According
to Torrance (1992:75), the institution of the cultic liturgy, set out in the
Torah and interpreted by the prophets, reinforced Israel’s separation from
other nations as “a people imprinted with a priestly character and invested
with a vicarious mission” as mediator of divine revelation and reconciliation. This
was not, however, a mere formal rite designed to guarantee propitiation between
God and the people. Torrance writes:
[T]he
covenanted way of response had to be worked into the very flesh and blood of
Israel’s existence. It had to be impregnated into its understanding and sculptured
into its very being. It had to be built into the reciprocity between God and
Israel and be allowed to control the whole pattern of its life and mission in
history.
For
Torrance (1960a:121), the covenanted way of response had to be “translated from
the realm of symbolic ritual into the actual existence of His people,” for the
covenanted way of response was never intended to be a dead liturgy or an empty
ritual. He continues:
The worst thing that could be
done with such a covenant would be to turn the symbolic ritual into an end in
itself, as a means of acting upon God and bending His will to serve the ends of
men. That is precisely what Israel tried to do again and again, so that God
sent the prophets to protest against their use of the Cult and to demand
obedience rather than sacrifice.
As
Purves (2001:63) notes, by its very nature, the covenanted way of response was
intended to be written on the hearts of the people and incorporated into their
existence in such a way that Israel was called to pattern its entire life after
it. Similarly, notes Colyer (2001a:100), if Israel was to be a light to the
nations as mediator of revelation and reconciliation, the vicarious way of
response provided the people by God had to be embodied in Israel as a whole,
that is, in the totality of Israel’s existence as a people charged with a
priestly and vicarious life and mission.
As
God drew nearer to Israel in reconciling love, Israel’s sin was not only
revealed but also intensified. As Torrance notes, this was not an accidental
feature of the covenant: “[God] used the suffering and judgement of Israel to
reveal the terrible nature of sin as contradiction to God’s love and grace, to
uncover the deep enmity of humanity in its persistent self-will before God in
his divine self-giving.” The intensification of Israel’s sin was incorporated
into the “full design” of the covenant, Torrance argues, for “it was the will
and the way of God’s grace to effect reconciliation with man at his very
worst,” that is, in a state of stiff-necked rebellion against God. “In that
ordeal,” notes Torrance, “the word and the cult were not mere letter and
liturgy, but were worked out into the very existence of Israel,” as indicated in
Deutero-Isaiah (Chapters 40-55) and Jeremiah (Torrance, 1992:28, 29; 2008:47).
In this regard, argues Scandrett (2006:59), Torrance sees a connection between
sin and human suffering, for Israel’s condition of enmity and rebellion against
God was always the occasion for its suffering. For Torrance, notes Scandrett, sin
may be regarded as the “disease,” with suffering the inevitable “symptom,” from
which Israel (and all humanity) needs to be healed.
As
Torrance argues, in unswerving love for Israel, God worked out a way of
reconciliation that did not depend on a worthy response from humanity, but made
Israel’s sin and rebellion the means by which he bound it to himself in
“unsullied communion.” God used the history and suffering of Israel to reveal
his infinite love for humanity and to serve his unrelenting purpose of
forgiveness and reconciliation, until his love achieved its ultimate purpose of
final union and communion of humanity with God in Jesus Christ (Torrance,
1992:28, 29; 2008:47). More succinctly, Torrance shows how a sovereign and
gracious God can use even human sin as a means of further address to his people
(cf. Kruger, 1989:60).
The
great sign of the covenant was circumcision, notes Torrance, whereby the
covenant was “cut into the flesh” of the people as the sign that the promises
of God would be fulfilled in the life of Israel only as the word of God was “translated
into its flesh,” that is, into its very existence. Circumcision was the sign
that the covenant had to be written into the heart, in the “‘crucifixion’ of
self-will” and the “putting off of ‘the enmity of the flesh.’” Astonishingly,
however, the more God gave himself, Torrance argues, the more he forced Israel
to be what, in its sin and self-will, it truly was: a “rebel.” Because the
self-giving of God intensified the enmity and contradiction between Israel and God,
Torrance argues that Israel was, in fact, “the suffering servant.” Israel
suffered as it was broken, remade, and realigned into conformity with the
covenant will of God. For Torrance, the whole concept of the “suffering
servant” represents the activity of God, whereby he begins “to draw together
the cords of the covenant” between himself and Israel (Torrance, 2008:47-52).
The Servant of the Lord
Israel’s
corporate role of suffering servant is gradually associated in the mind of the
people with one individual who identifies himself with the nation’s suffering.
Torrance sees the vicarious embodiment and mediation of the covenant beginning
to come to expression in the Isaianic “servant of the Lord,” as particularly
and poignantly illustrated in Isaiah 53. Here the mediatorial and priestly
figures of Moses and Aaron respectively, and the notions of guilt-bearer and
sacrifice for sin, are conflated to provide the “interpretive clue” for the
intercessory and vicarious role of the servant in the redemption of Israel
(Torrance, 1992:75, 76; 2008:51, 52). For Torrance, notes Scandrett (2006:55,
56), this is the “penultimate stage” of mediation in Israel and reflects Torrance’s
image of the “ever-deepening, spiral movement” of divine revelation (cf. Torrance, 1992:8). Torrance’s
treatment of the Isaianic material, argues Scandrett, demonstrates his understanding
of the “unifying and narrowing thrust of the Old Testament toward the ultimate
goal of the Incarnation.”
Moreover,
the “fundamental antinomy” (Scandrett, 2006:60) between Israel’s sin and God’s
holiness will be gathered up and reconciled in this one individual, for, as Torrance
(1992:75, 76; 2008:51, 52) argues, the servant of the Lord is the “hypostasised
actualisation” of the divinely provided way of covenant response set forth
within the flesh and blood existence of Israel; that is, the entire covenanted
way of response is gathered up in this one individual (cf. Scandrett, 2006:56). Moreover,
Torrance sees a messianic role envisioned for the servant, wherein both
mediator and sacrifice, as well as priest and victim, are combined in a form
that is both representative and substitutionary, as well as corporate and
individual in its fulfilment.
For
Torrance, the Isaianic writer is struggling to articulate a vision wherein the
servant of the Lord is identified with Israel as a whole, the divine Redeemer (goel) is identified with the Holy One of
Israel, and the roles of Servant and Redeemer are combined and spoken of
together. Torrance argues, “It is as though
the prophet wanted to say that the real servant of the Lord is the Lord himself
who as goel-Redeemer has bound
himself up in such a tight bond of covenant kinship with Israel that he has
taken upon himself Israel’s afflicted existence and made it his own in order to
redeem Israel.” For Torrance, this implies an actual state of incarnation which
finally takes place within the matrix of Israel in the birth of the Son of God
to the Virgin Mary (Torrance, 1992:76; cf.
Colyer, 2001a:100). Thus, while Israel itself is the suffering servant, assumed
into oneness with the word of God, in the servant songs of Isaiah, it is
evident that the word becomes one with Israel, becoming more and more “one
Israelite,” for that is the only way in which the word assumes human nature and
existence into oneness with itself. For Torrance, therefore, the suffering
servant is primarily to be understood as “the Word” identifying himself with
Israel, and becoming “one particular Israelite, an individual person, the
Messiah” (Torrance, 2008:51, 52).
As
Scandrett (2006:61) notes, Torrance clearly identifies the suffering servant of
Isaiah Fifty-Three with Jesus Christ. For Torrance, the suffering servant acts from
within the ontological depths of Israel’s
troubled, sinful existence and, therefore, “vicariously” on behalf of Israel,
that is, “as Israel in a
participatory sense” (Scandrett, 2006:63). As Scandrett rightly emphasises, “The Servant’s suffering moves beyond the
forms of Israel’s covenanted way of response to penetrate the essential
disjunction which exists between God and Israel because of sin” (emphasis
in original) and, thereby, “binds” himself to Israel in such a way as to reconstitute
the nation’s relation to him so that “their true end is fully and perfectly
realised in unsullied communion with himself (Torrance, 1992:29). As will be
shown below (cf. Chapter Six) the
servant’s participatory, ontological penetration into the depths of Israel’s
existence in order to bind the nation to himself in communion is paradigmatic for
Torrance’s understanding of the atoning reconciliation of Jesus Christ.
For
Torrance, argues Scandrett (2006:57, 58), the repeated juxtaposition of the
Isaianic servant of the Lord and the Holy One of Israel is of new and critical
importance in regard to divine revelation in Israel. “Most remarkably,” notes
Scandrett, it juxtaposes God and humanity in a single individual. Moreover, it
brings together the legal and sacrificial dimensions of Israel’s life [as represented by
Moses and Aaron], which, together, form the “two complementary poles” of the
people’s entire existence, as encompassed in the covenanted way of response in
Israel. “In emphasizing the juxtaposition of these entities as pointing beyond
itself toward a single reality,” argues Scandrett, “Torrance’s basic commitment
to the centrality of the Incarnation is once again made clear.” In addition, the
juxtaposition of the servant of the Lord and the Holy One of Israel brings
together in an unprecedented way the liturgical concepts of Mediator and Sacrifice
with the moral and legal concept of Redeemer. For Torrance, argues Scandrett,
this marks a “stunning development in the mind of Israel regarding the
character and role of the Messiah as a Mediator between God and humanity.” This
“new combination of forms” by which the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ
can be apprehended shows the “progressive, unifying, and narrowing character”
of God’s self-disclosure to Israel, wherein the Servant of the Lord and the
Holy One of Israel are brought together, as the “ever deepening, spiral
movement” (cf. Torrance, 1992:8) of
revelation progresses toward its goal in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
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