The
Latin Heresy
In asserting the assumption of
sinful human flesh, Torrance (1986b:477, 478, 480; cf. 1990:232, 233; 1992:40, 41; 1993:237-239; 1994a:58, 59) rejects
what he terms the “Latin heresy,” that is, a “dualist” understanding of the
person and work of Christ, traceable to Leo’s Tome sent to the Council of Chalcedon, that provided the Western
Church with its paradigm for a formulation of atoning reconciliation in terms
of “external” relations, whether exemplary, as in Abelard, or juridical [legal],
as in Anselm. As Scandrett (2006:86) notes, beginning in the fourth century,
the idea that the eternal Word of God would assume sinful human flesh was
increasingly seen as unworthy of the “holiness and perfection” of God’s being.
Because the idea of the incarnate assumption of sinful flesh was “odious” to
Christians, notes Scandrett, it was largely rejected in the West by the end of
the fifth century.
In asserting the assumption of
a neutral humanity, argues Torrance (1986b:476), Latin theology rejected the
“cardinal soteriological principle,” associated with Nicene theology, that “the
unassumed is the unhealed.” In arguing that Jesus assumed a neutral human
flesh, Latin theologians split apart the intrinsic relation between the person
and work of Christ by construing the atonement in an “instrumentalist” way,
wherein the incarnation was regarded simply as a means of supplying a sinless
human being who could live in perfect obedience to the law of God and take our
place on the cross. Subsequently, atonement was regarded either as an external
moral transaction or as an external penal transaction, wherein the penalty for
sin is transferred from sinners to the sinless Saviour. As Gill (2007:48)
succinctly states, for Torrance, this transactional view reduces the atonement
to an “external action” between the sinless Christ and God, wherein the Son
pays the price of human sin to the Father. Either view, however, Torrance
(1986b:476) contends, creates a separation (i.e.,
dualism) between the incarnation and the atonement by construing Christ’s
saving act in external terms, whether exemplary or juridical, rather than in
terms of the internal Father-Son relation, wherein the atoning work of Christ
is a function of his incarnate constitution as the eternal Son who is homoousios to Patri. Protestant
theology, particularly Evangelicalism, has generally followed the Latin Church
in this regard, specifically in its development of various theories of the
atonement, all of which, in varying ways, dualistically divide the incarnation
and the atonement by separating the person and work of Christ (Torrance,
1986b:476).
As Scandrett (2006:86, 87)
argues, in the Latin view, the humanity of Jesus Christ must be perfect if the
eternal Word is to assume it in the incarnation. The problem with this view,
argues Scandrett, is the de facto
distinction it makes between Jesus’ perfect, sinless humanity and our own
sinful humanity. For Torrance, notes Scandrett, this distinction results in the
“radical diminution” of the atonement from an ontologically transformative,
healing, and, therefore, saving event to a detached externalised transaction
understood in purely forensic terms and limited to the cross. For Torrance, as
Scandrett rightly argues, such a viewpoint is woefully inadequate, for in its
concern to safeguard the holiness of the eternal Word against the taint of
original sin, it ironically denies fallen human nature the promise of healing
inherent in the incarnation-atonement. Similarly but more simply, as Gill
(2007:56) notes, for Torrance, the denial of the incarnate assumption of fallen
Adamic humanity is to deny the reality of the incarnation and to throw doubt on
the atonement as anything other than an “arbitrary exchange.” Against those who
argue that Christ assumed a “neutral” human nature in the incarnation, we ask
with Gunton (1992:52; cf. Gill,
2007:56), “[I]f Christ bore the flesh of unfallen Adam … what is his saving relation to us in our lostness?”
According to Cass (2008:159),
Torrance has a “rare understanding” of the hypostatic union among Western
theologians in arguing that the hypostatic union is itself an atoning union,
wherein atonement and reconciliation between God and sinful humanity are
“perfectly effected vicariously for all” in Christ’s life, death, and
resurrection. By grounding salvation in the hypostatic union, argues Cass,
Torrance breaks with the Western Augustinian tradition, which grounds salvation
in Christ’s [external] relationship to humanity and requires a “contribution”
from sinners to complete the work of salvation. As Torrance (1992:40) argues:
If the
incarnation is not held to mean that the Son of God penetrated into and
appropriated our alienated, fallen, sinful human nature, then atoning and
sanctifying reconciliation can be understood only in terms of external relations between Jesus Christ
and sinners. That is why in Western Christianity the atonement tends to be
interpreted almost exclusively in terms of external forensic relations as a
judicial transaction in the transference of the penalty of sin from the sinner
to the sin-bearer.
The Latin view of the atonement
as a “forensic transaction,” wherein the sinless Saviour offers his body in an
“external,” “instrumental” way, stands in marked contrast to Torrance’s
discussion of the atonement in terms of the eternal Word’s “internal
penetration” of fallen Adamic flesh and its consequent “ontological healing.”
In contradistinction to the
“gospel” of “external relations” that characterizes the Latin heresy, Torrance
(1992:41) follows patristic theology in arguing that the incarnation and the
atonement are “internally linked,” for “atoning expiation and propitiation are
worked out in the ontological depths of human being and existence into which
the Son of God penetrated as the Son of Mary.” As Torrance (1994a:59) argues,
if the incarnation itself is essentially redemptive rather than instrumental,
that is, merely a means to an end, then “atonement must be regarded as taking
place in the ontological depths of Christ’s incarnate life, in which he
penetrated into the very bottom of our fallen human being and took our
disobedient humanity, even our alienated human mind, upon himself in order to
heal it and convert it back in himself into union with God.” Jesus penetrated
to the depths of our original sin “in order to redeem us from it by bringing
his atoning sacrifice and holiness to bear upon it in the very roots of our
human existence and being.” Noting that in his genealogy recorded in Matthew,
“Jesus was incorporated into a long line of sinners,” Torrance (1992:41)
eloquently argues:
[H]e
made the generations of humanity his very own, summing up in himself our sinful
stock, precisely in order to forgive, heal and sanctify it in himself. Thus
atoning reconciliation began to be actualised with the conception and birth of
Jesus of the Virgin Mary when he identified himself with our fallen and estranged
humanity, but that was a movement which Jesus fulfilled throughout the whole
course of his sinless life as the obedient Servant of the Lord, in which he
subjected what he took from us to the ultimate judgment of God’s holy love and
brought the healing and redeeming power of God to bear directly upon it in
himself. From his birth to his death and resurrection on our behalf he
sanctified what he assumed through his own self-consecration as incarnate Son
to the Father, and in sanctifying it brought the divine judgment to bear
directly upon our human nature both in the holy life he lived and in the holy
death he died in atoning and reconciling sacrifice before God.
In contradistinction to the
Latin tradition, Torrance (1992:41, 42) argues that we must “recover the
awesome truth that through his Incarnation the Son of God appropriated our
fallen humanity under the judgment of God.” Throughout the whole course of his
life, the incarnate Saviour brought his healing and redeeming power to bear
upon sinful Adamic flesh, even in the deep recesses of original sin, in order
to heal, cleanse, and sanctify it in atoning reconciliation.
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