifically with regard to the Trinity, to develop a model of 
harmonious particularity, which can be used to work out a new, broader, epistemology and 
ontology. This richer epistemology and ontology can be used to develop a more humanistic, 
participatory model of public administration, independently of the specific theological aspects of 
Gunton?s thought. More specifically, this model can break down the sharp distinction between 
politics and administration that has characterized public administration theory to allow a 
harmonious particularity of theory and practice. 
  
 iii 
Acknowledgments 
 
 
 I would like to thank the one creating entity; it inspires me, guides me, and allows me to 
value my input in the process. I would like to thank my family; my husband for his help, not only 
in my school endeavors, but at home where a partnership has been truly forged. His intellectual 
example and good humor has helped me tremendously; my kids because in their young years 
they teach me a lot more than I can learn on my own; and my mother, sister and brothers from 
whom I have learn immensely through conversations and mutual experiences.  I would also like 
to thank my professors (those I took classes with and those I assisted in classes with) for their 
contribution to my knowledge, and especially the members of my committee, Dr. Steve Brown, 
Dr. Linda Dennard, and Dr. Cathleen Guistiano. I would like to afford a special thanks to Dr. 
Murray Jardine, my Committee Chair, who in his patience and tact with our differences in 
language, culture, and understanding of writings, found a way to allow me to learn on my own 
and with my own point of view. He has been not only a great intellectual partner, but an amazing 
Chair, who took care of the most mundane of the details to the exposition of my new found 
knowledge. Thank you Dr. Jardine. I would also like to thank all my classmates and all the 
administrative staff, because every contribution into my schooling was a contribution to my 
achievement. To everyone, thank you. 
  
 iv 
Table of Contents 
 
 
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... ii 
Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................... iii 
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. viii 
List of Illustrations ....................................................................................................................... ix 
Introduction   ................................................................................................................................. 1 
Chapter 1 Public Administration: A Question of Ideology and Practice  ..................................... 6 
 Introduction  ...................................................................................................................... 6 
 Orthodoxy or the Classical (Rational-Legal and Scientific) School of Thought  ........... 10 
The Rational-Legal School of Thought .............................................................. 10 
The Rational-Scientific School of Thought  ....................................................... 15 
Challenges to the Scientific Approach  ............................................................... 22 
The Social Science Paradigm ......................................................................................... 26 
The Human Relations Model  ............................................................................. 27 
Behavioral Approaches  ...................................................................................... 30 
 The New Public Administration  .................................................................................... 37 
Public Administration and Values  ..................................................................... 37 
The New Public Administration  ........................................................................ 39 
Public Choice or the Rational Economic Approach  .......................................... 43 
Politics and Values in Public Administration ..................................................... 48 
 Contemporary Perspectives  ........................................................................................... 53 
 Conclusion  ..................................................................................................................... 57 
 
 v 
Chapter 2 Political Theory: A Question of Ontology and Epistemology ................................... 60 
 Introduction  .................................................................................................................... 60 
 Crisis  .............................................................................................................................. 63 
Ontological and Epistemological Crisis ............................................................. 63 
The Breakdown of the Modern Worldview  ....................................................... 78 
 Responses to the Modern Crisis  ..................................................................................... 80 
Philosophical Responses  .................................................................................... 80 
Leo Strauss and the Possibility of Value in Transcendence  .................. 80 
Postmodernism: A Revelation through Deconstruction  ........................ 82 
Counter-Enlightenment and the Challenge to Positivism  ...................... 84 
Theological Responses ....................................................................................... 94 
Early Theological Responses to the Modern Crisis  ............................... 94 
Colin Gunton and Trinitarian Theological Theory  ............................... 98 
 Conclusion  ................................................................................................................... 100 
Chapter 3 Trinitarian Theological Theory  ............................................................................... 101 
Introduction  .................................................................................................................. 101 
Colin E. Gunton: a Brief Biographical Background  .................................................... 102 
Gunton and Systematic Theology  ................................................................................ 104 
About Gunton?s Writings  ............................................................................................. 108 
The Trinity  ................................................................................................................... 111 
Historical Background  ..................................................................................... 111 
Gunton?s Journey Toward the Trinity .............................................................. 114 
Trinitarian Theological Theory  .................................................................................... 122 
 vi 
Issues to Address with Theology  ..................................................................... 124 
Creation is non-Dualistic  ..................................................................... 124 
Creation is Relational  .......................................................................... 125 
Creation and Time and Space  .............................................................. 125 
The Structure of Trinitarian Theological Theory ............................................. 126 
The One  ................................................................................................ 127 
The Three  ............................................................................................. 128 
The Many  ............................................................................................. 129 
Perichoresis  ......................................................................................... 129 
Oikonomia  ............................................................................................ 132 
Critiques of Trinitarian Theological Theory  ................................................................ 137 
General Critiques  ............................................................................................. 137 
Critiques in Terms of Social Theory  ................................................................ 137 
Projection  ......................................................................................................... 139 
Fallen Beings  ................................................................................................... 139 
Challenges in Terms of Application  ................................................................ 140 
Responses  ......................................................................................................... 142 
Conclusion  ................................................................................................................... 143 
Chapter 4 Public Administration Revealed .............................................................................. 145 
Introduction  .................................................................................................................. 145 
Ontological Roots Disengagement  .............................................................................. 146 
Epistemological Roots Displacement  .......................................................................... 151 
Trinitarian Theological Theory ..................................................................................... 154 
 vii 
Rendering Politics-Administration a False Dichotomy  ............................................... 159 
What is the Politics-Administration Dichotomy?  ............................................ 160 
The Dichotomy?s Consequences on Public Administration?s Epistemology  .. 163 
Normative  ............................................................................................. 164 
Empirical .............................................................................................. 165 
Understanding the Politics-Administration Dichotomy as other than a False 
Dilemma  ........................................................................................................... 165 
Disengagement  ..................................................................................... 166 
Displacement ........................................................................................ 169 
Time and Space ..................................................................................... 171 
Conclusion  ................................................................................................................... 174 
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 177 
References ................................................................................................................................. 179 
 
 
 
 
  
 viii 
List of Tables 
 
 
Table 1-1 Olson?s Table of Goods  ............................................................................................. 48 
Table 2-1 Human Nature ............................................................................................................ 77 
Table 2-2 Symbols and Signs ..................................................................................................... 96 
Table 3-1 Gunton?s Writings ............................................................................................. 120-122 
Table 3-2 Other concepts to describe the Trinity ..................................................................... 135 
Table 4-1 Conceptualization of the creator affects how we relate to each other ...................... 150 
Table 4-2 Summary of Trinitarian Theological Theory  .......................................................... 159 
Table 4-3 Politics-Administration Dichotomy Consequences .................................................. 165 
Table 4-4 Summary of Public Administration Revealed ................................................... 173-174 
  
 ix 
List of Illustrations 
 
 
Illustration 1-1 Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs ........................................................................... 28 
Illustration 1-2 Simon?s Rationality ........................................................................................... 33 
Illustration 2-1 Aristotelian Ethics .............................................................................................. 87 
Illustration 2-2 Representation of Greek Human Condition ....................................................... 88 
Illustration 2-3 Comparison of Human Condition  ..................................................................... 92 
Illustration 3-1 Trinitarian Theological Theory Structured  ..................................................... 136 
Illustration 4-1 Public Administration Revealed  ..................................................................... 172 
 
 1 
Introduction 
  In attempting to develop a topic for this dissertation, I have placed one demand upon 
myself: to offer a window into the good government can do through new possibilities that go 
beyond the practical and economical. My inquiry then starts where most brainstorming starts: 
what do I want to address; what is my purpose; and how do I want to accomplish it? Political 
theory is a good starting point because it allows us to not only develop an understanding beyond 
the practical that may reveal immediate faults and strengths in current understandings and/or 
approaches, but also allows us to deliberate over issues that may be better understood in different 
dimensions. In other words, discussions about society can include the purpose of government, 
the nature of man, and even what may ultimately allow man to achieve or be driven towards 
perfectibility. It is through political theory that one may find, or at times destroy or distort one?s 
understanding of reality or oneself in relation to action and/or structures of society.  
Contemporary political theory addresses the crisis of modernity, the denial of any 
possibility of truth, and the apparent disintegration into nihilism. Modernity is generally accepted 
to have started around the year 1500. This period has been characterized by scientific and 
technological advancements resulting in significant material improvement of human life. The 
ability of modern science to control and even change nature eventually resulted in a moral and 
epistemological crisis. Older natural law theories, which assumed that humans have a limited 
capacity to change nature, seemed to become obsolete when it became clear that humans can 
change nature to a considerable extent, and this discovery in turn raised the question of the extent 
to which nature itself is just a human interpretation. This is a total assault to reality, where 
everything is nothing but our own interpretation, our own creation, and the real world, or truth 
 2 
non-existent (see Table 2-1). This moral and epistemological crisis is what has been known as 
nihilism.      
A brief note on methodology, this is an ontological and epistemological analysis of public 
administration theory, political theory, and theology. When it comes to theoretical analysis that is 
not attempting a comparison, there is no evident explicit systematic approach. In working with 
theoretical analysis, one addresses certain questions and issues that may not have an obvious 
proscribed process to reach a solution or answer. However, it attempting to meet the 
requirements of the established academic basis, which should not necessarily violate the aim of 
this particular dissertation, I have attempted to design a loose and open process. This analysis 
will start with inductive reasoning exercised in all three intellectual branches. This type of 
approach should allow for the identification of corresponding or concurrent issues that should 
result in the revelation of a root, a starting point, from which each intellectual branch can form 
part of a constituted reality that offers a solution in union. It is the analysis itself that is expected 
to reveal the ability for each intellectual branch to uniquely and with its own authority, reveal a 
new ground where new discussions can emerge that can help in the concurrent issue identified. 
This loose open analysis will allow for the integration of the literature, the historical approaches, 
and identification of new approaches to projected outcomes.  
My purpose in this dissertation is to look into the solutions presented in political theory to 
the perceived crisis and extract from political theory the approaches presented and apply them to 
public administration theory. I attempt to do this by examining public administration theory in 
light of recent developments in political theory.  My assumption is that public administration 
theory is explicitly and implicitly derived from perspectives in political theory and that both have 
developed from the same philosophies. This development will be established with the first two 
 3 
chapters. Chapter 1 presents the public administration schools of thought that have developed 
over the past century or so, and will argue that although recent public administration theory has 
been moving away from its original narrow, scientistic/technocratic orientation, it has yet to 
develop a more fully humanistic, participatory model. Chapter 2 places issues in recent public 
administration theory in a broader context, and points toward possible solutions, by presenting an 
overview of the history of political theory.  It will show how the modern crisis developed and 
discuss the alternatives to modernity that have emerged in recent political theory, particularly 
new theology as alternatives to modernity.   
Chapter 3 examines Colin Gunton?s Trinitarian theological theory. Gunton?s revision of 
classical Christian theology presents a model of harmonious particularity that broadens our 
ontology and epistemology. The fourth and final chapter applies Gunton?s model of harmonious 
particularity to public administration, revealing the possibility for a more humanistic, 
participatory model by breaking down the sharp distinction between politics and administration.  
The Enlightenment assumed that science could bring about improvement of the human 
condition, because it was believed that through science one could achieve true knowledge. 
However, instead the Enlightenment?s attempt to understand science resulted in positivism, with 
the upholding and promotions of a sharp distinction between facts and opinions. This distinction 
has been pervasive in all aspects of understanding and knowledge which has resulted in a 
tremendous moral and political confusion in society (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Herbert Simon, 
Leonard White, Robert Dahl, Eric Voegelin, Alasdair McIntyre, Colin E. Gunton and more).  
Contemporary political theory questions this epistemology. It questions the fact-value 
distinction and addresses through philosophy and theology the moral dimension in political 
society. Recent philosophy of science has demonstrated that empiricism/positivism is an 
 4 
inadequate epistemology, or, put differently, an inadequate attempt to explain how science works 
(like those of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper).  
There was an established assumption during the Enlightenment that science revealed a 
mechanistic universe.  But more recently the Enlightenment's mechanistic ontology has been 
shown to be not the outcome of scientific investigation but rather a general picture of reality that 
began to develop during the theological debates of the late Middle Ages. Recent political 
theorists such as Eric Voegelin and Alasdair McIntyre, and theologians like Paul Tillich and 
Colin Gunton, have been concerned with developing an alternative epistemology and ontology 
that addresses issues of morality, political order, and political reality as a whole. Gunton offers, 
through a reevaluation of the doctrine of creation a new ontology and the Trinity, a new reality 
through harmonious particularity.     
Gunton, although not the only theorist to present a valid argument, seems to provide a 
compelling and pivotal alternative to the Enlightenment?s rigid and mechanistic worldview. His 
insights allow for a different understanding of people, society and the role of government. He 
traces the origins of the modern mechanistic worldview to the failure of Christianity in 
developing a truly Trinitarian theology. He then argues that a Trinitarian theology can offer an 
alternative ontology and epistemology that can be applied to issues in political theory, and I 
believe, ultimately to public administration transforming not only the political, but reality itself. I 
argue that although contemporary approaches revealed the complexities of people, government, 
and society, they also failed to accept the interrelation between all three that ultimately allows 
them to be particulars and one at the same time, a harmonious particularity. In other words, 
through an ontological and epistemological analysis a revelation of the need for the Three (the 
Trinitarian approach) will be established.   
 5 
It may be assumed then ? and will be discussed in this dissertation ? that public 
administration theory has suffered from the same limitation as modern political theory in 
understanding and approaching people and government. I will use Gunton?s Trinitarian 
theological theory to show how public administration theory could be transformed.  
  
 6 
Chapter 1 
 Public Administration: A Question of Ideology and Practice 
Introduction  
This chapter traces the development of public administration theory and reveals its 
attempt to move from a scientistic, technocratic approach to a more humanistic approach. It has 
been quite difficult to find resources on the link between political theory and public 
administration. This has been expected because since the beginning, when Woodrow Wilson 
called for the professionalization of the administration of government, for the purpose of 
reforming the civil service, the two appear to have separated as if by decree. He noted in his 
essay ?The Study of Administration,? that ?it [was] getting harder to run a constitution than to 
frame one? (1887, 200) and made a call to understand politics and administration in different 
realms in other to facilitate the administration?s professionalization. This has been known as the 
politics-administration dichotomy, the separation of politics (as what sets the task) and 
administration (as government in action). Wilson argued that ?administrative questions are not 
political questions,? that the ?practical detail? of application has been left unanswered by all 
thinkers and writers of political theory and/or political philosophy (1887 210, 199). He explained 
that this was not an accident, but a result of the simple society that was under analysis and 
discussion by thinkers and philosophers in the past. He noted that complex government calls for 
the systematic and methodological study of its administration.  
Frank Goodnow in Politics and Administration elaborated more on the dichotomy and 
noted that bureaucracy should be apolitical, that administrative operation is possible without the 
interference of politics (1900). He further described politics to be the will of the people and 
administration the execution of that will remarking that politics ranked superior to 
 7 
administration. He viewed administration as a tool and explained that politics can be what 
ensures political accountability of the bureaucracy. In other words, he supported and upheld 
administration as a function where expertise should be in place in order to carry out ?the will of 
the people,? the politics through the bureaucracy in order to facilitate accountability. Leonard 
White in his 1926 Introduction to the Study of Public Administration further noted that this 
dichotomy was made an ?article of faith? (Guy 2003, 643). Although this has been considered by 
some scholars to be a concept or issue of the past, it can be agreed that is the origin or basis of 
public administration and it is said to have severed or created a split between the ideology and 
the practice, the public and the administration.  
Mary E. Guy in the article, ?Ties That Bind: The Link Between Public Administration 
and Political Science,? describes the importance of this concept as follows: ?this [the dichotomy] 
is emblematic of a turn public administration made at its inception, a decision parallel by 
political science as it embraced the ?god? of science and it ignored the truth of context, history, 
values, and messiest of all, unforeseen, unpredictable exigencies? (2003, 643). In other words, 
effectiveness, efficiency and professionalization were established as the basis of public 
administration, as the perimeters of public administration thought and conduits of action. This 
conceptualization, origin, and understanding of public administration, established in order to free 
the practice or government action from corruption for its professional development, has at the 
same time established from the beginning a dislocation which has consequently blinded 
professionals to other possible and necessary dimensions and other elements of truth that may 
reveal better suitable governmental action or expression of the ?will of the people.?  
This chapter is a brief look into public administration epistemology; it is not an attempt to 
reinterpretation, but is a possible reencounter of the minds that would be beneficial and offer a 
 8 
fertile ground for what is to challenge the application of public administration theory in a new 
age. It is a window into the presentation that public administration theory has attempted to move 
from its original narrow scientific orientation only resulting in the same orientation of western 
political theory. Public administration has emphasized a materialistic ontology and positivist 
epistemology failing to develop a solid grounding from a more humanistic, participatory model. 
New technology and advances in science will present public administration with more complex 
challenges into the application of theory that may further hinder these limitations of public 
administration.    
Broadly, public administration is the study and implementation of policy. More 
specifically, our profession?s title itself encircles in it the paradoxes and complexities that have 
accompanied public administration?s growth and development. Its challenges are part of its 
established struggle between public and administration; equity and efficiency, theory and 
methodology, experience and technique. This means that public administration is both a moral 
endeavor through the creation of a public good and social justice, and a technological, practical, 
procedural terra firma. ?Public administration is both an art and a science. It is not a single set of 
principles and concepts due to its socio-cultural context, its evolving intellectual content, and its 
tacit values? (Dobuzinskis 1997, 298). The term ?public? is also often related to government. 
The different levels of government makes it a complex entity that now includes, non-profit 
organizations, and at times even contractors. In other words, public administration is both 
complexity in the ideological/ theoretical and complexity in the material/ practical.  
Public administration epistemology has developed or been presented mainly through 
paradigms or schools of thought. Although these can sometimes overlap or had a delay between 
the time they emerged and the time they are practiced, they offer a window into the development 
 9 
of conceptualization in public administration and the professionalization of its practitioners. 
Paradigms are defined and described by Thomas S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific 
Revolutions (1962). These are periods of normal science, where what is taught and practice 
seems parallel. It is a period of time where there is certain stability in knowledge that allows for 
the development of certain systematized rationalization that frames thought, knowledge and 
consequently practice. This means that knowledge discovered not only follows a certain pattern 
established by prior knowledge, but also restricts and homogenizes action as well as future 
knowledge.   
When new patterns of understandings are established, which are normally created by 
anomalies, these are called revolutions. Revolutions in social sciences are understood as changes 
in the established structure of society. These also include knowledge, language, and patterns of 
behavior. New revolutions, as explained by Kuhn, have to take hold and be promoted by new 
generations going against established understandings and assumptions, which become at the 
same time practices and behavior within a society (1962). This means that paradigms and 
schools of thought take time to develop, but once accepted, revolutions form part of real world 
experience which then shape and help maintain a reality until a new revolution occurs. This is 
why schools of thought allow possible conceptual options, alternatives to one another, and 
challenges to the unstated conventional wisdom of our cultural context. This includes the 
revelation of progression or change not just in thought but practice within our 
professionalization. These conceptual paradigms offer rational models, general conceptual 
guidelines to make sense of existing social structure, as well as rationally ideal relationships and 
circumstances.  
 10 
This chapter offers a description of these conceptualizations, of these schools of thought, 
and attempt to reveal that the moral dimension perceived to be missing can be found in the 
response to modernity from theological thinkers in political theory. More specifically, this 
chapter develops an understanding of the underdeveloped, underinvestigated, or completely 
ignored roots within public administration that a new approach found in Colin Gunton?s 
Trinitarian theological theory could recover.   
Orthodoxy or the Classical (Rational-Legal and Scientific) School of Thought  
 The first of these schools of thought is the rational-legal school of thought, also known as 
the classical school of thought. In it we encounter the rational-legal and the rational scientific 
epistemological roots. This school of thought reveals the ontology, the origin and bases of public 
administration. It describes its creation and establishes its value, parameters, structure, and 
purpose.    
 The Rational-Legal School of Thought 
The first school of thought normally discussed in the public administration canon is the 
rational-legal approach. Under this school one can find the father of public administration, 
Woodrow Wilson. Wilson called for the development of a science of public administration 
(1887). He notes in his essay, ?The Study of Administration,? that effectiveness, efficiency and 
professionalization are needed as the bases of public administration. He explains that these 
values should form part of the whole management of government. This means that the steps to 
professionalize governmental action should not just deal with personnel reform, as this process 
was intended for an immediate response to the spread of corruption in government at that time, 
but should enact, support, and uphold the organization and the methods of governmental action. 
He noted that administrative tasks have to be ?studious and systematic,? and laid out the 
 11 
importance of a hierarchical structure (1887 200). This ?machinery,? with unity of command and 
top-down flow of decision making, will enhance and provide the arena for decentralization in 
order to supply the ?best possible life to a federal organization,? while promoting accountability 
through clear-cut responsibilities (1887 210, 221). At the same time, this reform to ?running the 
constitution? will advocate broad discretionary responsibility to perform efficiently and be 
transparent in the process (1887, 200).  
In Mastering Public Administration, Brian R. Fry notes that it is this call to 
professionalization by Woodrow Wilson, that establishes the objective of this profession to be 
the ?discover[y of] general principles to guide administrators in the efficient performance of the 
duties? based on systematic and empirical investigations? [determining] the applicability of 
those techniques to the practice of public administration in the United States? (1998a, 2). 
Furthermore, Fry notes that Wilson claims that administration is the same in the private or public 
sector and this sets up business techniques as what can and should be used to manage 
government in order to promote the feasibility of the application of management techniques. This 
was further promoted by Frank Goodnow.  
Goodnow, in his book Politics and Administration, approached the study of public 
administration from a functional point of view, and although he promotes the idea of the 
separation of politics and administration, he also acknowledges that they are forever intertwined 
(1900). This means that for the administrative part of government to run efficiently, control 
measures need to be developed to avoid too much entanglement. He recommends greater 
administrative centralization and more autonomy for local legislative bodies, which should result 
in a more efficient bureaucracy and greater expression of the ?will of the people.? This results in 
 12 
the creation of regulatory measures and structures not just for control but procedural action. It is 
the ground or arena in which ultimately the rational-legal authority will be exercised.   
The concept of the rational-legal can be traced to Max Weber. He presented three types 
of social legitimate authority: traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal. Traditional legitimate 
authority is that which is understood as an inherited and or passed on. Charismatic legitimate 
authority is understood as that authority given to an individual because of their likability, their 
personality or talent of persuasion. Rational-Legal authority refers to authority that derives 
consent or legitimacy from law and established regulations. This is promoted as technically 
superior. Consequently, one may ask what gives a bureaucracy authority to action. Before 
answering this question, it is important to discuss the concept ?bureaucracy.? Max Weber in 
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (The Theory of social and Economic Organizations) presented the 
concept of bureaucracy (1922; Stillman 2005; Shafritz 2004). This is not to say that he created 
this concept, but through a study Weber noted the rationalization of the West and presented this 
structure or form of organization not only as the ideal form of organization in a rational society, 
but also as a great expression of this rationalization. It is this structure that not only allows the 
legitimization, promotion, and systematization of legal-rational authority but also the spirit or 
desire to legitimize authority to be exercised.  
According to Weber the ideal bureaucracy has six characteristics: fixed and official 
jurisdictions; hierarchy; expertise in management; written rules and documentation (record 
keeping); full capacity of the official (appointment, seniority); and general rules. Fixed and 
official jurisdictions can be said to be the first step toward an effective rational organization. This 
first characteristic establishes not just the limits and structure of authority but also results in the 
institutionalization of responsibility. In other words, it establishes limits and expected action 
 13 
according to the rank and position held by the member of the organization. Position and rank, or  
hierarchy, will not only emphasize and ground fixed official jurisdiction but also establish an 
effective channel of communication exercised according to authority, which will facilitate 
direction and clear expression of expectations, goals, and commands while establishing the 
necessary level of expertise in the position held. It is this level of expertise that most highly 
supports the professionalization of public administration because it establishes the requirement 
of certain skills for the duties performed according to the position held within the organization. 
The level of expertise needed for every position in the organization will be supported and find 
expression in written documentation. Written documentation will ensure not just accountability 
and some level of transparency, but also ascertain the level of depersonalization that allows equal 
treatment in the allocation of goods and services. At the same time, the level of expertise will 
also find certain reliance on the concept of full capacity and seniority. If one is to establish a 
professional public service, certain training is needed in certain areas, and other training for other 
areas, because of the different levels of expertise and responsibility that the position held may 
require. This means not only expertise is needed but also vocation. Vocation is what will mediate 
not only the ills of politics but also the ills inherent in the rationalization of the process (see 
Robert Merton 1957, ?Bureaucratic Structure and Personality?). Vocation is like a natural 
tendency or inclination to a position, a job, or a profession held, and is going to be required more 
of senior employees. This natural tendency towards the job will not only emphasize 
professionalization but also carry within certain values needed for the exercise of politics and 
discretionary authority. This is presumed because a natural tendency towards a job will 
inherently contain a respect for the job, and in the case of public administrators, and inherent 
sprit of service. In a bureaucracy, all of these characteristics are encircled under the direction and 
 14 
structure created by written rules. These, like the law, have to be known, understood, and equally 
applied to all employees to facilitate action and decision making within the organization, while 
ensuring procedural equity, legal accountability, and effective execution. 
Bureaucracy is then the epitome of rationalization. It is what offers the necessary ground 
and/or structure for the development, establishment, and continuation of the rational effective 
execution of public administration as profession. Accepting Weber?s ideal bureaucracy as the 
structure of our government, as noted by Brian R. Fry, in ?Max Weber the Process of 
Rationalizations,? supported not only the equal and impersonal application of the law, but also 
emphasized the legal-rational approach to the ?will of the people in action? (1998b, 22-23). In 
other words, bureaucracy became the arena for the apolitical rational administration of 
government. Bureaucracy is then the perfect place where action can be guided by law and 
regulation while limiting power and promoting the exercise of discretion.  
It is Norton Long and John Rohr who further ground public administration as a rational 
profession through the U.S. Constitution. Norton in ?Bureaucracy and Constitution? argued that 
bureaucracy was a legitimate element of the state and that it deserved an official role in 
government. He went as far as insisting that it should be recognized as the fourth branch of the 
government (1952). This is because it is not only the direct connection between the will of the 
people and governmental action, but argued that bureaucracy is a more ethical and professional 
entity than the U.S. Congress that should not be under the control of one branch or segment of 
the population.  
This is further expanded or emphasized by John Rohr in To Run a Constitution: The 
Legitimacy of the Administrative State (1986). Rohr notes that administration is governing, that 
the United States Constitution validates the administrative state, and that the administrative state 
 15 
has struggled to establish its validity because of its intentional distancing from the United States 
Constitution itself by the founders of the administrative state. He attempts to legitimize 
bureaucratic authority through the U.S. Constitution giving origin, basis, and strengthening the 
rational-legal approach. In other words, it makes the U.S. Constitution the ultimate rationality, 
the authority of public administration and the ultimate schemata through where the rational-legal 
is exercised. 
During the 19th Century empirical observations and logical deductions came to be seen as 
the only legitimate sources of knowledge which can be said to also be as a result of the age of 
positivism. This means that science and technology served as the ground for the establishment of 
a new social, political and moral order. Wilson emphasized this fact and values dichotomy and 
bureaucracies as instruments concerned with the implementation of policies (Dobuzinskis 1997). 
One can see the structure given to the profession of public administration since the beginning. 
The call for professionalization was also rooted in the momentum started by the Enlightenment 
establishing a very effective, machine-like, rigid, rational organization that supports and upholds, 
enhances, and promotes rational processes for the expression of the public will. It was the 
bureaucracy and inherent rational-legal exercise of authority that also allowed for the fast rise of 
positivism and scientism in the practices of public administration.   
The Rational-Scientific School of Thought  
The essence of scientism in public administration can be traced to Frederick W. Taylor. 
He presented in The Principles of Scientific Management, a business oriented approach, using 
scientific analysis as the only means to derive facts that will shape decision making (1911). 
Taylor thought that scientific analysis like time and motion studies of work would yield the ?one 
best way.? He developed this under the assumption that workers operated below their capacity. 
 16 
In other words, full capacity of the employee in the held position needed to be understood, 
clearly stated, and evaluated. It is through his ideas that management is placed as the key factor 
for efficiency in the workplace. Furthermore, he argued that these methods could be employed in 
the government to ensure governmental efficiency. This has been known as scientific 
management. The principles presented are the following: scientifically study each part of a task 
and develop the one best way of performing it; select the best person to do the job; train, teach 
and develop the worker; provide financial incentives; divide work and responsibility so that 
managers are responsible for executing the work accordingly. As one can see, these principles 
not only uphold science as the revealer of truth and knowledge but are allowed to be exercised 
and promoted within the bureaucratic structure, within governmental decision making, and 
according to scientific and economic values.  
Leonard White wrote the first textbook on public administration, Introduction to the 
Study of Public Administration (1926). He is responsible for the establishment of the first 
epistemological step in this profession. While one can say that Wilson established the purpose of 
the profession, it is White who set the bases for the knowledge to build upon. He established a 
generic theory based on research (the scientific method) and from a business perspective. He 
believed that in public administration a scholar needed to be a practitioner and emphasized that 
administration is a unitary process that can be studied uniformly at any level. In other words, 
White called for epistemology to be based primarily on science and secondly supported by 
practice (neither without). He also noted that management should be the focus of the 
organization and not the law. He challenged the focus on legal-rational authority and in a way 
upheld science even above the governmental constitution.  
 17 
White, like any other thinker of public administration, embraced the paradoxical nature of 
this profession advocating the scientific base in epistemology while challenging the developing 
faith in the scientific approach. He did this by acknowledging and promoting that administration 
is primarily an art, while advocating its transformation into science. He defined public 
administration as the management of men and materials in the accomplishment of the purpose of 
the state. He noted that the work of administration incorporated all three governmental activities: 
legislative, executive, and judicial (1955, 2).  
These calls, for the professionalization, the structuralization, and scientification of public 
administration and government itself, were answered. The result was a further systematization of 
public administration. Luther Gulick in Papers on the Science of Administration (1937), 
introduced the concept of POSDCORB, now an acronym imprinted in every public 
administrator?s mind. In his paper ?Notes on the Theory of Organization,? POSDCORB is the 
main prescription given in its attempt to develop a ?best way? for the practice of public 
administration. This acronym stands for Planning, which is identifying goals and methods to 
accomplish those identified goals; Organizing, which is establishing a formal structure of 
authority; Staffing, which has to do with personnel functions like recruitment (picking the right 
person for the right job), training (ensuring that the right training is given to the right person for 
the job), maintaining morale (by designing the right compensation for the right job according to 
its level in the organization); Directing, which is making decisions and relaying them via specific 
general orders, and the right channels; Coordinating, which is the correlation of the various parts 
of the organization to work towards the specified goal; Reporting, which is informing and/or 
information keeping through records, research, reports, and inspections; and Budgeting, which is 
 18 
fiscal planning, accounting, and control. These prescriptions broke down even further the 
recommendations and observations of Weber regarding bureaucracy.  
In addition, Gulick noted that politics and administration are interrelated, and that in 
periods of change and/or evolution government must strengthen those agencies that deal with 
administrative management focusing on leadership, planning and coordination. Coordination, 
Gulick stressed, must be done by organization of authority or organization of mind. He explains, 
?there must be leadership with increased scope for action, but every step toward increased power 
must be matched with a step towards increased accountability? (1937, 45). This focus on 
leadership increased the power of the executive at every level and trickled down the importance 
of scientification and rational decision-making. It is like Gulick embraced the idealization 
presented by Weber and espoused research under the now dogmatic accepted value of ?one best 
way? placing sole responsibility onto leadership. Presenting two divisions within this new 
understanding of organization, staff (those members within the organization that are about 
knowing, thinking, and planning) and line workers (those members within the organization that 
do), Gulick attempted to modify the ?one best way? approach, promoting not a generic approach 
to management in organization, which could be difficult after presenting POSCORB, but by 
managing organization by major purpose. The focus is on leadership to coordinate, and on the 
purpose of mind, that which drives the actions of the organization. However, either by line 
employees (those doing), or by staff (those planning), further promotes scientism and a 
mechanistic worldview.   
This conceptualization or attempt at scientization came from the collective work in 
Gulick?s Papers on the Science of Administration where Lyndall F. Urwick, James D. Mooney, 
Henri Fayol, Elton Mayo and others presented ideas focusing on management, administration 
 19 
and organization hoping to spark the development of accepted theories of administration (1937). 
The word ?accepted? in this case means scientifically developed, reliable, and valid. Lyndall F. 
Urwick in ?Organization as a Technical Problem? analyzes the methods of division of labor, 
allocation of duties, and delegation of authority (Gulick 1937). He states that subdivision and 
allocation results in efficiency; that delegation is a necessary part of leadership and management 
and it is not divorced from authority. In other words, the breaking down of authority and 
responsibility results in efficient and responsible exercise of authority. James D. Mooney in ?The 
Principles of Organization? presents organizational principles, coordination, 
leadership/command, and division of employees between line and staff, emphasizing that 
organization should be like a graded series of steps in terms of level of authority and 
responsibility (Gulick 1937). In this organization the top command is also the top coordinator 
bringing together all the individual jobs. These papers not only support the established rational 
structure of bureaucracy and chain of command but also further imbed scientification as public 
administration reality.  
Henri Fayol, in ?The Administrative Theory in the State,? and Elton Mayo, Henderson 
and Whitehead in ?The Effects of Social Environment? noted that public administration agreed 
and promoted this idea of top-down command and explained that the top administrator should 
have coordinating ability, professional competence in the area of control, general notions on all 
essential functions of the organization, stability and good staff keeping in mind that the social 
environment of the workplace affects productivity (Gulick 1937). Mary Parker Follet expanded 
this insight in ?The Process of Control? and noted that organizations have four fundamental 
principles of coordination: coordination as the nature of unity, coordination by direct control, 
coordination in the early stages of the process, and coordination as a continuous process (1937). 
 20 
In other words, Follet revealed coordination as a process of interaction at all levels of the 
organizations and one that is continuous. Furthermore, she notes that coordination, the 
responsibility of the top person in command, requires observation and experience that needs to 
be exercised at all levels of the organization. It is Follet who started forging the path for human 
relations.   
Luther Gulick summarized all these papers, in the POSCORB concept. In ?Science, 
Values, and Public Administration,? he noted that the basic good in public administration is 
efficiency which is accomplishing the work at hand with the least expenditure of man power and 
materials (1937). This then is the main responsibility of the coordinator. This concept took 
shape, with the help of Gulick, in the highest coordinating position of them all, the executive 
branch. On 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt called for an evaluation of the executive branch 
and formed a committee, The President?s Committee on Administrative Management, headed by 
Louis Brownlow. The other members of the committee were Charles Merriam and, as mentioned 
above, Luther Gulick. The purpose of this committee was to identify the resources needed for an 
efficient executive branch, which included a more specific description of the responsibilities and 
possible responsibilities of the executive branch. The Brownlow Commission, as it became 
known, expressed the same concepts that were espoused in the Papers on the Science of 
Administration. The recommendations in general advocated the expansion of the executive 
branch (the top coordinator), and the creation of the staff that would help the execution of the 
responsibilities of the executive branch. It was noted that new principles were not needed, but a 
modernization of the managerial equipment that is an expansion of the White House Staff. This 
has allowed the president, the executive, to have the necessary knowledge to make decisions, 
delegate, and most importantly coordinate. However, the commission noted, the staff should 
 21 
remain small in number, remain in the background, issue no orders, make no decisions, make no 
public statements, and should have a passion for anonymity. The commission also recommended 
strengthening managerial agencies as arms of the chief executive, extending the merit system, 
reorganize the 100+ agencies into a few large departments, and revising fiscal systems in light of 
private practices, particularly records, audits and accountability to Congress. This was like the 
rational-scientific mind establishing a brain in which it would exercise its power where 
everything and everyone is viewed as a tool.     
This classic school of thought establishes clearly the bases, the ontology and 
epistemology of public administration. These are not just efficiency, and effectiveness, but also 
rational, scientific and economical epistemological schemas. Business roots cannot only be 
traced to the capitalist base of our society, but mainly the business practices webbed from the 
beginning as the solution to better government practices. In addition, this can be emphasized by 
what Richard Stillman II call an antistatist ontology.  
In ?The Study of Public Administration in the United States: The Eminently Practical 
Science,? Stillman notes that the ontology of public administration is mainly antistatist. 
Antistatism is the tradition, ?ideas, and doctrines expressively hostile to [the] central governing 
institutions in society, which argue for reducing, limiting, even eliminating their role(s) and 
activities? (Stillman 2000, 16). In other words, Mary E. Guy, notes that it is our public 
administration nature not only to embrace science but at the same time approach governing with 
a rational and economical approach (2003), which as Stillman notes, paradoxically works against 
the existence of the state itself (2000). Government is viewed as a tool, a machine, where 
instruction is given and execution follows, where effectiveness is expected to result in more 
professional execution of the ?will of the people,? and where structure, chain of command, and 
 22 
rational, economical, and legal bases are established as the parameters of epistemology and 
practice of public administration. At the same time, there seemed to be a connection of politics, 
or the public with not only corruption but the inefficient, the ineffective. This negative 
correlation results in a simultaneous rejection of public administration, of the state. It is then 
noted that the mechanistic worldview, is our inheritance, our departure ground, and with it a 
simultaneous apprehension and rejection of our nature, the public administration ontology.  
Challenges to the Scientific Approach 
Before we move to the human relations school of thought, there is a kind of overlap 
period that becomes influential later, which is discussed in this section. It is in this period that a 
paradigm revolution brews giving birth later to a new paradigm. It challenges the scientific and 
rational approach to public management by including the human element in the efficiency 
process. More specifically, it attempts to bring to light human socialization. One of the first to 
question the common approach to management was Mary Parker Follet. She challenged the 
executive, authoritative, impersonal approach in organizations by introducing the idea of 
participatory management. She challenged the idea that position, rank, and/ or authority 
determines the role of the members of an organization. She introduces human relations and 
human psychology into organizational management. This is a challenge to the mechanistic 
worldview where leadership and humans themselves are viewed as cogs in the machine. Follet 
was an advocate of employee empowerment, constructive use of conflict, and flatter 
organizations. She defined leadership outside formal authority and within ?the law of the 
situation,? dictated by knowledge and experience, not position (Fry 1998a, 112). She noted that 
organizations function on the principle of power. However, to be efficient, organizations need to 
exercise ?power with? (participative decision-making) not ?power over? (coercion) (Fry 1998a, 
 23 
116).  She advocates power sharing, integration, and the need for conflict resolution noting that 
conflict should not be feared but faced, acted upon, to allow a solution to emerge (Fry 1998a, 
106).  
Follet presented four means of conflict resolution: voluntary submission of one party, 
struggle and victory of one party over another, compromise, and integration. Integration is the 
solution without compromise. In the compromise approach to management both parties lose. It is 
inherent in the understanding that compromise is reached by each party giving up a part or some 
of the desired outcome. A better option, according to Follet, is integration. Follet explains that 
this can be possible through the ?law of the situation? (Fry 1998a, 112).  This is the idea of 
conflict resolution according to the facts, the demands of the situation, not according to the 
relative superiority or authority of any party and/or the concept of manipulation (making a 
decision their idea). In other words, she notes that contract, law and ballot democracy are all 
win-lose situations and not a synthesis of ideas. She was calling not only for a different approach 
of decision-making, and exercise of authority, but a different arena where this can take place. 
This new approach redefines leadership as a role to transform (help the group to release energy) 
and to anticipate and provide conditions for constructive change (unite and help in creating new 
purposes). These transforming assumptions should be existent not just in management, but the 
structure where management is practiced, and even more important where communication is 
exercised. This establishes social interactions as reciprocal not linear. These social interactions 
are relationships at all levels: relationship between those working together, and between those 
members of the organization providing services and those receiving services outside the 
organization. These transformed organizations allow for what Follet calls a ?circular response? 
that includes social responsibility (Fry 1998a, 103, 105 & 114). This, in turn, will make the 
 24 
interaction symbiotic, organic, and mutual. In this environment or new reality, new 
conceptualization of leadership would be needed, and new understandings of role of government 
and citizens.     
Follet was not the only scholar to attempt or promote a move away from the focus of a 
rational structure to create efficient management. Chester I. Barnard in ?Functions of the 
Executive? viewed organizations as cooperative systems, socialization as a contract between 
employee and the employer (1947). This interactive and tacit agreement revealed what is referred 
as Acceptance Theory of Authority. This means that the amount of authority or ?power over? (as 
referred by Follet) equals to what the employee or follower allows the leader or employer to 
have. In other words, Barnard is also challenging the accepted approach to efficient management 
based authority (as position) and authoritativeness (as coercion). Acceptance Theory of 
Authority depends on four conditions: clear understanding of expectations, the existent ability 
for the employee to comply, the perception that the directive is in compliance with 
organizational objectives, and that directives cannot oppose personal goals.  
While Barnard was moving away from the idea of a central control, he was enhancing the 
needed focus and importance of the executive (the top coordinator). Barnard noted that the 
?functions of the executive? were to maintain balance between the needs of the organization and 
the needs of the individual through effective communication. Instructions, directions, and 
expectations need to be clear, known, accessible and within short and direct lines. According to 
Barnard, this can be accomplished by understanding ?zones of indifference? (1947, 169).  These 
zones are noted by Barnard to be the range in which each individual willingly accepts orders 
without consciously questioning authority. According to Barnard, this can be expanded with 
incentives that meet the needs of the members of an organization, which are not only monetary 
 25 
but may be or include status, prestige, and personal power. Barnard also presented the existence 
of informal groups in the organization that may include outsiders. These informal groups are 
aggregates of personal contact and interactions, and associating groups of people that may 
impact the process of the organization, communication, interaction, maintenance of balance and 
power exchanges (forerunner for Mayo). Barnard?s conceptualization not only supports certain 
epistemological bases about management and efficiency but also brings attention to a new 
understanding of efficiency to include its members and their motives. At the same time, it 
attempts to transform understandings or assumptions of power as Follet, to where power is 
shared and at times held by the members of the organization and not necessarily the leadership of 
the same. However, the mechanistic approach, which is inherent in the epistemology, seems to 
have kept this from a full-blown transformation of public administration.     
The attempt to focus away from rational organization as the answer to efficiency could 
have not taken place without Robert K. Merton. Merton is known to be the greatest critique of 
Max Weber?s concept of Bureaucracy. In Bureaucratic Structure and Personality, Merton states, 
against Weber?s original argument, that bureaucracy prevents efficiency (1957). He noted that 
the bureaucratic structure creates what he calls ?displacement of goals? (1957, 198).  This means 
that the formal role of a member of an organization becomes more important than the substantive 
one. This takes place when following the rules and regulations replace the goal of the 
organization. In other words, following the rules and regulations or obeying the rationality of the 
structure becomes the goal itself displacing the organizational goals. Furthermore, bureaucracy 
turns means into ends. The rigid structure prevents adjustment to new situations and results in 
over-conformity that stagnates and prevents the organization from further growth.  
 26 
At the same time, Merton noted that depersonalization and adherence to rules makes 
bureaucrats impersonal and warns against trained incapacity ? or trained incompetence (the 
incapacity to adapt to new condition) or occupational psychosis (where people develop day to 
day routines around preferences, discriminations, and aversions that are the result of demands 
put on individuals through their particular occupational role in the organization) (1957). Merton 
challenges the effectiveness of bureaucracy by challenging the definition of efficiency itself 
while not only emphasizing the bureaucratic shortcomings noted by Weber, but also 
incorporating the call for the integration of psychology into coordination (1957).     
This transitional period was still connected to the traditional school of thought through 
efficiency but attempted to re-define it outside its rigid structure. However, the profession is still 
moving towards the goal of effective management and still within scientification while trying to 
place emphasis in the importance of the individual within the rational structure. This new 
emphasis on the individual opened the door for what has been known as the Humans Relations 
School, or Social Sciences paradigm.    
The Social Science Paradigm  
The Social Science Paradigm includes the human relations model school and behavioral 
approaches. This paradigm transforms public administration by focusing more on individual?s, 
their motivation, and response to different styles of leadership. However, this response took 
place within the rigidness of the structured arena. Some attempted to answer questions about 
relationship patterns, individual behavior, individual power and influence, and more. This 
section will briefly note the most significant influences in the public administration 
epistemology.      
 
 27 
The Human Relations Model  
The Human Relations School of thought builds on Follet?s and Barnard?s work focusing 
at a greater extent on the needs of the individual, on human behaviors, on their desires and needs. 
These elements then become important for the organization?s effectiveness and efficiency. They 
become just another part in the rational process. One of the most influential scientists in this 
school of thought is Elton Mayo. During a period from 1924 to 1927, Mayo performed an 
experiment on work environment and its effect on productivity. This study is referred to as the 
Study of Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company and is discussed in The Human 
Problems of an Industrial Civilization (1933). Accepting the desired and ideal form of 
organization in rational approaches, he wanted to find out why in an era of efficiency there was 
no efficiency. Creating changes in the lighting of a factory, he intended to discover that changes 
in the environment could bring about more efficiency but the results revealed much more of what 
was expected and changed the focus of the study giving birth to social sciences. He observed that 
changes in productivity came about because of the attention given to the workers, not the type of 
changes introduced to the environment. This is now known as the Hawthorne Effect. This 
discovery is a great contribution in human relations and motivation, as well as the approach to 
scientific studies in the social sciences. Mayo revealed that work places are social environments 
that contain informal groups which are not formally acknowledged in the structure or 
organizational chart but greatly influence the power structure. He presented scientific evidence 
that supported Follet?s argument that attention to human relationships was needed. In addition, 
Mayo also noted, as Follet and Barnard previously theorized that power was not necessarily all 
derived from a position, but in relation to how much the worker is willing to allow that power to 
 28 
be exerted supporting the understanding of power relations as not just individualistic or within a 
formal structure, but also within the informal groups in the organization (Mayo 1933).  
Abraham H. Maslow in ?A Theory of Human Motivation? further expanded the 
understanding of human motivation by introducing a human motivation theory in which men and 
women moved up or down a ?Hierarchy of Needs? (1943). The assumption is that once a need is 
met, that need is no longer an incentive or motivator. The ?Hierarchy of Needs? from bottom to 
top is presented as follows: Physiological Needs, which are essential needs like air, water, food,  
sleep, and sex; Safety Needs, which have to do with safety from harm, and job stability; 
Love/Belonging Needs, such as love, affection and the need to belong to a group; Esteem Needs, 
which have to do with self-respect, recognition, attention, appreciation, and importance; and 
Self-Actualization/ Self Fulfillment Needs, which involve doing for what one is best fitted for; 
the maximization of one?s potential (see Illustration 1-1).  
 
Illustration 1-1 Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs  
On a different approach, but not away from the focus on the individual, Douglas 
McGregor in The Human Side of Enterprise presented a different argument (1957). He placed 
emphasis on social psychology and research in human relations in achieving a better fit between 
 29 
the personality of a mature adult and the requirements of a modern organization. He popularized 
a humanistic managerial philosophy, Theory X and Theory Y. He explained that theory X 
represents scientific management, something that is no longer useful. Theory Y represents 
human relations. They both assume that management?s role is to organize resources, which 
include organization members who were chosen to best benefit the company. In other words, the 
attempted escape from scientific rational rigidness was still within the established scientification 
where humans were once again viewed as an extra element in the rationalization process, cogs 
that needed to be chosen according to the needed shape and form for the machinery to work 
effectively. Beyond this, they are quite dissimilar.  
Theory X assumes that work is inherently distasteful to most people and therefore people 
attempt to avoid it. This means that most people are not ambitious, have little desire for 
responsibility, and prefer to be directed. Under theory X, most people are assumed to have little 
aptitude for creativity in solving organizational problems, resist change, are gullible, and 
unintelligent. This establishes motivation to occur only at the physiological and security levels of 
the hierarchy of Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs. McGregor argues that these are no longer a 
motivator in modern society, since basic needs are mostly met. Furthermore, he notes that with 
Theory X it is assumed that most people are self-centered and must be closely controlled and 
coerced to achieve organizational objectives. This means that organizations need to foster an 
environment of command and control. This results in a leadership style of hostility, low output, 
and/or demand for higher reward.  
 McGregor then recommends Theory Y. Theory Y accepts that work is something as 
natural as play. This occurs if conditions are favorable. This means that people will be 
committed to their quality and productivity objectives if rewards are in a place that addresses 
 30 
higher needs. This means that people will be self-directed and creative to meet their work and 
organizational goals and committed to them. Theory Y assumes that people are responsible, 
creative, and will demonstrate ingenuity. He also notes that this kind of attitude spreads and that 
is under this conditions that people will seek, accept, and embrace responsibility. This leadership 
style will result in decentralization, deregulation, job enlargement (as in broadening of the scope 
of an employee?s job), participatory management, and performance appraisal that may include 
self-assessments. This theory is based on higher needs that are assumed to be never completely 
satisfied and therefore are good motivators. McGregor acknowledges that not all people may 
have the level of maturity assumed by Theory Y and therefore may need tighter control that can 
be relaxed as the employee matures. It is McGregor that creates a kind of transition into the 
actual focus on behavior through his inclusion of social psychology in human relations.   
Behavioral Approaches 
However, one of the most important and most influential epistemological steps in public 
administration was the questioning of the conceptualization of ?the rational man? itself (Dahl 
1947). Robert Dahl in ?The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems,? presented three 
problems that need to be addressed in public administration which seemed to have been rooted in 
the rigid rational assumptions of the classical school of thought (1947). These three problems 
were about a different approach to the politics-administration dichotomy, to human behavior 
(outside the rational man), and to look at context outside systematizations. In other words, Dahl?s 
call for public administrators to look beyond, outside the rational schemata set in the classical 
school of thought which no longer seemed to fit reality.        
The first and most influential person to have answered this call is Herbert A. Simon 
(1957). He is said to be the basis for the behavioral approaches that further grounds all activities 
 31 
of management in scientification. This school of thought seems to be a kind of culmination of 
rationalization, scientific approach, and human relations where human behavior takes center 
stage but in a mechanistic and scientific arena. Simon?s main contribution to public 
administration is his argument that it is necessary to understand the principles developed in 
theory as being more like proverbs (Simon 1957). This means that POSCORB is more like a 
guide where values oppose each other and/or are mutually incompatible (Simon 1957). This 
resulted in a new call for a more realistic administrative theory based or rooted in practice but 
most importantly challenging the accepted ?rationality.? At the same time, Simon called for the 
inclusion of individual values as part of the decision making process. This was exposed in 
Administrative Behavior where, following the called by Wilson, he sought to construct a more 
realistic science of administration (1957).  
Simon adopts a procedure that emphasizes systematic and empirical investigations, going 
beyond observation, pure science into practical science. He studies decision premises, the 
process of decision-making and/or the act of choice. Through this study, he challenges the 
?Rational Comprehensive Method of Decision-Making.? This method of decision making is a 
linear limited thinking where one defines the perceived problem or issue, establishes a goal or 
objective, identifies all alternatives and/or means to resolve the identified problem, selects the 
best alternative using cost-benefit analysis, implements best alternative, and measures results.  
Simon?s challenge took place with the concept, ?bounded rationality.? He noted that 
normally men make decisions within a structured and limited universe where the process of 
decision making follows established axioms, assumptions, beliefs, and/or patterns of thinking 
and where information and ability of exposure of the information is limited which limits itself 
the process of reason; limited rationality. In addition, he challenged the rational approach by 
 32 
questioning the politics-administration dichotomy noting that the dichotomy cannot take place 
because there was no possibility for a value-free environment to achieve efficiency 
(descriptively) and that facts can no longer be controlled because of the growing complexity of 
issues and science (normatively). Simon then replaced this dichotomy with the fact-value 
dichotomy (1957). According to Simon, this presents a better basis for a science of 
administration and administrative conduct because it divides decisions into two: fact premised 
(these are about the observable world that can be true or false) and value premised (these are 
should or ought to statements, good or bad, but not factual) (1957). This distinction would help 
identified scientific processes and if or when their truth or falsity can be assessed.  
Simon made this distinction through models of decision-making. He noted first the 
economic man. This model promotes value maximization. He noted that although this is an 
appropriate normative model of decision-making, it ignores uncertainty which pervades the 
decision making process. He then exposed the satisficing man. In this model, limits in the 
cognitive and analytical abilities allows for the acceptance of only those alternatives that are 
satisfactory, sufficient in an area of ?bounded rationality.? The third model is called the 
physiological man. This decision making model is self-explanatory and focuses on affective 
considerations. The last model presented by Simon is the sociological man. This model 
emphasizes role-playing. In other words, the focus is on social roles, rationality, and leaves little 
room for choice. This model establishes rationality no longer as value maximizing but in a 
continuum (1957). In this continuum you have bounded rationality in one end, and complete 
knowledge on the other (see Illustration 1-2). According to Fry, this means that most decision-
making would fall somewhere in between and ?even madness has its methods? (Fry 1998a, 192). 
 33 
This is consistent with one of Simon?s greatest contributions: the understanding or assumption 
that all human behavior has a rational dimension.      
 
Illustration 1-2 Simon?s Rationality  
Simon viewed organizations, as Barnard and Follet, as a system of exchanges and even 
though he agreed that authority lay in the relationship not the position, he emphasized that a 
hierarchy was necessary. In other words, it is in this exchange where members of the 
organization enter into a contract and accept the relationship that will be in place where authority 
is recognized establishing direction of communication and authority, making obedience to that 
authority less of a challenge. Simon notes the importance of how an order (given by the 
authority) is presented to how much merit may come from following the order. In other words, 
Simon expands on Follet?s logic of the situation. It is this that will establish, by defining the 
situation, a construct -the reality or universe- in which the order and issue are being addressed. 
This takes place through the decision-maker?s perception of future events, possible alternatives 
and possible outcomes. Simon seems to support some of the conceptualizations from the 
classical school of thought while including ideas from the human relations school. Most 
importantly, Simon brought about a focus on human behavior, the role of the unpredictable 
Simons? Definition of Rationality: 
?the selection of preferred 
behavioral alternatives in terms of 
some system of values whereby the 
consequences of behavior can be 
evaluated? (Fry 1998, 191). 
     Unconscious/non-deliberate  Conscious/ Deliberate  
 Deliberate 
  
Objective: Maximizing given values in a 
given situation. 
Subjective: Maximizing value relatively to 
knowledge of decision-maker.  
Conscious: Is conscious adjustments of 
means to ends, but could be subconscious. 
Deliberate: Is deliberate adjustment of means 
to ends, but may be non-deliberate in 
character. 
Organizational: oriented towards the 
organization?s objectives.   
Individual: oriented towards individual 
goals.  
 
 
Could be organizational or individual 
Objective 
Subjective 
 34 
member of the organization in the rational organization, an acceptance of every member as 
rational, and the importance of leadership and authority beyond and within traditional power 
structures.  
This new understanding did not leave informal groups or the newfound understanding of 
influences outside a formal organization without further discussion. Phillip Selznick conducted a 
study of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) where he found an example of cooptation. He 
describes this in ?Cooptive Mechanism? as the ?process of absorbing new elements into the 
leadership or policy determining structure of an organization as a means of averting threats to its 
stability and or existence? (2004, 153). This concept reflects the conflict between formal 
authority and social power outside of an organization. Selznick noted that TVA absorbed local 
elements into its policy, which determined its structure. TVA ceded its agricultural policy goals 
to powerful local interests in exchange for political support in order to survive. According to 
Selznick, this revealed two forms of cooptation: formal and informal. A formal cooptation is 
when an organization publicly absorbs new elements into its structure and it takes place when 
authority is questioned or self-government needs to be established in a large organization. An 
informal cooptation occurs in response to community pressure. According to Selznick, this can 
be a good idea gone badly because new elements change decisions and values within the 
organization. This understanding of cooptation does not only accept the nature of socialization, 
but expanded it to organizations and opens them to the influence of their environment for 
coexistence. Rigid structure where communication is a top down process is no more. However, 
this accepted openness of organizations resulted in an analysis of how this can help efficiency. 
This means that we discover that human relations are complex, that men?s motivation is 
complex, and that there is evidence of interdependence and interconnectedness, and somehow, 
 35 
we force these complex ideas into a systematized rationality with the same question: ?how can 
these new factors formulate efficiency.? As mentioned at the beginning the idea of ?one best 
way? with roots in economy and science is an epistemological base and some would say the 
principle still present that manipulates even new understandings within our profession.  
New approaches in public administration pave the way that reaches the highest levels of 
management. The Hoover Commission, established under the chairmanship of former President 
Herbert Hoover in 1947, was created to study once again shortcomings in the delivery of 
government services. This commission delivered its first reports and recommendations to then 
President Harry S. Truman and Congress in 1949. The recommendations included the reduction 
in number of agencies; the need to flatten organizations; the need to address staff support, the 
shortage of highly qualified, vested administrators, and coordination and organization of general 
administrative services across organizations. More importantly, the commission challenged the 
detailed and rigid statutes and regulations shaping the process of governmental action, calling for 
the humanization of organization and the reduction of impersonalization and red tape.  
At the same time, there was a call for improvements in budgetary processes and 
standardization and simplification of accounting. These recommendations resulted in a 
reorganization of the executive branch, the establishment of performance budgeting, and 
replacement of efficiency and effectiveness with accountability and control. Why is this 
important? This commission showed that the development of administration epistemology 
(whether public or private) is applied to the government process and deliverance of services but 
not without a certain level of politicizing of the application itself. In other words, public 
administration has developed along the lines of scientification, efficiency, effectiveness, and 
control, which is in essence political control. While the influence of human relations and human 
 36 
behavior schools of thought can be clearly highlighted, the assumptions that so far have been 
presented by these schools are now forming part of the management practices within the rational 
reality, within the arena and purpose of efficiency and effectiveness. In other words, human 
relations and human behavior was analyzed within economic man rationality. It is this bounded 
knowledge that has limited public administration epistemology.       
One great example of this is the The Forest Ranger (1960). In this book, Herbert 
Kaufman notes the U.S. Forest Services success in producing individual agent behavior that is 
consistent with headquarters directives. The organization is constructed within the rigidness of a 
rational bureaucracy, where unity of command and hierarchy allows clear directions and well 
developed training, promotions, decreed diaries, and constant reminders of status of agents or 
representatives. This also required that higher-level authority be informed of all ranger activities, 
prohibitions and/or penalties or transfers. Communication was then taking place top-down and 
bottom up. This can be said to have also come about as a result of Simon?s influence through his 
challenge to the rational comprehensive method of decision-making and systematizing rationality 
and individual values accepting a hierarchical structure because of the accepted contract which is 
formalized through common values and goals. Kaufman noted that decision-making takes place 
within established directives, and within each person?s value system. In this case, large 
organizations fostered lower level decision making when voluntary conformity has been 
accepted because it allows for consistency between individual behavior and headquarters? 
directives. This is done through the internalization of mode of behavior which takes place 
through manipulation of intellect where the members of organization input their needs shaping 
organizational needs which results in the member meeting those needs and feeling proud about 
it. The integration of the different schools of thought into the analysis of the forest rangers 
 37 
revealed not only bounded rationality in action where the public administration universe is still a 
rational, rigid, scientification of knowledge and practice but also where the goal or aim for public 
administration is still effectiveness and defined by efficiency within economic values. This 
reveals to some practitioners and scholars that certain values are absent from the inception of 
public administration epistemology that need to be addressed.    
The New Public Administration   
 It is obvious to practitioners and scholars that, however vast and complex, our 
epistemology is, something is missing. Some of the responses will note a lack of an ethical 
dimension and others will focus on efficient accountability, which will result in the need to 
produce systematized decision-making, data, objective, and difficult-to-contest basis for 
governmental action. This feeling for the backing of administration with facts (data) has 
accompanied public administration till the present time, epistemologically and ontologically it 
has been the constant request and it will culminate in a union with economics where this 
becomes our common language. This section will briefly note major influences of this aspect of 
public administration epistemology.   
Public Administration and Values 
Noticing that certain values were absent from public administration epistemology can be 
said to have created a reaction that resulted in a school of thought that centers on questions of 
public administration values. This school of thought questions the politics-administration 
dichotomy; rational bureaucracy; the role of the administrator in politics, policy, and 
administration; and the idea of administrative discretion. Carl J. Friedrich in ?Public Policy and 
the Nature of Administrative Responsibility? and Herman Finer in ?Administrative 
 38 
Responsibility in Democratic Government,? exemplify this debate which centered on public 
administration and democracy (1940).  
How can one ensure that public officials will act responsibly? Friedrich can be said to 
have taken the Theory Y approach and advocates internal mechanisms of self-control (ethics) 
guided and at times supported by ?inner-checks? (internal mechanism within the organization of 
profession). This personal ethics would limit or control ones actions while the organization 
promotes and fosters loyalty and a sense of responsibility through developed administrative 
environment and guided by professional standards (from colleagues, professional organizations, 
and/or scientific evidence). Ethics could be developed based on professionalism and moral 
standards. Accepting that some irresponsible conduct is inevitable and nothing can be done about 
it, good policy can help. Policies are like decision guides, manuals about what to do or not to do 
in a given situation. These should offer effective actions and stimulate initiative. This should be 
done in terms of actualities and technical knowledge elicited from the administrator with sound 
work rules and effective morale.  
On the other hand, Finer can be said to have argued from a Theory X approach.  
He argued that external punitive controls are both essential and the only effective means to 
assure the right behavior. Finer puts emphasis on the external control. This can be like a system 
of checks and balances, politics, and/or the organizational structure itself. He calls for a strict 
legal and administrative accountability in public administration. He calls for control, sanctions, 
and putting the executive as the top authority. He argues for strict administrative subservience to 
elected officials (classical approach to public administrators). 
 It has been argued that Finer won the argument because of the Administrative Procedure 
Act (APA) of 1946. This act passed to ensure uniformity and openness in the procedures used by 
 39 
the federal agencies through governing regulation, adjudications, and rule-making in general 
terms. This is the major source of federal administrative agency law and even state agencies? 
administration and regulation are governed by comparable state acts. However, it can also be 
argued that both approaches in attempting to bring about the inclusion of ethics in public 
administration failed to see the strict establishment and further expansion of the rational-legal 
mechanistic worldview rooted in public administration epistemology. In other words, the attempt 
was to assure action, not promote better public administrators. Within the value of efficiency the 
discussion turned to accountability, not an inclusion of an ethical dimension in decision-making. 
Simon had noted that a public agent cannot act only within the external parameters established, 
but will also be influenced by personal mores, so values would be distorted. This is not a 
rhetorical question, or na?ve, but an attempt to ask whether the possibility can exist for more, for 
a bridge. Some answers have been given by looking into management directly, and mainly 
leadership, where an ideological and material approach to public administration can be found. 
However, this could not have taken place without shedding light on the importance of the public 
employee. Only this way can the public employee move away from the perception of just acting 
within the parameters prescribed in the law, away from ?trained incompetence.?        
 The New Public Administration 
Although the attempt of the prior school was to include ethics as a value in public 
administration, it seems only to have mechanized decision-making by focusing the argument and 
therefore solutions on internal and/or external structures of control. However, by focusing on the 
important role that public administrators play in social interaction and construction of social 
values, the New Public Administration helps to further the discussion of decision-making and 
ethics even if this still took place within the prescribed parameters of supporting and enhancing 
 40 
the scientification of truth. The New Public Administration school of thought critiqued the state 
of public administration, its disregard for values and social equity, and its unconditional 
acceptance of the status quo. This happened in conjunction with the questions of value that were 
presented above which seemed to have brought to light new approaches.  
Charles A. Lindblom in ?The Science of Muddling Through? was the first to question the 
understanding of reality from which knowledge and understanding for the purpose of action was 
derived. He exposes the rational comprehensive model of decision-making in government as a 
false explanation of how decisions take place (this is the root model, similar to Simon?s rational 
decision making model). Then he presented the successive limited comparison model as the 
reality of the decision-making process, the incremental model (1959). This is a model of little 
steps at a time, muddling through. His analysis pits economic man v. satisficing man. 
In the Rational Comprehensive model (root), based on a model of economic man, values 
and objectives are clear, so that empirical analysis can be used to determine best policies. With 
this model, policy formulation comes through means-end analysis. This means that the final goal 
or desired outcome is determined first and then a plan is made to achieve that goal or outcome. 
The test of a ?good? policy is that it can be shown to be the most appropriate means to the 
desired ends and its analysis is comprehensive. In this model, all important facts are assumed to 
be taken into consideration and theory is often heavily relied upon. In the Successive Limited 
Comparison (branch), based on a model of satisficing man, values, goals, and the empirical 
analysis needed of alternatives are closely intertwined (Lindblom 1959). This just means that 
instead of a linear reasoning, there is a presumption of a more complex analysis. Since means 
and ends are not easily distinguished, means-end analysis is often inappropriate. In this model, 
the test of a ?good? policy is that various analysts agree on that policy (Lindblom 1959). The 
 41 
analysis itself is drastically limited where important possible outcomes, potential alternatives, 
and values are neglected. This means that any comparative analysis is reduced or eliminated and 
there is no reliance on theory. 
This new light shed onto decision-making in the government called for new approaches, 
and brought new understandings of policy construction and implementation allowing for the 
possibility of better policy. In this spirit, Dwight Waldo in The Administrative State notes that 
the field of public administration needs to develop further and differently from where it has been 
(1968). He denies that a science of politics is possible and emphasizes that public administration 
cannot be value-free, and argues that the politics-administration dichotomy is no longer 
meaningful. Instead, he insists on new approaches to organizational theory. This needs to be 
developed and does not necessarily originate in the private sector. Waldo pushed for new 
grounds to be explored in public administration where a possible separation of Western history 
and culture may be possible in order to understand problems in communication, cooperation, and 
industry. In other words, the shortcomings in the public administration epistemology are not just 
disciplinary, but rooted in origin. He argues that the roots of public administration are not in 
political science but in psychology and sociology.  
This challenge found expression in a group of young (under thirty) political science 
academics in the 1968 Minnobrook Conference on New Public Administration, which was 
facilitated by Waldo who got involved in a deliberate attempt into helping transform public 
administration. They were driven by the spirit of finding not only a new public administration, 
but also fresh perspectives, based on ?ideas of participation, consensus building, sharing, mutual 
trust, and even love of mankind? (Stillman 2005, 22). H. George Frederickson in ?Towards a 
New Public Administration? presents the synthesis and his interpretation of what emerged of the 
 42 
Minnowbrook Conference (1971). Frederickson called for adding social equity to efficient, 
economical, and coordinated management through the ?New Public Administration.? New 
Public Administration should not be value neutral and the champion of causes. He noted that this 
could be accomplished by dividing organizations in four ways: distributive process (concern with 
the external distribution of goods and services which became the precursor to a customer 
oriented approach to public administration); integrative process (group decision making); 
boundary-exchange process (relations with clientele and government); and the social-emotional 
process (human relations). Alice M. Rivlin further expands on this in ?Systematic Thinking for 
Social Action? (1971).  
Rivlin discusses in a little more focus approach models to improve effectiveness of social 
services. She promotes decentralization of discretion or decision-making where federal 
government should provide the funding while allowing lower level governmental authority to 
make decisions on service management and rewarding those that are efficient. The localized 
discretionary authority would establish organizations that are controlled and accountable to the 
community and promote effectiveness through sensitivity to the communities they serve. This, 
however, promoted following the market model arguing that it would give power to the 
individual to make choices according to their preferences. One important aspect of the NPA is 
that the success of the model will depend on the development and use of better measures of 
effectiveness, and an aggressive attempts to find new methods, test and publicize results. This 
includes an evaluation of origin of power relations where decentralization would allow for the 
effectiveness of the new understood permeability of organizations where coexistence and 
interdependence could generate effectiveness in rational classic form but include new principles, 
like equity. The NPA is not completely challenging the epistemology, but hoping to add to its 
 43 
systematization more values like equity and ethics. However, within this call for the exercise of 
social equity in organizational or governmental action, there was a mutual argument for 
democratization through the market model by acknowledging and supporting the power of 
individual?s choice through competition. This can be seen to be developing in Rivlin and further 
emphasized by Vincent Ostrom and public choice theory.           
 Public Choice or the Rational Economic Approach 
While the development of public administration epistemology has had periods where 
thinkers call for a reevaluation of efficiency, of rationality, and of scientification, these seemed 
to have found a heaven on earth in the public choice school of thought. It is as if public 
administration epistemology had achieved its perfection in the arrival of this school of thought. 
Public choice theory is a branch of microeconomics that developed from the study of taxation 
and public spending. It emerged in the fifties and received attention in 1986, when James 
Buchanan received the Nobel Prize in economics. He was only one of the architects. The other 
was Gordon Tullock. This theory takes economic principles to analyze people?s actions in the 
market place and applies them into people?s actions in collective/ social decision-making. Just 
like in the market, this theory inherently implies self-interest as the driving force. 
It was Vincent Ostrom who introduced these economic principles and consequently 
inherent values into public administration. In The Intellectual Crisis In American Public 
Administration, Ostrom notes that in a world of public administration where nothing makes sense 
anymore, the tools of economists can offer new grounds to explore administrative behavior 
(1973). He promotes the application of economic principles to make bureaucracy respond to 
public demand for effective government. Ostrom acknowledge the transcendence, overlapping of 
jurisdiction, and the fragmentation of authority through multiplicity and/or diversity of 
 44 
organizations. However, he notes that this complexity could facilitate production in the public-
service economy, which is possible through the analysis of individual preferences and collective 
decision-making. Criticizing centralization and concentration of power in the executive, he 
revealed the need to pay attention to the demand side of politics. He noted that executive 
centralization is only interested in the ?supply side.? In other words, the focus becomes power in 
the executive at the expense and ignorance of the ?demand side,? the public preferences. Public 
choice could help the ?demand side? by revealing to the ?supply side? the public preferences. It 
is then followed that collective interest cannot be pursued unless the individual interest is known 
and met.  
One can see that rational effectiveness has reached a climax with the help of economic 
bases. This new economic values embrace takes place regardless of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom?s 
awareness that individual acting in self-interest does not necessarily result in what is best for the 
collective, for society. Furthermore, economic rationalization results in high external costs. 
External costs are costs that someone else bears (usually society) that are imposed by others 
(1971). This was because in the center of the spirit of democratizing public administration was 
the antistatist drive against what had so far being established. The struggle seemed to have been 
between democratic social values and economic values, which seemed to have resulted in the 
economic social values. This was further emphasized and made more concrete by Anthony 
Downs.  
In ?An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy,? Downs discusses 
government in economic theory because he perceives the need of a single general theory that can 
offer balance (1957). There have been two areas where government has been forced to apply 
rules on how decisions need to be made based on economic theory: public finance and the 
 45 
economy itself. Government has the role of maximizing social welfare, but this has not been 
defined and the motivation may not necessarily need to exist within the process. He then presents 
a model of rational government decision making that consist of the following agents: political 
party (men seeking income prestige and power), the winning party (men having control until the 
next election), and government?s economic power (having the power to nationalize or privatize). 
Using economic theory he notes that political parties formulate policy strictly with the purpose of 
maximizing votes and not social welfare. As a result, the party will move to the center during a 
campaign in order to capture voters. Downs also revealed that people are not rational when 
picking a candidate to vote for in that many vote according to one issue or how the incumbent 
has performed (retrospective voting). He presents the individual as the basic unit of decision-
making accounting for the rationality of democratic politics. He argues that politics can be 
compared to entrepreneurs in a profit seeking economy. In other words, politicians formulate the 
policy that will gain them the most votes and the steps taken are not divorced from their personal 
qualities. This means that political parties and politicians follow economic principles in search of 
maximization of votes, while individuals are only pursuing self-interest but not collective self-
interest maximization.   
This economic approach to public administration also establishes the understanding of 
bureaucrats themselves as something different, away from public values. Anthony Downs in 
Inside Bureaucracy focuses on the behavior of bureaucrats (1966). He noted that bureaucrats 
inside organizations, defined by public choice principles, are self-interested, maximize utility, 
are committed and fight for survival. This fight involves externalities, and outputs which are 
difficult to measure. Within this new established understanding of bureaucrats, Downs presented 
five types: the statesmen, who are those whose broad general loyalties encourage them to resolve 
 46 
contentious matters through compromise; the advocates, who are optimistic, energetic, and easily 
swayed by superiors, equals, and subordinates; the zealots, who equate the public interest with 
specific goals; the conservers, who seek to maximize their security and personal convenience; 
and the climbers, who seek the path with least resistance to maximize personal power. All five 
types act within their organization and at times tend toward actions that maximize the 
organization?s interest. All five types are now interrelated to economics and driven by self-
interest that finds communication in economic concepts and assumptions. This theory 
transformed not only the bureaucrat, and the context or arena where it acts, but organizations 
themselves. This then becomes the analysis of individual organization, but not as a collection of 
members.   
William A. Niskanen, in ?A Reflection on Bureaucracy and Representative 
Government,? presented a bureaucratic behavior theory (1971). He notes that agencies maximize 
their budget surplus for their own benefit and sustainability and that this results in bureaucracies 
having a monopoly of buyers and suppliers of their service, which are usually politicians. This at 
the same time established that bureaucracies do not increase efficiency because the sponsor is not 
motivated to increase bureau efficiency since they cannot benefit from the improved efficiency. 
However, surpluses can indirectly benefit bureaus and/or sponsors, which establish the 
understanding of bureaucrats to be driven by budget maximizing. This is why they vote to 
increase size of budgets while there is no incentive to be efficient.  
Economic theories not only changed the understanding of organizations and bureaucrats, 
they have changed the approach to collective action. In The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur 
Olson challenged the pluralist idea that common interest would unite to take action (1965). He 
notes that individuals are rational self-interest beings, motivated by their own private interests. 
 47 
This means that an individual will only join a group if the individual believes the benefit from 
belonging to the group will outweigh the cost of being in that group. In other words, self-interest 
finds expression in cost benefit analysis. Sometimes in this analysis free riders are taken into 
account. Free riders are those members of the groups that enjoy the benefits of an organization 
without contributing. This does not mean that an individual will automatically not be interested 
in the organization because there are large and small group dynamics that can create interests. 
These are anonymity, contribution, and enforcement. Facilitating understanding of collective 
action Olson compared group behavior to market structures. For him one actor is a monopoly; 
few actors, that is, powerful groups that lobby for specific legislation, consitute an oligopoly; an 
intermediate size group, small groups like neighborhood associations, and active groups with 
sub-optimal results are examples of monopolistic competition; and very large groups that have 
many members with little involvement (typically just voting) are cases of perfect competition.  
This transformed or displaced democracy can understood as perfect competition where 
groups or organizations pursue goods (although not necessarily the same type of goods for each 
group). Goods can be either rival or non-rival or excludable or non-excludable (see Table 1-1). 
This rational classification of goods allows for understanding the level of interest of the group 
and consequently the intensity of involvement or operation. Olson explained that non-excludable 
collective goods do not present interest to a rational person and therefore will provide no or 
minimum effort to maximize welfare. At the same time, Olson noted that the size of the group 
alters how the group operates. For example, small groups will be more effective in providing 
collective goods and large groups will do it with some level of coercion or incentive.  
Economic rationalization, or public choice, thus seemed to have allowed the 
scientification and mechanistic worldview to climax in public administration. Just as Olson 
 48 
expected, public administration found a common language and displaced values by distorting 
goals themselves, form the individual level to the organizational level, which could be local or 
national. Economics became the focus, the end, the means, and the value.  
 
 
Excludable 
 
Non-Excludable 
 
Rival 
 
Pizza, Furniture, Socks Common pooled resources (fish in the sea) 
 
Non-Rival 
 
Toll roads, cable TV Fresh Air, National Defense, Libraries 
Table 1-1 Olson?s Table of Goods 
Politics and Values in Public Administration  
Although the bounded rationality within public administration?s epistemology seems to 
not move far from scientification, and even now embraced the high level of rationality and self-
interest from the economic mind, little by little questions have been attempted to bring light to 
ignored values like equity and ethics. This school of thought, Politics and Values in public 
administration, will raise some of the most important questions about values outside the 
efficiency and the rational rigid realm of public administration challenging accepted truths and 
new embraced economical values. This school of thought will force new approaches and bring 
about changes in the general understanding of public administration. Politics and Values in 
public administration rejects the politics-administration dichotomy accepting an interconnectivity 
and interdependence between politics and administration, between representation and action, 
and, in addition, considers the study of public administration to be the study of policy. This not 
only brings together the New Public Administration but also appears to move forward into a 
public administration that includes ethics in discussions and analysis outside the mechanistic 
worldview of public administration epistemology.   
 49 
One of the first questions raised makes a remarkable break between the public realm and 
the private realm. Is private and public the same arena? Paul Appleby in ?Government is 
Different? sheds light on the fact that private and public realms are not the same (1945). Public 
administration epistemology is rooted in private management, and has until now accepted a 
distorted, forced application of private theories and private approaches into public management. 
Lindblom also addresses this indirectly when he notes that teachings in the public administration 
profession were not reflecting the reality of public life and that this is a constant that has 
pervaded public administration from the beginning (1959). If our understanding of reality is 
misconstrued, then all knowledge and approaches will seem to be irrelevant and useless ensuing 
in no results. This is where Appleby offers a solution. He argues that public and private 
organizations have different goals. Public organizations aim at service (non-profit). Private 
organizations aim at profit making their operation and environment not the same as a private 
organization. In public organizations decision-making is shaped by the public scope, 
accountability, and political character making the process more complex and difficult.  
Graham T. Allison successfully expands on this subject in Public and Private 
Management:  Are They Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects? Allison notes that 
government is similar to private organizations in the perspective of POSDCORB (1980). 
However, it is in POSDCORB and everything else that there are major differences. One of the 
major differences is time perspective. Government managers tend to have short time horizons, 
making short-term decisions. This is also stressed by duration, the time period elected officials 
have to make decisions. The length of political appointments is relatively short. In addition there 
seems to be difficulty establishing clear measurements of performance. It is difficult to develop 
standards from which to measure good and efficient public managers. Some reasons are the 
 50 
personnel constraints, no wide latitude for action, high regulation, politics, and high levels of 
scrutiny. This scrutiny is diversified. It takes place within the public, the legislature, and, at 
times, the judiciary. This at the same time invites into the universe of public scrutiny, the media. 
Another factor making a strong case for the differences between the public and the private is 
direction. In the private sector a goal can be set and direction taken towards that goal. Public 
managers often mediate decisions to respond to a variety of pressures making goal paths less 
direct. This essentially makes the bottom line nonexistent. Allison makes us aware that all this 
emerges from our constitutionality. This is because in the United States government, the 
functions of general management are constitutionally spread among competing institutions: the 
executive, two houses of Congress, and the courts. This, as noted by Justice Brandeis, makes 
public administration even more difficult since the constitutional goal was ?not to promote 
efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power? (Myers v. U.S., 1926).   
The understanding of the differences between the public and the private is and continues t 
be one of the major elements missing from a better understanding of public administration, 
because it is this strong embedding of private management epistemology that has helped the 
warped reality or misconception on the context of public administration, which is in the realm of 
the political. A good public administrator would have political inclinations, organizational skills, 
and executive experience. They must have the ability to consider many different interests and try 
to operate in a fair, uniform manner that can be explained to the public (Appleby, 1945). This 
means that politics and administration cannot be separated in the public arena because even 
though the public and the private realm are different, they interrelate, interconnect, and are 
interdependent (although often only seen this way in economic values). This means that the 
function of public administration is then to create interaction between public and private 
 51 
accepting that this position inherently carries with it stricter ethical standards due to the public 
nature of the institution. This is because the public nature of an organization accepts the inherent 
role of representation and/or agency to the citizenry.   
It is this accepted political dimension in the public administration epistemology that 
opens new forms of understanding cooptation, interdependence and interrelation. Norton E. Long 
in ?Power and Administration,? supports the political side of government stating that power is 
the lifeblood of administration (1949). He understands that politics has always been related to 
power but notes that power flows from the sides of the organizations and up the organization, 
from the citizenry, the customer, the clientele, to the representative. At the same time and 
supporting the complexity or interrelation of politics and administration, Long points to the fact 
that the citizenry is not the only source of responsibility, accountability, and power. This also 
comes from the legislature and is cultivated with knowledge and expertise. In addition, while the 
focus on the citizenry inspires analysis of normative values, it is Aaron Wildavsky in ?The 
Political Implications of Budgetary Reform,? who notes that normative theory was not realistic 
and that descriptive policy could help (The Budgetary Process, 1961). Wildavsky explained that 
the important question addressed should be the ??who gets what? of governmental decisions? 
(1961, 183). In other words, he drew attention to the budget as a representation of political 
interests, an expression of who prevails in the process. He noted that the budget is an expression 
of ?what the government does or intends to do? making allocation a political not economically 
governmental action (1961, 184). As a result, one views democracy as the arena responsible for 
the source of corruption where the citizenry is now an interest group, a client (Lowi 1969). This 
means that administrative power comes from statutory authority, with customers, the budget, 
benefits to customers, expertise, and knowledge resulting in different sources of power for 
 52 
administrators, which makes power a complex and fragmented political entity that has to be 
negotiated from different directions. 
Fragmented power is not necessarily bad. Our governmental structure was designed to 
control power through fragmentation. However, this complexity further increases the number of 
those involved in the power structure through access points. The political no longer only 
involves the citizens, and the diverse groups within the citizenry, but also the legislature, the 
structure and all the processes within the governmental structure. This has brought attention to 
public organizations experiencing conflictive values. It is Herbert Kaufman who notes three 
values that drive administrative institutions and are in constant conflict (?Emerging Conflicts in 
the Doctrines of Public Administration,? 1969) and the need for these values to be balanced 
(?Administrative Decentralization and Political Power?, 1969): representativeness, politically 
neutral competence (expertise, explicit standardization, and politics/administration dichotomy), 
and executive leadership (control and authority in the top coordinator, results in reduction of 
organizations). The balance between these conflictive values should not be understood in the 
form of sheer power, but influence or adjustment. For example, low representation will result in 
inability to impact governmental decision and weak executive authority. This means that the 
level of representation of an organization would have to be increased in order to help 
governmental action. This interaction and interdependence is understood and now obvious in the 
new political arena.     
This understanding of the political can be said to have received a step back with the 
responses to how to address the new found reality in public administration. This is because even 
though it was intended to expose the complexity of the public realm, it grounded an 
understanding of allocation of benefits as a struggle of power between the haves and the have-
 53 
nots. At the same time, it made the budget itself a political game where only the players change 
but the game remains a zero-sum, Hobbesian reality where winners and losers compete. 
However, more damaging was the bureaucratization, systematization, and structuration of this 
process, of the political realm as a market democracy.  
It is Dwight Waldo who invites new approaches to public administration. Waldo in ?A 
Theory of Public Administration Means in Our Time a Theory,? explains that a theory of public 
administration should fuse the art of administration and the science (1990). He expose that some 
of the challenges in public administration are ingrained and that public administration suffers 
from a kind of low self-esteem, from a very close relation to business. This, according to Waldo, 
public administration has failed to embrace the behavioral movement, and contains a complex 
relation with law and the courts that have made public administration?s definition, purpose 
and/or responsibility more confusing. This is enhanced not just by the political aspect in the 
public realm, but the boundaries between society and the administrative state, which are unclear, 
weak, and constantly shifting. He invites public administration epistemology to look to other 
branches of knowledge for insights, like psychology and sociology. This is the call and legacy 
left to contemporary theorists.  
Contemporary Perspectives 
 Contemporary thinkers are faced with dealing with the old, the new, and the renewed. 
Conversely, the issues addressed have not changed, nor has the push and insistence in the 
systematic empirical analysis format. Public administration seems to be in a stage of continual 
testing, in a cyclical motion for the establishment of validity in the public administration science, 
which some would argue is non-existent. Pubic Administration seems to be in a permanent 
search for the most efficient answer. There are aspects of our epistemology asking whether the 
 54 
egg (bureaucracy) came first or the chicken (bureaucrat) (Hummel 1977). Others were 
concentrating on describing what a bureaucrat is and/or should be (Dilulio 1994), whether power 
should be centralized or diffused (March 1984), whether there should be more regulation or less, 
whether there should be more incentives or less, economic or intrinsic (Dilulio 1994), and 
whether we should be conceptualized as citizens or customers (Barzelay & Amajani 1992; 
Osborne & Gabler 1992). It was a stage that seemed to have accepted the political aspect of the 
public realm and still tried to fit it once again within the private understanding of management. It 
is like public administration is locked in a paradigm itself of scientification and efficiency from 
its conception. It seems that Waldo?s invitation for a completely new approach to public 
administration has failed.  
Laurent Dobuzinskis in ?Historical and Epistemological trends in Public Administration? 
notes that public administration is not fully positivistic nor wholeheartedly post-positivistic but is 
?standing at the brink of the postmodern condition? (1997, 298). The postmodern condition is a 
clear and positive approach to the paradoxical nature of the public administration. It is where 
public and administration interrelatedness and interdependence can be linked through efficiency 
and equity. It is as if the link between the politics and management is public administration itself. 
Although there is substantial  agreement that objective analysis of policy problems and 
management of complex organizations by unbiased technical experts has failed and that 
hierarchical structures and top-down approaches no longer constitute adequate responses to 
problem situations, scientification and positivism is still the arena in which policy formulation 
and analysis is performed and it needs to be accepted as offering a effective tool on the practice 
of allocation of services, or exercise of equity.  
 55 
However, in this sea of scientification and positivism, there are some thinkers attempting 
to address unnoticed or ignored issues that may help make this link more evident.  Camilla 
Stivers can be said to be one of the most important leaders for the restoration of government, and 
provides a possible answer to Waldo?s invitation. In ?Towards a Feminist Perspective in Public 
Administration,? Stivers introduces a feminist approach to public administration (1990). She 
explains that to be a feminist is ?to be critical of existing reality,? to shed light into ?left out or 
ignored ideas? that offer or establish a new understanding (1990, 477). Some of these are: the 
question of administrative knowledge, the model of an ideal public servant, the nature of 
administrative discretion, and the dimensions of the administrative state. She notes that 
feminists? perspective on administrative discretion emphasizes power as an enabling capacity; 
authority as an accountable expertise; and leadership as facilitator. This is different from the 
hierarchal approaches, which are known to be masculine. In other words, she invites our 
epistemology to exercise feminism to challenge not only the approach to political roles and 
dialogue but also the definitions of basic values like freedom.    
Similarly, in Government is Us, King, Stivers, and Box were inspired to write after the 
bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma in 1995 (1998). This event has been seen by some 
as a symbol of the extent to which government trust had fallen and at the same time reminded 
people of the close involvement of government in their lives. The American Federation of State, 
County and Municipal Employees, a few days after the bombing, published an advertisement in 
newspapers around the US, showing pictures of the police, firefighters, physicians, nurses, 
counselors, and other workers who joined in the emergency rescue. Accompanying the photos 
was the proud message: ?This is our government? (1998, Preface).  This is very significant 
because this exposition of the government took place in the 90?s while government discontent 
 56 
was at its highest and represents the paradox that is government itself. Stivers and King give 
three reasons for high levels of discontent with government: strong control, inefficiency, and 
disconnection between government and the citizens (1998). Offering examples of active 
citizenry, Stivers and King represent the transformation that is perceived to be needed in public 
administration epistemology. They present a philosophy of citizen power through political 
involvement in administration, where the role of the administrator would be to find ways or 
establish processes to facilitate political activity (1998). This is what has become to be known as 
?democratic public administration.? This is a kind of wing in public administration epistemology 
struggling against the rigid mechanistic rationality established and embraced by the 
scientification of public administration.  
This can be further noted by the introduction of the New Public Service. Janet and Robert 
Denhart in The New Public Service: Serving not Steering, note some of the shortcomings in 
public administration that have been noted in this chapter and called for public management to 
become Public Service. This means that values based on rational and economical efficiency need 
to be transformed and understood in different realms. They call for the total transformation of the 
role of the public administrator: ?Public Servants do not deliver customer service, they deliver 
democracy? (2007, xi). They point out the similarity between the Old Public Administration and 
the New Public Administration. This means that although different issues were highlighted and 
different foci were presented, the recommendations to address those issues have been pretty 
much the same, all within the essential values of efficiency, rationality, and economics. This 
does not mean the public administration epistemology has not grown or evolved, but it has been 
kept from evolving into something more encompassing of the values in the public. Those values 
to uphold and enhance the necessary processes in the political.   
 57 
More recently, Camilla Stivers examines the concept of the political, addressed 
philosophically by Hannah Arendt, and noted by Appleby and Allison as mentioned in this 
chapter, in Governance in Dark Times: Practical Philosophy for Public Service (2008). Stivers 
notes that after 9-11, there was a belief that everything, as we have known it, was forever 
changed. She not only criticizes this perspective, but also invites to take this period as a time of 
renovation or restoration of the understanding of ourselves as public administrators and citizens. 
This essentially will transform the role of public administrator to a kind of citizen agent where 
public administrators are not just managers, or boat helmsman, but as Denhart and Denhart 
appeal, servants of the public. Stivers notes that the conceptualization of public administrators 
has shrank to dealmaker, contract monitor, and overseer, while governance has expanded to 
statecraft (according to duty, justice and reason). This means that somewhere in public 
administration epistemology there is a basic disconnection between the role and purpose of 
public administrators, government, and the citizenry. Stivers recommends public administrators 
to find solutions in philosophy (2008). Stivers brings the discussion into further focus noting that 
the important aspect of the public, in which the real action takes place, the political, is what is 
threatened in ?dark times? and it needs to be not only safeguarded but upheld as an important, if 
not the most important, aspect of the public realm in which public administrators act and help in 
the action. This transforms public administrator?s responsibility to safeguarding societal 
structure, forming part of transforming it, and protecting its most important aspects that allow for 
this transformation, the political (2008).     
Conclusion 
This chapter has attempted to open a window into the canon and epistemology of public 
administration. It is the establishment of the context and argument of this dissertation, the 
 58 
presentation that public administration theory has attempted to move from its original narrow 
scientistic orientation, with its materialistic ontology and positivist epistemology, attempting to 
develop a solid grounding for a more humanistic, participatory model, but has ultimately failed 
to do so. This is not an attempt to reinvent, or reconstruct public administration but is a possible 
reencounter of the mind that would be beneficial and offer a fertile ground for what is to 
challenge the application of public administration theory in a new age. This can be possible by 
looking into public administration theorists that have already noted shortcomings or flaws, or 
incomplete epistemology within public administration theory and who offer a possible solution 
to a lack of certain values in governance which would transform from the bottom up, or inside 
out (Allison, Appleby, Denhart and Denhart, Waldo, Stivers and King, and Stivers). It is in the 
acknowledgement of the internal, and interconnectivity amongst individuals that through the 
inclusion of certain values could transform public administration into a more humanistic, 
participatory public administration. All of these recommendations, in my opinion have fallen 
short of any integration, transformation, or recapitulation of public administration epistemology 
where what has been ignored, like values of the political and the public realm, public 
participation, deliberation, and justice, can also co-exist with reliability, efficiency, and 
rationality. We are in need of new approaches or a re-encounter of the old, new, and renewed. 
We need something that will truly nourish and maintain what Denhart and Denhart called the 
?public spirit? (2007, 30). Something that, as Stivers recommended, will not only bring together 
fact, deliberation and knowledge, but allow for its true deliberation, accumulation, and practice.      
I believe we can find such resources in Colin E. Gunton?s Trinitarian theology. In The 
One, The Three, and The Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, Gunton argues that 
there is a relation between the way creation was formulated in the West and the shape of modern 
 59 
culture (2005). This formulation has led to contradictions and paradoxes in the modern 
worldview. A revision of three main features of creation is needed that will unify the intellectual 
and material while establishing a better understanding of humans relation to each other and to a 
higher power offering a better understanding of harmonious particularity. This is what he calls 
and presents as a Trinitarian theological theory and it can help to the current state of public 
administration that is disengage, apart from the public, other public administrators, and reality.  
Before considering Gunton, however, I will briefly examine the history of Western 
political theory. This will accomplish two important goals: first, it will place the issues involved 
in the history of public administration theory in a broader context, and indeed show how debates 
within public administration theory are related to issues within political theory and Western 
politics generally; second, it will explain the issues that Gunton?s theology attempts to respond 
to.  My next chapter, then, simultaneously expands the scope of the discussion while narrowing 
its focus. 
 
  
 
 60 
Chapter 2 
Political Theory: A Question of Ontology and Epistemology 
Introduction 
From the first chapter one can see the evolution of public administration theory, revealing 
its attempt to move away from its early scientific/technocratic structure to a more humanistic and 
participatory approach. Chapter 2 will place this evolution in a broader context and reveal the 
basis that public administration inherited. We will examine Western political theory, showing 
how it developed a narrow empiricist epistemology, mechanistic ontology, and utilitarian 
individualistic social model. We will perceive the disintegration of this model into nihilism. The 
chapter will also note the philosophical and theological responses to this crisis. The chapter will 
conclude with the introduction of Colin E. Gunton, whose Trinitarian theology, can, in my 
opinion, form the basis for a transformation of public administration theory and practice.  
What is political theory? It has been defined as a qualified activity of theorizing or 
understanding about the state and its relation to other states, in relation to public life and affairs, 
which may include questions about authority and government (Boucher and Kelly 2008; Freeden 
2004; McKinnon 2008; Spragens 1976). In other words, the study of how we should live 
together in society. Consequently, since human society is part of a larger universe, political 
theory involves the question of reality, the state of the now, the understanding or production of a 
worldview. This means that political theory strives for the whole picture, ?a full-scale way of 
understanding? (Spragens 1976, 1). Political theory presents arguments that may criticize or 
support existing political arrangements or alternatives to these. These arguments reveal the 
possibilities of and limits to political action.  
 61 
Thomas Spragens describes the role of political theory in his book Understanding 
Political Theory (1976). He refers to political theory as the master science. The term ?master 
science? does not imply the greatest precision or certitude. This description comes from the 
comprehension of the scope and relevance of political theory. In other words, political theory 
demands a comprehension (or understanding) of reality, from which it derives an understanding 
of the purpose of political society, which in turn reveals the relationship between society and 
individual humans. This means that the term ?master science? has nothing to do with precision  
but simply analyzes society?s complex function. Political theory aims at encompassing the 
understanding of all other sciences into the construction of a worldview, into the understanding 
of society itself, its reality ?as a comprehensive vision of politics? (135). In other words, 
psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, theology, physics, metaphysics, and other sciences 
coming together to form a conception, a picture of political reality. ?Far from being an arcane, 
esoteric or cocooned practice, it is the preliminary to, accompaniment of, and consequence of all 
political activity and processes. We should not regard political thought as a separate area of 
political study, or as a rarefied, even luxurious, form of political self-indulgence- as some hard-
nosed and pragmatic detractors would have it- but should recognize it as a normal and necessary 
aspect of the political that requires careful analysis both for what it is and for what it does,? 
political theory as a theory of reality (Freeden 2004, 3).  
This in itself, the way political theory has been described and explained, can be said to be 
or form part of scientific epistemology; however, at the same time, it introduces and reveals 
everything that is not concrete and measurable, everything that goes beyond the empirical 
conception of knowledge. Michael Freeden notes that one of the great strengths of political 
theory is its ethical framework or its normative dimension, ?the possibility of the convergence of 
 62 
individual judgment in a reasonable equilibrium, as well as the question of the objectivity or 
subjectivity of values? (2004, 6). This means that political theory is not a systematic 
amalgamation of knowledge but a natural unification of the concrete and the abstract, the 
scientific and the unscientific, the empirical and the unempirical. Political theory is then the 
historical which looks at the time, the author?s intentions, and focuses on the author?s immediate 
social or political environment, and the philosophical which allows for the development of social 
implications, of a moral truth.  
Spragens argues that political theories generally are responses to the perception of crisis 
in the political system.  He explains that theorizing about politics seems to have four stages, and 
these four stages can help us to understand political theory. The first is the perception of crisis, as 
mentioned above; the second is diagnosis, that is, understanding the cause of the crisis; the third 
is imaginative reconstruction, or imaging what the political system would look like with the 
source of the crisis, resolved; and the fourth is prescription, that is, making concrete 
recommendations to resolve the crisis.  In the present day, many political theorists have argued 
that since the late nineteenth century, Western societies have developed a profound crisis in the 
form of nihilism (1976).  
Nihilism means the loss of any moral or even epistemological standards.  As Friedrich 
Nietzsche first argued, modernity has dramatically expanded our capacities to understand, 
control and even change our environment (both natural and social) but has left us unable to make 
moral and political sense of our sense of those capacities (Nietzsche 1966).  Ultimately, 
following numerous recent political theorists (Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, Martin 
Heidegger, Helmut Thielicke, and Eugene Rose, to mention some), I will argue that this situation 
 63 
has developed because of the limited materialistic ontology and our positivistic epistemology 
that have come to characterize modern thought.   
Crisis 
 After postmodernism, we have been living in an era of disengagement and disjunction 
where individuals have grown comfortable only interested on their immediate needs and 
disconnected from everyone else?s. At the same time, knowledge has been established to belong 
in different realms and professions have kept to themselves and arguing with other professions to 
have the answer to the issues perceived in society. There is a great need to unify knowledge, not 
just for interdisciplinary cooperation, but for a more holistic approach to our epistemology, to the 
understanding of our canon. The first place to start is the ontological and epistemological crisis.      
Ontological and Epistemological Crisis 
Very generally speaking, numerous political theorists have argued that nihilism result 
from the Enlightenment, which upheld science not only as what could bring about improvement 
of the human condition, but as the only true path to generate truth and/or knowledge (Strauss 
1953; MacIntyre 2007; Arendt 1958; Voegelin 1987). In other words, it has been both, the 
establishment of higher truth as unreachable and incomprehensible to most while at the same 
time the development and acceptance of science and empiricism as the main, and at times the 
only, means to knowledge and/or truth that has disregarded other important values and resulted 
in the breaking down or complete abandonment of moral dimension of truth.         
This systematic embrace of a sharp distinction between facts and opinions has gone hand 
in hand with a mechanistic ontology.  Contemporary political theory questions the fact/value 
distinction, and notes that recent philosophy of science has demonstrated that empiricism/ 
 64 
positivism is an inadequate epistemology, that it inadequately explains how science works and 
how it relates to society 
To get a broader sense of how this happened, I will sketch a rough history of political 
theory, showing how Western humanity gradually developed a greater sense of human agency by 
the early modern era and how the Enlightenment failed to make sense of this agency, leading to 
the nihilism of late modernity.  It is then important to start with the earliest mythological 
attempts to understand the human situation, the human purpose, the root of human agency.  
The Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh could be described as the earliest articulate 
ontology and anthropology, respectively.  The Babylonian creation epic was written about 3000 
B.C, and the story of Gligamesh about one millennium later.  These works can be seen as 
windows into the values of the society at that time, ?a character document for proper social and 
moral conduct? (Parsons & Cook 2004, 188).  Both works are referred to as myths.  A myth can 
be described as an imaginative or poetic representation of perceived cosmic and anthropological 
truth.      
In the Enuma Elish the creation of the cosmos is by violent force, through a battle of 
opposing forces, which ultimately limited order from chaos. These opposing forces were the 
gods.  These gods, or forces, created the world through war: from the skies to the lands, from the 
animals to the humans. Humans were created last and, in this story, as servants. This established 
an order, a hierarchy, where the gods are the ones in-charge, in control, and humans are to obey 
and serve the gods.  
When Marduk [one of the gods] heard the word of the gods, 
His heart prompted him and he devised a cunning plan. 
He opened his mouth and unto Ea he spake 
 65 
That which he had conceived in his heart he imparted unto him: 
"My blood will I take and bone will I fashion 
I will make man, that man may 
I will create man who shall inhabit the earth, 
That the service of the gods may be established,  
and that their shrines may be built. (Enuma Elish, 6th Tablet) 
The Epic of Gilgamesh describes the condition of humankind. It is not so much about 
how the cosmos were created but more specifically about the purpose of human beings and their 
relationship to their creator or creators. The main character is Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, two 
thirds god and one third man. Gilgamesh becomes tyrannical, resulting in the people of Uruk 
pleading to the gods for some relief. Enkidu, a wild man who lives with the animals, is sent as an 
answer to their prayers but instead becomes a close friend to Gilgamesh. Being god-like and 
similar in strength they decide to travel and seek adventure. One of these adventures, in which 
they kill the Bull of Heaven, leads to the death of Enkidu, something which forces Gilgamesh to 
face his own mortality. Afraid of his mortality, Gilgamesh sets out to look for immortality. In his 
journey or quest for immortality he meets Utnapishtim, a person that survived a worldwide flood 
and is said to have been given everlasting life from the gods. Utnapisthim tries to explain to 
Gilgamesh that there is no immortality for mortals.  
However, eventually, Utnapisthim feels sorry for Gilgamesh and reveals a secret through 
which Gilgamesh could find everlasting life. The secret to everlasting life is said to have been in 
a thorny plant that grows underwater in the deepest channel and restores men to their youth. 
Gilgamesh, following the instructions of Utnapisthim, acquires the plant. Dreaming about 
restoring the youth of the elders in Uruk and his own immortality, Gilgamesh travels back to 
 66 
Uruk. Along the way, he stopped to bathe in a well of cool water. In the well, a serpent sensed 
the sweetness of the thorny plant and snatched it away from Gilgamesh.  So Gilgamesh does not 
achieve immortality.  But ultimately he does achieve immortality: he is alive to this very day in 
the sense that we still hear his story.   
In nether-earth the darkness will show him a light: of mankind, all that are known, none 
will leave a monument for generations to come to compare with his. The heroes the wise 
man, like the new moon have their waxing and waning. Men will say, ?Who has ever 
ruled with might and with power like him?? As in the dark month, the month of shadows, 
so without him there is no light. O Gilgamesh, this was the meaning of your dream. You 
were given kingship, such was your destiny, everlasting life was not your destiny. (The 
Epic of Gilgamesh 1972, 118) 
It is from this story that we can understand not only what is regarded as important and 
valuable in Babylon, or more generally the ancient pagan societies that told similar stories, but  
can also see the hierarchy or social structure of those societies. The strongest and bravest 
warriors, those who engage in great and challenging adventures--who can gain immortality 
through the stories told of their great deeds--are considered god-like and become the kings who 
rule society absolutely.  This not only establishes a starkly hierarchical social structure but 
indicates that in the human world, as in the overarching cosmic order, sheer force is the 
fundamental source of order.  And since even these great warrior-rulers cannot change the fate 
fixed for them by the gods, the Babylonian stories reveal a very limited sense of human agency.    
A somewhat different version of the origin of the cosmos is the Mayan account of 
creation, the Popl Vuh.  Creation in the Mayan account is peaceful, and although it involves 
gods, it recognizes one main creator called the ?Heart of Heaven.? At the same time creation 
 67 
takes place through the spoken word, ?Over a universe wrapped in the gloom of a dense and 
primeval night passed the god Hurakan, the mighty wind. He called out ?earth,? and the solid 
land appeared? (Nutt 1908). In the case of men, the Popl Vuh says that man has been created 
several times. The story explains that the creator demands acknowledgment, gratefulness, and 
worship, or there may be consequences. One of these consequences was the flood, which 
separates man from the creator, ?the divine beings resolved to create mannikins carved out of 
wood ? these were the second beings [the first beings were created out of mud]?. But these too, 
soon incurred the displeasure of the gods, who, irritated by their lack of reverence and blunt 
abuse of their animals and tools, resolved to destroy them. Then by the will of Hurakan, the 
Heart of Heaven, the waters were swollen, and a great flood came upon the mannikins of wood. 
They were drowned and a thick resin fell from heaven? (Nutt 1908). This resulted in monkeys. 
The true humans were created later, out of corn dough and given life by the main creator, Heart 
of Heaven, who also blew dust in their eyes. This was done for them to see only what was close, 
and therefore not desire to be gods. The Popl Vuh establishes clearly the social order. God is to 
be acknowledged, appreciated, and worshiped. If this does not take place, man is destroyed. This 
of course created a culture of servitude and dependence on the creator where society was viewed 
as having been established for the sole purpose of pleasing and worshipping the creating force. 
Only those who could directly communicate with the gods would lead society. It is also 
important to note that in this story, the transcendental is time, not God himself (Parson & Cook 
2004). This indicates the Mayan view of life in terms of cycles.   
In Genesis, the creation story resembles that of Popl Vuh in peacefulness but places the 
creator above time and above any other heavenly body involved. The creation of the cosmos, the 
earth and humankind is also through the word, but in Genesis the word is God.  
 68 
And God said, let there be light: and there was light?  
And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters?  
And God said let the waters under the heaven gather together? ; let the earth bring forth 
grass? ; let the water bring forth abundantly the moving creatures? ; let the earth bring 
forth the leaving creatures?  
And God said, let us make man in our own image? and let them have dominion over 
[creatures] and all the earth? [He commanded] be fruitful and multiply, and replenish 
the earth, and subdue it. (Genesis 1:3-28) 
In Genesis 1: 1-2:3 God creates the world, as we know it: the heavens, the earth, the 
waters and land, living things, and humans. This establishes God as the creator. At the same 
time, God creates man in his image, and gave him dominion over nature.  This represents a 
critical break with earlier cosmological conceptions of the human condition.  Humans, made in 
God?s image, can create, and thus can not only control nature, but have a creative role to play in 
God?s purpose.   
On the other hand, humans are also God?s creatures; their creative capacity is limited.  
This ambiguous situation is what establishes the fundamental human dilemma of sin.  In Genesis 
3 humans attempt to overstep their limitations, to create beyond their capacity, and suffer painful 
consequences: 
Then the Lord God said, ?Behold the man has become like one of us, knowing good 
and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and 
live forever? ? therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the 
ground from which he was taken (Genesis 3: 23-24).   
 69 
The critical issue here is that in the biblical picture of reality, humans are much freer than 
in they are conceived to be in the earlier pagan cultures, but human freedom is still limited, and 
humans have a tendency to misuse this limited freedom. 
What can we learn about these societies and their values from these stories? Hans H. 
Schmid notes that one concern that creation stories have in common in the ancient world is that 
they root social order ? ?justice in the way things have been made by God or the gods? (quoted 
in Gunton 2005, 19). This means that politics, society, law and nature are all part of the order of 
creation and defined through or by the gods. One can see that according to Enuma Elish and the 
Epic of Gilgamesh, man was created through violence, and forced into a certain political order 
where men were servants and are at the mercy of the gods.  It was believed and accepted that 
gods were the ones that dictated the condition of mankind.  And on the basis of the order dictated 
by the gods, society was divided between the aristocracy--the great warriors, like Gilgamesh, and 
the priests, those in communication with the gods whom would interpret the orders of the gods to 
the masses?and the rest of the people, the masses, who served the aristocracy.  
In Popl Vuh and creation is more peaceful but ultimately humans still have very limited 
capacities.  In Genesis, however, human capacities are significantly greater?but are still limited.   
Further, the fact that all humans are created in the image of God has clear democratic 
implications, although these might take many centuries to become socially effective.  
According to M. B. Foster the Bible establishes the conceptual framework of modern 
science by allowing for the possibility of empirical investigation of nature (1934).  The earlier 
pagan cultures could not have developed empirical science because they saw the world as 
disorderly, and even the Greek philosophers had only a partial confidence in the world?s 
orderliness, but in the biblical picture, God always creates faithfully, so all the world we 
 70 
experience with our senses can be trusted, although, as with the democratic implications 
discussed above, it could take a very long time for the possibility of empirical science to become 
manifest.  
The Western tradition of abstract, analytical political theory begins with the Greek 
philosophers.  Certainly the two most important Greek philosophers were Plato and Aristotle. 
Plato presents in his works the concept of the ideal: the ideal form, the ideal type, the ideal 
society. He notes that ideas are before sensual experience and reality, and emphasizes that ideas 
are transcendental. These can only be perceived by philosophers and through contemplation of 
nature. This established ideas as existing beyond the physical.  The ideas are the basis of human 
knowledge and political order.  
Aristotle puts forward a static view of the world where nature has a set structure. In other 
words, he supports Plato?s worldview, the idea of an established order of the cosmos and adds 
that in this well ordered place things move in accordance to a purpose. He notes that in order to 
understand the nature of anything, it is important to understand its end and function. He explains 
that there are four facts or causes to understanding something: material cause (what composes 
the object), formal cause (principles of law through which the materials within the something 
and its environment are able to combine and grow to realize its potential), efficient cause 
(whatever brought this things together) and final cause (the mature thing that this something 
moves to as it develops). This means that objects are defined by their natural potential and that 
the principles through which they realize their potential are called ?Natural Laws.? (Portis 2008).  
Aristotle develops the idea that humans have purpose and this is happiness--but happiness 
does mean mere pleasure but rather eudaimonia, a kind of moral self-perfection, which comes 
from practicing the fundamental human virtues. Note that this gives humans significant agency, 
 71 
since they are, to a certain degree, responsible for their own happiness.  Aristotle does not, 
however, see humans as capable of creation, even in a limited sense.  
Plato states that not everyone can understand the ontological basis of the virtues; only 
philosophers can. In other words, the Greek philosophers do not, unlike the authors of the Bible, 
see all humans as created equal.   
Greek ideas were later incorporated, in modified form, into Christian theology.  In 
Christianity one accepts the omnipotence of the creator while also embracing human freedom. 
St. Augustine claimed that the ultimate knowledge, regarded by Plato as something that only 
philosophers could reach or comprehend, was God but argued that no human could know 
absolute truth, or absolute good (Portis 2008; Elshtain 2008).  
Plato first noted the difference between ideas and sensual experience. St. Augustine 
modifies this idea noting that the body was needed for experience and the mind for reason, but at 
the same time emphasized their difference as earthly goods and heavenly goods (Confessions and 
City of God) (Portis 2008; Elshtain 2008). He established that everything incomplete, imperfect, 
faulty or even delusional is ?earthly? while the opposite could only be found in the heavenly 
kingdom (through service to God and hope of his grace). No fulfillment, no clear understanding 
of values, and certainly no worldly ideal can be achieved on earth. This means that, differing 
from Plato, a creature cannot know the truth or comprehend it unless it is revealed (Tillich 1999; 
Voegelin 1987) and that no one is or can be self-sufficient. This is why only through faith and 
the grace of God one can reach heaven. 
 It is important to note here that St. Augustine?s lower estimate of the capacities of reason 
actually indicates a greater sense of overall human agency.  He thinks that humans have a 
powerful will that tends to pervert reason to self-serving ends, a concept clearly derived from the 
 72 
biblical anthropology and nowhere to be found in the comparatively na?ve rationalism of Plato or 
Aristotle.  In Augustine we perhaps see the clearest recognition before Nietzsche that greater 
human capacities do not necessarily lead to greater human happiness. 
Another important thinker who modified Greek ideas is St. Thomas Aquinas. He tends to 
have a more optimistic view of human capacities than Augustine. Aquinas has been credited with 
introducing Aristotle to Western Christendom. He argues that it is through reason informed by 
faith that one can understand the magnificence of God (Portis 2008; Canning 2008). He further 
explains that reason links us to God and allows us to achieve human potential. He describes 
human potential in terms of our natural inclination to God (Portis 2008; Canning 2008). Just like 
Aristotle, Aquinas believed that a meaningful life will be worth living again, so that there is no 
need to choose between this world and the next to enjoy the blessing of God. He notes that earth 
is an expression of God and therefore worldly experiences are attenuated experiences in paradise. 
In other words, humans can reason and create something good through our link to God.   
As with Aristotle, Aquinas gives humans a role with a significant ability to control the 
world. Most importantly, he argues that society should embody faith, hope and charity in the 
political system. In other words, government, society and human law must have a moral purpose 
and humans a material, cultural, intellectual, spiritual interconnectivity and interdependence 
(Portis 2008; Canning 2008).  Thus human civilization can potentially accomplish great things. 
Rodney Stark, in The Victory of Reason, notes the interconnectivity of reason, progress, western 
civilization, and Christianity (2006).   
This tendency can also be seen in the Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John 
Calvin.  Luther started the Protestant reformation by challenging the authority of the Catholic 
Church through a radical conceptualization of freedom.  For Luther there is no limit on what 
 73 
humans can accomplish if they allow Christ?s power to free them, although in practice humans 
generally tend to resist this power.  Similarly, although Calvin at first sight appears to reduce 
humans to complete impotence in the face of predestination, the idea that virtue is a sign of 
election, coupled with the Protestant ethic of work, has led to the spectacular degree of human 
control over nature found in the modern capitalist economy. 
Politically, the modern age can be said to begin with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. 
Hobbes and Locke are the founders of liberal political theory.  Hobbes attempted to understand 
human action through laws of nature developed by scientists like Galileo and Newton. If natural 
phenomena can be explained through axiomatic laws, maybe the same thing can be done in the 
social sciences (Stokes 2005). Hobbes explains human nature in terms of Newton?s first law of 
motion (Portis 2008). Humans are conceived of as physical objects, matter in motion, driven by 
physical forces that result in what we call desires.  Human social existence can be understood in 
terms of our attempts to satisfy those desires. 
Both Hobbes and Locke, using science as an epistemic guide, establish their 
understanding of reality through the construction of a hypothetical world where government does 
not exist, the state of nature. They believe this would reveal the true nature of man, which in 
essence could bring light into men?s purpose and the role of social institutions.  
Hobbes interpretation of the ?state of nature? establishes men as self-interested and 
pleasure seeking individuals, as noted above. Government?s role then becomes allowing humans 
freedom to pursue their desires while controlling the conflict that arises from the fact that the 
resources necessary to meet men?s desires are limited.  Fortunately, the fundamental human 
desire is for self-preservation (since one cannot fulfill one?s other desires unless one is alive), so 
 74 
maintaining order simply requires that government threaten with death those who do not 
peacefully coexist with others.     
According to Locke the ?state of nature? reveals that men are mostly free, good, and 
rational, and thus can for the most part coexist peacefully without government.  Specifically, 
Locke thinks humans are subject to what he calls the ?Law of Nature,? which is essentially 
derivative from older natural law conceptions and which commands men to preserve themselves 
and others.  Being rational, humans will know this law exists and follow it.  However, there will 
be a few irrational people who will not obey the moral law, so the rational people must come 
together and establish a government to protect them from those irrational criminals.  But since 
the state of nature is generally peaceful, government can be limited and people will be freer than 
in Hobbes?s system.   
This worldview makes men creators of society and interpreters of the law of nature. 
These assumptions resulted in liberal institutions that supported and promulgated the idea of men 
as their own master.  A development has taken place where men are no longer at the mercy of 
capricious gods; one could say that the Greek philosophers replaced the pagan gods with nature, 
and Christian theologians attempted to reinterpret nature as God.  Hobbes and Locke uphold 
science as the revealer of truth and the social order, and this development potentially leaves God 
out of the equation, as he increasingly is conceived in deistic terms, as creating a universe that 
runs automatically, so to speak, according to fixed mathematical laws.  The early liberals 
establish the progressive, human-centered worldview of modernity.   
But there are at least two problems with this worldview.  First, Locke is only able to 
avoid the war of all against all that characterizes Hobbes?s state of nature by retreating, so to 
speak, by re-introducing premodern natural law notions into his theory.  Hobbes?s purely 
 75 
mechanistic picture of the world results in a conflictive state of nature because it leaves 
individuals radically dissociated from each other.  Locke can only assume a relatively peaceful 
state of nature, and therefore a limited government and greater freedom, by employing remnants 
of an older, teleological morality that is incompatible with a mechanistic universe.  Second, and 
more fundamentally, the picture developed by the early liberals of humans as masters of their 
own fate, as creators, contains the seeds of its own destruction.  The instinct to self-preservation 
that Hobbes sees as an invariant result of mechanical forces may turn out to be just a cultural 
construct, that is, a human creation, and even the mechanical universe that Hobbes assumes is 
discovered by science may turn out to be nothing more than a human interpretation.  The early 
liberals establish a human-centered worldview that can lead to progress but may also, because of 
its narrow, mechanistic basis, logically lead to nihilism. 
It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of 
Inequality Among Men (1755) who begins to see the implications of the early liberals? human-
centered worldview. He notes that Locke and Hobbes? understanding of human creation is 
limited, and therefore establishes a limited reality or worldview (see Table 2-1). He explains that 
human creation should be understood as unlimited because we are natural beings in search of 
distinction, which ultimately provide the drive ?to create, to build, or to subdue [nature] thus 
setting the stage for progress in science, art, and industry? (Portis 2008). In other words, human 
creation can be understood as infinitely perfectible. He notes that it ?is this unremitting rage of 
distinguishing ourselves that we owe the best and the worse things we possess? (as quoted in 
Portis 2008, 119).  This however has resulted in a radical vision of human freedom and creativity 
where humans in effect become the divine.  
 76 
Karl Marx further advances this point of view with a historical perspective on society. It 
was in Germany that he became seduced by Hegelian philosophy, historical materialism, and the 
drive to identify the rationality in history as bases for identifying and criticizing the irrationalities 
of the present (Portis 2008). Subsequently, he had to leave Germany and he move to France 
where he met Friedrich Engels who introduced to him socialism and the term ?historical 
materialism? (Thomas 2008). Historical Materialism is Karl Marx?s approach to history, his 
methodology. He notes that the driving force behind human social development is economics, 
the relation between forces of production and stages of societal development. He states that it is 
these forces that determine the consciousness of man, not the other way around. Under this 
understanding, he establishes his critique of modern society. He notes that ?modern state [is] 
structurally bound to present particular interests rather than universal ones? that favor only those 
in power (Wilde 2008, 412).   
Marx agreed with Hegel in his identification of human freedom with reason and its social 
nature, but rejected the idea that we must accept the world as rational. Marx noted that the 
conception of freedom depends on us making the world rational rather than just having faith that 
it is (Portis 2008). We make this world rational through production, through work, through the 
ability to domesticate nature and transform it for our purposes: conversion of raw material, of the 
natural world, into the goods necessary for our survival. This means that economics, essentially 
production, or what he calls productive creativity, is the primary conditioning factor of life 
(Portis 2008). Marx believes that humans are essentially radically creative beings (see Table 2-
1). Although human history begins with humans determined by natural forces, those forces 
eventually allow humans to control them.  This means that for Marx the only political activity 
that might have an appreciable impact on human history is that which aims at the transformation 
 77 
of society, and results in social revolution rather than a mere change in regime. He noted that 
through its structure power could change hands and a new regime could form where property 
was no longer individual, no longer existent, but collective. It would be this reintegration of the 
individual to ?species beings? (Portis 2008, 149) that would bring back humans to their 
humanity, create a utopia, a kind of returned to paradise, a heaven on earth.  
       Human Nature 
Aristotle 
Limited Agency 
Locke & Hobbes 
Limited Creation 
Rousseau 
Unlimited Creation 
Marx 
Unlimited Creation 
 
Nature creates Society 
Society creates Humans 
 
Nature Creates Humans 
Humans Create Society 
 
Society creates Humans 
Humans create Society 
Humans create Humans 
 
Nature creates Humans  
Humans transform nature  
Humans transform Humans 
Table 2-1 Human Nature 
Just like Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche believed that human creativity drove history, but he saw 
aesthetic creativity, not economic creativity, as central.  Nietzsche argued that, precisely because 
humans are radically creative, there is no real truth. He stated that all that is stated as truth is 
nothing more than personal confessions. This means that truth is in the eye of the beholder; it is 
subjective, and comes to each of us in different ways and according to self-interest. Self-interest 
can be survival, maintenance of lifestyle, or power. This truth is then expressed and distorted 
through persuasion. This means that the strong rule over the weak and that such rule takes place 
in the form of persuasion through artistry. Nietzche thought that the purest form of creation is 
artistic expression (1966).  
He argues that it is through this that moral principles are derived. It is quite ironic that his 
main critique was against morality, but he critiqued morality as an interpretation of thinkers. He 
notes, ?every great philosophy so far has been?the personal confession of its author and a kind 
of involuntary and unconscious memoir.? In other words, the morality that a philosopher 
 78 
embraces simply bears ?decisive witness to who he is,? changing, morphing, according to time 
and space (Beyond Good and Evil 1966, 6). He believed that outside this changing morality is 
artistic creativity. Nietzsche believed that art could express and reveal what morality is, allowing 
us to go beyond good and evil; essentially, good is what promotes artistic creativity and bad is 
what suppresses artistic expression. In other words, art is always capable of ?employing irony 
and parody, mimicking the ascetic ideal in order to undermine it? [where ascetic ideals could] 
mean either nothing or too many things? revealing the truth (Widder 2008, 448). This is where 
the phrase ?God is dead? comes from. This aphorism created to shock ultimately means that our 
creative power has become so great that there are simply no limits to it. This allows for the 
displacement of the creator, and or unlimited acceptance of the power of creation within 
ourselves, where diverse interpretation destroys knowledge basis and creates a nebulous 
approach to good and evil.    
The Breakdown of the Modern Worldview 
Western political theory has gone from contemplation and idealism to materialism and 
positivism, and some have argued that from there to nihilism. But even if we ignore the 
disintegration of post-Enlightenment continental thought into nihilism, we can still see a massive 
epistemological crisis within the Anglo-American liberal materialist framework.  Thomas S. 
Kuhn is the best-known writer on this issue. Kuhn has been promoted as a revolutionary who at 
times has been criticized and even blamed for the destruction of science itself. But Kuhn?s 
analysis actually shows that the roots of late modern nihilism lie in the Enlightenment?s 
misinterpretation of science.  
The Enlightenment came to see scientific knowledge as the opposite of religion or 
philosophy, because these were believed to be based on opinion, unproven subjective personal 
 79 
deductions, while science achieved unbiased objective knowledge. It was during this time that 
the sharp distinction between fact and opinion was made by upholding science and rational 
decision making as superior. At the same time, a challenge to rational bases on religious beliefs 
was developed and resulted in the rationalism and positivism of the 19th century. By this time, 
valid knowledge was expected to be a result of scientific research, not moral or religious 
deductions. Kuhn?s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions provides a devastating 
critique of this interpretation.   
Kuhn notes the existence of scientific periods where assumptions and beliefs guide, 
shape, and set limits to scientific research. These periods set the parameters of knowledge within 
a given field. He refers to these assumptions as paradigms. Paradigms limit the creation or 
understanding of knowledge and consequently, in a very real sense, shape results. Kuhn 
emphasizes the dogmatic aspects of science, which may create knowledge through structuralized 
rationalization while at the same time limiting its inherent spirit of wonder and possibility. 
However, it is in periods of revolution, when anomalies discovered in the course of knowledge 
creation or understanding, that the transformation of the structure, axioms, and parameters of a 
scientific field takes place (1962).  
This standard of knowledge gathering or understanding, the paradigm, although it may 
guide understanding by uniformity of language and conceptualization, also limits innovation and 
questioning.  In other words, a paradigm allows us to identify agreed upon knowledge but also 
limit scientific inquiry. This is its paradox. New discoveries take place in its background that will 
eventually result in change in the accepted understanding and/or conceptualization changing or 
transforming the paradigm itself.  But ultimately the limitations of the paradigm do produce new 
knowledge.  
 80 
It is this explanation of scientific paradigms that reveals a potential relativism even in 
science. This consequently challenges any conception of moral truth because it potentially 
reduces all moral ideas to opinions. In this sense, Kuhn potentially paves the way to 
postmodernism where so many truths are perceived to lead to none. One could interpret Kuhn?s 
approach to science as leading to the fragmentation of knowledge, but could also interpret it as 
demonstrating the limitations and ultimate failure of the Enlightenment?s positivistic 
interpretation of science (Gattei 2003).  
This perception of a distorted worldview, or perverse reality has resulted on 
contemporary thinkers calling for the review of political theory. This review should be on 
approaches, perceptions of society and its politics but mainly a question of ontology and 
epistemology - a review of how political theory is created, studied, review, and interpreted. 
There seems to be two main responses: philosophical and theological.  
Responses to the Modern Crisis 
The rest of this chapter will discuss the various responses to the crisis of modernity that 
have developed since World War II, first examining philosophical responses and then theological 
ones.  We will see that all of these responses attempt to uncover the ontological and 
epistemological roots of our current crisis. 
Philosophical Responses.  
Leo Strauss and the Possibility of Value in Transcendence 
Leo Strauss in Natural Right and History urges a recovery of classical philosophy, and in 
particular the concept of natural right, as a cure for the nihilism of late modernity (1953). He 
starts by analyzing the original concept of natural right and its (distorted) modern version.  
Strauss says that the concept of ?natural right? originated in classical philosophy, which deals 
 81 
with moral principles derivable from the eternal natural order that the Greek philosophers 
discovered. Later ?natural right? was distorted by Hobbes and Locke into a materialistic and 
individualistic doctrine that logically degenerates into nihilism. 
In other words, classical thought defines natural right as teleological.  All things, 
including humans, have a natural end.  The natural goal or end for humans is rational activity.  
Therefore the best political system is the one that allows humans to achieve that natural end, and 
that system would be one ruled by philosophers, since they are the humans with the greatest 
capacity for rational activity. Modern natural right is not teleological, it exists outside society, 
and it is excessively individualistic. This new conceptualization, derived from the mechanistic 
universe of Thomas Hobbes, embraces self-preservation and has been redefined as freedom.  The 
mechanistic nature of humans means that they have a natural right to self-preservation and 
therefore the freedom to bring this about.  But, as we discussed above, if the mechanistic picture 
of the universe is pushed to its logical conclusion, then the desire for self-preservation is not a 
natural consequence of the structure of reality but merely a cultural construct, and even the 
mechanistic universe is just a human interpretation.  Taken to its logical conclusion, modern 
natural right results in nihilism.  
Strauss recommends a return to Socrates? classical approach, because it was then that 
reason above instinct was established and that there was a valuable insight into values through 
politics and ethics. It is known that contemplation and the abstract were the greatest values and 
that is reason, which separates us from animals, what can help us achieve excellence through the 
acceptance and understanding of those ?first things:? those things that ?are always? more truly 
beings than the things which are not always? (Strauss 1953, 89).  
 
 82 
Postmodernism: a Revelation Through Deconstruction 
It is Nietzsche who is related to the beginning of the school of thought known as 
postmodernism. It is said that one can trace all the postmodern ancestry to Nietzsche (Robinson 
1995). He is known as the grandfather of postmodernism. This is important to mention, because 
it is this school of thought that presents and makes us aware -but at the same time in a sense 
promotes and embraces- the crisis of nihilism. This is because through doubt of it all, one 
supposed to reach understanding and freedom. However, it is this doubt that destroys 
epistemological bases and absolutes in morality.  
This approach or school of thought has influenced virtually all humanistic disciplines. 
The term ?postmodernism? implies three elements (it is said that political theory participates in 
all three but is more concentrated on the third element): a structural shift in the way collective 
life is organized from a centralized and hierarchical structures towards more networked 
structures, an anti-classical aesthetic orientation (where for example literature experiments with 
non-linear narration, an architecture of playfully mixed styles, and an appreciation of popular 
culture that complicates the distinction between high and low brow), and as a set of philosophical 
critiques of teleological and/or rationalist conceptions of nature, history, power, freedom, and 
subjectivity (Ball 2004).  
In political theory, postmodernism represents the rejection of the quest for an objective 
truth behind subjective experiences. Postmodernism believes or argues that a positive ethic does 
not need a universal God, reason, or some surrogate but can be grounded in the cultivation of 
existential attachment rather than on an internal or external authority.  
Martin Heidegger, generally regarded as the father of postmodernism, articulating its 
major themes, notes that humans can react in two ways to the concealing and unconcealing of 
 83 
beings in the world: openness and domination. An open reaction is poetic, aesthetic, and free, 
without restriction. A dominant reaction is closed and controlling.  This kind of dominating 
approach to reality is what Heidegger saw as the essence of technology.  In other words, 
Heidegger attempted to establish poetic truth as a kind of revealing dimension. It could be said 
that he attempted to reveal some kind of artistic ontological truth through language (as discussed 
further by Jacques Derrida).  He traces subjectivism to Plato?s understanding of truth as a 
projection of the self. Heidegger noted that in order to recover our humanity, we need to become 
more poetic, more aware of our surroundings and how these make us feel. This is a kind of call 
to go back to focusing on nature with an aesthetic approach. Any other form of understanding, 
which includes the creation, acceptance, and routine utilization of technology, is dominating. 
This includes Western philosophy, which under its influences of Plato and Aristotle has resulted 
in the objectification of beings, treating them as means. Ironically, however, Heidegger?s 
emphasis on self-expression ultimately intensifies the late modern tendency toward subjective 
nihilism, as seen perhaps most strikingly in his own (admittedly brief) embrace of Nazism.  
One of the most important figures in postmodernism is Jaques Derrida. Derrida 
challenges the assumption that language has the same meaning in different contexts. He notes 
that the aim of interpretation of language is to expose and criticize arbitrary or constructed 
claims to truth or knowledge, particularly by examining subjective dichotomies. In other words, 
Derrida notes that all attempts to represent reality do not produce knowledge but only different 
interpretations; there is no stable meaning (Bennett 2004; Ball 2004). This position is an example 
of the loss of transcendental values or truth feared by Strauss. Derrida noted, just as Heidegger, 
that language could reveal some kind of truth not only by pointing out differences in the use of 
language itself, but the inherent normalization and loss of interpretation by usage. In other 
 84 
words, Derrida notes the influence of culture, interaction of convention, and environment in 
change or concerted meaning in language. It is a type of deconstruction that reveals truth. This 
type of deconstruction for the purpose of creating or revealing knowledge not only took place in 
language but was further related to human action by Michael Foucault. 
The Foucauldian school of thought seeks to expose and criticize the myriad ways in 
which humans beings are normalized or made into subjects, willing participants in their own 
subjugation (Ball 2004). Foucault critiques systems, explores patterns of power and how they 
relate to the self, and brings to light the systematization of knowledge. He looks at truth as a 
form of power and control. This is the main theme of his best-known work, Discipline and 
Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1995). He notes that punishment used to involve the body 
(torture) but it then evolved into control of the soul, to a process involving structure, morality, 
and scientific steps to search for a cure (what we call socialization or rehabilitation).  
Foucault traces modern understandings of justice and their resulting structures of control. 
The process of rehabilitation and re-socialization construct humans as docile bodies, as 
shapeable and trainable.  Foucault sees this process as characterizing all of modern societies; the 
modern quest for freedom has ironically resulted in intense control.   
Counter ? Enlightenment and The Challenge to Positivism 
Foucault brought light onto hidden or rarely perceived mechanisms that affect human and 
their socialization including the creation of knowledge. He showed that even scientific 
knowledge promotes and supports power structures. J?rgen Habermas also challenges the idea 
that facts or objective truths are independent of human interest, but draws very different 
conclusions than Foucault. 
 85 
Habermas notes that no knowledge is independent of human interest and that this does 
not necessarily lead to nihilism or the impossibility of consensual agreement on values (a 
conclusion also supported by Kuhn).  Habermas presents three interests: technical or control, 
meaning or hermeneutic, and emancipatory or moral. These have been described as follows: 
technical/ control interest involve empirical/analytical knowledge that ?represents the world in 
terms of objects, processes, and laws ? which describe the transformation of objects and 
processes? (Streibel 1991, 6); meaning/hermeuneutic interests represent the physical, social, and 
cultural world as ?texts,? narratives, - which have to be interpreted and are not in the platonic 
sense encrypted to be discovered but understood or perceived differently according to different 
social and cultural interactions; emancipatory/moral interests are about the understanding of 
certain axioms, maxims, dogmas, theorems that have been brought together by a kind of 
collective reflection on social and cultural practices and are used for the purpose of restructuring 
the future (Streibel 1991, 7).  
These interests can still be objective and can be pursued by natural sciences, historical or 
interpretative analysis, and critical or social and political science or philosophical. According to 
Habermas, this can take place because they all derived from the capacity to speak or 
communicate. For Habermas, it is through communication that objective knowledge, morality, 
and political values can be developed.  He notes that ?the achievements of the transcendental 
subject have their basis in the natural history of human species? (1972, 312); that ?knowledge 
equally serves as an instrument and transcends mere self-preservation? (1972, 313); that 
?knowledge-constitutive interests take form in the medium of work, language, and power? 
(1972, 313); that ?in the power of self-reflection, knowledge and interest are one? (1972, 314); 
finally that ?the unity of knowledge and interests proves itself in a dialectic that takes the 
 86 
historical traces of suppressed dialogue and reconstructs what has been suppressed? (1972, 315).  
This means that there is a possibility of finding order in a changing world and of finding truth 
through certain types of community. Habermas envisions a republican type of community where 
debate of the common good could bring about a type of egalitarian morality.    
One of the most influential recent reactions to a distorted reality and the possibility of 
reconstructing reality as a remedy for nihilism has been that of Alasdair MacIntyre. In After 
Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, he argues that morality can only be understood teleologically, 
but that the teleological approach of Aristotle (and premodern moral reasoning generally) must 
be recast to take into account the realization of a significantly greater human agency in the 
modern era.  
Aristotle describes virtues in Nichomacean Ethics (1999). A virtue can be intellectual or 
moral. Intellectual virtues are formed through education and experience while moral virtues 
through habit, ethos. Virtues, according to Aristotle, are learned and developed (of character); 
furthermore, it is the practice what will give a virtue excellence or destroy it. In other words, 
virtues are exercised, practiced, concerned with pleasure and pain, and they involve choice, the 
exercise of reason. Virtues themselves are the median found in the relation of emotion, action 
and scarcity or excess (which are the vices) and can be found through practical wisdom. This is 
simply the ability to be able to identify the mean of extreme characteristics or emotions and is 
done through contemplation. Aristotle, explains that the exercise of virtues, ethos, are the path to 
happiness where happiness is a kind of a moral perfection and the highest human aim. This, 
however, is not something that is individualistic, but in relation to others. Because virtues 
develop through practice, they are activities, actions, and involve others and our environment. At 
the same time, this highest good ? happiness, is not and should not be thought of as a natural 
 87 
state but something one does, something practiced through a long period of time (See 
Illustration 2-1).            
 
Illustration 2-1 Aristotelian Ethics 
MacIntyre noted that the modern conception of reality is missing telos, a highest aim, an 
objective like happiness and a conceptualization of virtues. This is not to be understood as an 
individual external goal, but as an internal aspiration that defines life?s path and focuses 
decision-making. He then updates Aristotelian ethics. Virtues in modern society can be acquired 
human qualities, which ?the possession and exercise ? tends to enable us to achieve those goods 
which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving such 
goods? (2007, 191). With this redefinition, virtues are not just the expression of contemplation, 
the median found in extreme emotions, or practical wisdom. Virtues are understood to be all 
three and more: an already acquired value that in practice allows us -humans- to achieve that 
which we consider good while also understanding that the lack of practicing them preventing us 
from the same. This means that unless a definition of good is established our practices can be 
aimless and we without achievement.  
The ?goods? can be defined with the help of stories or narratives that can express the 
values that a community might deem worth. He notes that this stories and narratives will have to 
 88 
be created within the context of a community. In other words, the values to be upheld and 
promoted need to be extracted from the community and most importantly develop the proper 
structure and framework to allow for its expression, and practice. Aristotle notes the importance 
of emulation for the expression of virtuous action. MacIntyre notes that practice then is not just 
the exercise of certain skills, or those acquired qualities, but how goods are conceived and valued 
for their own merit. Ultimately, it is the accumulation of these practices that would allow for the 
creation of a mature human being, and consequently a mature society. This conception or re-
conceptualization of Aristotelian ethics also acknowledges the action involved in the practice of 
ethics in relation to others. MacIntyre emphasizes that moral philosophy and the conception of 
society have to co-exist; in other words, morality has to be socially embodied in order to help the 
state of disorder in our unrestrained society.    
Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, takes a somewhat different approach.  
Arendt?s main concern is, like Habermas, to revive the public world of debate and action to 
achieve the common good.  Arendt recommends looking in the past for answers in the present. 
She focuses on men?s everyday basic experiences. She argues that the classical philosophers 
prioritized values or aspects of the human condition in the wrong order: contemplation (vita 
contemplativa) above what she referred to as vita activa (active life: labor, work and action) (see 
Illustration 2-2).  
 
 
Illustration 2-2 Representation of Greek Human Condition 
 89 
 Just like Aristotle, Arendt notes that contemplation is good for gods not humans. Humans 
must devote time and effort to survival and maintenance of themselves as well as social entities. 
She notes that it is Aristotle who identifies three levels of social organization: the household, the 
village, and the polis. These are outside the vita contemplative. The household manages the 
necessities of existence like sleep nourishment and shelter. The Village or ?Civil Society? is the 
market, the world of buying and selling where individuals compete and cooperate in the pursuit 
of personal or household interests. Finally, he identifies the polis where the making of collective 
decision takes place. This one is concerned with the good life while the first two with the 
acquisition of necessity (Portis 2008).  
 Arendt also brings attention to these dimensions of the human condition attempting to 
discover what has gone wrong and what can be corrected. She notes that, in modernity, every 
citizen ?belongs to two orders of existence; and [that] there is a sharp distinction [in both] ? his 
life what is his own (idion) [private] and what is communal (koinon) [public] (1958, 24). Arendt 
explains that this has been blurred or has been misplaced and forgotten in modernity. In other 
words, in antiquity, these realms were distinctive and clearly identifiable but today, the private ?
self-interest, has misplaced the public ?the communal-. This has literally established the public 
realm as the aspect of the human condition to be the sphere of individual interest where vita 
activa is then the means to an economical, self-interested, private dimension. The public is now 
lost within the private, and the private (idion) no longer identifiable. These two realms are 
blurred and seem to be only aimed at the economical. The public realm has then become the 
arena for the acquisition of the necessities of existence and the private just an identification of 
those necessities. In other words, there is a loss of the public in the private where vita activa has 
 90 
lost the polis in favor of the household and village. This can be better understood under the 
description of the human condition provided by Arendt.    
Arendt presents three aspect of the vita activa: labor, work and action. These aspects can 
be understood as evolutionary and as permanent, as phases in human condition and as 
dimensions. Labor has to do with biological processes; ?the human condition of labor is life 
itself? (1958, 7). In other words, labor is related to activities that provide for the necessities of 
life, it is unending, and/or enslaving. This human condition is linked to servants, slaves, women, 
those that are subjected to this condition; those bound to necessity (especially in antiquity); 
animal laborans. Work has to do with ?unnaturalness?[with the] artificial;? ?the human 
condition of work is worldliness? (1998, 7).  In other words, work is related to those activities 
that create something, with a finished product; something that has been transformed out of 
something else; with a certain level and acceptance of creativity; a physical relation to the world, 
to the temporal; man the maker, homo faber. Action has to do with plurality, socialization, the 
condition of man in politics, speech. It is where individual interest are expressed and transformed 
for the collective; the human condition of action is the political.  
Arendt notes that in modernity there seems to be a pronounced mix-up of all three 
dimensions in modern times allowing for the diminishing of freedom and speech (action) 
through the upholding of labor as the most important dimension in the human condition (see 
Illustration 2-3). Arendt noted that there is a victory of the animal laborans over the homo 
faber, and, most objectionable, a loss of freedom, plurality and solidarity. She is in other words, 
not only asking for a revisit of pre-philosphical thought which held the highest value to be 
activity in the Polis, but a reversal of today?s priorities where action is mostly ignored and labor 
upheld as the highest value in our society (see Illustration 2-3). In addition, and as evidence that 
 91 
is not necessarily true that pre-philosophical thought had it right, Arendt brings attention to the 
emphasis that has been placed in upholding vita contemplativa over vita activa since classical 
times. In other words, vita contemplativa has and continues representing the highest value, even 
above the action, which ensures freedom and the formation of society. It can be perceived within 
her political thought, that action is upheld above all other dimensions of the human condition and 
that her main goal is to make us aware of the loss of action in the monotony of labor which is 
held in modern times above the public, the communal life. In essence, this is the giving up of our 
freedom, our ability to transform society, in other words, the political dimension.   
Arendt notes that this is further emphasized by Karl Marx who establishes that ?labor 
(and not God) created man or that labor (and not reason) distinguishes man from other animals? 
(1958, 86). It is important to note that to Arendt all dimensions in vita activa are intimately 
connected, interrelated, and interdependent. Labor ensures survival; work contributes a 
dimension of permanence and identity; and action offers possibility and transformation through 
speech: ?all three activities and their corresponding conditions are intimately connected with the 
most general condition of human existence: birth and death, natality and mortality? (1958, 8). 
She further explains that human beings are both political and social. In other words, human 
beings are both contemplation and speech; private and public; social and laborans. This means 
that all three realms need to be acknowledged as part of the human condition and action within 
the vita activa reclaimed. In other words, the priorities set by the classics, which have 
contributed to the modern state of disorder need to be revisited but not re-embraced without 
proper evaluation.     
 92 
 
Illustration 2-3 Comparison of Human Condition  
Eric Voegelin can be said to be our link between philosophers to theologians. In his book, 
The New Science of Politics: An Introduction, Voegelin, through a historical journey through 
various understandings of political representation, establishes a compelling connection amongst 
humans through a social relationship that amounts to a collective consciousness that develops 
into a kind of social spirit (1987). This is not the kind of spirit explained and developed by 
Charles Louis de Secondat, baron of Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1914). It is 
something that goes beyond a consciousness, and it is said to develop by the interconnectivity of 
individuals and that drives decision-making in the construction of society. Voegelin points out 
that it not only influences the creation of social reality as constructed by man, physically and 
materialistically, but also establishes or creates an essence, a fundamental nonphysical, part of 
the society.   
Voegelin discusses several types of truth: cosmological, anthropological and 
soteriological. Cosmological truth is essentially the worldview of the ancient pagan societies, in 
which human society is seen as a cosmic analog.  The greater sense of human agency developed 
by the Greek philosophers?wherein social order is seen as a function of human character, rather 
Human Condition 
according to Classical 
Philosophers 
Human Condition 
according to 
Modernity  
Human Condition 
Recommended by 
Hannah Arendt 
 93 
than ritual appeasement of the gods?is referred to as anthropological truth.  And finally, the still 
greater sense of cosmic and human agency order developed by Christianity is referred to as 
soteriological truth.  Voegelin?s concern is with the disintegration of soteriological truth into 
nihilism.  He argues that this has occurred because Christianity failed fully to develop some of its 
own implications, resulting in a revival of the early heresy of Gnosticism, which he sees as the 
essence of the modern age (1987, 106).  
On the one hand, Eric Voegelin addresses the separation or disjointing of History in the 
era of Augustus from whole or complete history to holy and secular history severing knowledge 
and consequently truth. Furthermore, he explains that the re-divinization of modernity can also 
be said to have originated from Christianity through Gnosticism (even if this component of 
Christianity was regarded as heresy). Gnosticism is the belief that the material is imperfect and 
that knowledge (gnosis) consists of the truth found only through the spiritual, the divine, the 
abstract. This knowledge is only revealed to those that have and understand their relationship to 
the divine. This is pre-Christian, but although rejected by Christian at the beginning, it is not 
absent from Christian teachings. Voegelin explains that Christianity?s ultimate desires the 
?deliverance of the world? (1987, 108) and Augustinian bases support and promoted the 
adoption of men?s divinity; in other words, there has been something wrong with Christianity 
from the beginning that can be found in its roots with Gnosticism. Moreover, Voegelin explains, 
Gnosticism changed through positivism. Secular history has embraced positivism, scientism, and 
consequently replaced God. The new Gnostic movement replaced faith with tangible ?terrestrial 
paradise? (1987, 129). In other words, both the re-divinization, and the embrace of control over 
the material world by men resulted in the destruction of any advancement of the truth. The 
misshaping or perversion of theory can be said to additionally come from the severance of theory 
 94 
from the creator, from ontology. Therefore, he promotes the reconsideration of the spiritual and 
the political, the unity of the civil and the soul.  
Theological Responses  
If the issue that political theory needs to address is the nihilism that seems to be the end 
result of modernity, through epistemology and ontology, the development of a prescription will 
ultimately lead to religious questions. Voegelin is the thinker who most obviously points in this 
direction, but ultimately the other political theorists we have examined also do.  This section will 
examine the major post-World War II theological responses to the crisis of modernity  
Early Theological Responses to the Modern Crisis 
Paul Tillich exposes another explanation for a distorted reality. In the article, ?The Lost 
Dimension in Religion?, Tillich makes an invocation to look for the lost dimension in our 
understanding of reality (1999). This can only be done by understanding religion in its ?basic and 
universal meaning? not necessarily under an specific church or canon (1999, 3) He explains that 
being religious means that one would be ?asking passionately the question of the meaning of our 
existence and being willing to receive answers? even if one does not agree (1999, 1). Religion is 
defined as ?believing in the existence of gods or one god, and a set of activities and institutions 
for the sake of relating oneself to these beings in thought, devotion, and obedience?? ?the state 
of being concerned about one?s own being and being universally? (1999, 1). He explains, in 
Systematic Theology, Vol 1, that God is what ultimately concerns men and ?is the answer to the 
question implied in man?s finitude? (1999, 11).  The third aspect of this invocation is faith. Faith 
is described in Dynamics of Faith, as the dynamics of man?s ultimate concern: an act of the finite 
being who is grasped by and turned to the infinite? (1999, 13 & 22). Tillich explains that 
 95 
concerns in man can be spiritual and cognitive, aesthetic, social, political; and each of these 
claims priority, demanding all other concerns to be sacrificed. 
Tillich then explains how religion can be the needed dimension for a better understanding 
of our reality. He notes that there is the horizontal dimension, which relates to linearity of events 
and is literal. This dimension can be said to be this-worldly. Then is the vertical dimension, 
which may address aspects within the linearity, contains depth, and relates to powerful 
expression. This dimension can be or is related to the spiritual. In our own time the world is 
being subjected scientifically and technically to the control of men, which has resulted in the loss 
of any sense of the vertical dimension. Religion could offer an alternative, but religious symbols 
themselves have lost their power in modern times. However, he explains in ?Religious Symbols 
and Our Knowledge of God? that a confusion of language, symbols and signs can be noted in 
modern times. In other words, religious language, symbols have developed into signs and a 
difference between these two needs to be established (see Table 2-2). This will reveal a hidden 
level (or dimension) of reality. This, Tillich explains, will take place because religious symbols 
have two fundamental levels: transcendental, that which goes beyond the empirical reality, and 
the immanent.  
 96 
 
Symbols 
 
? Participate in the reality of that which 
they point 
? Cannot be replaced 
? Opens level of reality which otherwise are 
closed 
? Unlocks dimensions and elements of 
reality which correspond to the 
dimensions and elements of reality 
? Grow out of the individual or collective 
unconscious and cannot function without 
being accepted by the unconscious 
dimension of our being 
? They grow and die 
 
 
Signs 
 
? Do not participate in the reality of that 
which they point 
? Can be replaced for reasons of 
expediency or convention 
? It is one dimension, of one reality 
? Has no relation to the soul or its 
different dimensions 
? Are produced intentionally 
Only common characteristic: that they point beyond themselves to something else. 
Table 2-2 Symbols and Signs 
In modern times, one can understand the difficulty of religion as a dimension of analysis 
or reality. Religion, as noted by Tillich, has been reduced to specific groups and is accompanying 
theological teachings. This can make it difficult to make religion or religiousness part of reality 
or societal understanding. He notes however that it is this dimension that will reveal that which 
may complete the whole picture. Eric Voegelin makes a similar argument in his call to revisit 
and reinterpret Christian symbols. If there has been a severing of the human dimensions between 
the religious, spiritual and the mental, intellectual. A reunification would result in the revelation 
of a complete picture.   
Under the spirit of reunification or reintegration of the creator with creation, Reinhold 
Niebuhr in The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation Volume I Human Nature, 
notes the need to address the intrinsic problem man is to himself (1980a).  Niebuhr sees 
modernity as the result of the incoherent medieval synthesis of Greek and Hebraic conceptions of 
man, and urges a recovery of the biblical anthropology as an alternative to modernity.   On the 
 97 
one hand, the classical Greek view is that ?man needs to be understood primarily from the stand 
point of the uniqueness of his rational faculties? where the mind is conceived of as separate from 
the body and identified with the divine (1980a, 6).  Human rational capacities have tremendous 
possibilities but tend to be dragged down by the body, so that ultimately the Greeks had a fairly 
limited view of human agency.  On the other hand, the Christian view of man is that man is a 
?created and finite existence? and has the ability to stand ?outside both itself and the world? 
(1980a, 12 & 14). The biblical view sees humans as having much greater capacities than the 
Greeks?humans are able to transcend nature to a much greater than Plato or Aristotle thought?
but precisely because of this greater capacity are much more likely to see themselves as without 
limits, to try to become God, that is, to sin.  The modern view of man can be said to be a little of 
both: From the Greeks it takes the optimistic estimate of human rational capacities, without the 
limitations imposed by nature, while from the Hebrews it takes the greater sense of freedom from 
nature without the sense of limits imposed by an awareness of our sinfulness. Modern culture is 
then ?a battleground of two opposing views of human nature? [the classical and the biblical] and 
fails to ?comprehend the unity of mind and nature?? ?the spirit of man and his physical life?? 
?reason ?[and] non -rational vitalities? (1980, 5 & 123), and results in a grandiose conception of 
human capacities.  Niebuhr sees the beginnings of modern notions of inevitable progress in the 
optimistic worldview of Catholic theology in the high Middle Ages. 
Noting the difficulty and paradoxical reality of humans? desire of history, infiniteness, 
and finiteness, Niebuhr presents Christ as the answer ?and his cross the fulfillment? (1980b, 6). 
In other words, Christ and the epic of his life transcends the meaning of history in a 
reinterpretation of ?prophetic Messianism for the ?Kingdom of God? is expected? while at the 
same time, individuals are known to being ?involved in the historical process? (1980b, 36). This 
 98 
means that Christ in history allows the eternity; however, the individual has developed 
contradiction and misinterpretation of symbols. This can be repair because God, Niebuhr notes, 
has given us the meaning of life and the resources to accomplish the goal of wisdom, and power 
to reach grace and truth where self-love and sin will be allow and are possible in human freedom. 
Colin Gunton and Trinitarian Theological Theory 
The crisis of modernity and nihilism has elicited responses from both philosophers and 
theologians. On the one hand, philosophers have attempted to re-connect ethics and politics by 
revisiting or reintegrating certain aspects of classical thought. On the other hand, theologians 
agree with philosophers that morality needs to be understood in a social context but think that the 
disjunction between the two probably originates in the inability of Christian theology to relate 
God to his creation more clearly.  Voegelin discusses the complete absence of divine history 
(Voegelin 1987) which has led to complete destruction of symbols that not only help in the 
cohesion of a society, but the construction of reality (Tillich 1999), and the complexity and 
misunderstood paradoxical dimensions within human nature itself having to do with physical and 
spiritual, infinite and finiteness, mind and nature (Niebuhr 1980). I believe Colin Gunton brings 
together these tendencies most fruitfully providing a model for the creation of something more 
than political theory.   
In the book The One, The Three and the Many: God Creation and the Culture of 
Modernity, Gunton presents a Trinitarian theological theory (2005). He notes that there is a 
relation between the way creation was formulated in the west and the shape of modern culture. 
This has led to contradictions and paradoxes. A revision of three main features of creation is 
needed: first is that creation is not dual (intellectual and material); second, that humans are to be 
understood relationally to the one creating entity rather than in terms of fixed characteristics as 
 99 
reason or will; and last, that there is continuity within discontinuity (a better understanding of 
time and space). He notes that in the west, theology (and political theory) has developed under 
the understanding of oneness, in absence of the three and the many. This means that it has 
developed under the acceptance of one creating entity as a single entity and apart from us, and 
the individual as disconnected from others and in essence from the creator himself.  
Modern thought presents us with disengagement from each other and the world, making 
both the world itself and us into mere instruments. These misconceptions or perversions, 
according to Gunton, are rooted in Plato and developed throughout time, which has resulted in 
the separation of person and world, the separation of people from each other, and the separation 
from the one creating entity from his creation. This separation from the one creating entity, in 
essence, has meant a separation from within, a kind of tearing apart of man: a separation of the 
body from the mind and most importantly the spirit.  
The theme of the one and the many focuses on two questions: in what sense is our 
universe a unity and in what sense a plurality? Gunton argues that political theology should be 
Trinitarian in order to unify all aspects and dimensions of humanity to the creator. In other 
words, to unite the one and the many, one needs the three. Gunton believes that this will facilitate 
the conceptualization of a new theology, one that offers new concepts of time and space and a 
more complete understanding of the one that embraces the many through the new covenant, 
Jesus Christ. This concept ?embraces the being of the world in its relations to [the one creating 
entity] and the action of [the one creating entity] in relation to the world? (2005, 160). A 
theology of trinity offers a kind of transcendental unity that encircles the one and the many in a 
communion with the three.     
 
 100 
Conclusion 
To summarize, the modern age, while it certainly appears to have some legitimate 
achievements in improving the material conditions of human existence, has ultimately developed 
a crisis in the form of nihilism.  We are unable to make moral and political sense of our great 
human capacities because of our limited materialistic ontology and positivistic epistemology. 
Since World War II philosophers and theologians have attempted to understand the 
epistemological and ontological roots of our crisis.  This chapter has given a historical review of 
political theory epistemology and ontology to show the development of this crisis and has then 
surveyed the major recent responses.  
According to the most compelling philosophical or theological responses, the solution or 
prescription lies in the re-integration of the moral dimension to religious questions. It is 
philosophers and theologians in contemporary political theory that attempt to address this issue: 
the distorted reality that creates and/or results in distorted perceptions, values, and truth. They 
have attempted to bring back a sense of a creating force, the creator, and/or something eternal. 
Some are requesting to return to the classics and reinterpreting them or borrowing some ideas 
(Arendt, MacIntyre, Strauss, Voegelin). Some are calling for new approaches or dimensions 
(Tillich, Voegelin).  
I argue that Colin Gunton seems to offer the best possibility in the next step of 
developing a more complete political theory, more importantly, a humanistic approach in public 
administration. It is through Gunton?s Trinitarian theological theory that we can find solution for 
the crises perceived in political theory?s epistemology and ontology that will transform public 
administration theory. The Trinitarian theological theory can offer a unity, a communion of the 
one and the many through the three.   
 101 
Chapter 3 
Trinitarian Theological Theory 
Introduction  
Colin E. Gunton provides a model for the creation of a broader ontology and 
epistemology. He presents the possibility of unification by revising classical Christianity, 
through harmonious particularity.  In the book The One, The Three and the Many: God, 
Creation, and the Culture of Modernity, Gunton presents a Trinitarian theological theory (2005). 
He notes that there is a relation between the way creation was formulated in the West and the 
shape of modern culture. This has led to contradictions and paradoxes. A revision of the three 
main features of creation is needed, which will challenge the way that theology (and political 
theory) has developed in the west, under the understanding of oneness, in absence of the three 
and the many. This means that it has developed under the acceptance of one creating entity as a 
single entity and apart from us, and the individual as disconnected from others and in essence 
from the creator himself. These misconceptions or perversions, rooted in classical thought, have 
pervaded Western thought and are now part of public administration, and have resulted in a 
separation of person from the world, from each other, and from the one creating entity.  
This separation from the one creating entity, in essence, has meant a separation from 
within, a kind of tearing apart of man: a separation of the body from the mind and most 
importantly the spirit. This formulation has led to contradiction and paradoxes that have created 
confusion and incomplete knowledge. A revision of the three main features of creation is needed 
that will unify the intellectual and the practical while establishing a better understanding of 
humans? relation to each other and to a higher power, and ultimately offering a better 
understanding of continuity within discontinuity. This is what Gunton calls a Trinitarian 
 102 
theological theory and which I believe can help to address the current state of public 
administration that is disengaged, from the public, from other public administrators, and from 
reality. This chapter will present a brief biography of Colin E. Gunton, a brief look at his 
writings, and then a description of his Trinitarian theological theory. I will end by noting some 
challenges to the theory and Gunton?s probable responses.  
Colin E. Gunton: A Brief Biographical Background 
 Colin Ewart Gunton (1941-2003) was a ?constructive theologian and as an interpreter he 
was especially concerned to observe the arrangement of, and relations between, the different 
parts of the dogmatic? canon, the practice of systematic theology, which for Gunton was 
theology (Webster 2010, 18). Theology was his primary calling and he ?saw it as a human 
response to the gospel,? which for Gunton is the way in which the One creating entity personally 
relates to us as the One creating entity, Son, and Spirit (Holmes and Rae 2005, 13). In other 
words, he wanted and encouraged others to be part of an already open communication. He noted 
in The One the Three and the Many, that ?the responsibility of the theologian ? is to seek for 
ways to rehabilitate or reinvigorate the concept of truth, without, however, ignoring the genuine 
weakness of that against which much modern thought has reacted? (2005, 129). 
 He was however, not only interested in theology, but also in history, philosophy, science, 
music, art, politics, and gardening. Douglas Farrow calls him the ?the gardener? whose 
theological garden was fruitful and based on the understanding of theology as a ?communal 
activity? where participants should think in as orderly a manner as possible, and where space and 
perspective are shaped and defined by the gospel. This is theology within ?Trinitarian lines and 
Christological contours,? an understood ?free and open order.? (2010, xi). Constantly referring 
back to the gospel, creed, and dogma, Gunton consciously conducted his work on the basis of 
 103 
Trinitarian exegesis. However, for Gunton the doctrine of the Trinity was not an extra element of 
theology but the way in which theology can remain true to the gospel. ?For Gunton, Trinitarian 
theology is what makes Christian theology, Christian and Theology? (Schw?bel 2005; 2010, 
183). 
 Gunton grew up in Nottingham, and began his Theological studies in 1966 at Mansfield 
College Oxford where a year later, after completion of his M.A. in theology, he began his 
doctoral work. This turned into a first-rate study of the doctrine of the One creating entity in 
Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (Becoming and Being, 1978 & 2001, which is now a must 
read for every theologian). About two years into his research, he began teaching Philosophy of 
Religion at King?s College, London. He became an ordained minister and was appointed to 
Associate Minister of the Brentwood United Reformed Church in 1975 (McCormack, 2005; 
McFarlane, 2001; Schw?bel 2005; Schw?bel 2010). He was at this church for about 27 years. On 
1980, Gunton became a Lecturer in Systematic Theology at King?s College and Professor of 
Christian Doctrine four years later. He served as Dean of the Faculty from 1988-1990. During 
1994 through 1997, he was head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. In 1998 
he helped found the International Journal of Systematic Theology which he co-edited until he 
died on May 6th, 2003.  
 Gunton is said to have never considered himself a pillar of the establishment; he was ?too 
much of an English non-conformist? (Schw?bel, 2005). He tried to avoid working out his own 
theology because he thought too much originality could result in deviation from the gospel or 
teaching of the church, losing touch with the very basis of Christian theology. He is also 
described as humble, despite his honorary doctorate from Aberdeen, the Divinitatis Doctor from 
London and Oxford, named Lectureships, and visiting professorships. He enjoyed what he did, 
 104 
and did not do it for recognition, personal ambition, or because of a Puritan work ethic. His 
legacy for most commentators lies in his theological style. It is the communion and personal 
relations he formed with members of his church, colleagues at work, and mainly his students 
(McCormack 2005). This is why Farrow refers to him as ?the gardener.? Gunton spent most of 
his career ?growing many theologians?, watered and pruned as needed, until they were ready to 
be replanted somewhere else? (Farrow 2010, xi). 
Gunton and Systematic Theology  
 Gunton?s theology falls within the branch of systematic theology. Systematic theology, 
according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is ?a branch of theology concerned with 
summarizing the doctrinal traditions of a religion, especially relating the traditions convincingly 
to the religion's present-day setting? (2011). This means that it is the relating of the word to 
reality and everyday activity. It is an activity that begins in the word and is not so much strictly 
logical, but rather has an internal coherence and external relevance (McFarlane 2001). Gunton 
further notes that systematic theology is ?not so much a matter of the organizing of doctrines into 
systems, as of weighting and balance in the ways doctrinal matters are placed into relation with 
one another? (quoted in Webster 2010, 18). It is ?an activity, or series of activities, 
encompassing thought, speech, and writing? ha[ving] to do with the articulation and defense of 
the Christian gospel as the truth- not the truth in a narrow sense, abstracted from action, but the 
truth that involves also goodness and beauty, the world in all its dimensions;? it attempts ?to 
perceive connections between truths, and to know which belongs to which;? and is that ?in which 
some attempt is made to articulate the Christian gospel or aspects of it with due respect to such 
dimensions as coherence, universality, and truth? (1990, 251).  Systematic theology is 
?systematic as it is evangelical and evangelical in so far as it brings the gospel from the heart of 
 105 
the Church, to the heart of the culture? (Harvey 2010, xi). Systematic theology, according to 
Gunton, then consists of letting the Word use one and in turn using the Word. It is a communal 
form of life entailing the rational, continual conversation initiated by the One creating entity. It is 
an activity that has not stopped and involves learning, understanding, and applying theology to 
everyday activities.  
 Gunton has been identified as the ?most significant English theologian of his generation? 
and to have been responsible for single-handedly renewing and expanding the studies and 
application of systematic theology, if not completely transforming British theology during the 
course of his career (Jenson 2004; McCormack 2006, 3; McFarlane 2001; Schw?bel 2005). 
McFarlane identifies five specific areas within systematic theology where Gunton?s impact can 
be seen (2001). These are important because they offer a window into Gunton?s theological basis 
and wholeness of the application of his Trinitarian theology. Gunton can be said to have 
transformed the way theology is taught, viewed, understood, and practiced.  
 The first area is the general identification of the love-hate relationship we have with 
modernity and the Enlightenment. We can find evidence of this in the Enlightenment and 
Alienation: an Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology (1985) and The One, the Three and the 
Many: God Creation and the Culture of Modernity (2005). On the one hand we identify the 
Enlightenment as responsible for establishing a distorted conception of truth as only valid when 
it is scientifically proven. At the same time, Gunton notes that the Enlightenment was a great 
blessing to theology because it revealed the tendency ?to elevate the one above the many and 
make the eternal appear the enemy rather than the fulfiller of time,? which has allowed for the 
discovery of misconceptions within theology (Gunton 2005, 130). The elevation of the one can 
be the self above other and the One creating entity, as well as the all-knowing and omnipotent 
 106 
one-being above nature, which has resulted in a disconnection from the One creating entity, an 
alienation that makes the eternal the enemy--something incomprehensible and therefore 
unreachable if not even unreal (Suda 2005, 130).  
  Gunton?s second influence comes from his tenacity in applying the theological basis 
found in the scripture and divine oikonomia, what is referred to as pure theology, when 
addressing any type of question (Jenson 2004). As a theologian, he found answers in the word 
for the recovery of truth and therefore the recovery or reencounter between the One creating 
entity and creation. This can be found in Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in 
Christology (1997) and The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the 
Christian Tradition (1988). He wanted to bring the gospel to the culture in a way that was 
capable of renewing the respect for the one by offering ?fresh ways,? and laying down the 
?intellectual basis for the liberation of the many from the submersion in the one,? which 
according to Gunton is the threat of modern life (Farrow 2010, xii).   
 Third, Gunton served as an example by publishing what he taught (for example, A Brief 
Theology of Revelation (2005), but also in the many published sermons and articles he left 
behind). Understanding in theology takes place through revelation and communal interaction 
with the One creating entity and others. In Gunton?s case, sharing and inviting into this activity 
expanded further than his immediate surroundings. His writings were done for a wide audience, 
not necessarily evangelical or academic, helping people understand and grasp the importance of 
theology and theological concepts (Goodliff 2005). At the same, he emphasized the application 
of theology to issues of contemporary church and society, thus making theology relational.  
 Fourth, Gunton expressed a sense of immediacy where ?to be contemporary is to 
remember history? (McFarlane 2001, 1).  At first sight, this comment is not quite clear. 
 107 
However, from the beginning, Gunton in his writings notes the reality of both transcendence and 
temporality existing within the same time and space. This constitutiveness of transcendence and 
temporality reveals that there would be no contemporary without history. One can also note this 
concept in Christ and Creation and The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study and 
his discussion of the Spirit and perichoresis (1998; McFarlane 2001, 3; Jenson 2004, 85).  
 The impact has not only been in the form of academic writing, intellectual and spiritual 
exchanges amongst his colleagues, students, and members of his church community, but also in 
the practice of his ideas in his daily activity. This is the fifth area where Gunton has impacted 
Systematic Theology. Gunton was driven by community, interaction, and the connection with 
culture. Gunton?s drive has been referred to as a ?nervous energy? which was expressed in loud 
support or loud rejection of a position during exchanges in community, and his insistence on the 
importance of being culturally informed. This energy emanated from the understanding that 
?whenever theology was being done, there was a great deal at stake,? and therefore one would 
have to be involved (McCormack 2006, 1). It can be said that ?he would have liked to be 
remembered? not necessarily as someo ne whose theology we should agreed with, but someone 
who taught us why it was worth thinking hard enough about theology to disagree? the 
excitement in the possibility of theology, the confidence in the usefulness of theology, the 
orientation of theology only and ever towards the gospel? (Holmes, 2010, 45).  Gunton was a 
theologian in communion (Schw?bel 2005).  
 Gunton?s impact within a period of two decades influenced and renewed theology from 
?a purely prescriptive theology ? which could be learned parrot -fashion ? to one that is much 
more open-ended and fluid, ? based on the personal revelation of [the One creating entity and 
the Creator] of our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit,? in other words, based on the 
 108 
Trinity (Jenson 2004, 2; McFarlane 2001). For Gunton theology was life activity based on the 
gospel and his recommendation for an ontological transformation. Theology for Gunton, is not a 
social theory but reality itself.   
About Gunton?s Writings 
 Gunton thought that the answers to most questions can be found in theology. The central 
question that Gunton asks of any approach to theology is ?how does it relate eternal to temporal 
creation, and does it do so in such a way as to preserve at once the sovereignty and priority of 
divine action and the proper Selbst?ndigkeit ?relative independence- of the world?? (Webster, 
2010, 19-20). This is no easy task in an era that demands scientific certitude. In this section we 
will address this question with a brief look at Gunton?s writings.  
 It can be said that Gunton?s theology ?developed partly in critical conversation with 
Barth?s unfinished and not wholly successful attempt to extricate reformed theology from the 
[perceived] deficiencies of the St. Augustinian heritage? (Webster, 2010, 18). During the 
beginning of his journey, Gunton was about moving away from ?classical theism.? Classical 
theism, according to Gunton, understands the One creating entity as supernaturalistic, timeless, 
and a hierarchy of being (Jenson, 2010). Supernaturalistic means the One creating entity is 
understood as completely outside nature, which results in understanding the One creating entity 
through the via negativa. This is the understanding of the creating entity as ?whatever the world 
[is] not? and results in a creating entity who has no particulars, is not temporal, and does not 
speak the language of men (Holmes 2010, 41; Jenson 2010). This, Gunton argues, is 
understanding the One creating entity in a way that denies aspects of his creation, thus leading us 
?away from the world as it presents itself to us? (Jenson 2010, 9). This has resulted in alienation 
making our relationality to the One creating entity difficult to understand or at times even 
 109 
difficult to perceive (Gunton 2005). The understanding of the One creating entity as timeless 
finds its roots in Greek thought and emphasizes a disconnection between the now and the end of 
time while creating an oxymoronic perception of the gospel. This is because ?if to be [the One 
creating entity] is simply to be timeless? (Jenson 2010, 9) then what about Christ?  
The third aspect of classical theism identified by Gunton is the hierarchy of being. The 
hierarchy of being is the understanding that within the Trinity there is a hierarchy where the One 
creating entity, or Godhead, is understood to be at the top of a kind of a vertical chain of 
command. This also finds its roots in Classical Greek thought, more specifically, platonic and 
neoplatonic thought. This is because in platonic thought all true knowledge emanates from one 
source and this source is above all matter outside the perceived reality. This leads to an 
overemphasis on contemplation or life in the ideas, instead of life in the material. Gunton in his 
dissertation laid classical theism at the feet of St. Thomas Aquinas? Imagio Dei.  
Thomas Aquinas argues in Summa Theologia that when the Bible says that we were 
created in the image of creating entity, Imagio Dei, it refers to our capacity for reason. For 
Aquinas the mind is the essence of the soul and it allows through reason the revelation of the 
greatness of the creating entity on earth. Reason or wisdom is reached or accessed through 
understanding and will, which according to Thomas Aquinas are in the mind. It is often said that 
it is through the exercise of reason that we are linked to the creator or that it is in this aspect that 
we can share with the One creating entity (Portis 2008). Aquinas notes in De Veritates that ?we 
are in the image of [the One creating entity] by the fact that we exist, that we know that we exist, 
and that we love this knowledge and this existence? (McGlynn 1953). This means that to be in 
the image of One creating entity, one has to exist, live, and understand, to contain within the soul 
memory, understanding and willingness. These ?powers? are all part of the soul, which are its 
 110 
essence, but within these essences, the mind (reason) seems to be put at a higher level than 
understanding and will by Aquinas.  
Later, Gunton argued that this problem can also be seen in St. Augustine?s theology and 
?doctrine of divine simplicity? (Jenson 2010, 10). In Gunton?s first writings he seems to agree 
with St. Augustine in several respects. This is quite difficult to put aside because they seem to 
include a platonic aspect to themselves. St. Augustine?s writings are in the realm of the spiritual 
not only because he is a theologian, but in a kind of exalting of the spiritual, accepting that the 
best is yet to come and not in the material or temporal. This is also noted in what Jenson calls 
?doctrine of divine simplicity,? where Augustine notes that the one entity one can find refuge 
from the ailments of the temporal, which are also diverse and chaotic, is in the one entity, hence 
?not being many? (Jenson 2010, 10). The replacement of the one source of knowledge and truth 
in platonic thought by the one creating entity, is in my opinion, an expression of the resolute 
conviction of the drive towards the spiritual world, and denunciation of the material, for the 
perfectibility of man at the end, for the unification with the One creating entity. An analysis of 
the importance of historical work of the Son, and the importance of created order as means by 
which redemption is accomplish, does not diminish the higher value placed on the immaterial. In 
other words, St. Augustine, by enhancing the monism of the One creating entity as the most 
important aspect of the Trinity and promoting the spiritual realm as the only realm that truly 
counts, diminishes greatly the Trinity, and the connection of the spiritual realm with the material 
realm.  
This third aspect, the conceptualization of the Trinity in a hierarchy, is the one that 
seems, according to Gunton, to do the more damage to the understanding of the Trinity because 
it seems to inherently cause the Trinity to be misunderstood and incomprehensible. If there is a 
 111 
hierarchy within the trinity then it is not possible for them to be one, to be a harmonious 
particularity. Gunton explained that this is incompatible with the gospel and therefore attempts to 
make the Trinity the foundation, the beginning of his theology, through a new conceptualization.   
 The Trinity 
 The Trinity is a very difficult concept. This has resulted in throwing the concept into the 
realm of the ideal and incomprehensible. In this section we will discuss a brief historical 
background before moving into a conceptualization of Gunton?s Trinity.    
Historical Background 
The historical language of the word has not offered any easy help in understanding the 
Trinity. For example Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics used the phrase ?????? ????????, from 
the early church, which is translated into ?mode of being? to describe the particulars in the 
Trinity. The word ??????????? (substance/source) was also used to describe that which there are 
three of in the One creating entity (Cunningham 1998, 27). This was further complicated with 
the use of person, which developed into the understanding of the Trinity as three people in one.  
 Neale Donald Walsh, in The Complete Conversation with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, 
offers a good starting point. The Trinity is a concept that is developed through a process, through 
the understanding of life, reality, or time within the One creating entity. It is not a concept of one 
dimension but of three and of particulars. Walsh notes that one ?can call these three aspects of 
being ? [One creating entity], Son and Spirit; mind, body and spirit; superconscious, conscio us, 
and subconscious.? (2005, 83). This is done not for the purpose of allowing the understanding of 
the particulars within the Trinity, but for starting a process of understanding that the Trinity is 
also something more than a group of three particulars. The Trinity has to do with a process, more 
specifically the process of creation (David S. Cunningham, in his 1998 book These Three are 
 112 
one: the Practice of Trinitarian Theology, uses the verb ?production? to attempt to establish an 
understanding of the concept). Creation theologically and in modern psychology is understood as 
a process of thought, word and deed. It is dynamic. It is in this description that a good starting 
point and overall context for the understanding of the Trinity is found.  
 Historically, the beginning of this concept has been traced to the followers of Jesus 
Christ. The concept was developed through their life?s journey, trying to reconcile their belief in 
the One creating entity with their new found experience of ?beholding the presence of [the One 
creating entity] in their midst,? with Jesus Christ (Cunningham 1998, 21; Polkinghorne 2004). In 
other words, if there is only one creating entity, then why did we experience divinity or the 
presence of the One creating entity through Christ? This resulted in having to affirm the divinity 
of Christ, the dwelling of the creating entity in a human being. Furthermore, once Jesus Christ 
could no longer be physically present he made the promise that those that followed him would 
receive the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit was then understood to be that which would continue 
offering guidance and be present after Christ, just differently than Jesus Christ had been. This 
development can be seen in the narratives left behind by the followers (the Gospels, Acts, 
Letters), which describe their encounters with the One creating entity, with Jesus Christ, and 
with the Spirit. This means that the concept of the Trinity ?began as an attempt to account for the 
[One creating entity?s] definitive self-revelation? forcing early Christian thinkers to attempt an 
understanding of oneness and particulars (Cunningham 1998, 22).  
 It is the experience of the Word in the physical world that throws the doctrine of the One 
creating force into the realm of deliberation and discussion. How do we explain that the One 
creating entity, who is conceptualized in a monotheistic form, while teaching the divinity of 
Christ? The explanation is simply that Christ the Son is also the One creating entity, and that the 
 113 
spirit is also the creating entity. Here a historical separation is usually noted between those 
attempting to understand the concept of the Trinity by starting at the acceptance of one creating 
entity and then explaining the three (the Western Tradition) from those that start with the Trinity 
and then explaining its unity into one creating entity (the Eastern tradition). The Western 
Trinitarian theology has been rooted in St. Augustine and the Eastern Trinitarian theology has 
been traced to the Cappadocians.  
Augustine agreed with the Cappadocian?s distinction of ousia/hypostasis. Ousia is the 
essence and hypostasis is the substance. This means that the Cappadocians saw the essence and 
the substance of the creating entity as one, the same as for Christ. Augustine treated the work of 
creating entity in the economy as if any of them could have been done by any of the three, 
destroying its plurality and oneness at the same time. Gunton argues against Augustine?s 
understanding of the Cappadocians and notes that the Cappdocians understood the Trinity as a 
communion, which can only be understood by taking into account the economy (Jenson 2010, 
12). Gregory Palomas (who has been referred to as Thomas Aquinas from the East noted Robert 
W. Jenson 2010, 13) distinguished in the One creating entity?s reality between that which 
creatures could participate in and that in which they could not, making the Trinity a blank 
mystery. Regardless of the tradition embraced, because of the complexity of the concept, in 
looking to make sense of the Trinity, theologians turned to philosophy. This is because the 
Trinity is more easily perceived or understood in the realm of ideas. Once the conceptualization 
of the One creating entity was based on a single divine substance, the neglect of the internal 
relationality of particulars and subsequently the relationship of the One creating entity with 
creation was overshadowed by conceptualizing the One creating entity as one divinity, as an 
absolute subject (Cunningham 1998, 25). This means that the focus on making sure that the One 
 114 
creating entity is understood as one was kept intact and the Trinitarian conception of the One 
creating entity was left behind. One contemporary theologian who attempted to correct this and 
took on the challenge of the conceptualization of the One creating entity as the Trinity was 
Gunton.    
 Gunton?s Journey Toward the Trinity 
 The Trinity, as Gunton understands it, will be difficult clearly to state. This is not only 
because the concept of the Trinity itself is complex, but also because in his books there is not one 
chapter or statement that explains this directly; it is something revealed or that can be extracted 
through his collective writings. This means that Gunton?s Trinitarian theology is not developed 
at one point in time, in part because he was not attempting to develop a theology of his own, but 
only to interpret or recapitulate what had already been said, and in part because just like the 
concept he is trying to address, his theology develops through an intellectual communal process. 
Within him, the Trinity developed as it has throughout history in conversation with others for the 
purpose of the encounter of the self with the One creating entity. This section will briefly explain 
the evolution of Gunton?s concept of the Trinity.  
 We can begin and end with Gunton?s Thesis Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God 
in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (1978 and 2001), which shows the roots of his theology. 
In this book, Gunton presents Trinitarian theology (from Barth) as a way to recapitulate classic 
theology. This is done with Ebert J?ngel?s interpretation of relationality and Coleridge?s analysis 
between monistic, dualistic, or Trinitarian understanding of the One creating entity. Coleridge 
noted that one may be a monist (collapsing all distinction into one and so identifying the One 
creating entity and the world), a dualist (finding the answer in a primal opposition) or a 
Trinitarian (understanding the Godhead and the possibility of otherness as not opposed, or as 
 115 
?alterity?) (Holmes 2010, 38). This means that for Gunton, the Trinity will offer not a new 
theology, but a new understanding of theology that will allow for the relationality of the One 
creating entity and creature while allowing for the possibility of otherness, or particulars in the 
Trinity that do not oppose. This is Gunton?s starting point and the basis of his theological 
approach. From here, he will concentrate on certain aspects of theology with a new starting 
point, the One creating entity as Trinity. 
It can be said that Gunton addresses several aspects of the Trinity in several writings 
before a fully developed Trinitarian Theology can be perceived. He begins, in Yesterday and 
Today, by addressing Christology, emphasizing the importance of Christ?s temporality and 
divinity while at the same time trying not to diminish the importance of either. Gunton argues 
that classical Christology is still relevant and presents the solution for what he describes as 
Christological schizophrenia of the West (that is, either utter transcendence of the One creating 
entity beyond the temporal, or viewing of the world as a closed self sufficient system). He notes 
that if Christology is understood like this, only in dualistic terms, it results in alienation. His 
solution is presented from the philosophy of music, which suggests new ways of understanding 
time.  He notes that when one plays a triad, a three-note chord that can be stacked in thirds, 
neither one of the tones or notes is excluded. This is an example of perichoresis, which 
conceives new ways to relate word and object. He notes that the Western tradition has been the 
replacement of the classical dualism of time and eternity with transcendent creating entity and 
immanent son which not only disconnects both and emphasizes their individuality, but destroys 
the wholeness of time (Holmes 2010, 35). 
It is in Enlightenment and Alienation: an Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology (published in 
1985, written by 1982), that Trinitarian Theology is presented as an operational doctrine, which 
 116 
allows us to make sense of our reality, because through the Trinity freedom and obligation are no 
longer opposing values, and objective and subjective perception can be brought together. This 
hermeneutical approach brings attention to relationality as one of the main concepts that needs 
reinterpretation or recapitulation to unite the creator and creation and creation with creation, 
while enhancing the understanding of the Trinity. Gunton discusses divine relationality to 
humanity and argues that it is absent in Western thought (Tibbs 2010, 116).  Specifically, Gunton 
argues that Ireneus, who was a Second Century bishop of what is now known as Lyons France, 
noted that the personhood of Christ depended on the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and upheld 
that Jesus was truly human and truly divine (Spence 2010; Cumin 2010). Lincoln Harvey in ?The 
Double Homoousion: Forming the content of Gunton?s Theology,? notes this to be a double 
homoousion (double/one essence) and explains that Gunton settles this argument through 
Christological economy, where Jesus alone is simultaneously of one being with the One creating 
entity and of one being with humanity (2010, 87). This allows for the conceptualization of One 
creating entity where his divinity is maintained while at the same time affirming his genuine 
presence through Christ. Enlightenment and Alienation is divided in three sections and in each 
one Gunton presents a dualistic predicament. The first section is perception, which is normally 
perceived as objective or subjective. The second is freedom, which is normally addressed 
through obligation and interpretation. The third section is about biblical and canonical problems 
for contemporary western culture. It is through the presentation of dualism and its shortcomings 
that he notes the solution to be within the Trinity and the usage of metaphor.  
Gunton further explores metaphors and raises questions about atonement and the use of 
metaphor to understand of the Trinity in The Actuality of Atonement (1988). The book presents 
an argument against rationalism in theology (Kant?s argument of our innate capacity to save 
 117 
ourselves, Schleimacher?s push to make Christian terms mean what they once meant, and 
Hegel?s attempt to change the meaning of Christian terms where reconciliation is overcoming the 
infinite and the finite). Gunton then calls for the use of metaphor to understand our 
conceptualizations of the One creating entity, the doctrine of atonement, and the work of Christ. 
He presents six metaphors, which can unite the relationship of the One creating entity with 
human creation. These can assert the oikonomia (explained below). He argues that the suggestion 
that there is any language that is applied to the creating entity is not fundamentally analogical is 
dangerous, ?and that there is a risk ? of the imaginative stretch of human language to hint 
towards the ineffable divine reality (epinoia)? (Holmes 2010, 44-45) Some theologians look at 
the Trinity as either definitive (as the final conceptualization) or revelatory (an ongoing, dynamic 
analogy). Metaphor allows for both emphasizing the relationship between creator and creation 
through the oikonomia.  
 It is in Christ and Creation: The Disbury Lectures 1990, that Gunton revisits Christology 
and presents the Trinity as Irenaeus did: here we first find Gunton?s understanding of the Trinity 
as the divine working in and towards the world mediated by his two hands, the Son and the Holy 
Spirit. This is how Gunton explains his understanding of the Trinity (75; Spence 2010; Cumin 
2010; Holmes 2010, 41). This is also in connection to the concept of mediation. Mediation is 
described by Gunton as the process through which creaturely knowledge of God is structured 
(Harvey 2010). In The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, Gunton expounds the concept of 
communion as a function, a relation where one particular is not given priority over others (1997). 
At this point we are able to perceive the passionate drive behind Gunton?s transformation of 
theology and reality. We can already perceive his focus on the unification of what has been 
 118 
disengaged, his focus on the doctrine of creation, and his focus on the gospel as part of this 
transformation. 
In The One the Three and the Many, his inaugural lecture in the Chair of Christian 
Doctrine at King?s College, Gunton relates theology to the social order. He notes that modernity, 
thanks to the failings of classical theology, has ultimately lost any sense of truth in all three 
realms, the intellectual, the moral and the aesthetic (knowledge, goodness, and beauty) and 
presents Trinitarian theology as the healing solution. He begins his argument by defining 
modernity as something beyond technology, science, and economic systems; it is also a range of 
practices, attitudes and ideologies that are not always consistent with one another. He argues that 
ultimately the modern condition ?presents our civilization with grievous intellectual and moral 
problems? (2005, 13). These are rooted in Decartes?s ethic of disengagement from the world and 
body through an understanding of reason that views the world and even other people as tools.  
The basic framework framework for Gunton?s analysis is established by the pre-Socratic 
philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides. These are important representative figures of western 
thought as building blocks in philosophy and theology. Heraclitus argues that the many are prior 
to the one. He is the philosopher of plurality and motion. Parmenides is the opposite. Parmenides 
presents reality as unchanging, stable, uniformed, where the many are functions of the one. 
Gunton notes that Western theology and philosophy, beginning with Plato, have been primarily 
Parmedean.  Therefore Western thought tends to see plurality as essentially conflictual, and this 
is true even of postmodernism, which simply celebrates plurality as conflict.  But Gunton argues 
that plurality can be harmonious and that the Trinity is the proper model for such harmonious 
plurality. More specifically, he states that the Trinity can allow us to address the doctrine of 
creation in a way that can allow healing of our culture can take place.  
 119 
 Gunton also addresses theological issues having to do with particularity and person, 
revisits classical theism, addresses the knowability of the creating entity, presents the Triune 
creating entity and discusses mediation, creation, and the new revealed truth under the Trinity 
while addressing pneumatology (the interaction of creation and creator). It is in this work that the 
Irenean approach to the Trinity, mediation, personhood, and theology proper begins to take root. 
Gunton later extends this work in a Brief Theology of Revelation, where he proposes comparing 
human personhood with divine personhood where the words love and person means the same at 
levels of creator and creation (Holmes 2010).  
 Gunton?s Trinity is driven by the need of a Trinitarian doctrine of the divine. He finds 
this need in Karl Barth, who according to him was not Trinitarian enough. For Gunton only a 
Triune creating entity would allow ?a creature that is truly other than he, [to be] intimately 
related to him? (Jenson 2010, 10). This Trinity offers a new reality, which would allow us to 
think of both particularity and unity in the One creating entity. The Trinity is a dynamic activity, 
?in which [the One creating entity] is presently creating, electing, and redeeming humanity.? The 
eternal decree is ongoing, the contemporary and historical, the temporal and transcendental. This 
is because in this conceptualization ?the transcendence of [the One creating entity], rather than 
the creating entity?s identification with the human condition, [is what] guarantees human 
freedom. It is because [the One creating entity] is free in and within [the One creating entity?s] 
own self that humanity is free: unconditional lordship guarantees human autonomy.? What is 
even better is that it is ?free uncoerced, gratuitous act of [the One creating entity] which is in fact 
the order of the Trinity? (Campbell 1986, 331).  
 In Act and Being, he notes ?all of [the creating entity?s] acts take their beginning in the 
One creating entity, are put into effect through the Son and reach their completion in the Spirit. 
 120 
In other words, [the One creating entity?s] actions are mediated: he brings about his purposes 
towards and in the world by the mediating actions of the Son and the Spirit his ?two hands.? This 
should not be understood as saying that the One creating entity intrudes upon creation, but rather 
that the Spirit?s transcendent and eschatological action pulls things forward toward that for 
which the One creating entity has made them (Webster, 2010, 21). 
 This establishes the context of Gunton?s Trinitarian doctrine: the One creating entity in 
relation with creation through mediation where the temporal and the ternal are in relation through 
the Son and the Spirit. This communion is what allows for the new revealed reality where time 
and space are defined and open, the creator is in mediated relation with creation, and the 
particular and the many can exist in unity without losing either their particularity or their unity.   
Book Main Idea or Argument 
Becoming and Being 
(Dissertation Work, 
1978 & 2001) 
 
This book is a comparative analysis of the doctrine of God in Charles 
Hartshorne and Karl Barth. Gunton presents the argument against 
?classical theism? through Barth?s unfinished or incomplete attempt to 
understand a Trinitarian theology. In this book we find elements that 
were later fully developed in Gunton?s theology. Through Barth and 
J?ngel, Gunton accepts Trinitarian Theology?s function as 
hermeneutical in revelation. Jungel also provides Gunton?s basis for 
relationality, which results in a new understanding of God at an 
epistemological and ontological level. Gunton commits to removing 
theology from the intellectual roots of philosophy.  
 
Yesterday and Today 
(1983, 1997) 
 
Gunton argues that classical Christology is still relevant and launches a 
consistent attack on the dualisms which can be found in Greek thought  
(from above, which insisted on the utter transcendence of God beyond 
temporal being) or in our own post-Kantian culture (from below, which 
sees the world as a closed self-sufficient system). To Gunton, both are 
alienating, and the root of a kind of Christological schizophrenia of the 
West. His solution is presented from the philosophy of music, which 
suggests new ways of understanding time, and the philosophy of 
science which conceives new ways to relate word and object.  
 
 121 
Enlightenment and 
Alienation: A Essay 
Towards a Trinitarian 
Theology (written by 
1982 and published in 
1985) 
 
This book is divided in three sections: perception (objective and 
subjective); freedom (obligation and interpretation); and biblical and 
canonical problems for contemporary western culture. Gunton?s 
solution to alienation is Trinitarian Theology ? the understanding of the 
creator as a triune God. In this book his main influence is Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge.  
 
The Actuality of 
Atonement A Study of 
Metaphor, rationality 
and the Christian 
Tradition (1988). 
 
The book presents an argument against rationalism in theology (Kant?s 
argument of our innate capacity to save ourselves, Schleimacher?s push 
to make Christian terms to mean what they once meant, and Hegel?s 
attempt to change the meaning of Christian terms where reconciliation 
is overcoming the infinite and the finite). Gunton then calls for the use 
of metaphor to understand God, the doctrine of atonement, and the 
work of Christ. He presents six metaphors, which can illuminate the 
relationship of God with creation. These can assert the oikonomy.  
 
Chrsit and Creation: 
The Disbury Lectures 
1990 (1993) 
 
In this book, Gunton revisits Christology and addresses pneumatology. 
He presents the Trinity in the terms worked out by Irenaeus, as the two 
hands of God, for the first time (75; Holmes 2010, p.41).   
 
The Promise of 
Trinitarian Theology, 
(Essay, 1991, 1997, 
1999, 2003, 2006) 
 
In this essay, Gunton attempts to find more analogies and moves 
towards the Trinity as theology, as a basis for ontology, and as 
theological anthropology. In the second edition, he notes the increasing 
interest in the Trinity and warns against a superficial understanding of 
it while introducing the idea of theology in community.     
 
The One, the Three 
and the Many: God 
Creation and the 
Culture of Modernity. 
(1993) 
 
This book comes from Gunton?s inaugural lectures as the Chair of 
Christian Doctrine at King?s College. He takes theology to the social 
realm. It is in this book that he invites theologians to recover truth and 
apply theology to the social realm. He notes that the question of the 
three in one is also a question of our modern world where we ?cannot 
find room both for the unity of mankind and the free particular plurality 
of the many? (Holmes, 2010, p. 38). He argues that the culprits of 
morphed theology were Latin Theologians like St. Augustine.  
 
A Brief Theology of 
Revelation (1995, 
1997) 
 
A proposal on the knowability of God through analogies that 
introduces the subject of God?s mediation. He points out some of the 
weaknesses in modern theology, like overemphasizing revelation.  
 122 
Theology through 
Theologians (1996) 
 
This book is an introduction to systematic theology. It takes us on a 
historical journey through numerous theologians, not so much to focus 
on their missteps as to understand where we are today. The writings 
touch on subjects like Christology, the Holy Spirit, Creation, 
Atonement, Freedom, and more. Gunton discusses Coleridge, 
Newman, Barth, Niebuhr, Moltmann, Torrance and others.  
 
Triune Creator: A 
Historical and 
Systematic Study 
(1998) 
 
In this book, Gunton presents the concept of God as triune on the basis 
of the economy of salvation and the importance of this 
conceptualization on the mediation of creation through the beginning 
of a kind of theological history. For him, it is important that science be 
informed by a doctrine of creation. He outlines the elements of 
Christian doctrine of creation affirming the goodness of this created 
order.     
 
The Christian Faith: 
An Introduction to 
Christian Doctrine 
(2001) 
 
This book is a careful exposition of the Apostles creed. He takes 
aspects of the creed and therefore Christian faith and explains them 
through Trinitarian exegesis.  
 
Act and Being: 
Towards a Theology of 
Divine Attributes 
(2002) 
 
In this book, Gunton addresses the concept of ?person.? According to 
Holmes person as an eschatological concept. Gunton also argues that 
ontological commonality between the divine and the human can be 
found in an account of persons and relationships as the fundamental 
concepts in both divine and human ontology.   
 
Father, Son , and Holy 
Spirit: Towards a 
Fully Trinitarian 
Theology (2003) 
 
This is the book published shortly after Gunton?s death. In it he 
discusses the Trinity in theological terms and insists that is not a theory 
but an account of God?s being. He addresses elements important to the 
Trinity in papers previously presented or written about the Trinity. As 
the title of the book notes, the elements are present to guides us 
towards reunification.   
 
Table 3-1 Gunton?s Writings 
Trinitarian Theological Theory 
 Now that the conceptualization of Gunton?s Trinity has been briefly explained, I will 
examine in more detail his Trinitarian Theological Theory. Gunton argues that the roots of 
 123 
modernity lie very deep, and indeed can be traced to the failure of Christianity to work out a 
fully Trinitarian theology.  According to Gunton, modernity, ?in reacting against Christendom, 
?has bequeathed equal and opposite distortions of [our understanding of] human being in the 
world? further resulting in contradictions, paradoxes, and in cultural fragmentation that can be 
said to have ultimately decline into subjectivism and relativism that impose social uniformity and 
pressure toward homogeneity (2005, 13). He refers to this as ?pluralist indifference? (2005, 131). 
In other words, Gunton notes that modernity did not deliver the promise of rational-self-reliance, 
but a ?conformist herd? and an era that while seeking freedom bred totalitarianism, while 
attempting to understand the vastness of the universe has left behind the understanding of our 
own significance, and while trying to control the world and its natural forces have caused 
destruction to the earth (2005, 41). This means that all realms of our reality have been affected, 
the intellectual, the moral and the aesthetic. 
 In The One the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, 
Gunton addresses the need for healing these three realms, which have not only been disengaged 
but also displaced (2005) (see Illustration 4-1). It is Webster who notes that Gunton attempts, in 
his ?most ambitious work?, to ?reformulate modern thought? (as cited in H?hne 2010, 2). He 
explains that the disengagement that has taken place is from each other, from reality, origin or 
nature, and from the creator through the misunderstanding of knowledge, goodness, and beauty 
(truth). His recommendation is not to be understood as an all encompassing, absolute truth or 
theory, but instead in pursue for a different understanding of the realms themselves, a new 
understanding of reality, where all three realms in some conceptualization can be valued, 
weighted, or given importance equally. This is not just for the purpose of the reformulation of 
modern thought, because there are issues within theology, which have helped bring about 
 124 
modernity (this refers back to classical theism), but a kind of recapitulation of history, a kind of 
revelation of a new reality.  
Issues to Address within Theology 
 Before looking into Trinitarian Theological Theory, we need to note the issues that 
Gunton argues need addressing within theology. These will help us understand his Trinitarian 
theological Theory and help the recapitulation or revelation of a new reality. These issues are the 
three main features of creation: creation as dualistic, creation?s relationality to the creator, and 
the concept of time and space. Gunton argues that there is a relation between the way that 
creation doctrine was formulated in the West and the shape of modern culture. He also addresses 
or transforms the doctrine of the One creating entity through his writings and Trinitarian 
doctrine.    
 Creation is Non-Dualistic 
 Creation, Gunton argues, should not be understood as dualistic, as immaterial or material, 
because this sets the creator and creation in different worlds. A dualistic creation emphasizes the 
understanding that we are apart from the One creating entity. This, at the same time, has led to 
the loss of the Bible?s affirmation of the goodness of the whole world, which has resulted in the 
loss of the one and the loss of the many. In other words, if only the One creating entity is good, 
then creation is not, and if the assumption is that we are not then everything not good is accepted 
as belonging in created order (nature) and impossible to connect to the good, the divine or 
immaterial. This is disengagement and establishes disengagement itself as reality, while also 
establishing any engagement or connectivity between the material and immaterial as impossible.   
 
 
 125 
Creation is Relational 
 Second, we should not confuse the acceptance of the ?goodness of the whole world? as if 
then we are equal to the One creating entity. Instead, humans are to be understood relationally to 
the divine. This relationality is not to be understood in sharing fixed characteristics with the 
divine, as reason or will. This means that there should be different questions generated about the 
relation of creator and creation and our common ontology. Gunton notes that the relation 
between creation and creator would be better understood as human relation to the divine in the 
first instance and to the rest of creation in the second. According to him, it is the loss of this 
relationality that brought about the assumption that creator and creation are of the same nature 
and resulted in the loss of our place in the world while creating false universals. This has resulted 
in displacement.  
 Creation and Time and Space 
 Third, the way that the doctrine of creation was developed has not helped the warped 
conception we have of time and space and there needs to be an acceptance of the new 
understanding of time and space where harmonious particularity is possible making continuity 
within discontinuity between the divine and non-divine creation possible. Modernity has 
emphasized the now and created what Gunton refers to as ?time-space compression? (2005, 77). 
Modern technology after capitalism has emphasized this to where now we are expected to do 
more, in the same amount of time. This at the same time has resulted in the focus on short-term 
goals and search of faster processes. Sadly, Gunton notes, this has placed our understanding and 
connection to the future in the realm of ideas and disconnected it from the causal effect of the 
now. This has established a misunderstanding, or misconception about time and space, creating a 
misconception of reality itself.  
 126 
 Gunton notes that aspects of modernity also arose out of the failures of the doctrine of 
creation while also arising from its successful emphasis of one realm of reality over the other. 
This is rooted in classical philosophy and classical theism. It is through platonic thought that a 
sharp distinction between the material and the ideal that was made. At the same time, there was 
emphasis in the monotheistic aspect of the one creating entity. This was emphasized in classical 
Christianity through St. Augustine now placing all value and goodness in the one creating entity 
and away from the material or created order. Subsequently, through modern thought, like Kant, 
human agency replaced divine intervention, equating autonomy with the complete denial of the 
one creating entity, which denies any relational connection between creator and creation. This 
has at the same time, resulted in the misconception that the eternal and temporal are exclusive 
and therefore disengaged. Gunton expounds the Trinity and reveals as a result a new created 
reality. The divine as Trinitarian would incorporate the creator into the temporal, away from 
Plato?s and Aristotle?s picture of reality. It would allow for a reunion between creator and 
creation in a relational connection that would result in a harmonious particularity. This means 
that it would change not just theology but political theory and consequently public 
administration. 
 The Structure of Trinitarian Theological Theory 
 Gunton?s book The One the Three and the Many: God Creation and the Culture of 
Modernity is where his Trinitarian theory is presented as a solution for modernity?s dualistic 
elevation of the one above the many, and subsequent lack of relatedness. The structure of the 
Trinitarian Theological Theory cannot be established as a system or schema to follow. This 
would result in what Gunton fears most, leaving the Trinity in the temporal completely when 
some new social theory comes along. When discussing the structure of a theory, it will be helpful 
 127 
to discuss its different aspects to understand better how together they could offer a new ground 
for the transformation, recapitulation, or recovery of an epistemology and ontology. This is the 
aim of this section. First let us look carefully at the elements that compose his concept: the one, 
the three, and the many.   
The One 
 The ?one? in Gunton?s theory is the singular, the particulars within the Trinity: the One 
creating entity, Jesus Christ (the Son), the Holy Spirit; the created--man, earth, and universe. 
This is not to confusedly think of all of them as being in the same realm. The ?one? actually 
indicates that the Spirit is not the Son or nothing like the Son: ?If the Son is the content of [the 
One creating entity?s] redemptive movement into the world, the spirit is its form, and that form is 
its freedom? (Cumin 2010, 67). This means that within the Trinity, the ?one? is each particular. 
Furthermore, for Gunton, the creator and creature are related but not the same, not within the 
divine, and not within creation. The ?one? is then used to express distinctiveness, and the 
importance of the particular in both divine and creaturely action (Gunton 2005, 153; Wright 
2010). In this individual and distinctive understanding, Gunton notes that the One creating entity 
is understood as the creator and the system of universal coordinates (2005, 71). The Son is the 
exchange, the main element in the oikonomia, the most tangible example of communion between 
nature and the divine (2005, 158). The Son is also the one that anchors creaturely knowledge 
(Harvey 2010, 87). He is the one that gives structure to the world (Wright 2010). The Spirit has 
?to do with the crossing of boundaries?  relatedness? (2005, 2010, 181).  It is the one who brings 
things to perfection, the ?perfecting cause? ??the presence of one enabling the world to be and 
becoming truly itself? ?so that where the Son is the (personal) principle of the world?s unity and 
coherence, the Holy Spirit is, through the same Son, the focus of the particularity of things, their 
 128 
becoming ?perfect? -complete- as distinctly themselves? (Webster 2010, 24). In other words, the 
spirit grants space for development and creation within the structure created by Christ (Wright 
2010). 
 The Three 
 The ?three? in Gunton?s theory is the Trinity. Gunton notes that ?in the first instance [it 
is] a way of characterizing the being of [the One creating entity]? (2005, 145). It is also the 
?primary idea, from which all ideas evolve? (2005, 144). The Trinity is at the same time, the 
understanding, description, of the realm, the ?richness and diversity of the ways of [the One 
creating entity] towards and in the world,? it is the One creating entity?s agency forming a unity 
through time and space? (2005, 158). The Trinity is a ?mutually involved personal dynamic? of 
the particulars, a communion, ?a unity of persons in relation? (2005, 162, 215). It is here that we 
understand the that the Spirit is not the outcome of a supposed property of Christ?s ascended 
human nature, but rather is a particular and mediated presence, promised through the Word and 
received by faith (Colwell 2010). The Trinity is not just the idea of ideas for Gunton but what 
will allow the exercise in the open transcendental which manages to maintain the necessary 
space between the creator and creation, and establishes a better understanding of time and space 
(Harvey 2010, 87; Green 2010). In this, the communion is seen as a characterization of all three, 
a relation where order and freedom are not constraining but allow for the particulars to be in free 
communion (Cumin 2010, 76). This results in a doctrine of the divine that instead of a vertical 
relation is more of what Paul Cumin refers to as an open dynamic of personal love. In this 
communion ontologically the One creating entity ?causes,? the Son shapes, and the Spirit 
?completes.? The Spirit is also the mediator of the Triune love and is responsible for the Son?s 
 129 
eternal begottenness drawing from the oikonomia. This eternal begottenness is the ever-physical 
presence of the divine creating entity through Jesus Christ (2010).   
  The Many 
 The ?many? for Gunton is the One creating entity, the particulars within the Trinity, and 
creaturely collective. Creaturely collective allows for the inclusion of animal creation and nature, 
where because of the collective nature of the collectivity is understood to only be through the 
constitution of the relationship among them, and most importantly to the One creating entity, but 
also through a new accepted conceptualization, the Trinity. It is ultimately reciprocal, and 
meaningful, where the many are because of the one and the three. Gunton did all he could to 
have his Christ and his creation too (Cumin 2010).   
 These aspects are brought together conceptually by two main structures or processes. 
Gunton calls these open transcendentals: perichoresis and oikonomia. Generally a transcendental 
is understood as the clear and distinct mark of being as it has always been. An open 
transcendental is a flexible foundation, one which remains most basically continuous with the 
reality it opens up, but by which it can be changed. This means that an open transcendental is a 
transcendental but interaction with reality becomes while still being. He notes that it ?is a notion, 
in some way basic to the human thinking process, which empowers a continuing and in principle, 
unfinished exploration of the universal marks of being? during the continuing process of the 
thought? (Gunton 2005, 142-143).  
Perichoresis 
 Gunton attempts to avoid the perceived basic error of the Western tradition of theology 
and philosophy, the Platonizing tendency to distinguish sharply between the world of sense and 
the world of intellect, between unrestricted transcendence and unrestricted immanence, between 
 130 
the material and the ideal, between basic modes of dualism. Gunton strongly believed that this 
can be counteracted by theology (Webster 2010). How can incorporation of the divine creating 
entity into the temporal be done outside Plato and Aristotle? While the realm of philosophy 
further placed the Trinity in the realm of the idea (more in the West than the East), it also allows 
for the consensus that even if one starts from three and the challenge is to reconcile the 
particulars into one, or if one starts with one and the challenge is to explain the existence of three 
particulars, the challenge is in the reconciliation, in the unity, in the explanation of the 
communion. Often this is explained through perichoresis. According to Karen Kilby, it is this 
that makes the Trinity such a wonderful doctrine. Perichoresis is noted in J?rgen Moltmann, and 
it is what ?links together in a brilliant way the threeness and the unity, without reducing the 
threeness to the unity, or dissolving the unity in the threeness" (Kilby 2000).  In other words, 
perichoresis is the concept that explains that the persons of the Trinity give and receive existence 
from each other in a dynamic event of interdependent reciprocity.  Furthermore, it is what allows 
for eternal exchange of love between the particulars in the creating entity, between the creating 
entity and creation, and amongst creation. Perichoresis is a communion of mutual open 
particulars, it is what John Polkinghorne refers to as, a ?profound degree of relationality? (2004, 
103).  Perichoresis becomes an open transcendental, ?which means that the pattern of being 
found in [the One creating entity] can also be found alongside [the One creating entity] in the 
creaturely world? [where] ?  human persons are constituted in relation through ?perichorectic 
reciprocity?? (Harvey 2010, 92).  
 This is what to some seems to be the attraction to Trinitarian thought, the development of 
the understanding of the Trinity in concrete reality while encompassing the intangible. 
Perichoresis allows for the understanding of unity in a non-restrictive, non-compromising form, 
 131 
in a communion. At the same time, perichoresis allows for what LaCugna notes that the acts of 
the One creating entity in history as been ?the original subject matter of Trinitarian theology? 
(Cunningham 1998, 22). This means that the subject matter of Trinitarian discussions is the acts 
of the One creating entity in the realm of the physical and not just in the now. This means that 
the One creating entity has an internal and external history, a temporal and eternal involvement, 
which most theologians have to think through. This history for the most part is assumed into 
religious consciousness, leaving in reality a presumption of the divine and where this history has 
been neglected. This has been emphasized by the reliance on defining reality outside the 
narrative, in the concrete. It is through the Trinity that a recovery is taking place. For example, 
Karl Barth attempts in Church Dogmatics to assert the centrality of the Trinity by ?grounding it 
in the narrative of the One creating entity?s relationship with Israel and the Church, both of 
which find their ultimate center in Christ? (Cunningham 1998, 24); Walter Kasper in The God of 
Jesus Christ notes that when one reflects on the Trinity, it is never just abstract but grounded in 
the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Cunningham 1998, 23). Jurgen Moltmann 
encouraged and helped theologians consider the interaction of [the One creating entity] with 
history by ?explica[ting] Trinitarian doctrine through categories that are primarily social? 
revealing [the creating entity?s] activity in history?? which makes revelation a freedom state 
where the passivity accepted in Christianity could no longer be in place (Cunningham 1998, 24). 
The concept of the Trinity can be said to have risen ?as a response to the insistent complexity of 
the encounter with the reality of [the One creating entity]? with the reality of creation, ?not as an 
act of unbridled and ungrounded metaphysical speculation? (Polkinhorne 2004, 99-100) but a 
bottom-up movement that comes from the experience of salvation, the One  creating entity?s 
nature is made known through revelatory acts, the oikonomia (Polkinhorne 2004). This will 
 132 
allow for history to be restored taking into account the past, the responsibility in the present, and 
the importance of the future.  
  Oikonomia.   
 Oikonomia has been at times what replaces perichoresis in the explication of the Trinity?s 
activity, but in Gunton?s theological theory it is the context of perichoresis and all other activity, 
either divine or creaturely. This theological concept emerges early in the Christian tradition as a 
financial metaphor. This describes the ?generosity of [the One creating entity] on both the gift of 
Christ (?yet for your sake he became poor?) and the ?down payment? of the Spirit? (Harvey 2010, 
90).  When in the social sciences one refers to an exchange of benefits one refers to this as 
economy, and is not always based on monetary exchanges. These exchanges are based on values 
like justice, equity, ethics, discretion, representation, and freedom, which cannot be quantified in 
monetary value but still understood as an economy. The exchange involved in theology, can be 
said to be as difficult to measure, but is still not necessarily unperceived. These values are the 
creating entity?s gifts of ?sacrifice of His Son? and the benefit of forgiveness of sin for humanity, 
which also established a new covenant and subsequently starts a kind of new timeline or reality 
for the world. It is this, ?restart,? that is understood as the Spirit?s down payment. This 
understanding has allowed for the term oikonomia to be understood in terms of a divine activity.  
 Harvey notes that this divine activity is holding together all the different variables that 
took place within the world at the time of the exchange, within the temporal, as unified whole 
within Christ. This is why, according to Gunton, this is the only place to begin Christian 
theology (which is paradigmatically from the spirit). This is because the oikonomia breaks down 
dualism.  Jesus in the oikonomia is simultaneously of one being with the One creating entity and 
 133 
of one being with humanity (this is what Harvey calls a double homoousion; same essence) and 
it is what ?ties the speech of [the One creating entity] to Jesus? (Cumin 2010, 66; Harvey 2010).  
In The One the Three and the Many Gunton notes that ?because [the One creating entity] 
is economically involved in the world on those various ways, it cannot be supposed other than 
the action of [the One creating entity], Son and Spirit is a mutually involved personal dynamic? 
in eternity ? sharing a mutual reciprocity? (Gunton 1993, 158).  This links creation, incarnation, 
and redemption where creation is always moving towards the coming of the One creating entity 
and where Jesus Christ allows for the re-imagining of the creaturely realm while mediating the 
One creating entity?s working with temporal reality where the assumed latter is no longer needed 
because the creating entity sort of already has ?let that down ? on the incarnation of his eternal 
Son within the structures of worldly being? (Harvey 2010, 91). This is what has been understood 
as a theological anthropology. It is a linking of creature to creator through Christ (Harvey 2010; 
Tibbs 2010). At the same time, this dogmatic linking of Jesus to creaturely ontology represents a 
shift from oikonomia to the immanent Trinity, keeping the temporal Christ?s through a horizontal 
axis. Christ as creator and as the first new man allows for the understanding that ?to speak 
theologically of the oikonomia is to speak of the way in which [the One creating entity] 
constitutes reality? (Harvey 2010, 92).  
According to Gunton, Irenaeus has it right. The very function of Trinitarian talk is to 
construe the oikonomia, which emphasizes and allows some understanding of the Trinity. This is 
where the history of creation, consummation, and redemption is one history. In the aspects of 
Gunton?s Trinitarian theological theory, one can see that he is addressing not just displacement 
and disengagement, but developing a new ontology and a new epistemology. Gunton offers a 
whole new revealed reality to depart from.  
 134 
 First, Gunton recommends a rehabilitation or reinvigoration of the concept of truth, a new 
approach to the construction of knowledge itself thru a non-foundationalist foundation. 
Foundationalism is understood as ?a discipline?s claim for rationality and truth that must be 
based on some broadly accepted intellectual foundation, established by universal and certain 
reason? (2005, 132). This seems to put all knowledge creation in the hands of humanity with no 
consideration of the possibility that human knowledge may be flawed (Suda 2005). The rational 
and the empirical compete for foundational status (neither succeeded in delivering what they 
promised), and undermining the possibility to finding truth in both, the universal and the 
particular. Non-Foundationalism is when ?the basis and criteria of rationality are intrinsic to 
particular intellectual enterprises, which should not have imposed upon them in procrustean 
ways the methodologies which are appropriate for other form of intellectual life? (2005, 133). 
Suda notes that Gunton also rejects non-foundationalism because not only does it attempt to 
construct a barrier outside critique, but it also runs the risk of subjectivism (2005). 
Second, Gunton recommends recapitulation. Recapitulation takes into account what has 
been and the changes that have taken place. This means that change and certain elements kept or 
preserved allow for the transcendental and immanence to exist together. It allows for the 
conception of a kind of open metaphysics, which enables a conceptualization in reality with 
openness to the possible. This can be done through the Trinity and the concept of Perichoresis.  
Third, Gunton aims at presenting a theology of being that resists the pressure of 
homogeneity and gives the right value and weight to the particular. This is the Trinitarian 
theology, which allows for the understanding of the one, the three and the many when none are 
above or below any other. This is done through the right understanding of the spirit in the 
 135 
Trinity, and mediation. The spirit allows for the relatedness, the material and the immaterial, the 
universal and the particular, the immanent and the transcendental.   
 We have now a better understanding of Gunton?s Trinitarian Theological Theory. This 
theory aims at addressing three issues: disengagement (amongst particulars and from the 
universal), dislocation (of the material and the immaterial) and time and space (the 
transcendental and the immanent as separate). In other words, Gunton is arguing that through the 
Trinity an understanding of the one and the many can take place and disengagement, dislocation, 
and the truth about time and space reveal the communion that will heal the three realms: truth, 
goodness, and beauty; the intellectual, the moral, and the aesthetic. The structure of Gunton?s 
Trinitarian theology can be seen in Illustration 3-1.  
Following this paragraph is Table 3-2 with more concepts that have been used not only 
in Gunton?s writings about the Trinity but those commenting on Gunton?s writings that can help 
further the creation of new bases for knowledge and/or reality. These are examples of 
harmonious particularity.   
One Creating Entity Spirit Christ 
Word Thought Deed 
Moral  Intellectual  Aesthetic 
Goodness Knowledge Beauty 
Mind Spirit Body 
Super-conscious Subconscious Conscious 
Antimatter Energy Matter 
Being Knowing Experience 
Theoretical Tacit Empirical 
Ethics Science Aesthetics 
Table 3-2 Other Concept to describe the Trinity 
 136 
 
Illustration 3-1 Trinitarian Theological Theory Structured 
 
 
 
Issue: Modernity 
Modernity has resulted in cultural fragmentation declining into 
subjectivism and relativism, pluralism of indifference. 
This is derived from Western thought and the way creation doctrine was formulated in the west. 
The misshaping or warping of the creation doctrine has resulted in either neglecting it or accepting 
its transmogrification, which has enhanced disengagement and displacement. 
1st Solution A revision of the three main features of creation is needed 
Disengagement  
Creation is not dual;  
Immaterial or material 
 
Modernity has emphasized the 
material and autonomy away 
from the community ? the loss 
of the one and the many   
 
 
Time and Space  
There is continuity within 
discontinuity, between human and 
non-human creation. 
  
Modernity has emphasized the now 
while embracing the future as an 
ideology creating misunderstanding 
about time and space 
Displacement 
Humans are to be understood 
relationally to God, not in fixed 
characteristics as reason or will 
 
Modernity has emphasized 
homogenization and loss of our 
place in the world while resulting in 
false universals ? the loss of the one 
and the many    
 
The Solution is a Trinitarian Theological Theory 
 
The three issues to address are the particular and the universal, the material and the immaterial, and the 
transcendental and the immanent. Gunton notes the need for understanding these issues not individually 
or in relation to each other but in a harmonious particularity. This will heal the three realms: truth, 
goodness, and beauty; the intellectual, the moral, and the aesthetic. 
 
1. First he recommends a rehabilitation or reinvigoration of the concept of truth trough non-
foundationalist foundation/ a ?fallibilist? foundation, a ?fallibilist? reason. To find truth in 
both the universal and the particular where each is given equal weight in the right conception 
of reason which can be done through the Trinity   
2. Second he recommends recapitulation. Recapitulation is the sense of an idea of change where 
certain elements are kept or preserved and one can acknowledge transcendentalism and 
immanence. It allows for the conception of a kind of open metaphysics, which enables a 
conceptualization in reality with openness to the possibility of both the transcendental and the 
immanent. This can be done through open transcendentals.  
3. Third will be to find a theology of being that resists the pressure of homogeneity and gives the 
right value and weight to the particular. In other words, not understanding the one, the three 
and the many above or below any other. This can be done through the right understanding of 
the spirit in the Trinity: substantiality. The spirit allows for the relatedness, the material and 
the immaterial, the universal and the particular, the immanent and the transcendental.     
 137 
Critiques of Trinitarian Theological Theory  
Trinitarian Theological Theory with all its possibilities does not come without some 
criticisms and challenges.  
General Critique 
One of the most useful critiques from a theological perspective to note is the troubling 
tendency noted by David S. Cunningham in These Three are One: the Practice of Trinitarian 
Theology, which he calls historical scapegoating (1998). Historical scapegoating is the blaming 
of the doctrine of the Trinity?s misunderstanding, neglect, or decline on particular theologians or 
theological movements from the past. Some examples that Cunningham notes who have used 
historical scapegoating are: Karl Ranher and Colin Gunton blaming St. Thomas Aquinas; Robert 
Jenson and Colin Gunton blaming St. Augustine; LaCugne?s blaming Gregory Palmas, St 
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, also the Cappadocian Fathers, Athanasius, and the Council of 
Nicaea; J?rgen Moltmann noting the fault of one or more Evangelists. He then notes that this 
type of writing casts doubt on subsequent traditions, it is done with instruments created in a 
different period, and saddles ancient Christian authors with positions that were not theirs. This 
becomes even more difficult when some critiques do have to be addressed in order to better 
understand what Trinitarian theology can offer, what is Trinitarian theology all about, and how 
formulation of the doctrine has spoken and can speak to the present context (Cunningham 1998).   
 Critiques in Terms of Social Theory  
 Some theologians have argued that the Trinitarian Theological Theory outside a 
conceptualization of an open transcendental, perichoresis, and/or open reality can result in the 
legitimacy of a hierarchical and absolutist form of government. This is because even in the 
Trinity there is still the misconstrued tendency of oneness, of unity, and in addition the general 
 138 
acceptance of what has been referred to as ?Godhead.? This leads to the submission of the many 
to the one by losing the particulars to the perceived singular most important particulars of the 
Trinity. Sadly, this can also be perceived in Gunton?s Trinity by his return to Irenus and the two 
hands of the One creating entity. This description or conceptualization of the Trinity contains 
within the perception of Godhead, of a hierarchy he so graciously discourages. Karen Kilby 
notes that ?before [the One creating entity]? all human beings are leveled:  all alike are 
creatures, absolutely different from their creator, and any attempt by some to lord it over the 
others can be seen as a sinful attempt to usurp the place of the [one creating entity]? to exalt the 
many in the place of the one (2000, 7). 
 At the same time, within this critique is the perception of the masculinization of the 
Trinity. In the Trinity, two out of three particulars are normally referred, as masculine, and even 
when the understanding of the Trinity is of one essence, the concept has been generally 
understood or genderized masculine. This can be seen in the art, poetry, liturgy, and hymnody, 
where depictions of the Trinity have been masculine. This masculinization or patriarchy of the 
Trinity has been further emphasized in Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism with all male 
clergy. This is not to argue whether depicting the Trinity in any particular gender is better than 
the other but rather that it is not appropriate to depict or assign any particular gender to the 
Trinity. At the same time, it is a legitimate critique of patriarchy that has filtered into our 
practices (Cunningham 1998; Kilby 2002) where one gender has been perceived to be above the 
other. I have attempted to address this issue in this dissertation by referring to God as the One 
creating entity. This concept is based on David Cunningham?s recommendation in These Three 
are One: the Practice of Trinitarian Theology (1998). 
  
 139 
Projection 
 The strongest objection against Trinitarian theory is presented by Karen Kilby as 
projection, or high level projection, which is described as the development of the understanding 
of the Trinity within the self either as self-possess or constituted by relationships which could be 
either presented by an individual author or society?s latest ideas of how we should live in 
community and then imposing that as the doctrine of the One creating entity. Kilby understands 
that at some level all theorists project and create concepts to describe what cannot be 
comprehended filling in their theories with borrowed notions and personal experiences. Then this 
understanding is presented as a wonderful new thing that Christianity has to offer the world 
(2000). She notes that the danger lies in that whatever is projected on to the One creating entity 
is immediately projected onto man. In addition, she notes that doctrines of the One creating 
entity run the risk of presenting a false understanding or statement of what the One creating 
entity is or is not.    
 Fallen Beings  
 Another critique worth noting is presented by Brad Green in ?Colin Gunton and the 
Theological Origin of Modernity? (2010). He notes that all of the issues of modernity cannot be 
explained in terms of improper theological missteps, misunderstandings, or misconceptions. 
Green notes that in order for Gunton?s Trinitarian theological theory to be complete, we also 
need to consider that we are flawed beings, damaged by the fall. This means that we need to 
consider that although one can agree with Gunton, that modernity overemphasizes the one over 
the many, and that certain theological doctrines may have laid the groundwork for this alienation, 
attention needs to be paid to human sinfulness. Green says that Gunton?s analysis is incomplete, 
and that he needs to accept the biblical anthropology that ?in our fallen state our human tendency 
 140 
is not to gravitate towards better theological construal?r ather the more fully [the One creating 
entity] reveals? the fallen sinner ?s mode is to resist such revelation? (2010, 173) There are 
plenty of passages in the Bible in support of this, as well as philosophy. Paul sees sinful 
humanity as refraining from accepting the truth, ?scripture consistently links our ability to know 
with our desires, loves, and with the state of our hearts, and the reality of sin shapes and 
mitigates and twists our ability to know? (Green 2010, 174). 
Challenges in Terms of Application  
 In addition to various theoretical criticisms against the Trinitarian Theological Theory, 
there are some perceived challenges to its application. These challenges were presented by David 
S. Cunningham?s call for more practical and specific examples of the application of Trinitarian 
Theology from theologians (1998). First, those aiming at a systematic account or application of 
the Trinitarian theological theory need ?to release the doctrine from its imprisonment within the 
dusty history of dogma, translating it into our present context? (Cunningham 1998, ix). Second, 
it is necessary to render it more intelligible to both Christian and non-Christian. Third, it is 
important to present the testimony to its profound significance for the shape of Christian life. In 
other words, he recommends bringing the Trinity outside thought, into everyday life, into action. 
It was Ludwig Wittgenstein that noted ?practice gives words their sense? (quoted in Cunningham 
1998, 1). Cunningham guides us by recommending that we ask questions like how diversity 
within unity can help us address issues of identity and differences in matters of gender, sexual 
orientation, or criminal punishment (1998, 42).  
 Another challenge, one directly addressed by Trinitarian theology, is the tendency toward 
dichotomous structures of thought and knowledge found in analytical thinking. Most analytical 
thinking leads to ?either or,? ?true or false,? ?this or that,? in other words tendencies to zero sum. 
 141 
According to Cunningham, in modernity, this thinking in dichotomous terms is applied to realms 
where it had formerly been assumed to be inapplicable (1998). Analytical thinking is traced to 
Aristotle, and he noted that in areas of politics, poetics, law, and ethics, analytical thinking 
should not be applied. This is because it has had a great effect in depleting the rich complexity of 
some of these endeavors and results in the misguided assumption that the end result is sound. It 
is like most of us through analytical thinking compare and observe, but stop at one dimension, 
forgetting about reasoning what we have observe and then going one step further into making 
something of what we have learned after reasoning.  Some examples in theology are arguments 
about Christ?s humanity or divinity, history or myth, body or soul, theologia or oikonomia, and 
even Gunton?s dichotomy presented in his argument of Heraclitus and Parmenidian. 
Cunningham notes that although Gunton presented this distinction as a heuristic devise it became 
a dichotomy that was difficult to shake (1998). This meant that you either followed one root of 
thought or the other: Heraclitus is also Postmodernism and the focuses on human embodiness 
while Parmenidian is Western Christian thought which was enthusiastic about the soul. This, 
according to Cunningham, reads the history of thought through a Hegelian scheme of thesis and 
antithesis, which at the same time makes it difficult to create a communion (1998). Some 
examples in public administration are politics or administration, efficiency or equality, social 
justice or profit, church or state, accountability or discretion, legalism or morality. This has 
resulted in either/or arguments allowing zero sum assumptions that result in an answer that does 
not fit the situation or which is not examined in further depth.    
 In relation to this mind-set is the question of whether a theological theory can be applied 
in a secular environment. Is it possible to apply theological terms to the efficient and positive 
program or mind-set of public administration? It is possible, and even necessary to apply 
 142 
theological concepts to a secular environment. This is the main purpose behind Trinitarian 
theological theory, the unification and recovery of the divine and the secular. This may result in a 
more controversial and therefore difficult question having to do with the application of a 
Theological Theory in a process or aspect of society where the separation of church and state or 
secularism is presented under the assumption that it allows for efficiency and equal treatment. 
This question itself is something that on the surface can be answered in three ways: if one 
believes theology to exist only in the realm of the immaterial without relation to the material the 
answer will be no because the application of theological principles cannot take place. Second, if 
one believes that theology can only be theology in the application of its prescriptions, the answer 
can be yes. However, these answers will call for a third choice when one is faced with the three 
approaches to theology that Cunningham notes: speculative (theology at its most basic 
etymological sense, words about the One creating entity), grammatically (creates a structure for 
our conversation about the creating entity), and of levels of ethics (helps us to understand the 
kind of life we are called to live) (1998). This reveals the understanding that all three approaches 
are needed for the acceptance of the spiritual, material, and how these create a communion. This 
means that the understanding of the Trinity calls for the acceptance of Gunton?s call to accept the 
conceptualization of the possible realm where the material and the immaterial, the secular and 
the spiritual, the empirical and the theory can relate and exist in a communion. It is like the 
Trinity will transform not only reality, but the status quo of construction of knowledge. It will 
demand knowledge, understanding and practice to be all equally important.   
Responses 
Gunton responded to these challenges. His main drive was for the integration of the 
divine to the secular. He attempted to offer a practical application through the revelation of a 
 143 
new ontology and epistemology, a new reality where the Trinity would be the point of departure. 
However, one of the greatest concerns Gunton noted of Trinitarian theological theory was his 
fear that it would be reduced to just a social theory. This makes the practical aspect a challenge, 
because Gunton?s fear was that the theology would be distorted by treating it like a fad. He even 
expressed concern that his greatest work was perceived to be The One, the Three, and the Many. 
According to him, this book contained the least amount of theology. In many cases, it is this 
book that presents the practicality of the Trinity and possible healing gift for modernity, but 
results in Gunton?s own work and words to be only a suggestion.  
It is a fact that the argument in this book begins with a dichotomous approach, but it 
ultimately results in the production of a harmonious particularity that allows for the 
transformation of Gunton?s view. At the same time, it is in his writings that he expresses that the 
greatest challenge to the Trinitarian reality is the habits that we have to break in a dichotomous 
kind of psychological map, a dichotomous way of thinking. This however, does not seem to 
challenge the greatest gift of Gunton?s Trinitarian theological theory, his insistence on living the 
gospel every day. He seemed to be driven by the inspiration to invite everyone to the live and 
convert in action the conversation between the creator and creation. However, at the same time, 
there is a limit to those receiving revelation, which is why he seems to go back to transforming 
the Trinity to how it had been understood before he challenged it, with a hierarchical approach.    
Conclusion  
 If one remembers that the Doctrine of the Trinity is a concept that has derived from our 
attempt to connect with the One creating entity, from an attempt to form a better relationship 
with the One creating entity, and from the acceptance of an open communication with the One 
creating entity, then the next step would lead to something better. This has been Gunton?s 
 144 
underlying vision ?the created world? [reflecting] in different ways [the One creating entity] in 
communion? (Tibbs 2010, 116). One can see that the call or invitation from Gunton appears 
simple but is really quite complex and revelatory. He invites everyone to think beyond the 
secular without creating an absolute value of the spiritual over the secular. He intends to 
revolutionize the need to over power, the need of absolutism, while offering the solution for 
relativism. His approach is not something along the median or mean, or middle of the road, but 
an acceptance of something more, a communion. He invites us to accept the understanding of the 
Doctrine of the Trinity, not as giving insight into the creator or providing a picture, but as a rule 
or set of rules about a new reality, a new arena where the possibility into something more, 
something we have not yet conceptualize, can be perceived. Gunton invites us through the 
revision of classical Christian theology in his Trinitarian Theology to develop a model of 
harmonious particularity, which can be used to work out a broader epistemology and ontology, 
not for social theory, but a new reality.      
  
 145 
Chapter 4 
Public Administration Revealed 
Introduction 
In this chapter I will argue that the broader epistemology and ontology implied in 
Gunton?s theology can be used to develop a more humanistic, participatory model of public 
administration, independently of the specific theological aspects of Gunton?s thought. 
Specifically, this model will help break down the sharp distinction between politics and 
administration. Since its inception, the goal of public administration has been efficiency. 
Although ideology and practice were intended to be integrated, the zealous drive for 
professionalization and the passion for efficiency resulted in a mechanistic public administration 
where science and technology have grown to be the schemata for political decision-making and 
distorted the political realm itself. This has resulted in positivism becoming public 
administration?s epistemology, as the only form of knowledge creation and decision making, 
disregarding any possibility for the philosophical dimension, and affecting not only the political 
but also the administrative aspects of society. Incomplete and incomprehensible epistemology 
has not only distorted our role and values as public administrators, our contributions as citizens 
and agents to the ?running of the constitution,? but even contributed to our overall social reality.  
It is time to create change that does not regard what has come as a slate to erase, but on the other 
hand, takes into account what has taken place to find and comprehend where we truly stand. 
Now is the time for a meeting of the minds between political theory and public administration 
where transformation can take place and administrative theory is transformed into something 
more, a political theory that is a public administration theory. This is the time to reunify ideology 
and practice.  
 146 
One answer can be found in Trinitarian theological theory. In this chapter I will attempt 
to present the structure of Trinitarian theology as a new ground in understanding public 
administration theory by addressing one of the main aspects of public administration 
epistemology: the politics-administration dichotomy. One of the most important aspects of 
Trinitarian theology is the idea of three being one without losing particularity. This is what 
Gunton refers to as harmonious particularity. It is this aspect from Gunton?s Trinitarian thought 
that will break down the sharp distinction between politics and administration through a broader 
epistemology and ontology.  
Ontological Roots Disengagement 
Postmodernism can be said to represent the beginning of post-positivist public 
administration theory. This period created a revolution and in its examinations of our 
epistemology shed light into hidden or rarely perceived mechanisms that affect humans and their 
socialization, which includes the creation of knowledge and/or reality itself. This is the 
understanding that ?civilization? itself and its systematic approach to order can enslave humanity 
into a pattern of control.  
This can be found in the classics also, but it is revealed in a kind of holistic context in 
postmodernism. Postmodernism argues that the application of scientific developments also 
promotes and supports power structures that redefine and transform reality itself and make it 
very difficult to question those structures.  Thus our understanding of our needs becomes limited 
and even distorted. This understanding seems to have come to a climax in recent events where 
economic criteria for decision-making can be perceived in every aspect of our social and 
personal life.  
 147 
Postmodernism raises important questions but does not offer much in the way of answers. 
However, several current political theorists do. For example, much current public administration 
theory and political debate addresses the question of individual self-interest v. the community or 
collective interest and presumes that only an either or answer is possible, because objective 
knowledge of either is ultimately unknowable.  By contrast, J?rgen Habermas notes that no 
knowledge is independent of human interest but that this does not eliminate the possibility of 
objective knowledge (1972; Streibel 1991). Human interests vary from the technical, the 
hermeneutic, and the emancipatory but are all derived from the capacity to communicate and 
therefore can still be objectively understood by the natural sciences, historical or interpretative 
analysis, or critical philosophical reasoning. It is through communication, which can take place 
in various forms, that objective knowledge, morality, and political values are discovered. It is 
through the pursuit of these interests that the political can stay active and eventually transform 
society even outside its normalized and distorted reality. This provides a glimpse into the 
possibility of individual interest and collective good existing within, some order within order and 
the possibility of harmonious particularity (Streibel 1991).   
Another political theory that may have revealed a new way of understanding these issues 
is that of Alasdair MacIntyre (2007). He notes that the modern attempts to understand morality 
lack a telos, an internal goal that defines life?s path and focuses decision-making, since modern 
thought has abandoned the teleological understanding of nature from which premodern political 
theories derived such a telos.  But a telos for human existence, and the virtues that allow humans 
to reach that goal, can be derived from the stories human communities tell about their collective 
search for truth and meaning. This is not just internal and static, but external and in constant 
motion. McIntyre notes that telos, is pursued and made real with our actions, more specifically, 
 148 
virtues. He defined these virtues in modern society as ?acquired human qualities that one 
possesses which become the guide and action to achieve our aim only through practice? (2007, 
191). With this redefinition, virtues are understood to be not just an aim, but an already acquired 
value that in practice allows us -humans- to achieve that which we consider good and is at the 
same time transformed with those actions into that which we would like to achieve. This means 
that telos is no longer just a thought or intention, but strongly connected to action in which it will 
acquire its true meaning and value. MacIntyre notes that practice then is not just the exercise of 
certain skills, or those acquired qualities, but how virtues themselves and goods are conceived 
(2007).  
Like McIntyre, Hannah Arendt looks at the classics. She brings attention to the active 
dimensions of the human condition; labor, work, and the polis.  Modern society has made labor 
the central human activity, but Arendt argues that action, the public life of the community, 
should be restored, on a more democratic basis, to the preeminent position it held in the classical 
polis (1958).  The harmonious particularity involved in debate and action to achieve the common 
good could be understood as an application of the Trinitarian approach discussed in the previous 
chapter.   
Somewhat more generally, Eric Voegelin and Paul Tillich would argue that the severing 
of the spiritual realm from human decision-making and the construction of society on this basis 
has contributed to a distortion of reality (1987, 1999). They suggest that reintegrating divine 
history and secular history--which would result in engagement between creator and creation--
would help to heal this distortion.  This would result in a more complete or holistic reality. It is 
through Tillich that we understand that the way we conceptualize the creator and how we, as 
 149 
creation, relate to the creator, affects how we relate with each other. This can be said to be 
further emphasized by the severing of the secular and spiritual that Voegelin notes (1999).  
In Table 4-1this relationship is explored even further. One can note that before the 
classic period, around Babylonian time, the conceptualization of the One creating entity (or 
many) was mythical, misconstrued, one could almost say that it was, infantile. Our relationship 
expressed between creation and creator(s) was ritualistic and while collective and tribal, it was 
reactionary towards the incomprehensible. This relationship maintained creation in a state of 
confusion and dependent of an unreliable and capricious nature. This allowed for unity amongst 
creation because we seem to be together at the will of the misunderstood or mischievous 
creator(s). This also strongly established disengagement between creator and creation.  
During the classical period, the conceptualization of the creator (s) was not only 
disengaged from nature itself, but at the same time, understood in terms of anthropomorphism. 
This is because greater understanding of nature developed creating or taking that which was 
understood away from the unknown, the creator (s). Although it was argued that this is the root 
of modern understanding of society, it was also argued that it is the root of misconception or the 
One creating entity. The platonic roots have been connected not only to political theory and the 
disengagement between ideas and action, between theory and practice, but the disengagement of 
creator and creation. This at the same time has affected the relationship between each other 
where the discovery of potential drove humanity to conquer each other and manipulate each 
other under the pretense of expansion and natural right. It allowed for the beginning of the 
breaking down of the collective and the tribal. This gave way to the loss of faith in the standing 
institutions and values, which allowed for the new found conceptualization to spread. There was 
a great need for a new reality that was offered by Christianity. Although in a great sense, this 
 150 
allowed for a better understanding of the creator, it further promoted disengagement as noted by 
Gunton. The platonic and agnostic roots did not allowed for a true understanding of the creator 
(Gunton 2005; Voegelin 1987). This, according to Gunton, as further emphasized a 
disengagement from each other that encouraged and at the same time, can be said to, set the 
stage for individualism specially with the challenge to Christianity by the protestant movement.  
Modern thought and philosophy, in reacting against Christianity, developed a 
conceptualization of the creator that was to be not only personal but also left to every individual. 
At the same time, the creator was left to reside in the private and left outside the realm of the 
real, or the practical. The creator and creation were disengaged and created confusion about how 
we could relate to one another (Gunton 2005; Tillich 1999). It is argued then, that a 
recapitulation of the conceptualization of the creator as a Triune creating entity, could heal the 
disengagement from the One and the Many and among the many.              
Period Source  Conceptualization of Creator 
Relationality/ 
Human 
Consciousness 
Before 
Classic 
Enuma Elish/  
Popl Vuh 
Power over creation/ Mythic & 
Ritualistic 
Dependence/ Cosmic, 
collective, tribal 
Classic Classic Greek Thought 
Power over creation but 
involvement is absent from 
daily/Transitional/ Semi-mythic, 
Semi-ritualistic, and rebellious 
Semi-Independence/ 
Semi-Collective, 
Rebellious 
Christian  Christianity   No power over creation  Independence/Self-Interest, individualistic 
Present Modern Philosophy 
Absent and will create 
confusion on how we related 
and human consciousness 
Interdependence/ Self-
Interested or 
Collective 
Table 4-1 Conceptualization of the creator affects how we relate to each other1 
                                                 
1 The information in this table was gathered from Tillich, P. (1999). The Essential Tillich: An 
Anthology of the Writtings of Paul Tillich. (F. F. Church, Trans.). Chicago: The University of 
Chicago Press; Lynch, T. D. & Lynch, C. E. (2002). Applying Spiritual Wisdom. Public 
Administration & Management: An Interactive Journal, 7 (1), 8-25; and, Cousins, E. (1993, 
 151 
Epistemological Roots Displacement  
In the second chapter we learned that public administration canon has established from 
the beginning the scientific as the bases for decision-making. Even in the case of human 
behavior, the spiritual or moral dimension has been dislocated, in order to fit the creation of truth 
in the positivist schemata. It has been mechanized even in attempts to accept the fluidity of 
leadership and organizational context. Public administration as it is right now has a rational-legal 
structure, with a scientific mind, and a spirit of efficiency. This was established in the classical 
canon where separation and disengagement were founded as the context in which to understand 
the reality dealt with by public administration. At the same time, even attempts at humanizing 
public administration are promoted as tools for use within this scientistic context rather than as 
transformative.  
For example, the human behavior school of thought, even while attempting to humanize 
the administrative machine, enhanced the separation of mind and body by presenting solutions 
based on efficiency and conceptualizing any solution within the universe of tools. It almost 
regarded humans and their actions as robotic and their calculations as decision-making. Simon, 
who in a way called for a transformation within our understanding of organizations and decision-
making, has resulted in a stronger systematization of human behavior (1957). He noted that 
moral behavior can be systematized differently according to organization and organizational 
needs and goals. He established the understanding of psychological mapping that has helped the 
development of artificial intelligence but has resulted in a form of moral relativism. This has also 
emphasized the legal-rational approach to ethics (1957). Moral relativism is in a way perceived 
as a loose guide for the understanding of morality in public servants, but has also promoted the 
                                                                                                                                                             
Summer/Fall). Judaism-Christianity-Islam: Fascism Modernity Together. Journal of Ecumenical 
Studies, 30 (34). 417-425.  
 152 
possibility of the systematization of moral behavior. It has resulted in the loss or displacement of 
morality (1957; O?Reilly 2011). Simon assumes that there is a standard of decision making even 
though it changes according to situation. In other words, there is a systematic approach where 
there is a separation of fact and value (objective and subjective values; the is and ought) and an 
identification of goals. Ironically, while this could result in replication and validity, it can also 
result in identification of continual or transcendental values (O?Reilly 2011). Regardless of the 
attempt to transform public administration?s epistemology its own roots have left it immobile in 
its own mechanistic universe.  
This is where one looks at the present for the contribution it can make toward 
understanding the public administration theory canon. Not in an attempt to rewrite, but 
recapitulate, a kind of transformation. As a whole, we can see a call for transformation outside 
the roots, economical and rational, positivist basis. There seems to be a call that would take us 
outside the perpetual positivist cyclical motion for the establishment of validity in the public 
administration science. It is like public administration is stocked in a paradigm itself of 
scientification and efficiency from its conception. Contemporary thinkers shed light not only into 
the need of stepping outside this mechanistic approach but the acknowledgement of other 
dimensions within public administration epistemology that have been ignored.  
Laurent Dobuzinski notes that public administration is already within the postmodern 
condition (1997). This means that the positivistic framework informing public administration can 
now be questioned and that the paradoxes within public administration?s schemata of decision 
making can possibly be addressed. Camilla Stivers notes that we should question our reality and 
be critical in order to find new approaches to public administration and be able to share with the 
public the good that government is and can do (1997; King and Stivers, 1998). Stivers and C.S. 
 153 
King give three reasons for current high levels of discontent with government: strong control, 
inefficiency, and disconnection between government and the citizens. They respond to these 
perceived problems by calling for engagement, for the exercise of power through political 
involvement in administration, where the role of the administrators would be to find ways or 
establish processes that facilitate political activity. Janet and Robert Denhart further emphasize 
the need for something other than the economic values (2007). They called for the total 
transformation of the role of public administrators. Stivers moves in this direction by arguing 
that the context of both public administration and public administrators needs to be the political 
(2008). She notes that it is philosophy that can offer the tools for addressing thinking that has 
broken down the political realm to the point where we have forgotten how to act, to practice 
action. She says that we have displaced values and forgotten about the meaning or virtues that 
uphold the political. The role of the public administrator has shrunk to that of dealmaker, 
contract monitor, and overseer, even as the role and size of government has expanded. This 
means that somewhere there is a basic disconnection between the role and purpose of public 
administrators, government, and the citizenry.  
Ontology and epistemology have somehow met in their acknowledgement of needing 
something else, something beyond the cultural, technical, and intellectual norm. The two realms 
seem to want to acknowledge an unknown and out of our control dimension; Something that will 
bring about unity in creator and creation without losing the particular or relational value; 
something that will allow for engagement; something that will revive action to transform the vita 
activa; something that will allow for the revelation of truth, beauty, and knowledge that will not 
allow for displacement. This transformation cannot be temporary; cannot be self-contained; that 
it is not only a particular but also constant in a bigger context where it is transformation itself 
 154 
while transforming. We have agreed that we need the equal value of both, the contemplation and 
action, the creator and creation, where a third aspect creates the understanding of a unity while 
respecting the value of all three. 
Trinitarian Theological Theory 
Trinitarian theological theory is an aspect of systematic theology. Systematic theology 
can give us insights into a holistic approach to public administration. This is because systematic 
theology is concerned with summarizing the doctrinal traditions of a religion and relating those 
traditions convincingly to the religion's present-day setting. For public administration systematic 
theology would give a sense of the direction a more holistic approach would take, relating the 
canon, to the political. As Gunton stated, the systematization involved in systematic theology is 
?not so much a matter of the organizing of [conceptualizations] into systems, as of weighting and 
balancing in the ways [political] matters are placed into relation with one another? (quoted in 
Webster 2010, 18). This will allow public administration epistemology to become the rational 
conversation that would exist in a communal form that would ?relate eternal [creating entity] to 
temporal creation [the now], and [will do it] in such a way as to preserve at once the sovereignty 
and priority of [eternal] action and the proper Selbst?ndigkeit ?relative independence- of the 
world? (Webster, 2010, 19-20).  
We now have a better understanding of Gunton?s Trinitarian Theological Theory. This 
theory aims at addressing three issues: disengagement (which has taken place from each other, 
from origin or nature, and from the creator), dislocation/ displacement (of the material and the 
immaterial) and time and space (a new understanding of the transcendental and the immanent 
challenging their view as separate). In other words, Gunton is arguing that through the Trinity an 
understanding of the one and the many can take place and can reveal the communion that will 
 155 
heal the three realms: truth, goodness, and beauty, or the intellectual, the moral, and the 
aesthetic. His recommendation is not to be understood as an all-encompassing absolute truth or 
theory, but instead in pursue for a different understanding of the dimensions themselves, a kind 
of recapitulation of history, a kind of revelation of a new reality. He presents three solutions that 
I have attempted to reword for the purpose of taking them outside the theological rhetoric into 
the public administration canon.  
There are three assumptions that we have to challenge in every concept we address in 
public administration. This will create the context in which Trinitarian ontology can reveal a new 
reality. First, creation should not be understood as dualistic, as immaterial or material, because 
this sets these two apart, isolated, and gives each of our dimensions a different value. A dualistic 
nature emphasizes one dimension over the other. This can be seen in arguments where one gives 
more importance to the spirit than the body, or thoughts more than action. Second, while creation 
should not be dualistic, it should not be thought of as equal to creator. It is important to start 
assuming the possibility of particularity, distinction, individuality in a collective where 
individuals retain their particularity. We should think of the relationship between creator and 
creation, and different aspects of creation, relationally. Third, we have to challenge our 
understanding of time and space because it has not only influence thought, and action, but also 
limited our potentiality. We seem to have not moved away from Newtonian conceptualizations 
of Time and Space and deterministic language where control and rigidness is still part of 
scientific logic (Overam 1996). There is a possibility of continuity within discontinuity, outside 
the strong focused on the now which has placed our understanding and connection to the future 
in the realm of ideas, which is already understood to be other than.  
 156 
The elements of Trinitarian theology are, the one the three, the many, perichoresis and 
oikonomia. The ?one? in Gunton?s theory is the singular, the particulars within the Trinity. The 
one expresses distinctiveness, and the importance of the particular in both individual and 
collective action. It is also understood as the system of universal coordinates, what gives 
structure to the world, where the individual is the main element in the process of communion 
between creator and creation and allows the third aspect to act, and thus relate and perfect. The 
?three? is not just the Trinity in communion, creator, creation and relatedness, but also the 
communion, the collective, the process (for lack of a better word) of universe of particulars in 
relation; perichoresis and oikonomia. The ?many? is then the particulars within the Trinity, and 
creaturely collectivity. Creaturely collectivity allows for the inclusion of nature.  Gunton 
attempts to avoid the perceived basic error of the Western tradition of theology and philosophy, 
the Platonizing of Western tradition, the basic modes of dualism. Perichoresis is what links, 
what allows for the communion of particulars without losing their particularity or singularity, or 
reducing their communion into a unity. It allows for the understanding of three dimensions, 
which may receive existence from each other in a dynamic event of interdependent reciprocity 
without reducing this interdependence to only this relationship. Perichoresis is a communion of 
mutual open particulars, a ?profound degree of relationality? (Polkinghorn, 2004, 103). 
Oikonomia has been at times what replaces perichoresis in the explication of the Trinity?s 
activity, but in Gunton?s theological theory is the context of perichoresis. Oikonomia includes 
the assumption mentioned above where the communion is not in favor of one particular over the 
other. It completely replaces selfishness with love in the exchanges of the communion, which is 
now viewed as not limited by time and space.   
 157 
As noted above, the issues to be addressed with these concepts are disengagement, 
displacement, and our conceptualization of time and space. First, to address disengagement is to 
address the issue of a dual nature where the immaterial and the material have been accepted as 
separate dimensions in the human condition rendering us as only rational, physical, or spiritual. 
We would have to accept that being means all three dimensions at once. This will allow for the 
transformation in thought that we are not only instinctual animals guided by a desire for self-
preservation, but also empathetic; not only self-interested but also of a collective mind. 
Understanding that we are individual and collective at the same time would create further 
change: our understanding of the role of government, our definitions of power, authority, and 
rights, and consequently the structure of our society. We can no longer view ourselves as animals 
fighting to reach the top of the mountain at the expense of each other. We have to accept an 
inherent good that relates each one of us to the collective.  
Second, to address displacement of values, truth, and beauty, we would have to 
acknowledge not only an entity or energy that somehow is not seen or completely understood but 
present and provides for a unity, holding chaos and disorder together. It would mean accepting 
that there is an unknown meaning and value in history while maintaining personal responsibility 
for its development. This is not just about faith, about the assumption that not everything can be 
scientifically explained, or that there is unanswerable questions and unaccounted variables 
outside our control, but also about the acceptance of personal responsibility for our immediate 
proximate environment and for its ultimate fate. This new accepted fact and reality, a new truth 
through where everything else can be revealed, will engage us once more to the creator, to each 
other, and to creation, accepting both individual and collective value and goodness, in a union, a 
communion.  
 158 
Third, it is important to change our perception of time and space. We cannot longer 
accept time and space as separate. We must embrace Einstein?s believe in timespace, where the 
possibility of relation between temporal and immanence exists. This means that there is a 
possible relation between the eternal and the now where the two can hold the same value and we 
can see the possibility of continuity within discontinuity, or transcendentalism within 
temporality. This means that value has to be understood in terms of a bigger picture, a long term, 
not just the now.  
The conceptualization of the creator or creating entity will inevitably be tied to a 
particular theological approach. However, this essay will not argue for a Christian, Islamic, 
Hindu, or other theological approach, but simply that secular thinking is not the only path to 
rationality. It is possible for scientific and non-scientific thought to achieve a holistic approach to 
knowledge, to achieve wisdom through the spiritual. In public administration there is vast 
scholarship about spiritual wisdom, some of it mentioned in previous chapters. It is argued that 
this can help us, as administrators, make informed ethical choices (Lynch 2002). Furthermore, it 
acknowledges the inner life and the relation of this to the outer life. It allows for the 
comprehension of the individual act to the collective good. Without promoting one religion or 
philosophy, there is one aspect that can help in the spiritual aspect of the theory. It is in our 
convergence, in the meeting of our minds, that we can find basis for building fundamental 
universal collective wisdom that can emerge from the acceptance that the material, the 
immaterial and spirit exist and should be regarded with equal importance. In the context of the 
everyday, thought, action, and word are what creates, and not just in the present but in the 
eternal. A Trinitarian approach would not only mean no more dichotomies, but allow us to truly 
access where we are and where we might be going. 
 159 
Summary of Trinitarian Theological Theory 
Problems Identified 
1. Disengagement (from our creator, nature, each other, and our reality) 
2. Dislocation/displacement (from a holistic understanding and misunderstanding of knowledge, 
goodness, and beauty) 
3. Misunderstanding of time and space 
Solution 
The Trinity 
Context of Solution 
1. Relating public administration theory to reality 
Assumptions  
1. Nature cannot be dualistic ?material or immaterial, bad or good 
2. Creation and creator cannot be of equal value. The disappearance of dualism means the disappearance 
of a divisive wall between two concepts; however, this should not be taken as if then the two 
concepts, distinct in their own right, become the same or of the same value. To understand the new 
nature, we need to think of creator and creation, creation and creation, relationally 
3. Time and space cannot longer be thought of as separate or mutually exclusive.  
Elements 
1. One (creator, creation ?individual and nature-, spirit/ all in particular and distinct from one another) 
2. Three (communion of all three; the relationality process; perichoresis and oikonomia)  
3. Many (collective of all three, or collective of creation) 
This is a list of more concepts that have been used not only in Gunton?s writings about the 
Trinity but those commenting on Gunton?s writings that can help further the creation of new 
bases for knowledge and/or reality 
One Creating Entity Spirit Christ 
Word Thought Deed 
Moral  Intellectual  Aesthetic 
Goodness Knowledge Beauty 
Mind Spirit Body 
Super-conscious Subconscious Conscious 
Antimatter Energy Matter 
Being Knowing Experience 
Theoretical Tacit Empirical 
Ethics Science Aesthetics 
Body Mind Soul 
Table 4-2 Summary of Trinitarian Theological Theory 
Rendering the Politics/Administration Dichotomy a False Dilemma 
There are many areas of study in public administration. We could explore different 
segments within public administration, from employee incentives to organizational culture, from 
the public administrator?s role to what is the goal of public administration. However, I will 
address here only one of the tenants of public administration epistemology and reveal how a 
 160 
Trinitarian theological theory approach can transform our view of public administration. This 
tenant is the politics-administration dichotomy.  
What is the Politics-Administration Dichotomy? 
The politics-administration dichotomy is the idea that politics and administration should 
be are separate, mutually exclusive, opposing spheres. This separation of spheres has been rooted 
in public administration epistemology, beginning with Woodrow Wilson in his article ?The 
Study of Administration? (1887). His intent was to promote efficiency in the application of 
government services, thus reducing corruption and avoiding anti-politics sentiment by running 
the constitution on scientific principles. He promoted politics and administration as different 
spheres for the purpose of studying administration separate from politics, thus promoting the 
professionalization of public administrators, and specifically getting rid of the spoils system. He 
also established the idea that politics establishes and prescribes the rules and parameters of 
administrative action that can ensure and promote efficiency in the administration. This was 
expected to keep administration outside the political realm. Although this was in response to the 
development of a mass society with diverse demands to satisfy it was also an attempt to achieve 
the goal of political neutrality, rooted in the liberal tradition of political thought, which attempted 
to guard against the passions of politics (Skelley 2008; Overeen 2005).  
John Goodnow, although not necessarily promoting this dichotomous approach, has been 
historically linked to it by not completely rejecting it. He promoted the dual functionality of 
government asserting the complementarity of politics and administration but noting that at 
certain levels or stages of governing politics should stay outside administrative operations 
because ?certain aspects of administration are harmed by politics? by [the] perceived de mand 
of compliance to political agencies? (Svara 1998, 53). He noted that this was analytically 
 161 
possible but practically impossible and therefore a harmony between both was necessary for the 
modern state. Goodnow and Wilson ?wrote [promoting a dichotomous approach to public 
administration] in a time when bureaucracies were ripe with patronage, incompetence, and even 
outright corruption? (Svara 1998, 42). They both believed that politics was strongly influencing 
administration (Overeem 2005). The dichotomous approach is useful for the establishment of 
boundaries, of limits to authority, of jurisdiction, which allowed for the professionalization of 
administration and for the perception of equal treatment through the establishment of 
administrative rules and regulations (Svara 1998).   
It should be noted that Svara (1998), Van Riper (1984), Yang & Holzer (2005), and 
Walker (1989) do not agree that the origin of the dichotomy can be entirely traced to Wilson, or 
that the analysis of the concept should be absolutist.  They believe that Wilson was not 
necessarily establishing a dichotomous approach to public administration but trying to advance 
neutrality in its application. Yang and Holzer also argue that the conceptualization of Wilson and 
Goodnow was more open and that an enthusiastic drive for neutrality turned it into a social 
construct that lasted until the Hoover Commission, if not even later.  Svara (1998), Van Riper 
(1984), Yang & Holzer (2005), and Walker (1989) argue that the root of the dichotomous 
approach to government action can indeed be traced to the U.S. Constitution, because in the 
Constitution we find the separation of legislative and executive powers. This allows the 
distinction to become logical and helps to establish the dichotomous approach to public 
administration as an ideal. This can be seen in the council-manager form of government (Svara 
1998; Skelley 2008). The council-manager government is the approach at the local government 
level where the manager of a town reports to a council, which in turn is responsible to the public. 
Under this form of government, it is presumed that the city manager has no involvement in the 
 162 
shaping of policy but is instead a neutral administrator that follows the prescription given. 
Furthermore, it has been shown that the dichotomy has been perpetuated or reinforced not only 
throughout the various schools of thought, but by the expansion of authority of the executive 
which has enhanced the importance of the executive above the legislative, while placing the 
blame on the legislative for inefficiency since it is here where politics plays a stronger role 
(Rosenbloom and Ross 1994; Skelley 2008; Waldo 1948). This is epitomized in the recent quest 
to ?reinvent government,? which further discourages citizen participation in favor of experts; 
private values to public values (privatization); and analytical techniques above democratic 
practices.  
In any case, after this review of public administration epistemology, we can see that this 
dichotomous root can be found in positivism where social reality is understood through a 
separation of fact and value. Dobuzinskis calls this a  ?positivist dogma.? Wilson seems to have 
emphasized it by noting bureaucracies as the instruments through which implementation of 
policies and programs can take place through scientific processes (Dobuzinskis 1997).  
The dichotomous approach to public administration seemed to have changed around 1940 
because there was a strong argument that the middle and upper level bureaucrats play a role in 
politics that influences the rules and regulations that construct limits and parameters for 
governmental action. This does not mean that scientific approaches of principles were 
abandoned, but a type of blended view of politics and administration replaced the dichotomous 
approach. The separation seems to have resurfaced during the sixties and then again in the 
eighties (with the spirit of privatization). This may have been a ?historical response to social 
change? (Skelley 2008, 552; Dobuzinskis 1997).   There seems to be somewhat of a cycle where 
the separation shrinks and grows, but in any case the distinction persists.  Patrick Overeem 
 163 
argues that is a concept that we cannot leave behind because of our constant promotion of 
government neutrality (2005).  
This has left public administration epistemology with two models or approaches to the 
politics-administration dichotomy. The first model, derived from the classical/rational school of 
thought, is the assumption that politics and administration are separate spheres. This separation is 
done for the purpose of a strict structure of organization where responsibilities, expectations, and 
jurisdiction are carefully prescribed and therefore politics and administration can exist in 
separate-non-inclusive-dimensions. This also allows for the separation of political science and 
public administration as separate professions. This model also implies that public administration 
is subordinate to politics (democratic government), although its critics argue that it tends to make 
public administration unresponsive (Walker 1989). The second model is the blended, 
complementary, and or cooperative approach to politics and administration. This approach is 
believed to be open to the interrelation and interdependence between the political and 
administrative dimension of public administration. It is described as an ?interaction of political 
control and professional independence? (Svara 2001, 179). It also accounts for political power of 
administrators within and without the agency and at different levels of the organization. This 
approach sees administration as more democratic. 
The Dichotomy?s Consequences on Public Administration?s Epistemology 
As just discussed, the politics-administration dichotomy has been challenged since the 
1940s. It was observed that administrators could influence policy making and therefore the 
spheres were not so exclusive. The barriers thought to separate them came down (Svara 1998). 
Instead there seems to be a ?complementarity of politic and administration? (Svara 1998, 179; 
Skelley 2008). This concept has even been declared dead by several public administrators 
 164 
scholars while others insist that it will never go away (O?Toole 1987; Waldo 1948; Skelley 2008; 
Appleby 1946). Svara rejects dichotomy as a term because it reflects a misrepresentation and 
obscures the complexity of public administration. He notes that only understanding politics and 
administration as complementary can allow for policy implementation and achievement of 
political aims. This cannot have been perceived or understood without been aware of the 
consequences of the conceptualization itself. These consequences can be said to be rooted in the 
complexity of the relationship between politics and administration, which is both normative and 
empirical.  
Normative  
The normative aspect of the politics-administration relationship is rooted in Weber?s 
understanding of bureaucracies and bureaucrats: ?the politician in a bureaucratized society must 
be an ?identifiable, politically and ethically responsible individual at all time,? because 
bureaucratic decisions cannot be attributed to one individual but are collective in nature? 
(Skelley 2008, 556; Yang and Holzer 2005). The dichotomy has provided a functional distinction 
that is said to parallel willing and acting and it has a powerful ideational heritage. It is 
mechanistic and scientific through the institutionalization of behavior by developing or 
prescribing bureaucrat?s accountability to a higher authority and establishing expectation of 
behavior at all levels of government. It also potentially guards against vainglory and the 
possibility to undermine public values while allowing for limited individual discretionary action. 
The separation aims at the practice of neutrality and impartiality in politics at the administration 
level. It allows for two distinct ethical frameworks, the bureaucratic ethos and the democratic 
ethos (Yang and Holzer 2005). This is how the dichotomy has been made an ideal normative 
 165 
theory. It has in a way been used to describe and prescribe behavior-insulating practice from 
political interference. (Svara 1998).  
Empirical  
Empirically the conceptualization of politics and administration as separate spheres 
allows for functionality, and constitution. It is argued, whether against the dichotomy or in favor, 
that is it and was established as an analytical tool, not a rigid understanding of the functions of 
governing (Svara 1998; Waldo 1984; Appleby 1949; Overeem 2005). In other words, its 
separation of action allows for clear understanding of expectations while rooting it to the 
authority of government action. It is said that is an ?important tool in the fashioning of the 
administrative state true to the constitution? (Skelley 2008, 552). This means that it is the 
dichotomy that roots the administrative state to the U.S. Constitution and reinforces the 
administrative state?s legitimacy.  
Some Consequences  of the Politics-Administration Dichotomy 
Dichotomous Approach 
1. Neutrality (reaction to the spoil system) 
2. Pursuit of administration as an autonomous profession (outside politics) 
3. Promoted competency and democratic values 
4. Separation of power/ promotes constitutional frameworks 
5. Distinct ethical frameworks 
Non-Dichotomous Approach 
1. Bring about constitutional inconsistencies 
2. Recognizes administrator?s role in policy making 
3. Represents the complexity of public administration 
4. Presents lack of legislative control over administration 
5. Allows for effective legislation 
Table 4-3 Politics-Administration Dichotomy Consequences 
The Politics-Administration Dichotomy other than a False Dilemma 
The politics-administration dichotomy can be said to be part of the public administration 
epistemology forever. This means that we have to accept the different arguments presented as 
part of the epistemology that has shaped were we are right now. I will concentrate on the two 
 166 
major points made about the dichotomy, that as a dichotomy it allows for a distinction and 
separation between politics and administraion, while as complementary it allows for the 
acceptance that each although distinct does complement the other. Trinitarian theological theory 
will simultaneously transform the concept itself and the context in which it is argued by 
transforming basic assumptions in the conversation and action into a new reality. It will allow for 
a harmonious particularity of opposing concepts, views, and arguments to accept both sides as 
part of the concept itself.  
The problems identified in public administration can be seen as parallel to those noted 
about modernity. There seems to be disengagement, displacement, and a misunderstanding of 
time and space. The disengagement of modernity is ontologically from our creator and from each 
other. Our reality is mainly secular, and language has become so technical that there seems to be 
a break in the communication that can take place among fellow citizens where scientification has 
completely replaced wisdom. Epistemologically the disengagement is noted between fellow 
academicians, and between academians and practitioners. Displacment in public administration 
takes the form of replacement of service and and connection with the political realm for the drive 
to professionalization and scientification of public administration. This takes place instead of a 
democratic ethos. The misunderstanding or disconnection to new possible ways of 
conceptualizing time and space has left us in a rigid, mechanistice reality where absolutism and 
zero-sum arguments seem to be the only norm accepted (see Table 4-4).  
Disengagement 
The lack of acknowledgement of a spiritual dimension in the human condition has led to 
a severed humanity. It is literally like we have left part of ourselves behind. Thomas Lynch and 
Cynthia Lynch, while addressing the question of spiritual wisdom for public administrators, note 
 167 
that developing spiritual wisdom is not a promotion of one religion above the other, but in the 
acceptance that spirituality serves a purpose that lies outside religion itself (2002). Paul Tillich, 
discussed in Chapter 2, would agree and notes that spirituality (religiosity outside a religion) 
starts at the ontological questions of where we come from. Spirituality allows us not only to 
develop guides for decision making, but see ourselves as part of the collective where the eternal 
matters and is in relation to the present. It also acknowledges something bigger than ourselves 
that unites us by being creatures. 
One way to link the self and the collective is through the soul (spirit). The soul, according 
to the Lynches, is ?an acquired conscience of one or more sentient beings that guides our 
behavior? (1999, 25). They note that the purpose of a sentient life is the development of a 
collective spirit through shared consciousness. This means that if one takes into account the spirit 
in the unification of knowledge and practice, there will be a context for the exercise of the 
vocation as a public servant. Lynch and Lynch note that this spirit can be empirically observed 
during times of union. They give examples of one crying in union with someone else for their 
sadness, but also of been driven to action by someone?s words or determination. Ignoring this 
empirically verifiable spirituality has resulted in a spirituality that is not acknowledged at any 
level, including the societal level, resulting in disengagement. We have lost our link to each other 
and collective consciousness has broken down.  
Observing disengagement at the level of public administrators, one can see that the 
confusion of who we are adds to our confusion about what we are supposed to do. This can be 
seen throughout our epistemology where there is a struggle between public official or public 
managers, between engagement or strict administration. This struggle is so ingrained in our 
profession because we lack connectedness to a collective consciousness. Stivers notes that we 
 168 
disregard the political for the pursuit of individual goals. If we accept the political as the 
collective consciousness we would unite in a collective spirit where we, as public administrators, 
will become true moral agents. It will be our moral responsibility or duty to consider moral 
dimensions in decision making because of their impact on the collective soul, spirit and or 
identity, making every decision an individual and collective choice. This is not easily achievable 
under the assumptions of modern thought, but could be accomplished if we develop guidelines 
from developed from a Trintarian theology (see Table 4-2).  By accepting the spiritual 
dimension, we could empirically learn that the actions of public servants for the good of the 
collective, what Lynch and Lynch call virtue ethics, which takes place with the collective 
consciousness, and or identity, will reveal love, the perichoresis and oikonimia, a new nature that 
enhances life and not merely individual self-preservation.  
At the epistemological level, disengagement between academicians and practitioners 
leaves a gap between what we research and what practitioners need. This is evident in the 
scholarly work presented in respected journals for public administration. Bushouse notes that 
most research is conducted outside practice. Seventy seven percent of articles reviewed in 
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory and in Public Administration Review 
have no practitioner involvement (Bushouse 2011, i101).  The report from Minnowbrook III 
calls for the creation of a bridge between theory and practice. It notes that theorists of public 
administration have become ?academic free agents rather than institutional, community, or 
academic citizens? (quoted in Bushouse 2011, i102). Being academic citizens is the essence 
inherent in the spirit of public service, where action takes place with the collective in mind. This 
means that the academic work, or rather, academic service is guided by an innate pursuit of 
intellectual and civic progress (Bushouse 2011). This frees us into a new reality where one?s 
 169 
actions, although individual, will serve and shape the collective. The article notes that for this to 
take place, we have to work with other disciplines, discover new forms of language, to challenge 
old assumptions, and reintegrate knowledge. These goals can be accomplished by accepting a 
new paradigm where the pursuit of knowledge means discovery, integration (interdisciplinary 
research), application (relevance), and knowledge sharing (Bushouse 2011). Or as Yang and 
Holzer noted, ?balancing seemingly opposing values can only be achieve in an ongoing process 
of solving social problem? (2005, 124) 
This is not only a possible solution, but also a solution that will drive transformation in 
reality because it will completely change current assumptions. It is difficult to ask a profession to 
humble itself. Public administration had to step out of the shadow of politics to become its own 
field, and this process created a negative attitude toward politics which actually forms part of 
public administration?s identity.  However, in seeing our nature not as dualistic but rather in 
union with practitioners and politicians, we can accept a communion for the benefit of not only 
ourselves but the collective (see Table 4-4).   
Displacement 
Displacment in public administrtion has taken place in the relation of its role and purpose 
to values within the profession. An example is the replacement of service to the political realm 
with the professionalization and scientification of public administration. Some of this 
displacment would be addressed by greater engagement with politics. However, we must address 
the confusion that emerges from attempting to make public administrators managers, and not 
public servants, to really address this displacement.  
We can begin to get a sense of what this would mean by examining a distinction made by 
a prominent public administration theorist.  Political behavior and action behavior according to 
 170 
Brunsson involve different kinds of decision-making. The action organization requires 
agreement regarding goals and avoidance of conflict and requires a strong organizational 
ideology, which is presumed to reduce choice.  Political organizations focus on the 
organizational environment reflecting a variety of ideas and demands satisfying a variety of 
expectations from diverse groups, and are governed by the principle that conflict produces 
decisions. This means that a political organization, according to Brunsson is ?to [communicate] 
in a way that satisfies [a variety of] demands, to decide in a way that satisfies another [variety], 
and to supply a product that satisfies a third [variety]? ( quoted in Skelley 2008, 559). Public 
administration has the characteristics of both action and political organizations. Thus it deals 
with conflict and struggle. But public administration has tended to deny the inevitability of 
conflict. Thus equality or justice is displaced by effectiveness, and public administration forgets 
of its public status, its communion to the collective. This can be perceived in both political 
theory and public administration theory where the scientification of politics has resulted in rigid 
mechanistic understanding of politics itself. At the same time, the pursuit of scientification in a 
conflictual environment like politics results in further disengagement from politics, thus 
displacing political virtue for political apathy. Bureaucracy is not understood as the public 
organization of a complex state guided by a collective consciousness through law, but as a group 
of trained incompetents blinded by red tape.  
This displacement can be transformed first by engagement, and second by pursuing better 
forms of understanding knowledge. This in turn must accept that there is no possibility of a clean 
slate.  We cannot and should not forget what we have to learn from each other; now is the time 
for acknowledgement of one another and reunification of our minds for the purpose of creating a 
holistic knowledge where mind (knowledge), body (experience) and spirit (connectedness) in 
 171 
communion reveal a new reality. This means that we must proceed with holistic epistemology. 
We cannot pick and choose but must integrate through different perspectives. At the same time, 
we have to take into account our experience, what we have learned and done with our 
knowledge. Finally, in communion with these two, we must consider our spirit. This will be not 
only our collective consciousness, but our acceptance of something greater than ourselves that 
will allow for a vision of the eternal and the temporal in a cosmic process. The spirit will unite, 
will guide, and will transform while also revealing the new transformed reality (see Table 4-4).  
Time and Space 
It is obvious that in the field of public administration classic scientific thinking has had a 
huge impact. More specifically, classical scientific theories of time and space have influenced 
our approach to social theory. Sam Overman (1996) argues that administrative theory seems to 
be stuck in Newtonian scientific thought. He notes that ideas about scientific management rely 
on ideas or conceptualizations of fixed time and space and casual relationships. This has left 
administrative thought stuck in Newtonian language and the logic of determinism. In this article 
Overman argues that more recently, two scientific theories, Chaos Theory and Quantum Theory, 
have had a significant influence on public administration theory. Chaos theory changed a little 
the perspective of order but did not revolutionize our thought and has kept language 
deterministic, because even though it addresses chaos, it also assumes a systematic 
understanding of chaos. Thus it remains essentially Newtonian. Quantum theory on the other 
hand can create confusion because it focuses on ?energy not matter; on becoming not being; on 
coincidence not causes; on constructivism not determinism; and on new states of awareness and 
consciousness? (1996, 489). This results in shift of focus away from objective reality, certainty, 
and simple causality, towards the spiritual and qualities of organizational life. Aaron O?Connell 
 172 
is an experimental quantum physicist who has recently challenged our assumption about time 
and space by showing that one thing can be in two places at once.  He created an object and 
showed that the object vibrates and does not vibrate at the same time. In his explanation of this 
experiment, he argues that this discovery will create a revolution in many areas.  For him, 
however, it means not only that that there is a possibility of one thing being in two places at the 
same time but that it is possible for physical representation of the individual and the collective 
being one: ?in Quantum Mechanics everything is interconnected. That is actually not right. It?s 
more than that. It is deeper? (2011). This implies that connections define beings and allow for 
both the distinct object and its communion to all. This literally means that the eternal and the 
temporal relate.    
Addressing the assumptions behind the conceptualization can transform the public-
administration dichotomy to a relationship that goes beyond the complementary, to a 
communion. Public administration is both politics and administration accepting both their 
distinctiveness and relationality to each other for the purpose of the constituiveness of the 
political which also allows for the spiritual in which it finds communion that constitutes, guides, 
and perfects in temporal and eternal motion.  
 
Illustration 4-1 Public Administration Revealed 
Disengagement 
Displacement 
Missunderstanding of time and 
space 
Modern 
Reality 
Trinitarian 
Theological Theory 
Holistic 
Reality 
 173 
The transformation has resulted in a revealed public administration where politics and 
spirit create a harmonious particularity that will accept both a ?participatory administration? and 
a distinct profession where the legislation and executive are in communion united by one spirit, 
one identity acknowledging not just the present but the eternal (Walker 1989, 511). It represents 
the point of view of Woodruff, where ?Politics and administration are not two antagonistic 
elements, each seeking to enlarge its sphere of action at the expense of the other. They are not 
even independent powers in the government, each working in a distinct field, performing its 
appropriate acts, and having for this purpose an authority of its own. On the contrary, they are 
two [particulars in a communion]? In a sense, politics and administration take part jointly in 
every act performed? (Woodruff 1919, 37 quoted in Svara 1998, 53). This revealed public 
administration will acknowledge all the elements, the one, the three and the many not in a 
communion but in a harmonious particularity that is dynamic process that accepts the importance 
of history and reforms without declaring a clean slate.  
Summary of a Revealed Public Administration 
Problems Identified 
1. Disengagement (from creator, from the collective, from practitioners, and from each 
other ?as citizens and as professionals) 
2. Dislocation/displacement (from a holistic understanding of knowledge, goodness, and 
beauty/ displacement of values-- policy-administration/ bureaucratic democratic ethos) 
3. Misunderstanding of time and space (unforeseen possibility of both a distinct 
understanding of politics and administration, while accepting a complementary 
relationship/ We need to move away from Newtonian language and logic of 
determinism) 
Solution 
The Trinity 
Context of Solution 
1. Relating of the canon to existing reality (Engagement) 
Assumptions  
1. Nature cannot be dualistic ? politics (chaos, partisanship) or administration 
(organizational; neutral) 
 174 
2. Creation and creator cannot be undersood in terms of equality/ Politics and 
Administration cannot lose their distinction or particularity. (The loss of dualism means 
the disappearance of a divisive wall between two concepts; however, this should not be 
taken as if then the two concepts, distinct in their own right, become the same. To 
understand the new nature, we need to think of creator and creation, creation and 
creation, relationally/ politics and administration relationally/ the political and 
bureaucracy distinct, particular in a communion, of equal importance to the realm of 
social processes) 
3. Time and space cannot longer be thought of as separate or mutually exclusive. It is 
better to ascribe to the timespace theory of Einstein where the conceptual possibility of 
permanence and temporary exist relationally and deterministic language changes.   
Elements 
1. One (creator -the unknown, creating energy, the unexplained, the Political realm, 
society, government, oneself-as citizen, and spirit) creator, creation ?individual and 
nature-, spirit/ all in particular and distinct from one another) 
2. Three (communion of all three; the relationality process; perichoresis and oikonomia ?
the sharing of the love; the political)  
3. Many (collective of all three, or collective of creation, society) 
Table 4-4 Summary of Public Administration Revealed 
Conclusion  
From a Trinitarian perspective, public administration?s problem is the confusion of 
positivism and science. Positivism is a warped interpretation of science as a form of knowledge. 
It gives an incorrect description of how scientific knowledge is attained. Recent philosophy of 
science shows that gaining scientific knowledge is in fact holistic, participatory, and even a 
passionate process. This discovery can allow public administration theory and practice to retain 
objectivity while moving away from narrow, scientistic, technocratic thinking. Trinitarian 
theology can show more specifically how can this be possible.  
Since Wilson, the politics-administration dichotomy ?has been with us as an empirical 
statement, historico-cultural consequence, reform rationale, behavioral norm, myth, intellectual 
aberration and process gap? (Skelley 2008, 549). The dichotomous approach to public 
administration has persisted despite clear knowledge that administrative facts have political 
 175 
consequences, that there are administrators who initiate policy or shape it after the fact through 
evaluation and analysis, that civil servants are also citizens who are not necessarily politically 
neutral, and that legislation influences administration not only through policy but investigation. 
(Skelley 2008, 550) This persistence is due to the promotion of classic scientific principles of 
administration/management which leads to: the belief that there are still principles to be 
discovered; the reduction of civil service reform to administration; the use of science as a symbol 
of anti-corruption efforts in government; the anti-politics flavor of American politics; its roots to 
the U.S. Constitution which in the general approach is bifurcated (Skelly 2008, 552). Today is 
time to see a new reality. It is time to create change that does not regard what has come before as 
a slate to erase, but rather takes into account what has taken place to find and comprehend where 
we truly stand. Now is the time for a meeting of the minds between political theory and public 
administration where transformation can take place, where administrative theory is transformed 
into something more, a political theory that is a public administration theory. This is the time to 
reunify ideology and practice.  
 A Trinitarian approach would not only mean no more dichotomies, but would also allow 
us to truly access where we are and where we might be going. Science is not the enemy; it has 
offered a universal language.  The problem is that a warped interpretation of science, positivism, 
has allowed us to forget other dimensions that are still present in the reality of our society. We 
have moved from no control or understanding of our reality (ancient times) to believing that 
through classic science we can understand it all. According to the Trinitarian approach, 
revelations can come through science, but other dimensions outside the positivist schemata can 
complete our understanding. This means that in search for the truth we need to accept that there 
are truths that cannot be revealed through classical science and therefore that what scientific 
 176 
thinking reveals is not necessarily the only truth. At the same time, John Dewey notes that the 
scientific method can be and at times should be used to help in the solving of social problems, 
but it should not be allowed to separate fact and value.  A Trinitarian approach would accept that 
values, experience and facts are all needed for the revelation of truth. The broader epistemology 
and ontology implied in Gunton?s theology can be used to develop a more humanistic and 
participatory model of public independently of specific theological aspects of Gunton?s thought. 
This model can help to break down the sharp distinction between politics and administration that 
currently characterizes public administration theory and practice.    
 177 
Conclusion 
To conclude, my goal has been to apply work in recent political theory, specifically from 
recent political theology, to issues in public administration theory, and specifically to the 
politics-administration dichotomy that informs so much of current public administration theory 
and practice.  Contemporary political theory addresses the crisis of modernity, its apparent 
disintegration into nihilism. Modernity has been described as a period of technological 
development and of ideologies that have created a greater value of the self and individual interest 
relative to the collective. This means that modernity is related to the loss of many in place of the 
one. It also means that as modern technological capacities improve, older natural law theories, 
which assumed a natural order beyond human control, seem less plausible.  This has resulted in 
an increasing inability to make moral and political sense of our human capacities.   
My purpose was to look into the solutions presented to the perceived crisis and extract 
from political theory the approaches presented and apply them to public administration theory. I 
did this by examining public administration theory in light of recent developments in political 
theory. Chapter 1 examines the canon of public administration writings. Here we can see that 
public administration theory inherited the materialistic ontology and the positivist epistemology 
of the Enlightenment. Public administration theory has attempted to move from its original 
narrow scientistic orientation, but it does not seem to be entirely successful in doing so.  This 
was not an attempt to reinvent, or reconstruct public administration. It has revealed a possible 
reencounter of the mind that will be of benefit and offer a fertile ground for what is to challenge 
the application of public administration theory in a new age. This was made possible by looking 
into public administration theorists that have already noted shortcomings, flaws, or incomplete 
epistemology within political theory and or public administration theory and offering a possible 
 178 
solution to a lack of certain values in governance (Allison, Appleby, Denhart and Denhart, 
Waldo, Stivers and King, and Stivers). All of these recommendations, although calling for some 
type of reevaluation, have fallen short of any integration, transformation, or recapitulation of 
public administration epistemology where values of the political and the public realm, like public 
participation, deliberation, and justice, can co-exist with reliability, efficiency, and rationality. 
We are in need of re-encounter of the old, the new, and the renewed. In this chapter, we 
discovered that we can truly nourish and maintain what Denhart and Denhart called the ?public 
spirit? (2007, 30); and bring together, as Stivers recommended, fact, deliberation and knowledge, 
allowing for true deliberation, accumulation, and practice through a point where political theory 
and public administration can meet and find healing. 
In Chapter 2, we made a historical review of political theory that revealed that origins of 
the epistemological and ontological assumptions informing public administration theory as well 
as examining emerging alternatives to those assumptions.  The general solution according to 
these philosophical or theological responses to the crisis of modernity lies in the integration of 
the moral dimension to material realty because a distorted reality creates and/or results in a 
distorted perceptions, values, and truth. We examined both philosophical and theological 
responses to the crisis of modernity and argued that the theological responses hold out the best 
hope for a reconstruction of political theory and public administration theory.  
In Chapter Three we discussed one particular theologian, Colin E. Gunton, and how his 
Trinitarian theological theory could broaden our ontology and epistemology through a model of 
harmonious particularity. Gunton invites everyone to think beyond the secular without creating 
an absolute value of the spiritual over the secular. He intends to defuse the need to overpower 
and the need for absolutism while offering a solution for relativism. Through a revision of 
 179 
classical Christianity, Gunton introduces his Trinitarian Theological theory which offers a 
window into a new reality where the political can be once more reintegrated into a holistic 
dimension where fact and value can be in communion with the spirit, where ideology and 
practice no longer have to be in competition, where efficiency and equity can be upheld as 
equally important and not in constant struggle but both as aspects within the political. It is 
through Gunton?s Trinitarian theological theory that we can find solution for the crises perceived 
in political theory?s epistemology and ontology. The harmonious particularity can offer a unity, a 
communion of the one and the many through the three, a true model of integration.  
In the fourth chapter we applied the idea of harmonious particularity to one of public 
administration?s main tenants, the politics-administration dichotomy. We discovered in the 
second chapter that now is the time for a meeting of the minds between political science and 
public administration where administrative theory is transformed into something more, a political 
theory that is a public administration theory. This model helped to break down the sharp 
distinction between politics and administration that currently characterizes public administration 
theory and practice. This chapter revealed how a harmonious particularity allows for the view of 
politics and administration not as a false dilemma but as an acceptance that both are particulars 
and in full harmony as the only way to truly serve the public. 
My intention has been to shed light into the possibility of finding answers in areas not 
commonly traveled by our minds. In my journey, I found so much more, a harmonious 
particularity that will transform not only the way we think, but completely transform the reality 
we analyze. Harmonious particularity is the one and the many coming together through the three.   
 
 180 
References  
Angeli, E., Wagner, J. Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A. (2010,  
May 5). General format. Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association 
(6th ed.), Second Printing. Retrieved from: 
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/  
Allison, G. T. (1980). Public and Private Management: Are They Fundamentally Alike in All  
Unimportant Respects? In J.M. Shafritz, A. C. Hyde, & S. J. Parkes (Eds.). (2004). 
Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 396-413). Belmont, CA: Thomson 
Wadsword 
Appleby, P. (1945). Government is Different. In J.M. Shafritz, A. C. Hyde, & S. J. Parkes (Eds.).  
(2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 131-135). Belmont, CA: Thomson 
Wadsword 
Appleby, P.J. (1949). Policy and Administration. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press  
Aquinas, T. (1953). Question 10. In T. Aquinas. Questiones Disputatae de Veritat: Truth (J. V.  
McGlynn).  S. J. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. (Original work published 1256-
1259)  
Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 
Aristotle. (1999). Nichomachean Ethics. (Martin Ostwald, Trans.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: The  
Library of Liberal Arts 
Ball, T. (2004). History and the Interpretation of Texts. In G. F. Gaus & C. Kukathas (Eds.).  
Handbook of Political Theory (pp. 18-30). Thousand Oaks: Sage  
Barnard, C. I. (1947). The Functions of the Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press  
 
 181 
Barzelay, M. & Armajani B.J. (1992). Breaking through Bureaucracy. In J.M. Shafritz, A. C.  
Hyde, & S. J. Parkes (Eds.). (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 533-
555). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsword 
Bennett, J. (2004). Postmodern Approaches to Political Theory. In G. F. Gaus and C. Kukathas  
(Eds.). Handbook of Political Theory (pp. 46-56). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage   
Boucher, D. & Kelly, P. (Eds.). (2003). Political Thinkers from Socrates to the Present. New  
York, NY: Oxford University Press.   
Bushouse, B.K., Jacobson, W. S., Lambright, K. T., Llorens. J. J., Morse, R. S. & Poocharoen,  
O. (2011). Crossing the Divide: Building Bridges between Public Administration 
Practitioners and Scholars. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 21, 
i99-i112  
Campbell, C. M. (1986, October). Response to Colin Gunton. Theology Today, 43 (3). 331-333 
Canning, J. (2008). Aquinas. In D. Boucher & P. Kelly (Eds.). Political Thinkers from Socrates  
to the Present (pp. 108-123). New York, NY: Oxford University Press   
Colwell, J.E. (2010). Provisionality and Promise: Avoiding Ecclesiastical Nestorianism. In L.  
Harvey (Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp.65-85). London: T&T Clark  
Cousins, E. (1993, Summer/Fall). Judaism-Christianity-Islam: Fascism Modernity Together.  
Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 30 (34). 417-425  
Cumin, P. (2010). The Taste of Cake: Relation and Otherness with Colin Gunton and the Strong  
Second Hand of God. In L. Harvey (Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp.65-85). 
London: T&T Clark 
Cunningham, D. S. (1998). These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology. Oxford,  
UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd  
 182 
Dahl, R. A. (1947, Winter). The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems. Public  
Administration Review, 7 (1). 1-11  
Denhart J. V. & Denhart, R. B. (2007). The New Public Service: Serving not Steering. New  
York, NY: M.E. Sharpe 
Dilulio, J. D. (1994). Principled Agents: The Cultural Bases of Behavior in a Federal  
Government Bureaucracy. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 4 (3). 
277-318   
Dobuzinski, L. (1997). Historical and Epistemological Trends in Public Administration. Journal  
of Management History. 3(4). 298-316  
Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of  
Political Economy 65 (2). 135-150  
Downs, A. (1966). Inside Bureaucracy. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press  
Elshtain, J. B. (2008). St. Augustine. In D. Boucher & P. Kelly (Eds.). (2003). Political Thinkers  
from Socrates to the Presen, (pp. 95-107). New York, NY: Oxford University Press   
Enuma Elish: The Epic of Creation. (1902). (L.W. King, Trans.). In Sacred-Text.com (original  
work, The Seven Tablets of Creation). Retrieved on September 09th, 2009 from 
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm  
Epic of Gilgamesh, The. (1972). (N. K. Sandars, Trans.) New York: Penguin Books (Original  
work, The Seven Tablets of Creation)  
Farrow, D. (2010). Foreword. In L. Harvey (Ed.), The Theology of Colin Gunton (xi-xiii).  
London: T&T Clark 
 
 
 183 
Fayol, H. (1937). The Administrative Theory in the State. In L. Gulick & L. Urwick (Eds.).   
Papers on the Science of Administration, (pp. 99-114). New York, NY: Institute of Public 
Administration  
Follet, M.P. (1937). The Process of Control. In L. Gulick & L. Urwick (Eds.). Papers on the  
Science of Administration (pp. 159-170). New York, NY: Institute of Public 
Administration  
Finer, H. (1936). Better government personnel. Political Science Quarterly, 51 (4). 569-99 
Finer, H. (1940). Administrative responsibility in democratic government. Public Administration  
Review, 1 (4). 335-50 
Foster, M. B. (1934). The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Natural Science. Mind,  
43 (172). 446-468 
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY: Vintage  
Books 
Frederickson, H.G. (1971). Toward a New Public Administration. In J.M. Shafritz, A. C. Hyde,  
& S. J. Parkes (Eds.). (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 315-327) 
Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsword 
Freeden, M. (2004). Ideology, Political Theory and Political Philosophy. In G. F. Gaus & C.  
Kukathas (Eds.). Handbook of Political Theory (pp. 3-17). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage   
Friedrich, C.J. (1935). Problems of the American Public Service. New York, N.Y.: McGraw- 
Hill 
Friedrich, C.J. (1940). Public policy and the nature of administrative responsibility. In C. J.  
Friedrich & E. Mason (Eds.). Public Policy: A Yearbook of the Graduate School of 
PublicAdministration, Vol. 1. (pp. 3-24). Boston, MA: Harvard University Press   
 184 
Fry, B. R. (1998a). Mastering Public Administration: From Max Weber to Dwight Waldo. New  
York, NY: Chatham House Publishers  
Fry, B. R. (1998b). Max Weber the Process of Rationalization. In Mastering Public  
Administration: From Max Weber to Dwight Waldo (pp. 15-46). New York, NY: 
Chatham House Publishers. 
Fuller, S. (2000). Thomas S. Kuhn: a Philosophical History for Our Time. Chicago, IL:  
University of Chicago Press. 
Gattei, S. (2003). Editors Introduction. Social Epistemology,17 (2,3), 89-92.  
Gaus, G. F. & Kukathas, C. (Eds.). (2004). Handbook of Political Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA:  
Sage. 
Goodliff, A. (2005, February). Colin Gunton. [Web log comment] Retrieved from  
http://andygoodliff.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/02/emcolin_guntone.html   
Goodnow, F. J. (1900). Politics and Administration: A Study in Government. New York, NY:  
Macmillan 
Green, B. (2007, July). The Promodern Augustine? Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine.  
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 9 (3). 328-341. doi:10.1111/j.1468-
400.2007.00282.x 
Green, B. (2010). Colin Gunton and the Theological Origin of Modernity. In L. Harvey (Ed.).  
The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp. 165-181). London: T&T Clark 
Gulick, L. (1937). Notes on the Theory of Organization. In L. Gulick & L. Urwick (Eds.).  
Papers on the Science of Administration (pp. 3-45). New York, NY: Institute of Public 
Administration  
 
 185 
Gulick, L. Urwick, L. (Eds.). (1937). Papers on the Science of Administration. New York, NY:  
Institute of Public Administration  
Gunton, C. E. (1978). Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and  
Karl Barth. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press 
Gunton, C. E. (1983). Yesterday & Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology. Grand Rapids.  
MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company   
Gunton, C. E. (1985). Enlightenment & Alienation: An Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology.  
UK: Marshall Morgan & Scott 
Gunton, C. E. (1986, October). Barth, the Trinity and Human Freedom. Theology Today, 43 (3).  
316- 330 
Gunton, C. E. (1988). The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the  
Christian Tradition. New York, NY: T&T Clark  
Gunton, C. E. (1990, October). Using and Being Used: Scripture and Systematic Theology.  
Theology Today, 47 (3). 248-360  
Gunton, C. E. (1993). ?All Scripture Is Inspired??? The Princeton Seminar Bulletin 14 (3). 241- 
253   
Gunton, C. E. (1997). The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. (2nd ed.). London: T&T Clark  
Gunton, C. E. (1998). The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study. Grand Rapids,  
MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 
Gunton, C. E. (2000). A Brief Theology of Revelation. New York, NY: T&T Clark 
Gunton, C. E. (2005). The One the Three and the Many: God Creation and the Culture of  
Modernity. The 1992 Bampton Lectures. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press  
 
 186 
Gunton C.E. (2007) The Theologian as Preacher: Further Sermons from Colin E. Gunton. S. J.  
Gunton & J. Coldwell (Eds.). New York, NY: T&T Clark   
Guy, M. E. (2003, August). Ties That Bind: The Link Between Public Administration and  
Political Sciences. Southern Political Science Association 65, (3). 641-655  
Habermas, J. (1972). Appendix: Knowledge and Human Interests: A General Perspective. In J. J.  
Shapiro (Trans.), Knowledge and Human Interest (pp. 301-350). Boston, MA: Beacon 
Press 
Harvey, L. (Ed.). (2010). The Theology of Colin Gunton. London: T&T Clark  
Harvey, L. (2010). The Double Homoousion; Forming the content of Gunton?s Theology. In L.  
Harvey (Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp.86-99). London: T&T Clark 
H?hne, D. A. (2010). Spirit and Sonship: Colin Gunton?s Theology of Particularity and the Holy  
Spirit. Farnham, England; Ashgate 
Holmes, S. R. & Rae, M. A. (Eds.). (2005). The Person of Christ. New York, NY: T&T Clark  
Holmes, S. (2010). Towards the Analogia Personae er Relationis: Developments in Gunton?s  
Trinitarian Thinking. In L. Harvey (Ed.), The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp. 32-48). 
London: T&T Clark. 
Hummel, R. P. (1977). The Bureaucratic Experience: A Critique of Life in Modern  
Organization. New York, NY: St. Martin?s Press  
Jaeger, L. (2008). The Idea of Law in Science and Religion. Science and Christian Belief, 20 (2).  
133-146 
Jardine, M. (1998). Scientific Practice and Its Implicit Critique of Objectivism. In Speech and  
Political Practice: Recovering the Place of Human Responsibility (pp. 49-72). Albany, 
State University of New York Press  
 187 
Jardine, M. (2005a). Fundamental Readings in Political, Economic, and Social Theory. Ann  
Arbor, MI: Copley Custom Textbooks 
Jardine, M. (2005b). John Locke and the Foundations of Liberalism. In M. Jardine (Ed.).  
Fundamental Readings in Political, Economic, and Social Theory (2nd ed) (pp. 23-28). 
Ann Arbor, MI: Copley Custom Textbooks  
Jenson, R. W. (April 2004). Colin Gunton (1940-2003). Theology Today, 61 (1), 85  
 
Jenson, R. W. (2010). A Decision Tree of Colin Gunton?s Thinking. In L. Harvey (Ed.), The  
Theology of Colin Gunton, (pp. 8-16). London: T&T Clark 
Kaufman, H. (1956). Emerging Conflicts in the Doctrines of Public Administration. Presented at  
the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association: The Study of 
Public Administration Since Woodrow Wilson. Washington D.C.  
Kaufman, H. (1960). The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior. Baltimore, MD:  
John Hopkins Press  
Kaufman, H. (1969). Administrative Decentralization and Political Power. In Shafritz, J. M.,  
Hyde, A. & S. J. Parkes (Eds.). (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 
285-297). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsword. 
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd Ed.). In International  
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, II (2), Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 
from: http://experiment.iitalia.com/librarysplit2/Thomas%20,S%20Kuhn %20The% 
20Structure%20Of%20Scientific%20Revolutions%202Nd%20Ed.pdf  
King, C. S., Stivers, C. & Box, R. C. (1998). Government is Us: Public Administration in Anti- 
Government Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 
 188 
Kilby, K. (2000, October). Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the  
Trinity. New Blackfriars  
Levy, A. (2009, January/February). The Craft of Bureaucratic Neutrality?Is the Politics- 
Administration Dichotomy Dead? Public Administration Review, 69 (1). 145-147 
Lindblom, C. (1959). The Science of ?Muddling Through.? In J. M. Shafritz, Hyde, A. & S. J.  
Parkes. (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 177-187). Belmont, CA: 
Thomson Wadsword 
Long, N. (1949, Autumn). Power and Administration. Public Administration Review, 9 (4). 257-  
264 
Long, N. (1952, September). Bureaucracy and Constitution. American Political Science  
Review,46, (3). 808-818   
Losco, J. & Williams, L. (2002). Political Theory; Classic and Contemporary  
Readings:Machiavelli to Rawls (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company 
Lowi, T. L. (1969). The End of Liberalism: The Indictment. In J. M. Shafritz, A. Hyde, &  
S. J. Parkes. (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 298-301). Belmont, 
CA: Thomson Wadsword 
Lynch, T. D. & Lynch, C. E. (1999). A Theory of Soul. Public Administration & Management:  
An Interactive Journal, 4 (2), 138-164  
Lynch, T. D. & Lynch, C. E. (2002). Applying Spiritual Wisdom. Public Administration &  
Management: An Interactive Journal, 7 (1), 8-25  
MacIntyre, A. (2007). After Virtue (3rd ed.). Notre Dame, IN: Unversity of Notre Dame Press. 
March, J. G. & Olsen, J. P. (1984, September). The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors  
in Political Life. American Political Science Review, 78 (3). 734-749  
 189 
Maslow, A.H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50. 370-396.  
Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm   
Mayo, E. (1933). The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization. In Kenneth T. (ed.) (2003).  
The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations, Vol VI. New York, NY: 
Macmillan Company.  Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=gEUiVgI-
4g4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false  
McCormack, B. (2005). The One the Three and the Many: In Memory of Colin Gunton. Cultural  
Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture, 1 (2). 7-17. doi:131.204.172.51/1550-
4891   
McCormack, B. (2006). Foreword. In Paul L. Metzger (Ed.). Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic  
Theology. London: T&T Clark 
McFarlane, G. (February, 2001). Profile: Colin E. Gunton. Catalyst Online: Contemporary  
Evangelical Perspectives for United Methodist Seminarians, 27 (2). Retrieved April, 30, 
2011 from http://catalystresources.org/issues/272mcfarlane.html  
McGregor, D. M. (1957). The Human Side of Enterprise. In J. M Shafritz, J. M., Hyde, A. & S.  
J. Parkes. (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp 171-176). Belmont, CA: 
Thomson Wadsword 
McKinnon, C. (2008). Issues in Political Theory. New York: Oxford 
Merrian-Webster. (2011). Retrieved on April 30th, 2011from  
http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/systematic%20theology  
Merton, R.K. (1968). Bureaucratic Structure and Personality. In Social Theory and Social  
Structure (pp. 195-206) Glencoe, IL: Free Press  
Merton, R. K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, IL: Free Press 
 190 
Metzger, P. L. (2006). Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology. London: T&T Clark 
Miner, M. H. (2007). Back to the Basics in Attachment to God: Revisiting Theory in Light of  
Theology. Journal of Psychology and Theology 35 (2). 112-122. doi: 0091-6471/410-730  
Myers v. United States 272 U.S. 52, 293 (1926) 
Niebuhr, R. (1980a). The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation Vol. I Human  
Nature. New Jersey: Prentice Hall 
Niebuhr, R. (1980b). The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation Vol. II Human  
Destiny. New Jersey: Prentice Hall 
Nietzsche, F. (1966). Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. (W.  
Kaufman, Trans.). New York, NY: Random House. (Original work published 1886) 
Niskanen, W.A. (1991). A Reflection on Bureaucracy and Representative Government. In A.  
Blais & S. Dion (Eds.). The Budget Maximizing Bureaucrat.  Pittsburg, PA: University of 
Pittsburgh Press  
Nutt, D. (1908). The Popol Vuh: The Mythic and Heroic Sagas of Kich?s of Central America. (L. 
Spence, Trans.). London: Sign of the Phoenix. In Sacred-Text.com. Retrieved on 
September 09th, 2009 from http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/pvuheng.htm 
Oakeshott, M. (2004). What is Political Theory? In L. O. Sullivan (Eds.). What is History? And  
Other Essays, (pp. 391-402). Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic  
Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups.  
Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press 
O?Connell, A. (TED Talk). Making sense of a visible quantum object. (2011, June)  
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/aaron_o_connell_making_sense_of_a_visible_quantum
_object.html  
 191 
O?Reilly, P. (Fall 2011). Herbert Simon: ?Is?s? and ?Oughts? After Sixty Years. Public  
Intergrity, 13 (4). 371-383 
Osborne, D. & Gaebler, T. (1992). Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is  
Transforming the Public Sector. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.   
Ostrom, V. (1989). Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration (2nd ed.). Tuscaloosa,  
AL: University of Alabama Press  
O?Toole, L. J. Jr. (1987). Doctrines and Developments: Separation of Powers, the Politics- 
Administration Dichotomy, and the Rise of the Adminsitrative State. Public 
Administration Review, 47 (1). 17-25 
Overeem, P. (2005). The Value of the Dichotomy: Politics, Administration and the Political  
Neutrality of Administrators. Administrative Theory and Praxis, 27 (2), 311-329  
Overeem, P. (2006). In Defense of the Dichotomy: A Response to James H. Svara.  
Administrative Theory and Praxis, 28 (1), 140-147  
Overman, S. E. (1996, September/Ocober). The New Sciences of Administration: Chaos and  
Quantum. Public Administration Review, 56 (5), 487-491  
Pangle, T. L. (2004). Straussian Approaches to the Study of Politics. In G. F. Gaus & C.  
Kukathas (Eds.). Handbook of Political Theory (pp. 31-45). Thousand Oaks: Sage   
Parsons, M. C. & Cook, G. (2004). Cosmogonies and Culture: Teaching Genesis and the Popl  
Vuh in an Interdisciplinary Course at a Christian University. Christian Higher Education, 
3 (3). 185-205 
Patton, P. (2008). Foucault. In D. Boucher & P. Kelly (Eds.). Political Thinkers from Socrates to  
the Present (pp. 516-535). New York, NY: Oxford University Press  
 
 192 
Polkinghorne, J. (2004). Science and the Trinity: the Christian Encounter with Reality. New  
Haven, VT: Yale University Press  
Portis, E. B. (2008). Reconstructing the Classics: Political Theory from Plato to Weber.  
Washington DC: CQ Press  
Robinson, Dave (1999) Nietzsche and Postmodernism: Postmodernism encounters. Cambridge,  
UK: Totem Books  
Rivlin, A. M. (1971). Systematic Thinking for Social Action. Washington DC: The Brookings  
Institute    
Rohr, J. A. (1986). To Run A Constitution: The Legitimacy of the Administrative State.  
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas 
Schw?bel, C. (2010). The Shape of Colin GUnton?s Theology. On the Way towards a fully  
Trinitarian Theology. In L. Harvey (Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp. 182-208). 
London: T&T Clark 
Selznick, P. (1949). The Cooptative Mechanisms. In J. M. Shafritz, Hyde, A. & S. J. Parkes  
(Eds.). (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 155-161). Belmont, CA: 
Thomson Wadsword 
Shafritz, J. M., Hyde, S. & Parkes, S. P. (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.)  
Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsword 
Simon, H.A. (1946). The Proverbs of Admnistration. In J. M. Shafritz, Hyde, A. & S. J. Parkes  
(Eds.). (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 136-149). Belmont, CA: 
Thomson Wadsword 
Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in  
Administrative Organizations. New York, NY: Macmillan  
 193 
Skelley, B. D. (2008, Winter). The Persistence of the Politics-Administration Dichotomy: An  
Additional Explanation. Public Administration Quaterly, 32 (4). 549-570  
Smith, J. K. (2005). Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology. Grand  
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic 
Spence, A. (2010). The Person as Willing Agent: Classifying Gunton?s Christology. In L.  
Harvey (Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp. 49-64). London: T&T Clark 
Spragens, T. A. Jr. (1976). Understanding Political Theory. New York, NY: St. Martin?s Press 
Stark, R. (2006). The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and  
Western Success. New York, NY: Random House  
Stillman, R. II. (1982). The Changing Patterns of Public Administration Theory in America. In J.  
A. Uveges Jr. (Ed.). Public Administration: History and Theory in Contemporary 
Perspective, (5-37). New York, NY: Marcel Dekker Inc   
Stillman, R. II (2005). Public Administration: Concepts and Cases. New York, NY: Houghton  
Mifflin Co 
Stivers, C. (2008). Governance in Dark Times: Practical Philosophy for Public Service.  
Washington DC: Georgetown University Press   
Stivers, C. (1990). Towards a Feminist perspective in Public Administration Theory. In J. M.  
Shafritz, A. Hyde & S. J. Parkes (Eds.). (2004). Classics of Public Administration (5th 
ed.) (pp. 477-486). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsword 
Stokes, P. (2005). Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers. New York, NY: Enchanted Lion Books 
Strauss, L. (1953). Natural Right and History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 
 
 
 194 
Streibel, M. J. (1991). Instructional Design and Human Practice: What can we Learn from  
Habermas? Theory of Technical and Practical Human Interests? Proceedings of Selected 
Research Presentations at the Annual Convention of the Association for Educational 
Communications and Technology. IR 015 132. Retrieved April 8th, 2010 from 
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nf
pb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED335017&ERICExtSearch_SearchType
_0=no&accno=ED335017 
Suda, N. A. (2005). Foundationalism, Non-foundationalism, and Colin Gunton?s Proposal of  
?Open Transcendentals.? Deliverd at the SST Annual Conference. (St. Patricks College, 
Diblin) 
Svara, J. H. (1998). The Politics-Administration Dichotomy as an Aberration. Public  
Administration Review, 58 (1). 51-58 
Svara, J. H. (2001, March/April). The Myth of the Dychotomy: Complementarity of Politics and  
Administation in the Past and Future of Public Administration. Public administration 
Review, 61 (2). 176-183 
Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York, NY: Harper & Bros 
Taylor, F. W. (2004). Scientific management. In J. M. Shafritz, A. Hyde & S. J. Parkes (Eds.).  
(2004) Classics of Public Administration (5th ed.) (pp. 43-45). Belmont, CA: Thomson 
Wadsword. 
Taylor, B. J. (TED Talk). Jill Bolte Taylor?s Stroke of Insight. (2008, March)  
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html.  
Terry, J. (2010) Colin Gunton?s Doctrine of Atonement: Transcending Rationalism by Metaphor.  
In L. Harvey (Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp.130-145). London: T&T Clark 
 195 
Thomas, P. (2008) Marx and Engels. In D. Boucher & P. Kelly (Eds.). Political Thinkers from  
Socrates to the Present (pp. 419-435). New York, NY: Oxford University Press  
Tibbs, P. (2010). Creates for Action: Colin Gunton?s Relational Anthropology. In L. Harvey  
(Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp.116-129). London: T&T Clark 
Tillich, P. (1999). The Essential Tillich: An Anthology of the Writtings of Paul Tillich. (F. F.  
Church, Trans.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press 
Van Riper, P. P. (1984). The Politics Administration Dichotomy: Concept or Reality? In J. Rabin  
and J.S. Bowman (Eds.). Politics and Administration (pp. 203-218). New York, NY: 
Marcel Dekker 
Voegelin, E. (1987). The New Science of Politics: An Introduction. Chicago, IL: The University  
of Chicago Press 
Waldo, D. (1948). The Administrative State. New York, NY: Ronald 
Waldo, D. (1955). The Study of Public Administration. New York, NY: Random House 
Waldo, D. (1984). The Perdurability of the Politics-Administration Dichotomy. In J. Rabin and  
J.S. Bowman (Eds.). Politics and Administration (pp. 219-233). New York, NY: Marcel 
Dekker. 
Waldo, D. (1990). A Theory of Public Administration Means in Our Time a Theory of Politics  
Also. In N. B. Lynn & A. Wildavsky (Eds.). Public Administration: The State of the 
Discipline. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers. 
Waldrom, J. (2008). Locke. In D. Boucher & P. Kelly (Eds.). Political Thinkers from Socrates to  
the Present (pp. 181-197). New York: Oxford University Press 
Walker, L. (1989, Autumn). Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Reform, and Public Administration.  
Political Science Quarterly, 104 (3), 509-525  
 196 
Weber, M. (1922). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tuebingen, Germany: T?bigen, Mohr   
Wilson, W. (1887, June). The Study of Administration. Political Science Quarterly 2, (2), 197- 
222 
Webster, J. (2010). Gunton and Barth. In L. Harvey (Ed.). The Theology of Colin Gunton (pp.17- 
31). London: T&T Clark 
White, L. (1926). Introduction to the Study of Public Administration. New York, NY: Macmillan  
Widder, N. (2008). Nietzsche. In D. Boucher & P. Kelly (Eds.). Political Thinkers from Socrates  
to the Present, (pp. 4436-455). New York, NY: Oxford University Press 
Wildavsky, A. (1992, Nov-Dec). Political Implications of Budget Reform: A Retrospective.  
Public Administration Review, 52 (6). 594-599  
Wilde, L. (2008). The Early Marx. In D. Boucher & P. Kelly (Eds.). Political Thinkers from  
Socrates to the Present, (pp. 404-418). New York, NY: Oxford University Press 
Wright, T. J. (2010). Colin Gunton on Providence: Critical Commentaries. In L. Harvey (Ed.).  
The Theology of Colin Gunton. (pp. 146-164). London: T&T Clark 
Yang, K. & Holzer, M. (2005, Spring). Re-Approaching the Politics-Administration Dichotomy  
and its Impact on Administrative Ethics. Public Integrity, 7 (2), 111-127