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.