Thomas F. Torrance

Theologian of the Trinity

Paul D. Molnar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317010470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book provides an important study of the theology of Thomas F. Torrance, who is generally considered to have been one of the most significant theologians writing in English during the twentieth century, with a view toward showing how his theological method and all his major doctrinal views were shaped by his understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. Torrance pursued a theology that was realist because he attempted to think in accordance with the unique nature of the object that is known. In holding to such a methodology, he drew an analogy between theology and natural science. This book demonstrates how, for Torrance, God relates with humanity within time and space so that creation finds its meaning in relation to God and not in itself; this enabled him to avoid many theological pitfalls such as agnosticism, subjectivism and dualism while explaining the positive implications of various Christian doctrines in a penetrating and compelling manner. This book offers an important resource for students of theology and for scholars who are interested in seeing how serious dogmatic theology shapes and should shape our understanding of the Christian life.

Chapter 1
Introducing T. F. Torrance

There is little doubt that Thomas Forsyth Torrance (1913–2007) is one of the most significant English-speaking theologians of the twentieth century. According to Alister McGrath, those outside of Great Britain generally regard Torrance “as the most significant British academic theologian of the twentieth century”¹ and, in his view, “one of the most productive, creative and important theologians of the twentieth century”.² In the estimation of George Hunsinger, Torrance’s understanding of the sacraments in particular represents a new synthesis of Calvin and Barth which improves on both and embodies “the most creative Reformed breakthrough on the sacraments in twentieth-century theology, and arguably the most important Reformed statement since Calvin”.³ Stanley Grenz notes that as early as 1984 the editors of the Reformed Review praised Torrance as “the leading Reformed theologian today in the Anglo-Saxon world” and “one of the most brilliant and seminal thinkers of our time”.⁴ Elmer Colyer believes there is a “growing consensus that Thomas F. Torrance is one of the premier theologians in the second half of the twentieth century”.⁵ Kye Won Lee calls Torrance “the most consistent evangelical theologian in our times”.⁶ Most people today recognize that Torrance has made significant contributions to the discussion between theology and science. Daniel Hardy, for example, writes that Torrance “is virtually unique amongst theologians in the depth of his knowledge of the philosophy of the natural sciences”.⁷ And P. Mark Achtemeier believes Torrance’s contributions to the study of science and religion “are magisterial and highly original”.⁸ Alister McGrath also notes that Torrance authored, edited or translated a massive amount of material—more than 360 pieces before his retirement in 1979 and over 250 more after that date.

While Torrance’s writing covers a wide range of topics, he is perhaps best known for his study of science and Christian theology. McGrath notes wryly that many of those theologians he has studied did not seem bothered by the fact that they had no first-hand knowledge of the method and norms of natural science, but wrote about science nonetheless! But it is different with Torrance. “Torrance’s writings were, quite simply, of landmark significance.”⁹ While this book will consider Torrance’s contribution to the discussions between science and theology later in this chapter in order to give the reader some indication of his massive contribution to that area of study, we shall not focus on that contribution but will instead call attention to his dogmatic theology and how that theology informs all other aspects of his thought. Of course, even his dogmatic theology shows signs of his commitment to the scientific method, since every aspect of this dogmatic theology is marked by his belief that accurate thinking can only take place as thought conforms to the unique nature of the object being investigated. As the title of the book suggests, Torrance’s thinking is deeply structured around his understanding of the triune God. Not only all other doctrines, but even Torrance’s work toward ecumenical understanding between Orthodox and Protestants and Protestants and Roman Catholics is informed by his understanding of the Trinity. Interestingly, although he did not formally teach courses in the doctrine of God at the University of Edinburgh,¹⁰ he did write three very important books on the Trinity after his retirement and he personally was most pleased with his important book The Trinitarian Faith, which was published in 1988.¹¹ But before we get into the dogmatic material that will comprise the heart of this book, let us finish introducing the man himself.

T. F. Torrance was born of missionary parents in Chengdu, in the province of Sichuan, West China, on August 30, 1913, and was named after his great-grandfather, Thomas Forsyth Torrance. From 1920 to 1927 he attended a school established by Canadian missionaries “at Lan Tai Tze on the campus of the West China Union University”,¹² which, according to Alister McGrath, was not quite up to British standards but was good enough for Torrance to dream of entering the University of Edinburgh to prepare himself for missionary work in Tibet. Because of growing hostility to missionaries in China, all women and children had to leave in 1927, and so Torrance returned to Scotland in the middle of the Depression. When things stabilized in China, his father returned there in 1928 and left his wife Annie to raise the family in Scotland. His father finally returned home to Scotland after retiring late in 1934 and lived there until his death in 1959. T. F. Torrance eventually attended the University of Edinburgh to study classics and philosophy and began to formulate some of his own realist views of philosophy, theology and morality; he also studied the philosophy of science.¹³ He began the formal study of theology in New College in the fall of 1934. At that time he read and was disappointed by Schleiermacher and developed an interest in the theology of the early church. In Torrance’s own words:

I was captivated by the architectonic form and beauty of Schleiermacher’s method and his arrangement of dogmatics into a scientific system of Christian doctrine, but it was clear to me that the whole conception was wrong, for due to its fundamental presuppositions Schleiermacher’s approach did not match up to the nature or content of the Christian Gospel, while the propositional structure he imposed upon the Christian consciousness lacked any realist scientific objectivity.¹⁴

Under the influence of his mother,¹⁵ his view of Scripture was both Christ-centered and opposed to any crude fundamentalism. Indeed, his mother had given him a copy of Barth’s Credo that encouraged him to oppose not only rationalistic liberalism but fundamentalism and deterministic sorts of Calvinism as well.

Two professors at New College were to have a lasting influence on Torrance. Hugh Ross Mackintosh (1870–1936) stressed the centrality of Christ for the doctrines of revelation and salvation and also emphasized the connection between theology and mission,¹⁶ and Daniel Lamont (1869–1950), who succeeded Alexander Martin in 1927 and held the chair of “Apologetics, Christian Ethics and Practical Theology”, was interested in the relationship between Christianity and scientific culture.¹⁷ Mackintosh’s thought was so influential for Torrance that he took extraordinarily detailed notes. Mackintosh’s books, The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (1912) and The Christian Experience of Forgiveness (1927), remained the basic texts for divinity students at the University until the 1970s. Interestingly, two key points emphasized by Mackintosh were to be of long-lasting influence in Torrance’s own thought. First, “No one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth anyone know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willleth to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). This classic text indicated for Torrance that our knowledge of God comes only in and through Christ himself and that “What Jesus was on earth God is for ever”.¹⁸ As we shall see, Torrance would later develop this into his important position that what God is toward us in Jesus Christ, he is eternally in himself. Second, Mackintosh was quite convinced that the most important issue facing the Church in his time was the same truth that was central during the time of Nicaea, namely, “the cardinal truth of the Deity of Christ, the incarnate Son of God”.¹⁹ This same thought was repeated by Torrance many years later in his book The Christian Doctrine of God: “The Deity of Christ is the supreme truth of the Gospel, the key to the bewildering enigma of Jesus .…”²⁰ And, of course, Torrance developed this insight into his own insistence on the centrality of the Nicene homoousion for all theological loci.

Daniel Lamont helped to generate Torrance’s interest in science and in applying the scientific method to theology in the sense that knowledge was perceived to take place when thinking was conformed to the unique nature of the object being investigated. Some of this was presented in Lamont’s important book Christ in the World of Thought, published in 1934. This scientific thinking was to dominate Torrance’s thought in all areas, as we shall see. During his time as a student at Edinburgh, he had contact with John and Donald Baillie who were both critical of Barth in a way that Torrance considered inappropriate. He himself believed that John Baillie’s thinking in particular suffered from what he called an epistemological dualism. This meant that Baillie tried to establish “a method of inquiry apart from the subject-matter of his inquiry” on the one hand, and, on the other, “he worked out a theory of religion from its roots in the human soul and the moral claims of God upon it, without really taking divine revelation into account”.²¹ It is certainly not too much to say that Torrance became a lifelong opponent of subjectivism because such an approach to objective knowledge essentially cut one off from the truth as it exists independent of the subject. At this point in his career, he was following the thought of his teachers Mackintosh and Lamont and argued that “it is impossible for man to gain knowledge of God ‘by digging into himself’”.²² Barth’s theology was becoming popular in Scotland in the mid 1930s and Torrance became more interested in Barth’s thinking at that time. H. R. Mackintosh had introduced him to Barth’s “Theology of the Word” and Torrance himself read Barth’s Church Dogmatics I/1 as soon as the translation by G. T. Thompson appeared in 1936. Torrance was particularly intrigued by Barth’s understanding of dogmatics as a science, by his view of the objectivity of God’s self-revelation and by his trinitarian doctrine.²³ It is no wonder that Torrance was to become famous as the key person to introduce Barth’s theology to the English-speaking world. Torrance’s book Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology, 1910–1931 was to dominate the received view of Barth in the English-speaking world until 1995 when Bruce McCormack questioned his thesis that Barth turned from dialectic to analogy after reading Anselm.²⁴

In 1936 Torrance was awarded the Blackie Fellowship which allowed him to study in the Middle East. He traveled to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon as well as Bethlehem, Nazareth and Iraq. When he arrived at Basra, the city was still under martial law because a revolt had recently taken place against the Baghdad government. He was accused of being a spy and actually sentenced to death by hanging. Happily, he was able to persuade the authorities that he was just a theological student from Edinburgh and was allowed to travel to Baghdad and on to Damascus. Interestingly, Torrance retained some Arabic throughout his life. He also remained fluent in Chinese, Greek, Latin, German and French. When he returned to Scotland he graduated summa cum laude having specialized in systematic theology. It was at this time that he was awarded the Aitkin Fellowship which allowed him to engage in postgraduate study at Basel with Karl Barth. After studying German in Berlin and Marburg, he enrolled in Barth’s seminar for the academic year 1937–1938. There were about fifty students in the seminar, but Barth also selected around twelve students to meet once a week at his home, based on the results of an examination he gave them. Torrance was among them. During the semester, in addition to the weekly meetings at Barth’s residence where the group studied Wollebius’ Compendium Theologiae, Torrance heard Barth lecture four times a week on what would later become Church Dogmatics II/1. They were studying Vatican I’s teaching on natural theology at that point. Even as late as 1990 Torrance indicated that he considered Church Dogmatics II/1 and II/2—Barth’s Doctrine of God—to be the high point of Barth’s dogmatics. As far as Torrance is concerned, the second volume of the Church Dogmatics “surely ranks with Athanasius, Contra Arianos, Augustine, De Trinitate, St Thomas, Summa Theologiae, and Calvin, Institutio, as a supremel...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introducing T. F. Torrance
• 2 T. F. Torrance, Theologian of the Trinity The Centrality of the Doctrine of the Trinity in Torrance’s Theology
• 3 God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
• 4 Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, Homoousion with the Father and with Us in our Humanity
• 5 Atonement: Incarnation and Reconciliation Are One in Jesus Christ
• 6 Torrance’s Pneumatology
• 7 Resurrection and Ascension: Implications for Humanity in Light of Redemption and Eschatology
• 8 Torrance’s Trinitarian Understanding of the Church, Sacraments and Ministry
• 9 Considering Some Criticisms of T. F. Torrance’s Theology
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index