Greetings
everyone. Sorry to have been away so long, but I am going through a rough patch
on my doctoral dissertation and will post as I can. I think you will really
enjoy the following material. No doubt, it contains quite a few sermons waiting
to be preached.
Introduction
The
goal of Torrance’s scientific approach to theology is to investigate and to
articulate the essential interrelations (i.e.,
“onto-relations”) embodied in our knowledge of God through Jesus Christ in the
Holy Spirit. To that end, the mediation of Jesus Christ must be viewed, not in
isolation, but within the dynamic field of interrelations that disclose his
identity and mission, that is, within the context of his relationship to historical
Israel and also within the context of the elemental forms that arise from his
consubstantial relation with both God and humanity.
Axiomatic to Torrance’s
interactionist, critical realist epistemology is the foundational tenet, grounded
in faith in the authenticity of scripture, that God has acted in time and space,
not only in the incarnation and the sending of the Spirit, but also in historical
dialogue with ancient Israel, as recorded in the Old Testament. God’s
historical interaction with Israel is the preparatory background for
understanding the mediation of Jesus Christ. Torrance refers to the preparatory
background of the mediation of Jesus Christ as the “womb” of the incarnation.
Old Testament Background
The incarnation of Jesus
Christ did not occur in a historical or cultural vacuum; rather, the
incarnation of the Son of God has a “prehistory” or background, traceable to
the early chapters of Scripture, which must be considered if we are to
understand the mediation of revelation and reconciliation in Jesus Christ
(Torrance, 2008:37; cf. 1982:84).
In order to give a
theological account of the divine purpose of creation and redemption, as fully
revealed in Jesus Christ, Torrance turns to the Book of Genesis in order to
develop a “prelude” to Heilsgeschichte
(i.e., “salvation history”). As
Torrance notes, God made human beings and placed them in an idyllic environment
(Gen 2:7ff). As social creatures,
male and female “in the unity of man,” created in the image of God, they were
made for communion with God and fellowship with one another. The bond of
fellowship between them and God, however, was broken by sin, for it is the
nature of sin to disrupt and destroy relationship. In lieu of fellowship and
communion, they now stood before God in “guilty fear.” Moreover, the man-woman
relationship was implicated in the broken relationship with God. The fellowship
between man and woman was impaired by guilt and shame, as symbolized in the
mutual “hiddenness” of wearing clothes. With the bond of fellowship between
them broken, argues Torrance, man and woman were “individualised,” so that each
turned inward upon himself or herself.
Comment: Torrance’s
insight here is of far-reaching significance. Note that sin has disrupted
fellowship or community. If we rightly follow the Cappadocian fathers in asserting
that to be a “person” is to be a “person-in-relation,” then Adam and Eve are no
longer persons, for sin has disrupted the “communion”” between them and reduced
them to isolated “individuals,” cut off from God, from each other, and as we
shall see, from the earth. The contemporary western notion of the “individual”
is fraught with problems, for it is devoid of the being-constituting (i.e., onto-relational) quality of “community.”
Just as God is a community of persons, each distinct from the other yet
existing in eternal unity, to be truly human means to live in relationship to God
and other. In short, I cannot be truly who I am without you!
In addition, the
integrity of the human self was broken in the knowledge of good and evil, creating
an intrapsychic rupture between what the person is and what he or she ought to
be. Once the “constitutive bond” between God and humanity was broken, notes Torrance,
all other relationships suffered irreparable damage. When Adam and Eve were
expelled from the Garden, their relationship with the environment was impaired,
and the way back to Eden was blocked by divine judgement. The man now existed in
a state of tension with nature, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow
among thorns and thistles, while the woman suffered in childbirth. In addition,
broken fellowship with God extended into familial relationships, so that Cain
slew his brother Abel (Torrance, 2008:38, 39).
According to Torrance, the
theological narrative recorded in the Book of Genesis is not only a story of
disrupted relationships and the “atomisation” of humanity, however; it is also
the story of human attempts at “re-socialisation,” that is, heroic attempts to
mend broken relations and heal the internal rupture that has produced the
individualisation of humankind. The story of Babel (Gen 11:1ff) is the story of divided humanity’s
attempt to bind itself together again by its own strength and power. But since
all human attempts at self-healing involve fallen human nature, they merely
provide a new orientation of sin to the broken relationship with God and foster
the further disintegration of the self. As Torrance notes, “Mankind is unable
to re-socialise itself, unable to heal its internal rupture for that which
really makes man man is the bond between man and God” (Torrance, 2008:39).
In addition, Torrance describes
a second “prelude” to Heilsgeschichte:
that is, the story of God’s personal intervention in the plight of humanity.
From the beginning the promise was made that the seed of the woman would bruise
the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15), indicating that the solution to humanity’s
predicament is the destruction of the power of evil and the recreation of the
bond between God and humankind. “But,” as Torrance (2008:39, 40) argues,
if the first creation
was the creation of man in the image of God, the recreation is through an act
in which God condescends to take on himself the image of man. The whole
movement of redemption adumbrated [foreshadowed,
sketchily indicated] from the start is a movement of God coming to man in
order to restore man to God, of God taking man’s place in order to give man
God’s place—the principle of substitution and the principle
of incarnation.
As is made clear in the
story of Cain and Abel (Gen 4:1ff) and
the story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac (Gen 22:1ff), the movement of redemption is entirely the way of grace. As
Torrance (2008:40) argues, there are two ways by which humanity can be
reconciled to God. The first is the way of Cain, wherein humanity offers to God the fruits of its own labour. This is “the
way of man from man to God”: humanity provides its own offering, its own
personal sacrifice.
Comment: The “first way” is the way of “religion,” that is,
humanity’s attempt to please or appease God. Human efforts to please God vary as
widely as sacrificing maidens in volcanos to ritual forms of penance.
The second is the way of
Abel, wherein God provides the offering, the sacrifice of another. In
sacrificing an animal to cover or atone for sin, as God did when he clothed
Adam and Eve, Abel offered that which God himself had provided. Such is the
case with Abraham, who offered his very best to God: his only son. Yet
Abraham’s offering was displaced by God, who provided in place of Isaac a lamb
for sacrifice. As Torrance notes, “Substitution and free grace are identical.”
Cain’s way of approaching God ran counter to grace; his sacrifice was rejected
even though it used the gifts provided by God. Abel’s way was accepted because
it used God’s gracious provision. Torrance continues:
That adumbration of
God’s way of redemption is worked out more fully with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It is the way in which God comes in pure grace to gather frail humanity into
covenant and communion with himself, and even provides for man a covenanted way
of response to God’s grace. Man responds by faith, but in faith relies upon a
divinely provided way of approach and response to God in the covenant.
The
“covenanted way of response” was the sacrificial system of law and liturgy that
God unilaterally provided to Israel, so that it could respond to him as
covenant partner and come before him forgiven, sanctified, and consecrated in its
priestly mission to the world as mediator of revelation and reconciliation. The
Old Testament goes on to unfold the way in which God’s reconciling purpose for
all humanity began to be worked out in Israel, “in and through whom that
purpose began to assume flesh and blood in history” (Torrance, 2008:40).
Comment: The second way of reconciliation
is the way of grace, wherein God freely, sovereignly, and graciously provides
on our behalf and in our place all that is needed for divine-human
reconciliation. This is the way of grace, a way that is diametrically opposed
to the way of “religion.”
References
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. 174 pp.
Torrance,
T.F. 2008. Incarnation: The Person and
Life of Christ (edited by R. Walker). Downers Grove: IVP. 371 pp.
