Torrance and the Problem of Dualism, pt 2

In our last post we noted that dualism is the division of reality into two incompatible domains. Cosmological dualism, whether of the ancient Greeks or of the Newtonian-Deism of the Enlightenment, posits a separation (dualism) between God and the world, rendering the incarnation of Jesus Christ problematic if not impossible.

In today's post we will consider the dualism associated with the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. This is an epistemological dualism; thus, it has to do with human "knowing." Kantian dualism precludes meaningful knowledge of God. According to the Kantian thought, "We 'kan't' know God."

Stick with me on this one and we will see how Kantian epistemological dualism has had damaging effects on Christian knowledge of God in the modern era.

Epistemological Dualism

In addition to the cosmological dualism in its ancient and modern forms, Torrance rejects the 'epistemological' dualism associated with the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724‒1804), who posited a disjunction (dualism) between the human knower and the reality the human subject seeks to know. According to Kant, since human knowing is always influenced by language, culture, and the structures of the human mind operative in the activity of knowing, we cannot know objective reality, that is, "the thing in itself" (Das Ding an sich), but only how it 'appears' to us through our "cognitive grid," that is, as 'interpreted' by the categories and mental structures of the mind (Colyer, 2001a:58, 329, 330). In positing an "unbridgeable gulf" between the mind of the knower and the object of knowledge, epistemological dualism asserts that our knowledge is in reality an imposition of the mind's own thought patterns in order to bring an artificial order to the undifferentiated chaos of sensory experience (Achtemeier, 2001b:273).

Comment: The essential point is that we can't know "objective" reality, that is, "the thing in itself"; what we "know," rather, is a combination of empirical data and a whole bunch of mental constructs that we impose upon it. The bottom line is that we can't really "know" God as an objective reality because of the vast amount of mental "stuff" we bring to the table. God is as much a "subjective" phenomenon of our own minds as he is an "objective" reality "out there."

For Kant, man can know only the phenomenal world (the world of "appearances"), for the mind requires empirical evidence before it can be capable of knowledge. Following the Scottish philosopher, David Hume (1711‒1776), Kant argued that concepts such as space, time, causality, quantity, substance, and relation are not empirically verifiable realities; rather, they are a priori interpretive principles that the mind 'imposes' upon nature to bring order to an otherwise chaotic and overwhelming manifold of experience.

Comment: Kant claimed that Hume awoke him from "slumber." According to Hume, we cannot assert that the 8-ball caused the 9-ball to fly to the corner pocket like a marten to the gourd. All we really see is the "phenomenal" world, in this case, two balls in motion. To say that one "caused" the other to move is to introduce a mental construct that we "impose" upon what we have observed. In short, "causality" is one of many mental constructs or a priori interpretive principles that we bring to the table in order to make sense of the game. Said another way, "causality" is inside our heads, not "out there."

These a priori concepts are not read out of experience but read into it. In other words, Kant argues that instead of reading the laws of nature from nature, man ultimately reads them into nature through the processes of the human mind. Hence, the "order" that man perceives in the world is not a characteristic of nature but of the human mind. Contrary to the assumptions of everyday experience, the human mind can never experience what is "out there," apart from the mind, as a clear and undistorted "objective" reality. "Reality," rather, is a 'construction' of the human mind imposed upon the world. In relation to scientific theology, since objective knowledge can only be derived from empirical evidence, metaphysics (knowledge of God) is beyond the powers of human reasoning (Tarnas, 1991:341-347).

Comment: In short, the world is not really orderly ("order" is one of those interpretive principles we bring to the table, something inside our heads rather than "out there."). We merely impose an "artificial" order onto reality so that we can make some sense of the chaotic manifold of data that confronts us. The point is: What we call "reality" is not something "out there," that exists independently of the human mind; rather, "reality" is a "construction" or fabrication of the human mind imposed upon the phenomena of the universe in order to enable us to make some kind of sense of the world. Stay tuned; this is important!

According to Torrance (1984:38ff), there was a major epistemological shift from Newton to Kant. With the former, knowledge is derived through discovery of the inherent intelligibility of the world; for the latter, intelligibility and the theoretical components of knowledge are shifted to the human mind, wherein the raw data of sensory experience is organized to make it intelligible. This constitutes an "inversion of the knowing relation" away from the intrinsic intelligibility of nature or reality (as in Newton) to the cognitive processes of the human mind (as in Kant). This results in a "constructivist mentality" in which the mind imposes order and form upon experience. Thus, from Newton to Kant epistemology shifted from the 'discovery' of form to the 'imposition' of form in everyday experience and scientific inquiry, that is, from the inherent intelligibility of the universe to the synthesizing and constructive power of the human mind, wherein rational structure is read into nature. With this major change in epistemology, the idea of the inherent intelligibility of the universe began to fade away in accordance with Kant's assertion that the human mind is the origin of the laws and perceived uniformity of nature (cf. Colyer, 2001a:330, 331).

Comment: From Newton to Kant we have a big-time "epistemological shift." For Newton the world was an orderly, albeit closed, system of cause and effect. We could investigate the cosmic time clock and eventually come to understand it as it really is. Thus, knowledge was derived by the investigation of the empirical phenomena of the universe. By the time we get to Kant, the source of knowledge has shifted from the empirical events of the world around us to what is inside our own heads. We no longer discover reality (as in Newton); we impose an artificial (mentally constructed) reality onto nature. With this epistemological shift, w began to lose sight of the intelligibility of the universe as woven into it by its Creator; instead, we begin to see an artificial "intelligibility" imposed upon reality by the cognitive structures of our minds. In other words, it's all in your head, Bubba!!

So the bottom line on Kant's epistemological dualism is this: We kan't know "the thing in itself" (Das Ding an Sich) because we impose all our mental "stuff" onto it. Thus, what we "know" is really a construction of our own minds. Apply this to God and I think you'll see the problem.

Adverse Effects of Kantian Dualism on Christian Knowledge

OK. Here's why it matters. Pay attention!

From early in his career, Torrance has noted the many adverse effects of Kantian dualism on Christian thought and speech. As Torrance (1976:269) argues:

The damaging effect [of Newtonian-Kantian dualism] nowhere appears more sharply than in the wide gap that opens up between an inert God who cannot be known in himself and the world of phenomena conceived as a closed continuum of cause and effect. . . . [Dualism is] also the source of the wide-spread doubt and difficulties about providence, prayer and worship, for it means that even Christian forms of thought and speech about God are uprooted from any objective ground in the being of God himself and float loose in the vague mists of modern man's vaunted self-understanding. (Underline added)

In positing a bifurcation between unknowable "things in themselves," which must be treated as nothing more than hypothetical entities, and what is scientifically knowable, Kant created a "damaging dualism" that has had profound effects upon theological inquiry, the faith of the believer, and biblical interpretation. By limiting scientific knowledge to what is empirically observable, Kant severed the connection between science and faith, thereby "depriving faith of any objective or ontological reference and emptying it of any real cognitive content." In practical terms, this means that it is impossible for us to have real knowledge of Jesus Christ as he is in himself, for our understanding of Jesus is limited to how he 'appeared' to his followers and to the impression he made on the structures of their consciousness, by which they made him the 'object' of their faith and knowledge. Thus, the biblical scholar, using the methods of historical criticism, is faced with the task of stripping away the theoretical (i.e., theological) accretions that accrued over time to the Jesus narrative in order to bring into view, as far as possible, the actual impression he made as he appeared to his contemporaries. It was in this troubling context that Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and their followers struggled to find some meaningful place in human culture for the message of the gospel. As nineteenth- and twentieth-century theology demonstrate, as long as one operates with "an axiomatic disjunction" [dualism] between a "noumenal" realm of ideas [what's "up there"] and a "phenomenal" realm of events [what's "down here"], nothing more than a moral, symbolic, or mythological meaning can be given to the biblical account of God's saving interaction with the world of space and time, particularly the Christian message of Jesus' incarnation, death, and resurrection (Torrance, 1980:28-43).

Comment: Let's face it: What else can you do if you decide that God (and everything else) cannot be known objectively? What happens when you decide that what we call "God" is as much an imposition of human thoughts forms onto the heavens as it is any sort of objective reality "out there"? So if we kan't know God (epistemological dualism) and if God cannot enter time and space (cosmological dualism), what are we going to do with the gospel message, particularly as revealed in the New Testament? We have no choice but to interpret it in moral, symbolic, or mythological terms, whereby we reduce Jesus to a nice Jewish boy who told really good stories and set a fine moral example for us all.

As Achtemeier (2001b:274) observes, epistemological dualism manifests itself in theological science in a tendency, especially pervasive since the Enlightenment, to reduce theology to anthropology or psychology. In the place of God's objective self-disclosure within the concrete structures of time and space [the incarnation], the 'subjective' religious experience of the believer becomes the object of theological inquiry. This distortion in theological science also manifests in a "constructivist" (i.e., "subjective") approach to theology, which assumes that the task of the theologian, like that of the modern artist who attempts to portray his subjective experience on canvas, is to construct "symbol systems" which serve to project the idea of god onto the cosmos in order to serve the religious needs and aspirations of "believers."

Comment: The idea is that we create God inside our own heads then project him onto the vast movie screen above. As a significant part of the movie script, we create "symbol systems' (religion) to give meaning to our otherwise hopeless lives. So theology is really anthropology. It's not really about God (theology), because he is merely a projection of human imagination; it's about us (anthropology) and our need to create religion to provide us solace and meaning.

In addition, the Kantian restriction of knowledge to what is observable, or to what may be deduced from observation, creates a divide between objective, ontological realities [God] and the human knower, thereby reducing human understanding to a form of existentialism such that knowledge is nothing more than an expression of one's attitude toward reality. [Read that again! I know you didn't get it the first time!] Within a dualist framework, whether of the cosmological or epistemological kind, theological statements necessarily lose their connection to any objective, ontological reality. [Here comes the "why it matters" part.] Consider the following biblical statements: "The Word was made flesh"; "God is love"; "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." If the objective reality to which the biblical writers clearly refer is cut off by a "deistic disjunction" between God and the world, biblical statements must be interpreted merely in terms of the subjective, anthropocentric consciousness of the writers. That is, theological statements are diverted from their reference in the objective reality of God to subjective statements about ourselves as dependent on God [It's all in our heads]. Thus, the objective realities to which theological statements refer become merely a "mythological" way of expressing man's feeling of dependence on God [as in Schleiermacher] and the understanding of himself in the world in which he lives. Theological statements about Jesus, for example, are turned around toward us and reduced merely to the meaning he has for us in terms of how we order our lives. This reductionist way of handling theological statements shows what happens when we follow, for example, Bultmann, who rejects any conception of "the intelligibility of reality." Theological statements are stripped of any reference to an objective, transcendent reality so that they become nothing more than autobiographical statements about ourselves, with the result that theology is reduced to a poor form of anthropology. As Torrance rightly argues, it is the "anachronistic" persistence of these "damaging dualisms" that give rise to the "pseudo-theologies" that remain common today (Torrance, 1980:27, 34-36).

In our next post, we'll take a look at Torrance's "critical realist epistemology." I know you Kan't wait.

References

Achtemeier, P.M. 2001. Natural Science and Christian Faith in the Thought of T. F. Torrance. In E. Colyer, ed. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T. F. Torrance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Ch. 11.

Colyer, E.M. 2001a. How to Read T.F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian & Scientific Theology. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 393pp.

Kelly, D.F. 2007. The Realist Epistemology of Thomas F. Torrance. In G. Dawson, ed. An Introduction to Torrance Theology: Discovering the Incarnate Saviour. London: T & T Clark. Ch. 4.

Tarnas, R. 1991. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York, NY: Ballantine. 544pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1976. Theology in Reconciliation: Essays toward Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 302pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and Science. (Preface to new edition by T.F. Torrance, 2001). Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1981. Divine and Contingent Order. (Preface to new edition, 1998). Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 162pp.

Torrance, T. F. 1984. Transformation & Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 353pp.

Torrance and the Problem of Dualism, pt 1

Today's contribution to the cause of Trinitarian-incarnational theology is the first of a two-part post on the problem of "dualism." Even if you have read only a little T. F. Torrance, you have likely encountered his recurring critique of the problem of dualism, particularly in regard to the Enlightenment's dualistic Newtonian cosmology and the Kantian (dualistic) disjunction between the knower and the known (see below for explanations of these high-browed ideas). As someone noted, however, Torrance gives us (his readers) more credit than we deserve; that is, he assumes we know more than we really do ‒ and that can create problems for us readers. For example, consider the first few pages of The Mediation of Christ. In only a few paragraphs, Torrance probably manages to scare off most potential readers. Torrance graciously assumes we know what he is talking about when, in highly compressed prose, he notes the many problems associated with both cosmological and epistemological dualism and our need to embrace, as theologians, a unitary view of reality as conceived by modern science (beginning particularly with James Clerk Maxwell). (Note, however, that if you can get by the first three or four pages, the book gets easier ‒ though not necessarily easy.)

To be sure, reading Torrance often requires at least a general knowledge of the history of philosophy, history of theology, and a perverted desire to delve into the subatomic world of quantum mechanics. Ouch!! In regard to philosophy, if wrestling with the ephemeral world of Platonic and Neo-platonic philosophy is not bad enough, once you get into Torrance, you have to move on to the philosophy of the Enlightenment era if you want to have even the remotest clue about his critique of Kantian epistemological dualism. Problem is, most of us have lives to live ‒ you know, babies to burp and wood to chop. We simply don't have time for philosophy and quantum physics. We want to get to Jesus!

Never fear. This is where your faithful correspondent comes in. Think of me as a translator, like those who sit beside the diplomats at the U.N. This is not to suggest I am an expert in the Torrance "language"; I am not. But I am learning to speak "Torrance," and as someone who is a teacher by nature, I can't help but share what I am learning. Therefore, I seek to help my readers familiarize themselves with various concepts encountered in reading Torrance.

So here we go again. It's pipes for the men and cigars for the ladies. Sit back, kick off your comfy Mickey Mouse slippers, and enjoy a bit more of "All Things Torrance."

The Problem of Dualism

Torrance's scientific approach to knowledge of God as mediated by Jesus Christ draws him into sharp conflict with both ancient and modern forms of "dualism," that is, the division of reality into two independent, incompatible domains. Torrance (1980:76) notes that the Church has faced an ongoing struggle with dualism, particularly in the Patristic and modern eras. An appreciation of Torrance's rejection of cosmological and epistemological dualism is vital to grasping his "realist" understanding of the mediation of Christ (Colyer, 2001:57, 58).

According to Torrance, theologies may be divided into two distinct types: 1) interactionist and 2) dualist. An "interactionist" theology (such as that of Torrance) is one in which God is understood to interact closely with the world of nature and history without being confused with it. A "dualist" theology is one in which God is thought to be separated from nature and history by a "deistic distance." As an example of a dualist theology, Torrance cites Schleiermacher, who conceived of God as so transcendent and "other" that he cannot be the object of our knowledge; thus, knowledge of God arises from our immanent religious consciousness (Torrance, 1970:121; 1990:136).

Cosmological Dualism

Cosmological dualism posits "a separation between the reality or essence of something and the empirical sources of our knowledge about it," that is, a separation between "substance" and "appearance" (Achtemeier, 2001b:273). In regard to theological science, cosmological dualism posits a separation between God and the world, whether in the metaphysics of the ancient Greeks or in the "deism" of the modern era (Torrance, 1980:15ff).

Originating in ancient Greek thought, cosmological dualism asserts that what is "really real" is an eternal, unchanging realm of pure thought "forms" which stand in stark contrast to the imperfect, changeable realm of concrete appearances [we're talking Plato here]. In theological science, cosmological dualism typically asserts itself in an assumed incompatibility between the eternal, divine realm and the finite realm of space and time. For Christian theology, this has historically taken the form of a denial of the empirical reality of the incarnation, so that a wedge has been driven between the Christian understanding of Jesus Christ and genuine knowledge of God (Achtemeier, 2001b:273).

Comment: We've talked about this before (see The Wedding Cake Cosmos: Augustine and Neo-Platonism, 3/09). The Greeks posited a "dualism" between the divine and materiality. God is "way up there," we are "way down here," and there can be no interaction between the two. The dualist assumption that God cannot interact with materiality rules out the incarnation from the start! Thus, the gospel is "foolishness" to the Greeks.

Cosmological dualism arose again at the beginning of the modern scientific revolution, particular in the thought of the great physicist, Sir Isaac Newton (1642‒1727). The changes in cosmology initiated by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo were mathematically elaborated by Newton in his "system of the world." Newton's cosmology was characterized by "a thorough-going dualism between absolute space and time and the contingent events that took place within their embrace" (Torrance, 1976:268).

"Absolute space and time," presupposed by Newton's laws of motion, form a static backdrop against which the movement of bodies can be described and plotted. According to Newton, "absolute space" is structured according to the uniform principles of Euclidean geometry; "absolute time" provides a universal frame of reference against which events anywhere in the universe can be described as occurring simultaneously, before, or after one another. Absolute space and time form a vast "envelope" that contains all that goes on in the universe, "inertially conditioning" events and our knowledge of them while remaining unaffected by them. The contents of universal space-time are understood in atomistic terms as discrete particles, or "point-masses," called "corpuscles," which move and interact with one another according to the influences of gravitational "forces." Newton's "particles in a box" paradigm readily lends itself to mechanistic, reductionist ways of thinking about the universe; that is, if the universe is composed of particles moving according to fixed laws of motion, then all phenomena could conceivably be explained in those terms. The determinism evident in Newton's "corpuscular" view of matter gave rise to the conception of the universe as self-perpetuating clockwork-like machine. Newton's mechanistic-dualistic cosmology has dominated Western science for centuries (Torrance, 1980:75; 1984:270, 271; Achtemeier, 2001b:282, 283).

Comment" Newton's "corpuscular" view of particles moving around in the vast arena of space is often portrayed something like a giant pool table with billiard balls rolling around all over the place, more or less at will.

As Tarnas (1991:270, 271) notes, "By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the educated person in the West knew that God had created the universe as a complex mechanical system, composed of material particles moving in an infinite neutral space according to a few basic principles, such as inertia and gravity, that could be analyzed mathematically. . . . It also seemed reasonable to assume that after the creation of this intricate and orderly universe, God removed himself from further active involvement or intervention in nature, and allowed it to run on its own according to these perfect, immutable laws. The new image of the Creator was thus that of a divine architect, a master mathematician and clock maker, while the universe was viewed as a uniformly regulated and fundamentally impersonal phenomenon."

Newton's appeal to absolute time and space as an a priori "philosophical backdrop" to his theory creates a rigid cosmological dualism between absolute space-time and the material contents of the universe, a dualism that closely mirrors the ancient Greek distinction between an eternal, divine world of rational "forms" and a material world of subjective appearances. Not only has the Newtonian cosmology "built a deep-seated dualism into the whole fabric of Western science, philosophy, and culture" but also has encouraged a view of the universe as a "closed continuum of cause and effect," far removed from the ongoing providence of a loving God (Torrance, 1976:268, 269).

Torrance rightly observes that there are significant theological implications associated with the Newtonian view of the cosmos. To be sure, Newton's view of the material contents of the universe as "particles in a box" moving in strict accordance to fixed laws of motion leaves little room for God's involvement in the world, except as the "first cause" or creator of the universe. Moreover, Newton's dualistic outlook, coupled with a "Baconian" understanding of scientific method (wherein speculative hypotheses are shunned in favor of theories developed strictly by inductive means based on experimental data), drives a wedge between scientific and "religious" ways of knowing. "Science" is viewed as empirical and "objective," deriving its understanding from experimental data, while "religion" is viewed as "subjective," tenuously grounded in personal belief. The net result of this is a "powerful resonance" between the scientific view of Newtonian physics and Deism, a theological view that understands the world to function in an autonomous "clockwork" fashion that requires no divine involvement other than as a "first cause" (Torrance, 1981:43, 44; Achtemeier, 2001b:284).

Comment: That's the essential point. The Newtonian view of the cosmos as a closed system of cause and effect leaves God out of the picture. In fact, according to this view, if God were to intervene, say with miracles, it would throw everything out of whack, upsetting the delicate balance of the cosmic pocket watch. In short, miracles are a no-no in this view.

As Achtemeier (2001b:285, 286) observes, "The radical disjunction in Newton's thought between the philosophical backdrop of absolute, eternal, and unchanging space and time on the one hand, and the dynamic world of objects and appearances on the other, is thus mirrored in an equally radical disjunction between the creator God and the independent, ongoing processes and activities of the created order." Newton's "container" view of absolute space and time as the philosophical backdrop of his thought renders the Christian doctrine of the incarnation extremely problematic, since it is not clear (in a Newtonian view) how the infinite God could be contained in the limited structures of time and space. The theological implications of his theory were not lost on the great physicist. As Torrance (1980:68) notes, Newton was compelled to deny the incarnation and to support Arius against Athanasius.

In embracing a dualistic worldview, wherein the universe is conceived in terms of a self-containing and self-explaining deterministic framework, some theologians have gone to great lengths to "cut off faith from any empirical correlates in physical space-time reality" [i.e., incarnation, miracles, etc. didn't really happen in time and space, just in the collective imaginations of us dumb Christians]. In so doing, they have replaced objective, God-centered theology with a radically subjective, man-centred outlook (Torrance, 1981:62, 63). [What else can you do when God is disqualified as a player from the start?] Those who hold dualistic views tend to interpret the biblical accounts of God's agency in the world as "nonliteral symbolism or premodern mythology, and therefore subject to allegorical or demythological strategies of interpretation in order to extract or explain the meaning embedded in the symbol or myth" (Colyer, 2001:58). [In other words, the Bible is nothing but a collection of fairy tales.] Bultmann is a prime example of a theologian who is constrained by a modern dualist worldview. Bultmann held that historie, that is, history understood solely in terms of a closed system of cause and effect, ruled out of rational consideration anything that could not be interpreted in terms of natural physical laws. Thus, Bultmann was compelled to rule out any thought of incarnation, miracles, resurrection, or God's interaction in human history. "[Bultmann's] acceptance of the idea of an unbroken continuity of cause and effect governed by natural law made him regard the central Christian beliefs embedded in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament as a mythological account of reported this-worldly events in other-worldly ways lacking objective truth and reality." Thus, Bultmann devised a method of "demythologizing" the New Testament so that modern people could understand it within the framework of a Newtonian-deistic dualism, wherein the world is considered a closed system of cause and effect not subject to intervention from the "outside." In offering an "existentialist reinterpretation" of the gospel, Bultmann insulated the Christian message from the critical investigations of science while at the same time rendering the gospel completely irrelevant for modern science and technology (Torrance, 1980:18, 19; 1994:4-5).

This kind of "demythologizing" of scripture is alive and well today with the so-called "Jesus Seminar." In their vaunted wisdom, they get together and vote on which portions of New Testament scripture are authentic (they put colored balls into a hat I think) and which are merely the superstitious accretions of those silly first Christians. Like Bultmann, they appear to embrace a cosmological dualism in their assertion that God does not (or perhaps cannot) intervene in history. Thus, they get out their scissors and cut out everything in the Bible that smacks of the miraculous (including the Virgin Birth, incarnation, resurrection, ascension and other little things like that). When they get through, they have a really, really thin Bible. (I like mine better.) So you see, cosmological dualism is alive and well. Just watch the "biblical scholar" "Domino Croissant" who gets interviewed by the History Channel every time the subject of the "historical" Jesus comes up.

See part 2 for a discussion of Kant's epistemological dualism.

That's all for now. Stay tuned. Next post due in a week or so.

References

Achtemeier, P.M. 2001. Natural Science and Christian Faith in the Thought of T. F. Torrance. In E. Colyer, ed. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T. F. Torrance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Ch. 11.

Colyer, E.M. 2001. How to Read T.F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian & Scientific Theology. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 393pp.

Tarnas, R. 1991. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York, NY: Ballantine. 544pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1970. The Problem of Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth. Religious Studies, vol 6, pp. 121-135.

Torrance, T.F. 1976. Theology in Reconciliation: Essays toward Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 302pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and Science. (Preface to new edition by T.F. Torrance, 2001). Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1981. Christian Theology and Scientific Culture. Oxford: OUP.152pp.

Torrance, T. F. 1984. Transformation & Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 353pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1990. Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

All Things Torrance: An Introductory Post

OK, gang. Here we go with "all things Torrance." Starting with this post, we are going to probe deeply into "the mediation of Jesus Christ" in the "scientific" theology of T. F. Torrance.

If you have tried to read Torrance, you have made an inevitable discovery: this brother is hard to read. For a while, I thought it must be me. Then I discovered that Torrance is notorious for his "difficult writing style" and "overly-compressed prose" that is "dense to the point of obscurity" (as Elmer Colyer puts it). No mistake, Torrance will compress an entire chapter into a paragraph! So don't feel bad if you have trouble with Tom Torrance. His writing style is not only difficult, but the content of his thought presupposes a working knowledge of the history of theology, the history of philosophy, and the history of science. If you have struggled with Torrance, join the club.

In coming posts, I hope to untangle some of Torrance's intricate, highly complex thought and perhaps even shed some light on an evangelical, doxological view of the mediation of Jesus Christ that is unparalleled since Athanasius.

So kick back, light up a big cigar, and let's get started.

(In today's post, I will introduce some fundamental concepts in Torrance's thought. These will be developed in detail in future posts.)

While T. F. Torrance was widely known throughout his career for his interest in the relation between theology and the natural sciences, a number of Torrance's works, arguably his greatest, were published relatively late in his long life, after the end of his formal academic career. These books are concerned primarily with the nature of God, particularly as revealed in the economy of salvation in the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. Among his most compelling books (at least for the present writer) are: The Mediation of Christ (1983; rev. ed. 1992), which introduces readers to a number of important themes in Torrance's christocentric theology, including his understanding of Israel as "the womb of the incarnation" as well as his vision of the one simultaneous activity of revelation and reconciliation in the incarnation of Jesus Christ; The Trinitarian Faith (1988), which, as it subtitle indicates, is a thoroughly evangelical exposition of the ancient catholic faith as expressed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and is also an excellent introduction to the Patristic roots of Torrance's theology, especially as found in Athanasius; Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (1990), which describes Torrance's relation to his great teacher and introduces Torrance's own theological vision, and his last book, and one that has been regarded as his masterpiece, The Christian Doctrine of God (1996a). Published when Torrance was in his early eighties, this book is a thorough articulation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity grounded in God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ, implicit in the New Testament and articulated in the doxology and theology of the early church. This important work should serve as a classic treatise on the Holy Trinity well into the third millennium (and perhaps beyond). These late works, combining the intellectual rigor of the accomplished theologian with the compassionate heart of the son of Scottish missionary parents, reveal the doxological, evangelical, and thoroughly christocentric content of Torrance's theology.

Despite his life-long interest in the interface between theology and the natural sciences, Torrance remained a deeply devotional man of faith. In his introduction to Theological Science (1969:v), he wrote:

If I may be allowed to speak personally for a moment, I find the presence and being of God bearing upon my experience and thought so powerfully that I cannot but be convinced of His overwhelming reality and rationality. To doubt the existence of God would be an act of sheer irrationality, for it would mean that my reason had become unhinged from its bond with real being. Yet in knowing God I am deeply aware that my relation to him has been damaged, that disorder has resulted in my mind, and that it is I who obstruct knowledge of God by getting in between Him and myself as it were. But I am also aware that His presence presses unrelentingly upon me through the disorder of my mind, for He will not let Himself be thwarted by it, challenging and repairing it, and requiring of me on my part to yield my thoughts to His healing and controlling revelation.

Despite his intellectual rigor, Torrance insisted that accurate knowledge of God cannot be developed in a detached, merely academic way. To know God intimately requires that we enter into a personal and saving relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Hence, revelation and reconciliation are inseparable in Torrance's theology, for we cannot know God in a detached, impersonal manner without regard for his purpose for our lives (Torrance, 1988:3; 1996b:132). For Torrance, theology is one aspect of the church's response to grace in obedience and worship; thus, theology can never be more than a refinement and extension of the knowledge of God as it arises in the liturgy and doxology of the community of faith and in the believer's living personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Throughout his work, Torrance intertwines theology and worship, so that the theology of T. F. Torrance is not only rigorously scientific and intellectually challenging but devotional and evangelical as well (Colyer, 2001a:25, 28).

Torrance's theology, including his doctrine of the mediation of Jesus Christ, is strongly influenced by the methodology of the natural sciences. For Torrance, the basic methodological principle of scientific theology, like that of the natural sciences, is that knowledge in any field of inquiry must be developed according to the nature (kata physin) of the reality under study. Thus, a scientific theological method is one in which every aspect of its inquiry is governed by, and proceeds in accordance with, the nature of the 'object' in question: "God in Jesus Christ as the Truth" (Torrance, 1969:112, 113; cf. 1988:51).

In relation to its object of inquiry, a rigorous scientific approach to theology must be informed by actual knowledge of God as revealed to us in the economy (oikonomia) of salvation, that is, in God's historical dialogue with Israel and particularly through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit. God's self-revelation in Christ and the Spirit calls into question "all alien presuppositions and antecedently reached conceptual frameworks" regarding knowledge of God. For Torrance, this necessitated the development of a rigorous, scientific epistemology that was governed from beginning to end by the 'nature' of its object of inquiry: "God in his self-communication to us within the structures of our human and worldly existence" (Torrance, 1990:122).

Because God has given himself to be known in Jesus, "the central and pivotal point of all genuine theological knowledge" is found in christology. Scientific theology, therefore, will operate on a christological basis, for christology is critical to the understanding of the nature of God. Rather than go "behind the back" of Jesus to develop knowledge of God, christology teaches us to know God in strict accordance with the steps he has taken to make himself known to us and, therefore, to test our knowledge of God in accordance with the steps in which knowledge of him has actually arisen in space and time (Torrance, 1990:71). Hence, for Torrance, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is the "actual source" and "controlling center" for the Christian doctrine of God (Torrance, 1996a:18). To know God through the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, who is of "one substance with the Father" (homoousios to Patri) is to know God in strict accordance with God's nature (kata physin) and, hence, in a theologically scientific way (cf. Torrance, 1969:110-113; 1988:3, 51, 52).

In addition to the basic methodological principle that knowledge of God must be developed in his strict accordance with the divine nature as revealed in Jesus Christ, an important aspect of Torrance's scientific approach to theology is his attempt to reduce a vast amount of theological data to a few "elemental forms," that is, basic concepts that have the effect of illuminating and simplifying an otherwise incomprehensible array of data (Torrance, 1969:116-119). A grasp of these constitutive concepts is essential to an understanding of Torrance's overall vision of the mediation of Jesus Christ.

Two central concepts on which Torrance builds his doctrine of the mediation of Christ are the Nicene homoousion, that is, the creedal assertion that Jesus Christ is "of one being with the Father" (homoousios to Patri), and the doctrine of the 'hypostatic union' of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. After studying Barth, Torrance realized that concepts such as the Nicene homoousion and the hypostatic union provide a framework for embodying the "essential connections" of the material content of our knowledge of God, so that a "coherent and consistent account of Christian theology as an organic whole" might be developed in a rigorously scientific way in terms of its own "objective truth and inner logic" (Torrance, 1990: 123). Torrance believes that basic theological concepts such as the homoousion and the hypostatic union enable us to apprehend and articulate the inner matrix of relations revealed to us in the economy of God's self-revelation (oikonomia) in the Old and New Testaments. Together, these concepts provide a "disclosure model," or conceptual "lens," through which we allow realities to reveal themselves to us in a progressive way (always subject to revision as realities unfold) that simplifies and clarifies our knowledge of God and enables us to integrate the complexity of Scripture in a way that illumines God's self-revelation in the economy of salvation while strengthening our faith and experience (Torrance, 1980:125, 126; Colyer, 2001b:225).

For Torrance, the Nicene homoousion is the epistemological and ontological "linchpin" of revelation and reconciliation, and, therefore, of the entire enterprise of a Christian scientific theology. The homoousion is of the utmost evangelical significance. It is essential to our salvation that Jesus is of one nature with God, for only God can save. In light of the orthodox creedal assertion that Jesus Christ is "of one being with the Father," the homoousion "crystallizes" the Christian conviction that while the incarnation falls within historical time and space, it also falls within the eternal life and being of God (Torrance, 1980:160, 161; 1988:110ff; 1996a:30; 1996b:128). As noted above, a rigorous scientific theology must be developed in light of the nature of God as it comes into view in God's actual self-revelation. This is precisely what takes place when we develop our knowledge of God in accordance with the divine self-revelation in the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, who is homoousios to Patri (Torrance, 1988:52).

In addition to the Nicene homoousion, the 'hypostatic union' of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ is a constitutive elemental form in Torrance's doctrine of the mediation of Christ. While it is essential to our salvation that Jesus Christ is of one nature with God, it is also essential that he is of the same being and nature as humanity. If Jesus is not human as we are, then the gospel is emptied of soteriological content, for his actions have no connection to us and God has not bridged the gulf between himself and humanity created by sin (Torrance, 1988:4, 8, 146, 147; 1992:56-59). Yet the Patristic doctrine of the hypostatic union asserts that God has joined himself to human flesh in the incarnate person of Jesus Christ. In the "God-humanward" movement of the incarnation, God reveals himself within the limits of our creaturely existence (i.e., the mediation of revelation). The eternal Logos takes the form of a servant (Jn 1:1,14; Phil 2:5ff) and assumes our actual diseased, sinful humanity, not only atoning for it, but healing it and bending it back to the Father (Torrance, 1988:153, 157, 161ff). Because the incarnate Son is both fully divine and fully human, he encompasses both sides of the mediating relationship between God and man in his one incarnate person. Thus, the hypostatic union itself is the atoning reconciliation between God and humanity (i.e., the mediation of reconciliation) (Torrance, 1992:56-59).

Closely related to the above is another elemental form that constitutes Torrance's vision of the mediation of Christ: the important concept of "incarnational redemption." For Torrance, the incarnation and the atonement are intimately connected: the incarnation is inherently redemptive and redemption is inherently incarnational. Atoning salvation is not an "external" transaction, as in a forensic concept of atonement; rather, atoning reconciliation occurs "within" the incarnate constitution of the person of Jesus Christ. In the incarnate life of the Mediator there occurs an "agonising union" between God the Judge and man under judgment in a continuous movement of atoning reconciliation running throughout the life of Jesus, from his virgin birth through his resurrection and ascension. Hence, Jesus does not merely "mediate" a reconciliation that is other than himself, as though he were merely an instrument of reconciliation. Rather, Jesus embodies what he mediates, for what he 'is' and what he mediates are the same. He is the reality and content of divine reconciliation. He does not merely propitiate, redeem, and justify; he is our propitiation, redemption, and justification. In the identity of the Mediator and mediation the heart of the gospel is to be found (Torrance, 1986:476-478; 1988:155, 159; 1992:62-67; Colyer, 2001a:85).

A final and particularly characteristic feature of Torrance's understanding of the mediation of Christ is his important concept of the "vicarious humanity" of Jesus Christ. Here Torrance stresses the "human-Godward" movement of Christ, wherein, throughout his entire incarnate life ‒ from birth through death, resurrection, and ascension ‒ Jesus "vicariously" makes the perfect filial response of faith and obedience to the Father on behalf of, and in the place of, all humanity, in such as way as to undergird, rather than undermine, the integrity of our own human response to God in faith, repentance, and obedience (Torrance, 1988:149-154; 1992:73ff; 1996b:132; Colyer, 2001a:28, 29).

In summary, the Nicene homoousion, the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures of Christ, the doctrine of incarnational redemption, and the "vicarious humanity" of Jesus Christ are among the elemental forms of Torrance's vision of the mediation of Christ. Torrance weaves these basic constitutive concepts together into an intricate coherent whole, so that they are not easily conceptually separated from one another. These concepts are closely related, interpenetrating one another because they are all functions of the being and life of Jesus Christ, who in his one incarnate person is the mediation of God to man and man to God.

The coherence of these basic elemental forms is related to another essential aspect of Torrance's thought: his theological "holism." Inspired by his reading of natural scientists such as James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein, Torrance's theological holism is rooted in his basic convictions concerning the "dynamic interrelationality" of reality and the kind of inquiry needed to grasp this interrelatedness. These interrelations, or "onto-relations," as Torrance calls them, are relations so basic they are inseparable from, and characteristic of, the realities they constitute. If we are to understand the nature of various realities, they must be investigated within the nexus of the interrelations of which they are a part. Realities must not be studied in isolation, for they are what they are by virtue of the relations wherein they are embedded (Torrance, 1984:215ff; 1992:2, 3, 47-50; Colyer, 2001a:55, 56).

The holism of Torrance's thought is related to the elemental forms described above, for each basic concept in Torrance's thought is inherently relational. The Nicene homoousion describes the Son's eternal, ontological relationship with the Father. The 'hypostatic union' articulates the nature of the relationship between the divine and human natures "within" the one incarnate person of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of "incarnational redemption" connects the incarnation and atonement in a holistic rather than dichotomous manner. The doctrine of the 'vicarious humanity' of Christ describes the incarnate Son's relationship with the Father as man. Thus, an understanding of the constitutive concepts of Torrance's theological vision arises as they are investigated within the nexus of interrelations that constitute them.

Because the fundamental aspects of reality are 'relational' rather than atomistic, the goal of theology, for Torrance, is to investigate and to coherently articulate the essential interrelations embodied in our knowledge of God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, to understand Jesus Christ and the mediation of revelation and reconciliation, we must view Jesus within the nexus of interrelations that disclose his identity and mission: that is, we must adopt a two-fold approach in which we examine Christ 1) within the matrix of his interrelations with the history and people of Israel in covenant with God and 2) in light of Christ's internal relations with both God and humanity. As theology investigates and articulates these inner relations as disclosed in God's self-communication to us in word and deed as reflected in the gospel, it enables us to grasp the "organic structure" of our knowledge of God and of God's relation to us in creation and redemption. Torrance finds this kind of approach in the early church, wherein the followers of Jesus sought to understand his significance within the dynamic field of God's covenant interaction with Israel and also in light of Christ's relationship to the one he called "Father." Within this complex of interrelations, the early church found itself coming to grips with the essential message of the gospel, a message of salvation for all mankind, embodied in Jesus himself, in continuity with the message of God that had been worked out in covenant partnership with historic Israel. "In that mediation of God's saving revelation, the startling events in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus fell into place within a divinely ordered pattern of grace and truth, and the bewildering enigma of Jesus himself became disclosed: he was incarnate Son of God and Saviour of the world" (Torrance, 1992:1-5, 47-50; cf. Colyer, 2001a:55-57, 345).

Wow!! Yea, Tom!! That wasn't too bad! I hope that whets your appetite for more. Join me again around November 1, for the next post on "All Things Torrance."

References (All references listed may not be used in every post).

Colyer, E.M. 2001a. How to Read T.F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian & Scientific Theology. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 393pp.

Colyer, E.M (ed). 2001b. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T. F. Torrance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 354pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1969. Theological Science. Oxford: OUP. 368pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1976. Theology in Reconciliation: Essays toward Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 302pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and Science. (Preface to new edition by T.F. Torrance, 2001). Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1981. Divine and Contingent Order. (Preface to new edition, 1998). Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 162pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1982. Reality and Evangelical Theology: The Realism of Christian Revelation. (Forward by K.A. Richardson, 1999). Downers Grove, IL: IVP. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster. 174pp.

Torrance, T. F. 1984. Transformation & Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 353pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1988. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. London: T & T Clark. 345pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1989. The Christian Frame of Mind: Reason, Order, and Openness in Theology and Natural Science. Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard Publishers. 164pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1990. Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1992. (orig. ed. 1983). The Mediation of Christ. Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard. 126pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1994. Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 71pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1996a. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons. London: T & T Clark. 260pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1996b. (orig. ed. 1965). Theology in Reconstruction. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers. 288pp.

God for Us! One Year Anniversary

Greetings Everyone!

This month marks the one year anniversary of God for Us! ‒ a blog on Trinitarian theology.

I am grateful to all you regular readers for your interest, and I especially appreciate the kind comments you have offered. Many have found this blog helpful for their growing understanding of the goodness and unfailing love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. I have been very encouraged to receive your emails informing me about the ways this blog has been useful to you.

In the last year, we have spent much time and effort discussing the problems in the Western doctrine of God, a rather "un-Christian" synthesis of biblical and pagan thought. We have seen how the doctrine of the Trinity was relegated to the status of a relatively minor appendix to a practical unitarian view of God developed apart from Jesus. The 20^th century, however, witnessed a renaissance in Trinitarian thought, pioneered by the great Karl Barth. This renaissance continues today, and this blog is intended to play a role in the reawakening to the good news of the Father's love as revealed in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

In that light, beginning with the next post, we will charge off in a new direction in this blog. In the months to come, I will be posting on "all things Torrance." I will be sharing with you the things I discover and learn as I probe deeply into the theology of T. F. Torrance, a modern Father of the Christian Church. I hope you will continue on this journey with me, so that we may grow together into a fuller understanding of God's unfailing love for all humanity as revealed in the incarnate Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

So stay tuned! The news is good; really good!!

The Self-Revealing God

The following material was originally written for academic purposes. For this blog post, I am taking the liberty to interject comments [in brackets] to bring out certain aspects of the material.

As we saw in our last post (8/22/09), among contemporary trinitarian theologians there is a return to the trinitarianism of the Patristic era. Following Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, and many others, modern theologians are calling the Western Church to return to a doctrine of God that is firmly grounded in God's triune self-revelation in redemptive history (oikonomia) rather than in substantialist metaphysics [see last post] rooted in pagan philosophy. Among contemporary Trinitarians, a renewed interest has arisen in formulating a doctrine of God that is firmly grounded in God's unique self-revelation in the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.

Gunton (2003:25-27) rightly and cogently argues that whenever our doctrine of God is separated from Jesus, we move either into abstraction or idolatry. Hence, God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son is central to the doctrine of the Trinity. One of the values of the doctrine of the Trinity is that it ties our speech about God to Jesus and helps us not to create gods of our own making [as in certain forms of Protestant evangelicalism]. To be sure, any doctrine of the Trinity which loses its hold on the historical Jesus no longer represents the ancient faith of the Church [Irenaeus, Athanasius, and the Cappadocians are in full agreement!] In the end, argues Gunton (2003:18), the doctrine of the Trinity is only worth knowing if it helps us to know who the God is who reveals himself in the redemptive activity of the Son and Spirit. "Without the doctrine of the Trinity we might have a God of power, or a God in some way identical with the world, but not the God of the Bible, who is a God of love, and whose love takes shape in the story of creation and redemption."

• [Comment: God's essential nature is love; God IS love! His power and sovereignty are in the service of love. If you want a deterministic god of power and unrelenting sovereignty, buy a camel and become a Muslim.]

As Migliore (2004:72) notes, the doctrine of the Trinity "redescribes" God in the light of the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the transforming work of the Spirit. It describes a God whose love for the world is not accidental or capricious. The doctrine of the Trinity assures us that there is no sinister, demonic deity different from the God we know in the stories of Jesus who befriended the poor and forgave sinners. If talk of the Triune God is to be more than "wild speculation," argues Migliore (2004:69, 70), it must be grounded in, and limited by, the scriptural witness to the love of God that is mediated to the world in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Thus, proper Trinitarian theology does not first speculate on a Trinity in eternity (theologia), only afterward to search for evidence of the Trinity in revelation (oikonomia); rather, it begins with the history of revelation and salvation attested by Scripture and experienced by Christians from the beginning of the Church. Responsible Trinitarian thinking must begin with the 'economic' Trinity, that is, the threefold agency of Father, Son and Spirit revealed in salvation history (oikonomia). "To this beginning point in God's relationship to us through Christ in the Spirit Trinitarian theology must return again and again."

• [Comment: Real and accurate knowledge of God must be grounded in, and developed from, God's triune self-revelation in the Father, Son and Spirit. Real and accurate speech about God does not begin with speculative inferences on the nature of God based on the observation of the cosmos, as in Aquinas and Aristotle (see "Tommy A. and the Western Split," 3/09). Nor do we follow Augustine and look for "vestiges" of the Trinity in the human mind (see "The Wedding Cake Cosmos: Augustine and Neoplatonism, 2/09). As Gunton noted above, that leads to abstraction or idolatry. If we really want to know what God is like, then we need to take a long look at Jesus!]

• [By the way, I recently realized something about Augustine that may seem obvious to one or two of you. The entire Platonic-Neoplatonic (i.e, pagan tradition) is trapped in a damaging dualism that asserts that spirit is good and matter is bad. According to that tradition, human beings are essentially "sparks of divinity" imprisoned in a physical body. Therefore, as a committed Neo-Platonist, it makes sense that Augustine would look for "vestiges" of the Trinity in the human mind, for that is where one finds the spark of divinity. But note that in turning to that Platonic spark within, he turns away from God's self-revelation in the incarnate (i.e., en-fleshed, bodily) Jesus. Western Christians have suffered greatly as a direct result of Augustine's epistemological and methodological error, for he initiated a movement of theological thought that finally turned the Church away from Jesus (and toward the veneration of the saints) and put in the place of the Triune God, whose nature is revealed as love, the awful and dreaded omniGod of Western Christianity (see "How to Make a Western Omelet God," 4/09).]

LaCugna (1991:69, 70) argues that the eternal transcendent being of God (theologia) must not be considered in an abstract way divorced from God's self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia) [This is the problem of natural theology. We'll examine that in detail in an upcoming post.] The issues important to Medieval Scholasticism, for example, numbers of processions and relations or whether person precedes relation, can no longer be the primary concern of Trinitarian thought. Instead, "Christian theology must begin from the premise that because the mystery of God is revealed in the mystery of salvation, statements about the nature of God must be rooted in the reality of salvation history." In other words, theologia must once again be considered primarily in terms of oikonomia (LaCugna, 1991:3, 4). [Wow! I love LaCugna! Read those last two sentences again!] For LaCugna (1991:97), it is "impossible" to think of the divine essence or substance of God apart from the concrete particularities of the Triune Persons, for it is only through God's self-revelation as incarnate Son and Sprit that "the unknowable God (Father) who dwells in light inaccessible is revealed to us." Hence, in formulating the doctrine of God, the "real question" is whether or not one begins with God's self-revelation in the economy of salvation.

LaCugna's assertion, of the impossibility of speculation on the being (ousia) of God apart from God's self-revelation in salvation history, is persuasively articulated by T. F. Torrance (1996:116). He notes that, while the term ousia [substance, being, nature] was familiar in the various schools of Greek philosophy, Christian theologians [particularly Athanasius and the Cappadocians, but not Augustine] used the term differently, in a way governed by God's self-revelation in redemptive history as attested in Scripture, to denote not static, dumb being but rather living, speaking, personal being. Thus, the divine ousia should not be understood in the static sense of Aristotelian metaphysics variously translated by Western Latin theologians as essentia and substantia; rather, ousia should be understood in terms of the oneness and identity of being of the Father, Son and Spirit. To be sure, if God really is in his eternal, transcendent being (theologia) what he is revealed to be in the person and activity of his incarnate Son (oikonomia), as the Nicene homoousion would indicate, then the being (ousia) of God must be understood in a very "un-Greek way" (Torrance, 1995:131).

• [Comment: That last sentence is what we want to get. We don't want to articulate our understanding of the being of God in terms of pagan Greek philosophy (immutability, impassibility), although that is exactly what has been enshrined in the Westminster Confession of Faith. We want to develop our understanding of the nature of God in personal (not impersonal), dynamic (not static) terms as disclosed in God's triune self-revelation as three distinct persons perichoretically united in one being.]

For Torrance (1995:132; 1996:30), the Nicene homoousion is the "hinge" upon which the whole [Nicene] Creed turns as well as the "ontological and epistemological link" to knowledge of God in his eternal, transcendent nature. Thus, God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son demands a "revolution" in our thinking about God, for "the one Being of God is intrinsically personal, and indeed as intensely personal as God is in the manifestation of himself to us in the Gospel as Father, Son and Holy Spirit" (Torrance, 1996:3, 129). God is, therefore, not the remote deity of Greek philosophy, imprisoned and isolated in his own aloofness, unmoved by human plight; rather, God is the one who, in sovereign freedom, passionately engages and interacts with his creation, "for in his own eternal Being he is the ever living, loving and acting God who will not be without us but who in his grace freely determines himself for us as our God and Saviour" (Torrance, 1996:4). [Way to go, Tom!!]

• [Comment: Jesus is the ontological link to knowledge of God because he is one in 'being' with the Father; he is the epistemological link to knowledge of God because only Jesus 'knows' the Father and he is the express Word (Logos) of God to us; therefore, to establish accurate knowledge of God, we start with Jesus.]

Abstract philosophical speculation on the being (ousia) of God in terms of the presuppositions of the substantialist metaphysics of Greek philosophy is no longer tenable in the light of God's self-revelation in Christ (cf. Torrance, 1996:116). In Jesus, the Word of God incarnate, "God defines himself for us," so that we may rightly apprehend and know God as he really is (Colyer, 2001:76). In light of the divine self-disclosure in Jesus Christ, God can no longer be viewed as remote, aloof, immutable and impassible; rather God must be viewed as dynamic, active and intensely personal. In short, the Fatherhood of God revealed to us through the incarnate Son determines precisely how we are to understand God's being (Torrance, 1996:118).

The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the "actual source" and "controlling centre" of the Christian doctrine of God, for Jesus Christ is one in both being and agency with the Father he came to reveal. As Torrance (1996:18) rightly argues:

[T]o know God in Jesus Christ, and to know him as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, is really to know God as he is in himself in his eternal Being as God and in the transcendent Love that God is. He is in himself not other than what he is toward us in his loving, revealing and saving presence in Christ.

• [Comment: Linger on that quote, folks; Tom is the man!]

A 'Christian' doctrine of God, therefore, must be developed from the "unique, definitive, and final self-revelation of God" in Jesus Christ, for, in the incarnate Son, God defines and identifies himself for us as he really is. Jesus Christ is the complete revelation of God to man, for in Jesus, who is "of one substance with the Father" (homoousios to Patri), God's historical self-manifestation to us in the Gospel as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is wholly commensurate with who God is "inherently and eternally in himself" (Torrance, 1996:1).

Because Jesus Christ is "of one substance with the Father" (homoousios to Patri), as the Nicene Creed asserts and all orthodox Christians believe, all speculation about the nature of God rooted in Greek metaphysics and natural theology must be abandoned in favour of a return to the Patristic (pre-Augustinian) thinking about the essence or substance of God as revealed particularly in the incarnate Son and his ongoing self-communication to the Church through the Holy Spirit. Through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, the inner being of God is revealed in salvation history: "the invisible is made visible." In LaCugna's (1991:70) terse but trenchant phrase, "Theologia is recapitulated in oikonomia."

References:

Colyer, E.M. 2001. How to Read T.F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian & Scientific Theology. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 393pp.

LaCugna, C.M. 1991. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. 434pp.

Gunton, C.E. 2003. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Essays toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology. London: T & T Clark. 240pp.

Migliore, D.L. 2004. Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing. 439pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1995. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. London: T & T Clark. 345pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1996. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons. London: T & T Clark. 260pp.

Look for next post on or shortly after October 1, 2009. See you then!

The Return to Patristic Trinitarianism

In our last post ("The Problematic God of Western Theology", June, 2009) we examined a number of problems associated with the Western doctrine of God, a version of God that has influenced us all. These problems arose from the "substantialist" metaphysics of Augustine, Aquinas, and medieval Scholasticism. By "substantialist metaphysics," I mean an approach to knowledge of God based on rational reflection on the "unitary substance" of God, considered apart from God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. [That last phrase is what is important!] Substantialist metaphysics, markedly influenced by pagan Greek thought, understands the divine nature to be a simple, undivided "essence." With its emphasis on the 'unitary' being of God, substantialist metaphysics is hard-pressed to understand the 'diversity' of the Godhead as constituted by the three divine persons in relationship. As we have noted in previous posts, the Western emphasis on the unitary substance of God, considered apart from God's triune self-revelation, has contributed to the relegation of the doctrine of the Trinity to little more than a relatively minor "appendix" to the doctrine of the One God of substantialist metaphysics.

In order to circumvent the many problems associated with the Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of God, many contemporary Trinitarian theologians have looked primarily to the Fathers of the early Eastern Church in formulating a doctrine of God (theologia) that is firmly grounded in God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia) as Father, incarnate Son and Holy Spirit (cf. Schwöbel, 1995:5).

Irenaeus

Irenaeus serves as a prime example of the pre-Augustinian Fathers' approach to the doctrine of God. He and other theologians of the early Church were faced with the fundamental question of how God's self-revelation in salvation history is related to God's eternal, transcendent being [i.e,. "How do we relate Jesus and the Holy Spirit to the eternal God?"]. They realized that unless there is a "substantial bridge between the visible and the invisible," that is between oikonomia [God's triune self-revelation in salvation history] and theologia [the eternal, transcendent nature of God], there can be no sure foundation for human knowledge about God as God really is in the eternal, intradivine nature. Irenaeus realized that, unless God himself bridged the epistemological gap between his own incomprehensible being and limited human understanding, the Gospel would be torn asunder from any grounding in reality, emptied of all truth and validity, and its account of God's salvific acts for us would be little more than a fanciful projection into the heavens of the contents of our own psyches (cf. Torrance, 1996:77). As Irenaeus pointed out, only God can know himself; therefore, it is only through God that God may be known (Torrance, 1995:54). [That's a really important point; it renders all speculation about the "substance" of God irrelevant for accurate knowledge of God and drives us back to God's triune self-revelation in time and space as the source for true and accurate knowledge of God.] For Irenaeus, no knowledge of God is possible apart from God's revelation of himself. Following Irenaeus, Torrance (1996:77) comments, "A real revelation of God to us must be one which God brings about through himself."

Athanasius

Like Irenaeus, Athanasius approached the internal relations of the Godhead from a Christological, not philosophical, perspective. For Athanasius, the doctrine of the Trinity starts from and is controlled by the self-revelation of God in the incarnate Jesus
who is "of one being with the Father" (homoousios to Patri). Athanasius was little concerned with abstract philosophical speculation about the unknowable substance (ousia) of God. Rather, his thinking about the internal relations of the Triune God began with the self-revelation of God in the incarnate Jesus Christ. For guidance into the inner being of God, Athanasius relied on the truth of Jesus' own words: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30), and "I am in the Father and the Father in me" (John 14:10, 11) (Torrance, 1995:303-305).

For Athanasius, to know the Father through the Son, who is of one substance with the Father, is to know him in "the godly and the theologically precise way," because this is in strict accordance with what the Father actually is in terms of his own being and nature as Father and Son, and as Holy Spirit (Torrance, 1990:213). Thus, if we wish to gain accurate knowledge of God, we should "take our cue" from Athanasius. Insisting that our approach to God must be through the Son, Athanasius argues that it is "more godly and true to signify God from the Son and call him Father, than to name God from his works alone and call him Unoriginate." In other words, to approach God the Father through God the Son is more devout and accurate than to approach God through his works, then tracing them back to him as their Source (Torrance, 1995:49). [Note how different Athanasius' approach is from that of Thomas Aquinas, who, in fact, sought to describe the divine nature by reference to the "works" of creation: God is not this; he is more than that, and he is the first cause of it all. See previous posts: "Tommy A. and the Western Split," 3/09 and "How to Make a Western Omelet God," 4/09].

The difference in epistemology and methodology between Athanasius and the Augustinian-Thomist tradition is striking. Unlike Augustine, who turned away from God's self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia) to find "vestiges" of the Trinity in the human mind or soul, Athanasius approached the eternal, intradivine being of God through God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son. Unlike Aquinas, who followed Aristotle and approached God through his works by utilizing the principle of natural theology that a cause is known from its effects, Athanasius is content to allow Jesus to reveal the Father, for no one knows the Father but the Son (Mt 11:27). As Athanasius clearly understood, even though the creation proclaims the glory of God, the creation is other than, distinct from, and, therefore, externally related to God. Only Jesus Christ, who is "of one being with the Father," is internally related to God and can, thus, truly reveal the Father as he is (Torrance, 1995:49).

Against Augustine, Aquinas and the Scholastics (both Roman and Protestant), who begin their thinking about God with a syncretic mixture of speculative philosophy [rooted in pagan metaphysics] and biblical revelation, Athanasius begins his thinking about God with reflection on God's incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, the one who is the exact representation of God (Heb 1:3). Athanasius' epistemological and methodological principles rightly assert that access to God the Father is better gained through God the Son than through philosophical speculation or even by reflection on the works of creation.

The Cappadocians

Many contemporary Trinitarian theologians have looked to the Cappadocian Fathers to overcome the "vicissitudes" of Western Trinitarianism (Schwöbel, 1995:5). The Cappadocians rightly asserted that the essence (ousia) of God cannot be grasped through unaided human reason. Despite their own education in rhetoric and philosophy, they abhorred any suggestion that human reason (i.e., philosophy) could comprehend the incomprehensible Godhead (LaCugna, 1991:56). [The Cappadocian rejection of "philosophy" as a means of arriving at knowledge of God is in direct opposition to the approach of Aquinas and medieval Scholasticism.]

The Cappadocians maintained a close connection between theologia and oikonomia by insisting that to speak about the "mystery" of God is possible only because God has revealed himself in the economy of salvation (oikonomia). Because they began their thinking about God with the incarnate Son, they found it necessary to clearly articulate the exact nature of the Father-Son relationship (LaCugna, 1991:60ff). In so doing, they challenged the established view of Greek philosophy, which gave priority to the one over the many, by giving ontological primacy to person over nature (i.e., substance, essence). The Cappadocians developed their Trinitarian ontology based on personhood, that is, "on a unity or openness emerging from relationships, and not one of substance" (Schwöbel, 1995:52, 53). By claiming that the terms "Father" and "Son" refer to relations in the Godhead, the Cappadocians held that person, not substance (ousia), is the highest metaphysical category; thus, they claimed that God is supremely relational. In their insistence on internal relations in the Godhead, the Cappadocians swam against the powerful stream of prevailing Hellenistic thought, wherein the deity was conceived as simple, alone and arelational (Sanders, 2007:147, 148; cf. LaCugna, 1991:63-66).

Unlike the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, the Cappadocians did not regard substance (ousia) as an abstract principle to be considered apart from the concrete particularities of the Triune Persons. Rather, they saw that the divine Persons in relationship among themselves constitute the being (ousia) of God; that is, the Triune Persons exhaust the Godhead without remainder (LaCugna, 1991:69). In short, there is no fourth "something" distinct from, or to be considered apart from, the Triune Persons of the Godhead (cf. Gunton, 2007:86). God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because God eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is not an "in-itself," alone and isolated from relationships; rather God is "the epitome of love in relation" (Sanders, 2007:148).

In summary, Irenaeus, Athanasius and the Cappadocians assert the essential principle that our knowledge of God must begin with God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, the One who is homoousios to Patri ("of one being with the Father"). The pre-Augustinian Patristic insistence that real and accurate knowledge of God arises through his self-revelation in the incarnate Son can be summed up succinctly in a phrase said to the present author by theologian, Dr. Robert Lucas: "Jesus is our hermeneutic."

Why It Matters

Does it really matter whether we think of God in terms of substantialist metaphysics, with its emphasis on the unitary being of God, or in the personal, relational terms of God's triune self-revelation in history as Father, Son, and Spirit? Yes, it does matter; it matters a great deal.

If we begin our thinking about God based on rational reflection on the empirical phenomena of the cosmos (as in Aquinas), we can only arrive at concepts of God based on the "way of causality" (via causalitatis), that is, the assertion that a cause (God) is known by its effects. We develop a description of God that is nothing more than a negation of (via negativa), or an extension of (via eminentiae), the phenomena of the cosmos. For example, we say that God is not finite (infinite) or that God does not change (immutability) or that God does not suffer (impassibility). Or we can say that God transcends the limits of time and space and conclude that God is all-wise (omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent), and everywhere present (omnipresent).

Yet how do we relate an all-powerful, unchangeable and impassible God to the incarnation and the cross? As Barth, Torrance, Moltmann, Pinnock, Sanders and many others have argued, the "substantialist" view of God simply cannot handle Bethlehem and Calvary. To be sure, the unchanging, all powerful God of substantialist metaphysics is not a deity who can identify with our humanity, particularly our suffering; he has never "been there." The God of substantialist metaphysics is not a God who responds to our prayers or is concerned with our plight.

More importantly, the articulation of a doctrine of God based on substantialist metaphysics minimizes the vital importance of God's triune self-revelation. In simple terms, it leaves Jesus out of the picture, diminishes his humanity, and moves him to a far away celestial realm so that the faithful are left with no one to pray to but Mary and the saints!! And that is the real problem! (And that's exactly what happened!)

Catherine Mowry LaCugna describes the doctrine of the Trinity as "the mystery of salvation." It took me a long time to understand what she meant but I think I get it now. In biblical terms, a "mystery" is something that was hidden but is now revealed. Hence, God's eternal nature as Father, Son, and Spirit is a mystery that God had to reveal to us; we would never have gotten it on our own. Moreover, God's triune self-revelation is a salvific revelation. In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of human salvation (soteriology) go hand in hand (In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation upon which all other doctrines must be built.) In revealing to us the fact that he is eternally Father, Son and Spirit, God is revealing to us the fact that he is, by nature, the God who saves, or as LaCugna asserts in the title of her marvelous book, he is God for us! Get that point: The Father sends the incarnate Son to reconcile all humanity to himself (2Cor 5:19); the Father sends the Spirit to unite us to Jesus. Thus, the three persons of the Godhead are "saving" persons. It is God's nature to save. We cannot know that essential fact about the eternal nature of God unless God reveals it to us! Rational reflection on the cosmos can tell us that God is infinite and all powerful but it cannot tell us that God is love; it cannot tell us that God is for us! Thus, God must reveal to us the fact that he is love by sending his Son (and Spirit) to reconcile the entire cosmos to himself.

If we think of God solely in terms of the unitary essence of substantialist metaphysics, we miss the reality of God's salvific nature. We end up with a distant "omni-God" rather than the God who stoops to save. Apart from the doctrine of the Trinity, we miss the Good News that God is for us, that God is on our side. Yet, he has proven his love for us by his gracious self-revelation as Father, incarnate Saviour, and indwelling Holy Spirit. Amen.

(We will continue with this line of thought in our next post, coming on or about September 1, 2009. Stay tuned. The news is good; really good!

References

Gunton, C.E. 2007. The Barth Lectures (transcribed and edited by P.H. Brazier). London: T & T Clark. 285pp.

LaCugna, C.M. 1991. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. 434pp.

Sanders, J. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 384pp.

Schwöbel, C. (ed). 1995. Trinitarian Theology Today. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 176pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1990. Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1995. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. London: T & T Clark. 345pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1996. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons. London: T & T Clark. 260pp.

The Problematic God of Western Theology

Before reading this post, I suggest you read the previous post entitled "The Subordination of the Doctrine of the Trinity."

The following post brings together much of the material that has been presented in previous posts by articulating the problems associated with the Augustinian-Thomist-Western doctrine of God. The post is long but I believe it is vitally important to our understanding of the problems in the Western doctrine of God.

Split Between Faith and Reason

There are a number of serious problems with the Western doctrine of God. The first problem with the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God is a "false disjunction" between faith and reason. While Jesus and the Spirit are known by faith in the apostolic witness revealed in Scripture, the One God, that is, the supreme substance, is known by speculative reason rooted in pagan Greek philosophy (Rahner, 1997:ix).

The Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of God implies that the One God of substantialist metaphysics is the "real" God and is known differently from the Triune God revealed historically in the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit (oikonomia). As a result, the Augustinian-Thomist tradition has created a split between faith and reason and left the Western Church with two competing sources of knowledge of God, each tending to discredit the other (Gunton, 1990:35). These two versions of God are incompatible, for each posits a distinct but dissimilar view of the nature of God and God's relationship to the world. The One God of the philosophers, that is, the God of reason and natural theology, is the immutable, impassible God of all determining power who is unaffected by the troubles here below. The Triune God revealed in Scripture and known by faith is the God who stoops to interact with creation (cf. Hos 11:4) and whose power is subordinated to his essential nature of love (Pinnock, et al, 1994:18ff).

This split view of God leaves the Church with profound questions: Is the Christian God like the God of the philosophers ‒ remote, aloof, and disengaged? Or is the Christian God the Triune God of grace and mercy revealed in salvation history who freely and lovingly engages creation? In opening an epistemological chasm between the One God and the Triune God, thereby creating a split between faith and reason, the Augustinian-Thomist tradition has left the Western Church with the same question posed to T. F. Torrance (1992:59) by a dying young soldier on the battlefield: "Is God really like Jesus?"

Epistemology and Methodology

As evidenced above, many of the problems in the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God are epistemological and methodological, as can be seen by a comparison to Eastern Patristic theology. The pre-Augustinian Fathers of the Eastern Greek tradition begin their thinking about God with revelation; they do not attempt to describe God ad intra. Rather than offer a "philosophy of being," their primary concern is to explain how we may speak of the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ (Metzger, 2005:52). Whereas the Augustinian-Thomist approach to the doctrine of God begins with an emphasis on the unitary substance of God, only thereafter to consider the Triune Persons, the Eastern theologians of the early Greek-speaking Church begin their doctrine of God by considering first the Triune Persons as revealed in salvation history and only thereafter reflecting on the intradivine substance (ousia) (cf. Gonzales, 1987:335; Grenz, 2004:8, 9). While the Western approach emphasizes nature over person, the Eastern approach emphasizes person over nature (LaCugna, 1991:11).

Moreover, in the Eastern approach to the doctrine of God, the divine persons in relationship among themselves constitute the being (ousia) of God. The being of God is simply what the persons are, one to another; that is, for God to "be" is simply to be the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their intradivine relations to one another (Gunton, 2007:86). On the other hand, Western theologians, who typically begin their articulation of the doctrine of God based on the substantialist metaphysics of natural theology, tend to talk of three "subsistencies" in the divine being, as though the divine persons exist within the being of God rather than constituting that being. To say, however, that the divine Persons are merely subsistencies in the being of God seems to imply that the being of God is different from the persons. In other words, the Western tradition implies that the being of God is something that underlies the divine persons rather than being constituted by them. Thus, in Western theology, following Augustine, the being (ousia) of God appears to be a substratum, a fourth "something," that underlies the Father, Son and Spirit (Gunton, 2007:87). This presents the Church with an epistemological problem: If the essence of God is different from the Triune Persons, that is, if God is different from God's historical self-revelation in Christ and the Spirit, then Christians are faced with the question, "Who (or what) is God and how do we know?"

Another major problem with the Augustinian-Thomist approach is methodological. Because the identity of God is not rooted primarily in the biblical witness to the incarnate Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but is found in rational speculation on the substance (ousia) of God based on Greek philosophy, the Western practice of describing the unitary substance as "God" is liable to making God's redemptive self-disclosure as Father, Son and Spirit subordinate to the essence (ousia) of God. Because this approach begins with substantialist metaphysics, derived from human ideas of what is appropriate for a perfect being to be (dignum deo) (Sanders, 2007:295, n29), the Western tradition suggests that Jesus and the Spirit are to be interpreted in terms of the pre-understanding of the attributes of the divine essence (e.g., immutability and impassibility) rather than in terms of God's self-emptying love for the world revealed at the cross.

The Significant Influence of Pagan Philosophy

Another problem with the Augustinian-Thomist-Western doctrine of God is the ever-present influence of pagan philosophy. According to Bloesch (1995:205, 206), the history of Western Christian thought is marked by a "biblical-classical synthesis," particularly conspicuous in Augustine and Aquinas, wherein the "ontological categories of Greco-Roman philosophy" have been united with the "personal-dramatic categories of biblical faith." LaCugna (1991:3, 4) accurately asserts that, in many respects, the "Christian" doctrine of God is secular, because it is derived more from philosophy than from God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. She describes the root of this non-soteriological doctrine of God as the "metaphysics of substance": the pursuit of God in his internal, intradivine relations largely considered apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and the gift of the Spirit. Colin Gunton (2007:39), a rather outspoken critic of Augustine, argues that "Augustine either did not understand the Trinitarian theology of his predecessors, both East and West, or looked at their work with spectacles so strongly tinted with Neoplatonic assumptions that they have distorted his work." Similarly, Moltmann (1993:10-12; 16, 17) is rightly critical of the Thomist emphasis on divine substance derived from Greek philosophy and articulated in the classic "five ways" to knowledge of God (cf. Aquinas, 1989:12ff), wherein the unity of God is given primary consideration with the result that the Trinity is finally explicated only within the framework of the one, divine substance. Moltmann argues that such a rational philosophical approach to the nature of God based on natural theology becomes a "prison" for biblical statements about the nature of God; that is, the scriptural witness to God as revealed in the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit is constrained by an alien view of God developed from natural philosophy. Moltmann (1993:149) succinctly but accurately summarizes the all-important distinction between the methodological approaches to the doctrine of God: "If the biblical testimony is chosen as point of departure, then we shall have to start from the three persons of the history of Christ. If philosophical logic is made the starting point, then the enquirer proceeds from the One God."

The Compromise of Sola Scriptura

In the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, an alien framework of Greek metaphysics has been given equal place with Scripture in the development of the Western doctrine of God. This syncretic mixture of pagan and biblical thought compromises one of the hallmark principles of the Reformation: sola scriptura. When the doctrine of the One God is separated from the self-revelation of God as Father, Son, and Spirit, then reflection on the nature and character of God becomes merely a matter of philosophical speculation. When theologia is divorced from oikonomia, the biblical witness to God's involvement in the world in the history of Israel and the incarnation of Christ is rendered irrelevant for understanding the transcendent eternal nature of God. This means that rationalist speculative theology on the intradivine nature of God can operate on its own, unsupported by a thorough investigation of Scripture (exegesis). Therefore, while the Reformation principle sola scriptura might still be applied to the divine economy (oikonomia), there is apparently one area where the principal does not apply: "the immanent Trinitarian constitution of the divine being" (Schwöbel, 1995:7).

In the Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of God, natural theology, based on the rational speculation of Greek metaphysics, is the starting point for the doctrine of the One God, while revealed theology, as embraced by the community of faith, is the basis for the doctrine of the Triune God (Torrance, 1980:147, 148). Latin theology has promulgated a union in Western Christian thought between pagan Greek philosophy and biblical revelation that has been taken for granted for centuries, while only recently coming into question. In the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, the biblical revelation of the Father, Son and Spirit is subordinated to a view of God derived from natural philosophy. Consequently, as my friend theologian Robert Lucas notes, the Western Church, while intending to faithfully adhere to the Reformation principle, sola scriptura, at least in its Protestant manifestations, is unconsciously reading Scripture through an alien grid that emphasizes the oneness and unity of God with comparatively little consideration given to the distinctiveness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit or to the communion of fellowship shared among the Triune Persons of the Godhead. The Trinity is removed from the practical concerns of Christian life and worship and is relegated to the status of a puzzling conundrum whose incomprehensibility is taken as axiomatic. Finally, and most importantly, As my friend theologian Baxter Kruger notes, abstract philosophical reflection on the inner nature of God considered apart from the scriptural witness to salvation history means that Jesus Christ ‒ the One by, in, for, and through whom all things exist (Col 1:16, 17) ‒ is left out of the formulation of the doctrine of God.

In summary, the Western doctrine of God arises from a confluence of two very different streams of thought: 1) natural theology largely derived from the substantialist metaphysics of pagan Greek philosophy and 2) revealed theology based on Holy Scripture. According to theologian Robert Lucas, because the scriptural witness of God as Father, incarnate Son and Spirit has been thoroughly polluted by an alien stream of thought, the Western Church for centuries has unconsciously allowed the presuppositions of pagan philosophy to drive its "biblical" understanding of God.

Loss of Relationality in the Doctrine of God

Because the Latin emphasis on the unitary substance seems to portray God as an "isolated, passionless monad," thus obscuring both the inner relationality of the Trinity and God's loving relationship with creation, contemporary Trinitarian theologians largely eschew the Western emphasis on the metaphysics of substance wherein the divine essence is said to "stand under" (L. substantia) the divine Persons (Cunningham, 1998:25).

The emphasis on the unitary substance of God and the concomitant loss of relationality in the Western doctrine of God can be traced to Augustine. Because of his intense sensitivity to the suffering involved in human relationships, Augustine developed a permanent dislike for interpersonal models of the Godhead. Given the Neoplatonic presupposition that God is utterly simple with no shadow of plurality, Augustine has great trouble positing real relationships, that is, diversity, in the Godhead. For Augustine, the Father is God in respect to substance, yet he cannot say that God is Father in respect to substance because that would make relations an aspect of the being of God, an assertion that is in conflict with divine simplicity (Sanders, 2007:83, 84).

Moreover, Augustine fails to properly define "person," understanding the term to mean simply "relation." Constrained by the Aristotelian "substance-accident" dualism, Augustine gives relations in the Godhead secondary place to the divine unity (ousia) so that relations are understood logically but not ontologically, that is, as something that constitutes the being of God (cf. Thompson, 1994:129). Because Augustine is unable to make claims about the being of the particular persons of the Godhead, the Father, Son and Spirit tend to disappear into the all-encompassing oneness of God (Gunton, 1990:44, 45). In short, while Augustine understands the unity of the persons, he fails to sufficiently grasp the diversity, thus bequeathing to the Western Church a doctrine of God that barely masks an underlying modalism (cf. Gunton, 2007:86, 87).

Following in the tradition of Augustine, the Fourth Lateran Council and Thomas Aquinas formalized the Western habit of privileging unitary substance over the diversity of the Triune Persons. In relegating the concepts of person and relationship to secondary status in the doctrine of God, the Western tradition has further contributed to the separation of theologia and oikonomia by subordinating God's tripersonal self-revelation to a substantialist doctrine of God derived from rational presuppositions.

Practical Unitarianism

Closely related to the loss of a relational concept of God is the issue of practical Unitarianism. LaCugna (1991:6) rightly argues that an ontological distinction between God in se and God pro nobis, that is, God in his eternal intradivine nature (theologia) and God for us as revealed in salvation history (oikonomia), is inconsistent not only with the biblical witness to God's redemptive acts in history but also with early Christian Creeds and doxology. This separation of God in his eternal intradivine nature (theologia) from God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia), most particularly obvious in Aquinas' separation of the two treatises, De Deo Uno and De Deo Trino, can only result, she argues, "in a unitarian Christianity, not a Trinitarian monotheism."

In a similar vein, Moltmann (1993:17) sees in the Thomist approach not only an undue emphasis on the unity of God but also a reduction of the triunity of God to the One God. As he rightly asserts, "The representation of the Trinitarian Persons in a homogenous divine substance, presupposed and recognizable from the cosmos, leads unintentionally but inescapably to the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity in abstract monotheism." Moltmann seems to suggest that, given the Western emphasis on the ontological priority of unitary substance, the distinct persons of the Triune Godhead disappear into an undifferentiated ontological "soup," leaving the ordinary believer with a Unitarian view of God.

Following LaCugna and Moltmann, we may assert that the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God, wherein God in his inner being (theologia) is considered apart from God as revealed in Christ and the Spirit (oikonomia), is not commensurate with God's self-revelation in Scripture nor with the Apostles' or Nicene Creeds, both of which are set in an unmistakable Trinitarian framework, nor with Christian prayer and worship, wherein Father, Son and Spirit have been historically worshipped as God. In addition, the Augustinian-Thomist emphasis on the unitary substance of God makes the Trinity appear to be a mere addition to the doctrine of God, thus reducing Christian belief and piety to practical Unitarianism, as evidenced by Rahner's (1997:10, 11) lament that the doctrine of the Trinity is irrelevant in the lives of most Christians, who are, in fact, "almost mere 'monotheists.'"

Pastoral Concerns

The Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of the One God has only minimal connection to the incarnation of Jesus Christ. In the Western Latin tradition, Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity have been virtually divorced, so that the life and work of Jesus is disconnected from the Trinity. Accordingly, there is only an "accidental relation" between the economy of salvation (oikonomia) as revealed in Scripture and the eternal triune being of God (theologia) (Thompson, 1994:22). There are clear pastoral concerns attached to the separation of theologia and oikonomia when the "bond of being" between the incarnate Son and the Father is torn asunder in our doctrine of God. Any disjunction between the being of Jesus and the being of God disrupts the message of grace contained in the Gospel, introducing anxiety into the hearts of many Christians who fear there may be a dark, inscrutable, arbitrary deity hidden behind the back of Jesus "before whom in our guilty conscience as sinners we cannot but quake and shiver in our souls" (Torrance, et al, 1999:16).

A truly Christian doctrine of God (theologia) must be rooted in the economy (oikonomia) of salvation, particularly the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The vital importance of a Christological approach to the doctrine of God is ably demonstrated by a series of questions posed by T. F. Torrance (1995:134):

What kind of God would we have, then, if Jesus Christ were not the self-revelation or self-communication of God, if God were not inherently and eternally in his own being what the Gospel tells us he is in Jesus Christ? Would "God" then not be someone who does not care to reveal himself to us? Would it not mean that God has not condescended to impart himself to us in Jesus Christ, and that his love has stopped short of becoming one with us? It would surely mean that there is no ontological, and therefore no epistemological connection between the love of Jesus and the love of God ‒ in fact there would be no revelation of the love of God but, on the contrary, something that rather mocks us, for while God is said to manifest his love to us in Jesus, he is not actually that love in himself.

Torrance's questions illustrate the important truth that thinking about God that does not begin with Jesus Christ leaves us uncertain about God's care, concern and love for the world. The Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God implies that God in his eternal, inner being may be different from God as revealed in his acts in salvation history. Hence, Christians cannot be certain that God as revealed in the incarnate Son and Holy Spirit is the same as God "really" is in his inner-most being. This immediately raises a soteriological concern for the Church: "Is Jesus' death on the cross really the act of God on our behalf?"

Summary

Contemporary Trinitarian theologians, led by Barth and Rahner, have been highly critical of the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God, wherein the doctrine of the Trinity is separate from and subsequent to the doctrine of the One God. The Western bifurcation of the doctrine of God into a major treatise on the unitary substance (ousia) of God, followed by a relatively minor appendix on the Trinity, makes it appear that everything important to say about God is said in the first treatise, while God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history is subordinated to a position of little importance in the development of the Western doctrine of God. This schizoid split in the doctrine of God has created a false disjunction between faith and reason in the mind of the Western Church, burdening the Church with two competing, incompatible and often confusing versions of God: the immutable, impassible God of substantialist metaphysics and the world-engaging, compassionate God revealed in Jesus. Moreover, the Western emphasis on the unitary substance of God, presupposed by natural theology, has led to the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity and created a practical unitarianism or mere monotheism in the worship and practice of many Christians. Finally, the Western emphasis on the unitary substance of God raises the issue of knowability by appearing to make the divine essence the "real" God, while subordinating the Triune Persons to the unitary substance of God. Because the Father, Son and Spirit are interpreted in terms of the pre-understanding of substantialist metaphysics, many Christians are burdened with concerns for their salvation, uncertain that God is really like Jesus.

(Next post circa August 15, 2009.)

References

Aquinas, T. 1989. Summa Theologiæ: A Concise Translation (edited by T.S. M^cDermott). Allen, TX: Christian Classics. 652pp.

Bloesch, D.G. 1995. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 329pp.

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