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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The late Professor H. R. Mackintosh wrote: ‘All religious knowledge of God, wherever existing, comes by revelation; otherwise we should be committed to the incredible position that man can know God without His willing to be known.’1 This statement brings to light the obvious point that revelation and knowledge of God are of the same piece. Revelation and knowledge of God necessarily belong to one another. It would be as ‘incredible’ for a work on ‘knowledge of God’ to fail to discuss revelation at some point or in some way as it would be for a work on ‘atonement’ to fail to discuss reconciliation. It is not incredible, however, to find an absence of a discussion of atonement or reconciliation, soteriology or union with Christ in works on ‘knowledge of God’. Revelation and ‘knowledge of God’ are for the most part separated from works on atonement and reconciliation. The outstanding characteristic of Professor T. F. Torrance's doctrine of the knowledge of God is that it does not separate revelation and reconciliation. These two are held together in God's work in Israel and in the Person and work of Christ and consequently in our knowing God. As a result, soteriology and epistemology, salvation and knowledge of God are inseparable in Torrance's theology. As our Lord himself said,‘… this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.’2 Among other things this means that Torrance's doctrine of the knowledge of God does not stand as an isolated doctrine at the beginning of his thought cut off from the rest of his theology.
1 Mackintosh, H. R., The Christian Apprehension of God (London: Student Christian Movement, 1929), p. 65.Google Scholar
2 Jn. 17: 3.
3 In his essay, ‘Towards Better Ways of Reading the Bible’, SJT 33, pp. 301–315, Bryan J. Gray seems to suggest that Torrance is deriving his epistemology/hermeneutics from Michael Polanyi, see csp. pp. 302–306. However, while Torrance certainly interacts with Polanyi and picks up some of his terminology, this dialogue arises because of the parallels of Polanyi's work with his own existing theological epistemology. It is helpful in this respect to note a few of the reasons behind Torrance's interest in science. The most important is evangelical and methodological. Torrance has seen that many of the problems in modern theology, for example, the separation of method and subject matter, have their roots in cosmological and epistemological dualism. On one level, this is bound up with Newton's conception of the universe as a closed system of cause and effect, which ruled out a priori the possibility of incarnation. On another level, this is connected with Descartes' dualism between subject and object in knowledge and the problem of the ‘thing in itself’ in Kant. Torrance sees that modern science itself has blown apart Newton's closed system. This transition means that the whole cosmological outlook has changed and science no longer rules out a priori the possibility of creation and incarnation. But Torrance also sees in the work of post-critical scientists like Polanyi, a relentless attempt to overcome epistemological dualism. Torrance highlights these profound changes, not to build theology upon modern science, but as a means of pointing out that the separation of method and subject matter in theology, i.e., the divorce of theology from the control of God-incarnate, is not only unsound evangelically but anachronistic scientifically. This constitutes the initial critical point of Torrance's interest in science. But these changes set up the opportunity for renewed dialogue between theology and science which he has pursued in his later works. See Hesselink's, I. John, ‘A Pilgrimage in the School of Christ — An Interview with T. F. Torrance’, Reformed Review 38 no. 1 (Autumn 1984), p. 60Google Scholar and Torrance's, contribution, ‘Transformation in the Frame of Knowledge’, in In Necessariis Unilas: Mélanges offerts à Jean-Louis Leuba, ed. by Stauffer, Richard (Paris: Le Cerf, 1984), pp. 397–404Google Scholar. See also, ‘The Church in the New Era of Scientific and Cosmological Change’, in Theology in Reconciliation: Essays towards Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1976), p. 270Google Scholar, hereafter Theology in Reconciliation, and ‘Classical and Modern Attitudes of Mind’, in Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985).Google Scholar
4 Klinefelter's, Donald S. comment about Torrance's treatment of theological language, ‘this discussion is enough to warm the heart of any philosopher of language’, in his ‘God and Rationality: A Critique of the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance’, Journal of Religion 53, pp. 117–125 (1973), p. 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is more than a hint at the complexity of this side of Torrance's technical discussion alone. This is complicated by the fact that Torrance ‘has read everything about everything and much besides!’ Galilee, David, review of Theological Science in Religious Studies!, pp. 375–377 (Dec. 1971), p. 375.Google Scholar
5 ‘The Epistemological Relevance of the Holy Spirit’ in God and Rationality (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), p. 174.Google Scholar
6 The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), p. 55Google Scholar, hereafter abbreviated Trinitarian Faith The last sentence in this quotation is a reference to Ephesians 2: 18.
7 Jn. 1: 1, 14, 16.
8 See for example Eph. 1: 1–14.
9 In his pamphlet Christ's Words (Jedburgh: The Unity Press, 1980), p. 4Google Scholar, Torrance refers to St Athanasius as ‘my favourite theologian’. This is borne out by the fact that there is scarcely a theological work of Torrance's in which the thought of St Athanasius is not prominent. By far and away Torrance cites and dialogues with St Athanasius more than any other theologian in history. Not only is his recent work Trinitarian Faith an exposition of the Nicene Creed through the theology of the Fathers, most notably the theology of Athanasius, but it is also Torrance's own one-volume dogmatics. The interrelation of the most comprehensive statement of his own theology with that of Athanasius and the Fathers in such an unmistakable way is not to be overlooked.
10 In Torrance's, thought there is a necessary interrelation between the Incarnation and the Trinity. What he says of Athanasius in ‘Athanasius: A Reassessment of His Theology’, Abba Salama 5 (1974), p. 178Google Scholar, is equally true of himself: ‘Athanasius’ doctrine of the Incarnation decidedly affects his doctrine of God, and his doctrine of God decidedly affects his doctrine of the Incarnation.’
11 About the homoousion Torrance comments in Trinitarian Faith, p. 133: ‘The primaryand all-embracing significance of the homoousion was its categorical assertion that jesus Christ is God, and that as God he shares equally with the Father in the one being of the Godhead. As the only begotten Son of the Father he is the embodiment of the whole Being of God and his exclusive self-revelation as the Word made flesh.’
12 In Theological Science (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), p. 217Google Scholar, Torrance comments: ‘It is here in the inner life and being of Jesus Christ, in the hypostatic union, that we discern the interior logic of theological thinking, the logic of Christ, the logic that is in Christ before it is in our knowledge of Him, the logic that inheres ontologically and personally in Him …’ See also Torrance's, early essay ‘Reason in Christian Theology’, Evangelical Quarterly 14 (1942), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar
13 Torrance's Christology is neither a ‘Christology from above’ (in the sense that he begins with the Deity of Christ and works to his humanity) nor a ‘Christology from below’, for he begins with the God-man, the incarnation of the Son of the Father within the womb of Israel.
14 In his The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1980), pp. 158–159Google Scholar, Torrance remarks: ‘I myself like to think of the doctrine of the Trinity as the ultimate ground of theological knowledge of God, the basic grammar of theology, for it is there that we Find our knowledge of God reposing upon the final Realityof God himself, grounded in the ultimate relations intrinsic to God's own Being, which govern and control all true knowledge of him from beginning to end.’
15 ‘The Atoning Obedience of Christ’, Moravian Theological Seminary Bulletin (1959), p. 80.
16 ‘The Atoning Obedience of Christ’, p. 78.
17 ‘The Trinitarian Foundation and Character of Faith and of Authority in the Church’, in Theological Dialogue Between Orthodox and Reformed Churches, ed. by Torrance, Thomas F. (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), p. 82, hereafter Trinitarian Foundation.Google Scholar
18 The Mediation of Christ (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1983), p. 66, hereafter Mediation.Google Scholar
19 The Son's assumption of our fallen humanity in order to heal it is a constant theme in Torrance's writings. See for example Space, Time and Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1976), pp. 53ffGoogle Scholar; Conflict and Agreement in the Church (London: Lutterworth Press, 1959), vol. 1, pp. 149, 175Google Scholarff, hereafter Conflict and Agreement; Mediation, pp. 48–53, 76 and his article ‘Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy’, SJT 39, pp. 476ff. In an unpublished sermon on Rom. 12: 1–2, ‘The Reconciliation of Mind’, Torrance says, following Irenaeus, that he likes to think of the Son's assumption of our fallen humanity in the light of jesus' healing of the leper, when ‘instead of becoming leprous himself, he healed the leper’. ‘…Jesushad taken our leprous humanity upon himself, but… instead of becoming a leper himself he healed and transformed our leprous human nature.…’
20 ‘The Atoning Obedience of Christ’, p. 78.
21 Theological Science, p. 50.
22 The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church (London: James Clarke & Co., 1959), Introduction, p. lvi.Google Scholar
23 The School of Faith, Intro., p. xcviii.
24 de Margerie, Bertrand, S.J., , The Christian Trinity in History, trans, by Fortman, Edmund J., S.J., (Still River, Massachusetts: St Bede's Pub., 1982), intro. p. xviii.Google Scholar
25 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God: The Doctrine of God, trans, by Kohl, Margaret (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1981), p. 1.Google Scholar
26 LaCugna, C. M., ‘Re-conceiving the Trinity as the Mystery of Salvation’, SJT 38 (1985), p. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 The Atoning Obedience of Christ', p. 65.
28 ‘The Place of Christology in Biblical and Dogmatic Theology’, in Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1975), p. 130.Google Scholar
29 Theology in Reconstruction, p. 132.
30 Theology in Reconstruction, p. 133.
31 Mediation, p. 18.
32 See Mediation, pp. 34ff and Theology in Reconstruction, pp. 130ff.
33 ‘The Israel of God’, Interpretation 10 (1956), p. 307Google Scholar, reprinted in Conflict and Agreement, vol. 1, pp. 285–303.
34 ‘The Word of God and the Response of Man’, in God and Rationality (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), p. 149.Google Scholar
35 Mediation, p. 18.
36 See ‘Salvation is of the Jews’, Evangelical Quarterly 22 (1950), p. 166.Google Scholar
37 Reality and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), p. 125.Google Scholar
38 Mediation, p. 33.
39 Mediation, p. 67.
40 Trinitarian Failh, p. 55.
41 Trinitarian Faith, p. 55.
42 Mediation, p. 19.
43 Theology in Reconstruction, p. 129.
44 Theology in Reconstruction, p. 131. Torrance goes on to use the concepts of enhypostasia and anhypostasia to clarify this conception of revelation. ‘oIn revelation, therefore, we are not concerned simply with anhypostatic revelation and with human response, but with anhypostatic revelation and true human response enhypostatic in the Word of revelation. We are not concerned simply with a divine revelation which demands from us all a human response, but with a divine revelation which already includes a true and appropriate and fully human response as pan of its achievement for us and to us and in us.’
45 Theology in Reconstruction, p. 131.
46 See Conflict and Agreement, vol. 2, p. 81 and Theology and Reconstruction, pp. 129ff.
47 God and Rationality, p. 143.
48 ‘The Arnoldshain Theses on Holy Communion’, SJT 15 (1962), p. 10.Google Scholar
49 Conflict and Agreement, vol. 1, p. 245.
50 Trinitarian Faith, p. 155, his italics.
51 Conflict and Agreement, vol. i, p. 241.
52 ‘The Atoning Obedience of Christ’, p. 71.
53 Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 55.
54 Mediation, p. 67.
55 Thus, Torrance comments in ‘Trinitarian Foundation’, p. 91: ‘In the New Testament the Gospel refers not merely to the good news about salvation but to Jesus Christ who is his own person, Word and Act is the very core of the Gospel — i.e., to what John Calvin spoke of as “Christ clothed with his Gospel”.’
56 See Trinitarian Faith, p. 156. Torrance is here referring to St Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 111.1.2, cf. 111.19.3.
57 The School of Faith, Intro, p. lvi, his italics.
58 When Christ Comes and Comes Again (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1957), p. 74Google Scholar. See also ‘The Atoning Obedience of Christ’, p. 80 and ‘The Place of the Humanity of Christ in the Sacramental Life of the Church’, Church Service Society Annual 26 (1956), p. 3Google Scholar and ‘The Mission of the Church’, SJT 19 no. 2 (June 1966), pp. 129ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
59 Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 84.
60 Theology in Reconciliation, p. 210 see also pp. 226ff, his italics. Cf. Torrance's comment in ‘The Atoning Obedience of Christ’, p. 80: ‘The human life of Jesus on earth is the concrete embodiment of the Revelation and Reconciliation of God, the actual place on earth and in history, the one place where God and man meet’ Cf. also Space, Time and Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), p. 75: The ‘relation established between God and man in Jesus Christ constitutes Him as the place in all space and time where God meets with man in the actualities of his human existence, and man meets with God and knows Him in His own divine Being.’
61 In Conflict and Agreement, vol. 2, p. 122 Torrance writes: ‘In Jesus Christ God has not only done a work of grace for us and upon us in which He has done away with our guilt and sin and set us free, but He has also provided us in the obedient humanity of Jesus Christ with a perfected communion between man and God in which the Covenant-union is fully and finally actualised. It is in that obedient Humanity, and in that perfect communion between the Son and the Father lived and worked out to the uttermost within our human existence, that we are mercifully given to share.’ Cf. Matt 11: 27 and Lk. 10:22.
62 ‘The Atoning Obedience of Christ’, p. 70.
63 John 14: 6 is the Biblical verse most quoted and referred to in Torrance's writings and constitutes along with Matt. 11: 27, Eph. 2: 18, 4: 13 and Gal. 2: 20 built upon the foundation of John 1: 1 and 14 a concise index to his thought.
64 Theological Science, p. 48. In Theology in Reconstruction, p. 128 Torrance writes: ‘Christian knowledge of God arises out of the self-revelation of God in and through Jesus Christ, for in him the Word of God has become man in the midst of man's estrangement from God, committing himself to human understanding and creating communion between man and God.’
65 Trinitarian Faith, p. 151, his italics.
66 See Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 116.
67 Mediation, p. 90–91.
68 In an interview with Kernohan, R. D., ‘Tom Torrance: The Man and the Reputation’, Life and Work 32, no. 5 (May 1976), p. 14Google Scholar, Torrance comments: ‘But the cutting edge of my theology’ would be, I suppose, what I call the ‘vicarious humanity of Christ’ — the fact that Jesus Christ even in His humanity takes our place in faith, prayer, worship, mediating all we are and do in His name toward the Father — but really believing, praying and worshipping Him in our place in such a way that He is our worship, and our faith is a sharing in His faith and our prayer a sharing in His prayer.’
69 God and Rationality, p. 158.
70 God and Rationality, p. 159.
71 God and Rationality, p. 145.
72 Mediation, p. 145.
73 Mediation, p. 86.
74 Mediation, p. 86. Cf. Torrance's comment in The School of Faith, Intro., p. lviii: ‘The redemptive acts of God have been completely fulfilled in Christ…’
75 Mediation, p. 90, his italics.
76 God and Rationality, p. 158.
77 Theobgy in Reconstruction, p. 131.
78 Conflict and Agreement, vol. 2, p. 81. Cf. also pp. 75ff and Theology in Reconstruction, pp. 129ff. and God and Rationality, pp. 142ff.
79 God and Rationality, pp. 152–153. Cf. also his comment in ‘The Place of the Humanity of Christ in the Sacramental Life of the Church’, pp. 4–5: ‘If what Christ did for us He did as pure act of God, then there must of necessity be a human priesthood to respond to it and convey it to man. But if Christ acted not only as God but as Man, and has once and for all offered man's sacrifice, man's response to God, then our sacrifice is already made and our response is already offered, and there is no need for human mediation or a human priesthood.’
80 ‘The Word of God and the Nature of Man’ in Theology in Reconstruction, p. 106.
81 ‘Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth’, in Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific andTheological Enterprise (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1984), p. 291Google Scholar. See also God and Rationality, p. 145 and Reality and Evangelical Theology, p. 88 and Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 134.
82 John Calvin, Instituted. IV.XVII.5.
83 In his later works, Torrance prefers to add the word ‘cognitive’ to the phrase ‘union with Christ’. But his stress on the word cognitive with respect to our union with Christ is not an addition to his thought, it is simply a clarification of what has been present all along. See, for example, Mediation, pp. 34–36 and Trinitarian Faith, p. 59.
84 ‘Trinitarian Foundation’, p. 83.
85 Theological Science, p. 52.
86 God and Rationality, pp. 173–174. The burden of this article, with respect to the Person of the Spirit, is to emphasise the epistemological implicationsof the fact that the Spirit is God in Person and not simply the ‘bond of love’ between the Father and the Son. See for example, pp. 173ff. It is helpful, nonetheless, in getting to grips with what Torrance is saying to follow out this statement that the Spirit is the Communion of the Father and the Son for it highlights the point that in Christ we are lifted up to share in the very life and knowledge of God.
87 The School of Faith, intro., p. xxxiv.
88 ‘Royal Priesthood’, SJT Occasional Papers no. 3 (1955), p. 27.Google Scholar
89 Theology in Reconstruction, p. 135.
90 Theology in Reconstruction, p. 135.
91 ‘Royal Priesthood’, p. 28.
92 ‘The Doctrine of the Church’, p. 2. This essay is unpublished to date although substantial parts are found in several published articles and essays.
93 God and Rationality, p. 184.
94 God and Rationality, p. 151 cf. pp. 152, 184. See also Mediation, p. 88 and Reality and Evangelical Theology, pp. 88, 89, 93.
95 ‘The One Baptism Common to Christ and His Church’, in Theology in Reconciliation, pp. 82–83ff.
96 ‘The Paschal Mystery of Christ and the Eucharist’, in Theology in Reconciliation, p. 109.
97 Theology in Reconciliation, pp. 83–84.
98 ‘The Foundation of the Church: Union with Christ through the Spirit’, in Theology in Reconstruction, p. 193. Cf. his comment in Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 120: ‘The Church is die bodily and historical form of Christ's existence on earth through which he lets his Word be heard, so that as the Church bears witness to him and proclaims the Gospel of salvation in his Name, he himself through the Spirit is immediately present validating that Word as his own, and communicating himself to men through it.’
99 ‘The Mission of the Church’, SJT 19 no. 2 (June 1966), p. 132.Google Scholar
100 ‘The Mission of the Church’, p. 142.
101 ‘The Place of the Humanity of Christ in the Sacramental life of the Church’, p. 9.
102 ‘The Contribution of the Greek Community in Alexandria to the Intelligent Understanding of the Christian Gospel, and its Communication in the World of Culture and Science’, Abba Salama 5 (1974), p. 191.Google Scholar
103 God and Rationality, p. 174.
104 God and Rationality, p. 173.
105 God and Rationality, p. 178.
106 God and Rationality, p. 174. It is in this context of being confronted with the reality of God that Torrance develops his conception of objectivity. For example, in God and Rationality, p. 188, he comments. ‘Now it is in his knowledge of God where through the Spirit man learns what objectivity really is, by coming up against the unyielding objectivity of the Lord God before which his own objectified constructions are shattered, that he is emancipated from the prison-house of his own inturned subjectivity, and is made free for genuinely objective experience’, see also p. 176.
107 Cf. Gal. 4: 19.
108 Palma, Robert J., ‘Thomas F. Torrance's Reformed Theology’, Reformed Review 38 no. 1 (Autumn 1984), pp. 13–23.Google Scholar
109 It is regrettable that the evangelical scholar Ronald Nash completely misses Torrance's realism. See his The Word of God and Mind of Man (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub. House, 1982), pp. 93ffGoogle Scholar. In many ways Torrance's whole discussion rests upon the reality of dialogue and communication with the Living God through Christ and in the Spirit. Nash quotes C. F. H. Henry's argument (p. 95) that Torrance's position reduces to skepticism. It would appear that Nash and Henry are building upon the ‘law of contradiction’. Torrance, however, is building upon the reality of knowledge of God in Christ. We have here an unfortunate and lamentable clash of paradigms. The fundamental difference is between an a priori logical authority and the Autoexousia of Jesus Christ.
