Reference
Torrance, T.F. 1959. The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church. London:
James Clark & Co. 298 pp.
The Spirit and the Church
Because the Holy Spirit is the
“Spirit of Christ” and is sent in the name of Christ, the Spirit operates
especially wherever the name of Jesus is preached and wherever people gather in
his name (p. cxvii). Thus, the Church is the primary locus of the Spirit’s
activity. The Church is the “inner circle” of Christ’s identification with
humanity, for in the Church, the Son’s filial relationship with the Father “is made
consciously to echo within mankind in a filial relation of obedience to God” (pp.
cxvii, cxviii). As steward of the mysteries of God, the “economic” purpose of
the Church is the election of one community in place of all for the blessing of
God upon all (pp. cxx, cxxi). In the
language of Barth, the Spirit gathers a community of believers in faith, builds it up in love and sends in out in hope, carrying the same message of forgiveness
that Jesus brought to earth when he took the form of a servant in his mother’s
womb.
Comment: “Election” is not exclusive, as in
conservative Calvinism, where the few are chosen and the many are lost.
Election is inclusive. God called Israel to bring blessing to the nations. God
calls the Church for the same purpose. God “elects” for the purpose of bring
blessing to all.
By the Spirit, the Church
participates in the “New Humanity of Christ in order that through the same
Spirit at work in the fellowship of the Church mankind as a whole may share in
the New Humanity of Christ and therefore in the new creation.” As a corporate
entity, the Church is the “one” for the “many.” As such, notes Torrance, “the
Church is to be looked on as the new humanity within the world, the provisional
manifestation of the new creation within the old” (p. cxxi).
The Church’s participation in Christ
is the special work of the Holy Spirit. Within the Church, the Spirit creates
“real reception and participation in the life and love of God in Christ.” In
communion with Christ by the Spirit, the Church “presses out toward universal
fullness in all creation.” That is, the Church moves forward “from the
particular to the universal, from the nucleus to the fullness, from the one
hundred and twenty at Pentecost to all mankind” (pp. cxxi, cxxii).
Christ has ordained that he will be
met and known through the Church’s proclamation of the “Word.” It is the
mission of the Spirit that, through the communication of the “Word,” “men may
hear not only the words of other men who communicate it, but the Words of the
living God, the Words that are Spirit and Life” (pp. cxxii, cxiii). Through the
encounter with the Word, proclaimed by the Church in the power of the Spirit,
“each man may through the Spirit share in the faith and obedience of Christ,
and himself live the life of faith and
obedience to Him” (p. cxxiii; emphasis mine).
Torrance asserts a “three-fold
dimension” to the operation of the Spirit. First, there is a universal dimension of the Spirit’s
activity. As a correlate to the inclusion of all humanity in the atoning
reconciliation effected in the incarnation, the Spirit’s activity is universal
in scope. In regard to the universal dimension, however, Torrance notes that
“we can hardly speak of it as a Communion” (p. cxxiii). (One can only wish that
Torrance had elaborated further on this dimension of the Spirit’s work. Alas,
he did not.) In addition, there is a corporate
dimension of the Spirit’s activity, that is, “a Communion of mutual
participation through the Spirit in Christ and His graces.” Finally, there is a
personal dimension of the Spirit’s
activities within the corporate communion of the Church, wherein the Spirit
ministers to the individual believer (p. cxxiv).
In view of the corporate and personal
dimensions of the Spirit’s ministry to the Church, Torrance (p. cxxiv) writes
eloquently:
That
is the doctrine of the Church as the Communion of Saints, in which each shares
with the other and all share together in the life and love of God in Jesus
Christ. In that Communion no one can live for himself alone, or believe or
worship alone, for he is nothing without his brother for whom Christ died, and
has no relation to Christ except in Christ’s relation with all for whom he died.
Torrance’s
assertion of the importance of the corporate body in relation to the life of
the individual believer is confirmation of the “onto-relational” character of
his theology, where entities do not exist in isolation but find their identities
within the nexuses of relations in which they exist. In short, we are created
for community.
As a “Communion in the Spirit,”
through whom the Church participates in Christ, notes Torrance, the Church is
subject to an “irresistible compulsion” by the Spirit, in which “the Church is
turned outward to all for whom Christ became incarnate and lived and died that
they might be gathered into the life of God.” Thus, the Church cannot live unto
itself, for by the Communion of the Spirit, it is made to transcend itself in
proclaiming the “mystery” in which it is entrusted. The boundaries of the
Church must be open to all, for “the range of the Communion of the Spirit
cannot be limited and bound to the Church, but through the universal range of
the Spirit the Church is catholicised and universalised and made to reach out
to the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (p. cxxiv).
Comment: For the Torrances, who were born of
missionary parents, the Church can never be a closed society of individuals
seeking a common religious experience. The Church exists for the world, not merely for itself. In its proclamation of the
gospel of Jesus Christ, the Church must transcend itself and open its
boundaries in order to enter the “field” of the Spirit’s ministry, a field that
is universal in range.
Nevertheless, while the Church is
elected “for the world,” notes Torrance, it finds itself in tension with the
world, “for in the world, the Word of God is as yet resisted, and the Spirit of
God is abroad convicting of sin, righteousness and judgement” (p. cxxiv). Thus,
by participating in the New Humanity of Christ, sharing in his obedience and
love through the communion of the Spirit, the Church, by being Church, “calls the world into question, proclaims to it
the Gospel which claims the world for God and which therefore resists and
judges the will of the world to isolate itself from the love of God” (pp.
cxxiv, cxxv). Thus, by its participation in the “self-sanctification of
Christ,” the Church finds itself separated from the world. At the same time, by
its participation in the “reconciliation of Christ,” the Church is thrust into
the world with the message of reconciliation. The Church’s separation from the
world, even as it is thrust into the world, creates a tension that will only be
resolved with the return of Christ, when he comes again to take up His reign
and to judge and renew His creation. Yet, this tension is itself a sign of the
end, for it indicates that the Spirit is moving forward in triumph and
consummation.
Thus, there is a correlation between
the communion of the Spirit and union with Christ that carries within it the
eschatological hope of the renewal of all creation. In union with Christ, believers
may experience and enjoy their adoption as sons and daughters of God. In
communion with the Spirit, the Church goes forth with its message of
emancipation and renewal, when finally “the universal range of Christ and His
Spirit will be coincident with the Communion of the Spirit, that is, the sphere
wherein all who share in the Spirit share in Christ’s Sonship.” As Torrance
notes, the universal communion of the Spirit has its “provisional and proleptic
form” in the historical Church. In the consummation of all things, however,
“the Church attaining to the fullness of Christ will be coincident with the
whole Kingdom spanning the new heaven and the new earth.”
Amen. Come quickly Lord Jesus!
***
We will begin to unpack Torrance’s
thought in regard to “the communion of the Spirit” as we continue in Radcliff’s
book in the next post.
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