Advent: When Christ Comes to the Individual

The following post is taken from a written sermon by T.F. Torrance (reference below).

“Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

This is the answer Mary gave when the angelic messenger, Gabriel, announced that she was to be the virgin-mother of Jesus. For Torrance, this great miraculous sign is placed at the beginning of the life of Jesus as a sign of the way God’s love has taken in Christ, not only for Mary, but for each of us.

Though the Holy Child was born through the womb of Mary, notes Torrance, “[Jesus] came as a pure gift from God outside the range of human possibilities and above and beyond all human powers.” Apart from divine intervention, nothing the young Virgin could have done would have wrought this great miracle in her life. As Torrance notes, the coming of Jesus into the life of Mary was not the result of a decision on her part, for the decision had already been made by God. To be sure, God’s gracious decision was “announced” to the Virgin by the angel; Mary simply replied, ““Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”  As Torrance notes, “[Mary] acknowledged the decision that had already been made on her behalf; she let the Word of God happen to her, and Jesus was born of her from above” (emphasis added).

For Torrance, this is the good news of Advent: “that we too are highly favoured of God.” God has already made a decision on our behalf, that we are to be his children and that Jesus Christ is our Saviour. That decision has already been made for us and is announced to us in the gospel. To further illustrate his point, Torrance turns to the story of Zacchaeus, a callous-hearted extortioner who was so enslaved to his own selfishness and greed that he was not free to make any “decision” to follow Jesus, even if he wanted to. Yet, the Advent of Jesus took Zacchaeus by surprise when Jesus announced, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house” (Luke 19:5). As Torrance argues, Jesus had already decided to enter the home and life of Zacchaeus; thus, for the first time, Zacchaeus found himself free to follow Jesus, “free and able to have Jesus in his home and heart.” As Torrance notes, “[Zacchaeus] was able to make a decision for Christ, because Christ had already made a decision on his behalf.”

This is how the miracle of Advent still functions in the heart of humanity. God set the miracle of the Virgin birth at the beginning of the gospel to show us the way God’s love takes when confronted by our human weakness and frailty. As Torrance notes, Mary’s answer to the annunciation is “an example of the way we are to respond to God’s pure gift of grace in Jesus Christ”: “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”

According to Torrance, God’s Word announces to us the good news of our “destiny in the divine love, and it is ours to let ourselves be told by God’s Word, and to let His Word happen to us.” When announced to us, the gospel tells us that, long before we can do anything about it, even before we can know about it, “God has set his love upon us and chosen us in Jesus Christ to be His own.” We cannot “constitute ourselves Christians” by our own choice, Torrance argues, but, rather, we must flee from our own decision in order to take refuge in God’s gracious decision on our behalf in Jesus Christ. It is God’s faithfulness and decision on our behalf that undergirds our feeble decisions and enfolds them in his own. As Torrance notes, the entirety of our salvation depends on the faithfulness of God.

Torrance goes on to note that Jesus came into the world as “an individual to an individual in Mary,” and it is in this same individual way that he comes to everyone. In the Christian faith, we do not have to do with “God in general,” but with the personal God who comes in the particular individual, Jesus Christ, “so that in and through Jesus we are each summoned to meet with God individually, and to hear from Him the Word of His love.” Only in Jesus can we hear God’s decision of love for each of us.

Moreover, just as Jesus came into the world as an individual, he will come again as an individual, and “[e]ach one of us will have to meet Him individually face to face,” notes Torrance. This is the same Jesus about whom the old Simeon foretold, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against” (Luke 2:34), a prophecy which history has proven true, Torrance observes. He continues:

All men are divided, they are cast down or raised up by God, in accordance with their reaction to the child of Bethlehem. And at the second Advent of this same Jesus all men will finally be divided and judged by the answer which each has given to the Gospel first announced to Mary and then proclaimed to all who have ears to hear.

And what is the Gospel, asks Torrance? “[B]ut this, that God loves every one of us.” He continues:

He loves us so much that He has given His only Son to be our Saviour. Long before we were even born God had already made that gracious decision about us in Jesus Christ. May our answer be that of Mary: “Be it unto me according to thy word.”

Amen.

Reference

Torrance, T.F. 1957. “When Christ Comes to the Individual.” In When Christ Comes and Comes Again. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, pp. 31-38.

See also T.F. Torrance: The Vicarious Humanity of Jesus Christ, pt 5 @ http://martinmdavis.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html

T.F. Torrance: The Womb of the Incarnation, pt 3

There are three important aspects to the mediation of revelation in Israel: 1) the establishment of a community of reciprocity to facilitate a two-way movement or “double adaptation” of divine revelation and human response; 2) the intensification of the innate hostility of the human mind toward divine revelation as God drew ever nearer to Israel, and 3) the creation of the appropriate forms of thought and speech to enable humanity to receive the final self-revelation of God in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

1.                     A Community of Reciprocity

For Torrance, notes Scandrett (2006:33), all human knowledge develops within a “social coefficient of knowledge,” that is, a social matrix of forms of thought and life that shape our apprehension of reality (cf. Torrance, 1985:98-130). Since, for Torrance, there is no correlation between human knowing and the being of God, as Scandrett correctly notes, it was necessary to establish a “social coefficient of knowledge” in a human community, wherein forms of thought and life necessary for the apprehension of God in Jesus Christ could be developed. That community was Israel.

In order for divine revelation to enter history in a form amenable to human understanding, argues Torrance, it must arise within the context of “community.”

Language is the “currency of social being,” rooted in society and kept alive by the interchange of ideas within it; hence, “word” or language does not develop in isolation but within a community of persons bound by a common way of life and culture. For Torrance, therefore, if the Word of God is to become speech to humanity, it must be directed to us in the context of “community.” Moreover, if divine revelation is to create a “reciprocity” between God and humanity, it must create a “community of reciprocity” within human society as “the appropriate medium of its continuing communication to man” (Torrance, 1971:146, 147). Torrance continues:

That is what happened between God and Israel, for the Word of God spoken to man did not operate in a vacuum but penetrated human existence in the particular life and history of one people elected as the instrument for the actualization of God’s revelation in humanity and separated as a holy nation in whose midst God dwelt in an intimate way through the presence of His Word.

In order to be divine Word that is both heard and understandable, Torrance argues, divine revelation penetrates human interpersonal speaker-hearer relationships and becomes speech to humanity by becoming speech “of” humanity “to” humanity, as heard and spoken through the intelligible medium of human language. In taking the form of human speech and writing, God’s self-revelation to humanity becomes, at the same time, our obedient response to God, thus “anchoring” revelation both in divine reality and in the conditions of human reality. Torrance writes, “[T]he reciprocity created by the movement of divine revelation takes the form of a community of reciprocity between God and man established in human society, which then under the continuing impact of divine revelation becomes the appropriate medium of its continuing communication to man” (Torrance, 1982:85, 86). Noting that all God’s relations with his people are reciprocal, Torrance regards the creation of a “community of reciprocity” as an essential aspect of the mediation of divine revelation (Torrance, 1992:12, 13). In creating a reciprocal movement of revelation from God to humanity and a responsive movement from humanity to God, he argues, God established “a special partnership of covenanted kinship with Israel … in such a way that it could become the instrument of his great purpose of revelation” (Torrance, 1992:6, 7; 2008:41).

1.1                   Double Adaptation of Revelation and Response

For Torrance, the actualisation of revelation within the confines of our creaturely existence necessitates a “profound reciprocity” between God and humanity, wherein divine revelation summons an “answering movement” from humanity toward God that is a “constitutive ingredient” in God’s revelation of himself to us (Torrance, 1982:85; cf. 1971:138). Torrance (1971:138; cf. 1982:85) writes:

Thus the Word of God communicated to man includes within itself meeting between man and God as well as meeting between God and man, for in assuming the form of human speech the Word of God spoken to man becomes at the same time word of man in answer to God.

The self-revelation of God in Israel, within the medium of human thought and speech, notes Torrance, requires a two-way movement: “an adaptation of divine revelation to the human mind and an adaptation of articulate forms of human understanding and language to divine revelation” (Torrance, 1992:7). As Kruger (1989:48) notes, this “double adaptation” of divine revelation and human response, wherein divine revelation is adapted to human understanding and language, while human understanding and language is adapted to divine revelation, is an important feature of Torrance's discussion of the mediation of revelation in Israel.

The two-way movement of divine revelation and human response is integral to Old Testament thought. According to Torrance (1996b:130), “In the Hebrew idiom, revelation is not only the uncovering of God but the uncovering of the ear and eye of man for God. It is revelation which achieves its end in man and does not return void to God” (cf. Isa 55:11). In establishing a covenant relationship with Israel, notes Torrance (1992:22), God graciously adopted a way to make himself known “in which the movement of his revelation fulfilled itself not only from the side of God toward man but from the side of man toward God.” Divine revelation was “progressively mediated” to humanity through Israel in such a way as to make the appropriate human response a constitutive aspect of the mediation of revelation. In an essay on christology, Torrance (1996b:131) writes:

Revelation involves … the freedom of God to be present to man and to open up man for God and to realize from the side of man his understanding of revelation and his obedient response to it, to effect in man real meeting with God in revelation and to give him capacity for revelation. This capacity for revelation is not to be judged in terms of the receiver, as if he could achieve it on his own, but in terms of the Giver, the Father in Heaven, who acts by his Spirit upon man, from beneath and from within man, but who effects from the side of man and issuing out of man's life a really human understanding of revelation and a really human obedience to it.

Torrance is careful to point out that he is not speaking merely of a divine revelation that “demands” a human response; rather, and most significantly, he is speaking of a divine revelation which “already includes a true and appropriate and fully human response as part of its achievement for us and to us and in us.” In clear contrast to Kantian epistemological dualism, Torrance (1969a:45) regards knowing as reciprocal in nature, consisting of a two-way dynamic between the knower and that which is known; hence, the mediation of divine revelation requires both a movement from God to humanity and a responsive (reciprocal) movement from humanity to God, both of which must be considered. As Torrance argues, these are not two separate movements but one “two-fold” movement, “for even the movement from the side of man toward God … is coordinated with the movement of God toward man, and is part of the divine movement of revelation and reconciliation.” This is precisely what Torrance sees occurring in the two-fold movement of revelation in Israel.

For Torrance, notes Kruger (1989:54), revelation includes the “realisation and actualisation” of the knowledge of God in Israel (Torrance, 1992:10), “the fulfilling and actualizing of the knowledge of God in man” (Torrance, 1969a:45), the completion of “the circle of its own movement” (Torrance, 1982:86), and the achievement of “its end in man” (Torrance, 1996b:130). As Kruger (1989:53, 54) argues, in contrast to a divine monologue, Israel’s “reception” of divine revelation is given a critical place in Torrance’s thought, for Torrance envisions revelation as fulfilled and complete only when it is truly and faithfully received by humanity. For Torrance, notes Kruger, “revelation” and “reception” are the “obvious sides” of knowledge of God, and both are included in his discussion of the mediation of revelation in Israel. Likewise, Chung (2011:10) asserts that the mediation of revelation requires both divine initiation and human responsive participation through “the course of dialogical interaction in history” (cf. Kruger, 1989:54). Although the relationship between the divine and human aspects of mediation in Israel is asymmetrical, notes Chung, human participation, however insignificant in comparison to divine grace, constitutes an “indispensable place” in the mediation of revelation, for the revelation of God is “embodied” in Israel. In agreement with Kruger and Chung, we emphasise that the human participative response is a constitutive aspect of the mediation of revelation in Israel. Thus, we see that for Torrance, the two sides of the knowledge of God, divine revelation and human response, are aspects of the unitary, two-way movement of the mediation of revelation. Divine revelation and appropriate human response taken together constitute the mediation of revelation in Israel.

Torrance’s discussion of the two-way movement of divine revelation and human participative response in historical Israel is highly relevant to his doctrine of the mediation of Jesus Christ. For Torrance, Jesus Christ, in his incarnate constitution as God and man joined in reconciling union, embodies the two-way movement of divine revelation and human response that God established in Israel. As both the self-revelation of the divine God and the perfectly obedient human Son, Jesus not only reveals the Father but also offers “vicariously” the perfect human reception and response to divine revelation in place of and on behalf of all humanity.

1.2                   The People of the Voice of the Word of God

The covenant of grace God established at creation and which “assumed a particular form within history” with Abraham was re-enacted with Israel after its redemption from bondage in Egypt, taking on “more specific shape” (Torrance, 1960a:121) in the “once-and-for-all events at Mount Sinai in which God decisively revealed himself and enacted his revelation in the midst of Israel” (Torrance, 1956:309). At Mount Sinai, argues Torrance, God provided the Law as the “revelation of His Will”; God provided the commandments “to show the way of obedient conformity” to his will (Torrance, 1960a:121). At the heart of the covenant relation God established with Israel at Sinai are the Ten Commandments, or the “Ten Words.” “Those Ten Words,” argues Torrance (2000:2), “form the innermost secret of Israel's history.”

At Mount Sinai, “Israel stood forth as the Ecclesia or Church of God” (Torrance, 1976a:194). Unlike any other nation, Old Testament Israel is not merely a people with a national identity, that is, an ethnos; rather, Torrance sees the people of Israel as a laos, “a kind of church, a community burdened with the knowledge of God, a community divinely adapted and constituted as the correlate of God’s self-revelation.” In order to understand the role of Israel in the mediation of revelation, notes Torrance, we must consider the nation as a whole, that is, as a corporate entity or a “coherent community of reciprocity” in relationship with God. Israel itself is the “prophet” sent by God. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets act within the one body which is brought into special relationship with God in order to be moulded and shaped into the earthen vessel of divine communication to mankind (Torrance, 1992:12-14).

According to Torrance, the Old Testament writers, particularly in the latter books, apply the word qahal to Israel, translated in the Septuagint as ekklesia, to refer to “the congregation regarded collectively as a people and as a whole, rather than to the actual assembly or meeting of the people.” Qahal derives from the word for “voice”; hence, the Old Testament qahal was “the community summoned by the Divine Voice, by the Word of God.” Old Testament Israel, “the people of the voice of the Word of God,” was a nation “invaded by divine revelation” and progressively moulded under its impact in such a way that its responses, whether of obedience or disobedience, were the means by which God forged a deepening understanding of divine reality within the structures of human thought and speech. Throughout the history of Israel, argues Torrance, the Word of God kept “pressing for articulation within the corporate medium of covenant reciprocity,” creating “formal and empirical correlates of its own self-utterance” that progressively took shape in spoken and written form through the corporate understanding and response that developed among the people. “Thus Israel became in a unique way the bearer of the oracles of God, a church as much as a people charged with priestly and prophetic significance for all mankind and divinely destined for the universalization of its revelatory mission in the advent of God himself in space and time.” By choosing Israel from among the nations, God moulded Israel to its purpose by forming within it a “womb” for the incarnation of his Word, that is, “a matrix of appropriate forms of thought and speech” for the definitive and final reception of divine revelation (Torrance, 1956:305; 1971:149; 1982:87).

Next post: Intensification of conflict between God and Israel.

References

Chung, T. 2011. Thomas Torrance's Mediations and Revelation. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. 205pp.

Kruger, C.B. 1989. Participation in the Self-knowledge of God: The Nature and Means of Our Knowledge of God in the Theology of T.F. Torrance. Thesis Ph.D. University of Aberdeen.

Scandrett, J.A. 2006. Suffering Servant, Wounded Word, Troubled Trinity: The Passion of God in the Theology of T.F. Torrance. Thesis Ph.D. Drew University.

Torrance, T.F. 1956. The Israel of God: Israel and the Incarnation. Interpretation, 10:305-320.

Torrance, T.F. 1960a. Conflict and Agreement in the Church (vol. II): The Ministry and the Sacraments of the Gospel. London: Lutterworth Press. 213pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1971. God and Rationality. London: OUP. 216 pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1976a. Theology in Reconciliation: Essays toward Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 302 pp.

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. 1992. The Mediation of Christ (rev. ed.). Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard. 126pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1996b. (orig. ed. 1965). Theology in Reconstruction. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers. 288pp.

Torrance, T.F. 2008. Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (edited by R. Walker). Downers Grove: IVP. 371pp.

T.F. Torrance: The Womb of the Incarnation, pt 2

Prehistory of the Mediation of Revelation

Torrance’s interactionist, critical-realist epistemology, as well as his theological holism, is foundational to his doctrine of the mediation of Christ. Torrance rejects Newtonian Deist cosmological dualism by asserting that God has interacted with humanity in history, within the creaturely conditions of the world of space and time by revealing himself in the history of Israel and the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Similarly, Torrance’s assertion that God has accommodated his self-revelation to the human mind within the medium of human thought and speech (cf. below) is a clear rejection of the epistemological disjunction of Kantian dualism, with its separation of the knower and the known. For Torrance, God can be known because God has made himself known, graciously enabling us to know him through the creative power of his Word. God’s divine self-revelation in the history of Israel, as recorded in the Old Testament, provides the foundation of Torrance’s “realist” epistemology (cf. Torrance, 1982:84). As Torrance (1982:85) notes:

By revelation is meant, then, not some vague, inarticulate awareness of God, projected out of the human consciousness, but an intelligible, articulate revealing of God by God whom we are enabled to apprehend through the creative power of his Word addressed to us, yet a revealing of God by God which is actualized within the conditions of our creaturely existence and therefore within the medium of our human thought and speech.

For Torrance, revelation is an act of God, who graciously reveals himself to us in a means amenable to human apprehension and articulation.

Yet, if we are to know God and speak of him in appropriate ways, argues Torrance, we must have “fitting modes of thought and speech, adequate conceptual forms and structures, and indeed reverent and worthy habits of worship and behaviour governing our approach to him.” Just as a workman needs appropriate “tools” to complete his task, Torrance notes, we need “conceptual tools” to understand God; that is, we need basic categories, concepts, and beliefs to enable us to receive and assimilate divine revelation within the comparatively limited capacity of human understanding (Torrance, 1992:6; cf. 2008:41). As Chung (2011:4, 5) notes, Torrance’s “tool” analogy not only emphasises God’s gracious provision of the conceptual tools needed to articulate a radically new encounter with God, but also underscores the reality that our sin renders human thought unsuitable in itself for the purpose of mediating divine revelation. As Torrance (1992:12) notes, “Israel teaches us, then, that divine revelation cuts against the grain of our naturalistic existence and calls into question the naturalistic patterns of human thought.”

According to Torrance, the conceptual tools for the mediation of revelation are moulded throughout God’s historical dialogue with Israel, within the life and history of a particular people elected by God to be the instrument of divine revelation to all humanity (Torrance, 1992:6, 7; 2008:41). In order to gain a “foothold” in human history, so that we might learn to know and speak about God in appropriate ways, notes Torrance, God selected Israel, “one small race out of the whole mass of humanity,” and subjected it to “intensive interaction and dialogue with himself” in order to mould and shape it for the purpose of divine revelation. Refusing to allow his purpose of love and redemption to be inhibited by human limitation and weakness, God, in great humility, condescended to find a way to enter our “beggarly weakness and poverty” in order to restore fallen humanity to complete fellowship with himself, both in knowing and being. For the sake of the entire world, Torrance argues, God took Israel in hand to provide “a whole set of spiritual tools” and “appropriate (emphasis added) forms of understanding, worship and expression,” so that knowledge of God could be revealed in a means amenable to human understanding (Torrance, 1992:6, 7; 2008:40, 41; cf. 1952:164, 165). In regard to the development of conceptual tools for the mediation of revelation in Israel, Kruger (1989:47) rightly draws attention to Torrance’s insistence on “appropriate” conceptual tools for the creation of a “medium” in human thought and understanding through which God communicates himself to humanity.  It is not merely human speech or concepts per se that Torrance has in view, notes Kruger; rather, Torrance is concerned with ways of human thinking, knowing, and even worship which are “appropriate” to God. In addition, as Scandrett (2006:35) notes, the forms of thought and life that God gave to Israel are not “arbitrary.” They are graciously given so that humanity may rightly apprehend and respond to God’s definitive self-revelation in Jesus Christ.

For Torrance, the development of appropriate conceptual tools for the mediation of revelation constitutes the “epistemological significance” of Israel (Kruger, 1989:47) or the “normative pattern” of divine revelation and mediation before its final fulfilment in the incarnation of Jesus Christ (Chung, 2011:4, 5). For Torrance, notes Chung, the selection of Israel underlines the “singular purpose” of the mediation of revelation to the world, so that the salvation of humanity is made possible through the subsequent coming of Jesus Christ. As Torrance (2008:41) argues, God selected Israel in order to prepare humanity for the incarnation of the Son of God. The story of Israel is the “prehistory” of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

References

Chung, T. 2011. Thomas Torrance's Mediations and Revelation. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. 205pp.

Kruger, C.B. 1989. Participation in the Self-knowledge of God: The Nature and Means of Our Knowledge of God in the Theology of T.F. Torrance. Thesis Ph.D. University of Aberdeen.

Scandrett, J.A. 2006. Suffering Servant, Wounded Word, Troubled Trinity: The Passion of God in the Theology of T.F. Torrance. Thesis Ph.D. Drew University.

Torrance, T.F. 1952. Salvation is of the Jews. Evangelical Quarterly, 22(3):164-173.

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. 174pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1992. The Mediation of Christ (rev. ed.). Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard. 126pp.

Torrance, T.F. 2008. Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (edited by R. Walker). Downers Grove: IVP. 371pp.

T.F. Torrance: The Womb of the Incarnation, pt. 1

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.

All Things Torrance: Final Post

For the past two and one-half years we have followed in this blog my exploration of the doctrine of the mediation of Jesus Christ in Torrance’s scientific theology. During that time, I have identified a basic order or progression of ideas that helps me to understand Torrance’s doctrine of mediation.

This basic order begins with the methodological axiom that is fundamental to Torrance’s scientific theology. As Torrance repeatedly argues, in any field of scientific inquiry, knowledge must be developed according to the nature (kata physin) of the object of study as it reveals itself in the course of scientific investigation. From this fundamental axiom, two other basic principles naturally emerge: these are the principles of “onto-relationality” and “theological holism.”

Because reality is interrelational, an inquiry into the nature of the object of study requires that it be investigated within the nexus of “being-constituting” interrelations, or “onto-relations,” that disclose its identity. In keeping with this principle, I have located Torrance’s doctrine of mediation within the three nexuses of “onto-relations” that, according to Torrance, disclose the identity of Jesus Christ as incarnate Saviour of the world. These are Christ’s interrelations with 1) Israel, 2) with God, and 3) with humanity.

I began by following Torrance in grounding the mediation of Christ in the nexus of his interrelations with historical Israel, a matrix of interrelations Torrance calls the “womb of the incarnation.” Then I followed another fundamental principle of Torrance’s scientific theology, one he adapted from Einstein: “logical simplicity.” In my work on Torrance, I have adapted this principle to reduce Torrance’s vast and seemingly disconnected material on the mediation of Jesus Christ to a minimal number of elemental forms. By organising the themes of revelation and reconciliation in the mediation of Jesus Christ around these basic constitutive concepts, I have intended to facilitate the understanding and appreciation of Torrance’s thought by non-professional theologians.

The elemental forms around which I have organised Torrance’s material on revelation and reconciliation in the mediation of Jesus Christ are the Nicene homoousion, the Chalcedonian doctrine of the hypostatic union, the doctrine of incarnational redemption, and the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Having examined Torrance’s doctrine of the mediation of Jesus Christ, it has become clear to me that Torrance’s thought on this subject could easily be reduced to only two overarching elemental forms: that is, the homoousion and the hypostatic union. Indeed, these two elemental forms are the primary “christological tools” of Torrance’s doctrine of the mediation of Christ. Torrance’s doctrine of incarnational redemption and the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ could easily be subsumed under his doctrine of the hypostatic union, for they are plainly corollaries of this doctrine.

In addition, the elemental forms of Torrance’s thought are related to another fundamental aspect of his scientific theology: theological holism. Each elemental form displays a unitary, non-dualist character. The homoousion precludes a dualism between Jesus and the Father, such as is found in adoptionist christologies, while the hypostatic union precludes a docetic dualism that separates Jesus from humanity. At the same time, Torrance’s doctrine of incarnational redemption guards against a dualism between the incarnation and the atonement, or between the person and work of Christ, by asserting that the incarnation is inherently redemptive while redemption is inherently incarnational. Finally, Torrance’s doctrine of vicarious humanity describes the intrinsic connection between the faith and obedience of Jesus Christ and our own salvation.

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I hope these posts on Torrance have been beneficial to many of you. I know that the work I have done, and continue to do, on this great theologian has greatly strengthened my relationship with Jesus Christ. I shall forever be grateful to T.F. Torrance for taking me deep into the loving heart of the Triune God.

At this point in my doctoral work, I am required to read many other dissertations-theses that have been written on Torrance in recent years. This itself is a vast undertaking. I will continue to write on subjects related to Trinitarian-incarnational theology as I am able, sharing with you what I am learning. No doubt, as time goes on, I will have much more to say about the greatest English-speaking theologian of our time.

T.F. Torrance: General summary

The following is a general summary of all the posts that have appeared in this blog, beginning October 2009, on the doctrine of the mediation of Christ in the scientific theology of T.F. Torrance.

General Summary

The doctrine of the mediation of Jesus Christ in the scientific theology of T.F. Torrance rests on the fundamental scientific axiom, derived from the natural sciences, that knowledge is developed in accordance with the nature (kata physin) of the object as revealed in the course of scientific inquiry. To know God through the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, who is of “one nature with the Father” (homoousios to Patri), is to know God in strict accordance with God’s nature and, hence, in a scientific theological way. As Torrance argues, scientific theology will operate on a christological basis, for the incarnation of Jesus Christ is the “controlling centre” for the Christian doctrine of God.

A corollary to Torrance’s fundamental principle of kataphysical inquiry is the “interrelationality” of reality. As Clerk Maxwell argued in his “field theory” of electromagnetism, a theory in which Torrance invests significant theological capital, the “object” of scientific inquiry exists within a nexus or matrix of “being-constituting” interrelations, or “onto-relations,” that disclose its identity. Because the fundamental aspects of reality are relational rather than atomistic, the goal of Torrance’s scientific theology is to investigate and articulate the essential interrelations embodied in our knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. If being-constituting relations (i.e., “onto-relations”) are to be given their proper place in an inquiry into the mediation of revelation and reconciliation, then Jesus Christ must be viewed within three specific nexuses of “onto-relations” that disclose his identity: these are his interrelations 1) with historical Israel, 2) with God, and 3) with humanity.

Torrance’s doctrine of the mediation of Jesus Christ is rooted historically in the incarnate Son’s relationship with ancient Israel, a nexus of interrelations Torrance cogently describes as the “womb of the incarnation.” The cultic liturgy, particularly as enacted on the annual Day of Atonement, constituted the all-significant “middle term,” whereby a sinful, rebellious people could approach a holy God in appropriate worship. This “covenanted way of response,” which God graciously provided Israel, established permanent structures of thought and speech about God. Torrance describes these “conceptual tools” as the “essential furniture of our knowledge of God.” Apart from the pattern of divine revelation imparted in God’s historical dialogue with ancient Israel, particularly as enacted in the cultic liturgy, the mediation of Jesus Christ, as High Priest and sacrifice, Offerer and offering, would be quite incomprehensible.

The mediation of revelation and reconciliation in Jesus Christ must also be viewed within the nexus of Jesus’ interrelations with God. In developing his scientific theology according to the divine nature as revealed in Jesus Christ, Torrance adheres to his fundamental methodological principle of kataphysical inquiry, a methodology which requires him to develop his epistemology a posteriori, as he allows God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ to guide his thinking. Torrance follows Barth in rejecting natural theology as an a priori, antecedent conceptual system developed ‘independently’ of the divine self-disclosure in the incarnate Son, then offered as a preamble to faith. Torrance also rejects anthropological approaches to the knowledge of God, for example, Schleiermacher’s “feeling” of dependence, regarding these as mythological projections of the human psyche onto the heavens. For Torrance the Nicene homoousion, that is, the creedal assertion that Jesus Christ is “of one being (nature) with the Father,” is the epistemological linchpin in the knowledge of God and the sine qua non of his doctrine of the mediation of revelation and reconciliation in Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ is not God in the same way the Father is God, then his mediation of revelation lacks divine content. Moreover, if Jesus Christ is not God, then his mediation of reconciliation lacks divine validity, for only God can save.

The mediation of Jesus Christ must also be viewed within the matrix of his interrelations with humanity. Torrance draws upon the Chalcedonian doctrine of the hypostatic union to argue that the humanity of Jesus Christ means that God has acted among us as man; at the same time, the deity of Jesus Christ means that God has acted among us as man. For Torrance, the humanity of Jesus Christ is essential for the mediation of revelation and is the guarantee that revelation is accessible to us within the limitations of our own creaturely existence. At the same time, the deity of Jesus Christ ensures that his human word is also the divine Word of God. To mediate divine revelation to us, therefore, Jesus Christ must be both God and human, yet he must be God and humanity joined in hypostatic union, so that his word and act are predicates of one divine person. Otherwise, his divine word is not human speech to us and his human speech is not the word of God. Because the words spoken by Jesus Christ are the words of very God, Torrance rightly identifies Jesus Christ, not the Holy Bible, as “The Word of God.” The humanity of Jesus Christ is the “real text” underlying the written word of God and by which scripture must be interpreted.

In addition to its epistemological implications, the hypostatic union has vital implications for human salvation. Because only God can save, Jesus Christ must be divine; yet, in order for his saving activity to reach us, he must also be human. Consistent with his non-dualist, unitary theology, Torrance asserts there are not two acts in the life and death of Jesus Christ, but only a single, unitary action that is simultaneously Godward and humanward. If atonement is to be real, it must take place from the side of humanity if we are to be reconciled to God; yet, it must also take place from the side of God if it is to be effectual. Thus, atonement must be the work of the one God-man, God and man in hypostatic union, not merely God “in” man but God “as” man. To be sure, Jesus Christ, who is both Son of God and son of Mary, fulfils the covenant, both from the side of God and from the side of humanity, in one unitary movement of atoning reconciliation.

A corollary to Torrance’s doctrine of the hypostatic union is his doctrine of incarnational redemption, that is, the Godward-humanward aspect of the unitary movement of atoning reconciliation. In keeping with his unitary, holistic theology, Torrance asserts an intrinsic, internal connection between the incarnation and the atonement. For Torrance, the incarnate Son is no mere agent of reconciliation; rather, Jesus Christ “embodies” atoning reconciliation in his incarnate constitution as God and humanity hypostatically united in reconciling, sanctifying union. Simply stated, atonement is not what Jesus “does”; it is what he “is.” For Torrance, there is an unbroken unity between the person and work of Jesus Christ; that is, the incarnation is inherently redemptive and redemption is inherently incarnational. The unitary connection Torrance sees between the incarnation and the atonement is heavily dependent upon his controversial assertion of the assumption of “fallen” human nature in the incarnation. In contradistinction to the “Latin heresy,” that is, the view that the eternal Word assumed “neutral” human flesh as it existed in its perfect state before the Fall in order to offer it as an instrument in an “external” juridical transaction with the Father, Torrance supports the Patristic assertion that the “unassumed is the unhealed,” arguing that Jesus Christ had to assume Adamic nature in order to penetrate to the ontological roots of our fallen humanity in order to bend the rebellious human mind and will back to God in reconciling union. For Torrance, the hypostatic union is not merely a static union; it is a dynamic atoning union, wherein the actual condition of human estrangement is brought into reconciling, sanctifying union with God.

Torrance further articulates the intrinsic connection between incarnation and atoning reconciliation in terms of Calvin’s “wonderful exchange,” wherein Christ takes our poverty in order to give us his riches, and in the Patristic doctrine of theopoiesis, wherein Christ becomes what we are that we might become what he is. For Torrance, the atoning exchange “is” incarnational redemption, and incarnational redemption “is” atoning exchange, all worked out in the one person of the incarnate Son of God within the ontological depths of fallen humanity. An important aspect of the wonderful exchange between Jesus Christ and humanity concerns the reception of the Holy Spirit. All who partake of the nature of Adam are implicated in the Spirit’s descent upon the incarnate Son in the Jordan River. This has profound implications for the “range” of the atoning exchange. The range of atoning reconciliation is anchored in the nature of God, whom scripture describes as “love.” Because the love of God is unlimited and inexhaustible, argues Torrance, to limit the range of atonement is to introduce a limitation in the nature of God. Because the incarnate Son, the eternal Logos, in whom all humanity coheres and the very one “by” whom and “through” whom all things are created and “in” whom all things consist, has united himself to creation, all things, including all human beings without exception, are ontologically bound up in the incarnate reality of Jesus Christ, and are, in a profound sense, already redeemed, resurrected, and consecrated for the glory of God.

The universal range of atoning reconciliation bears directly on Torrance’s doctrine of election. Torrance’s rejects the Calvinist predilection for locating predestination or election in an inscrutable decree of God hidden in eternity past. For Torrance, Jesus Christ “is” the eternal word or decree of God. To detach election from the incarnation makes election precede grace and implies a higher will in God than the grace revealed in Jesus Christ. While Torrance rejects the traditional Calvinist doctrine of predestination, with its logical corollary of limited atonement, Torrance is no universalist. Notwithstanding the boundless nature of the atoning exchange, Torrance develops a doctrine of reprobation. In contradistinction to a doctrine of double predestination, he argues that reprobation is not the result of a divine decree but, rather, of the reprobate’s free but inexplicable decision to reject the reconciliation Christ has already provided for all.

An additional corollary to Torrance’s doctrine of the hypostatic union is his doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Emphasising the humanward-Godward aspect of the unitary movement of atoning reconciliation, this doctrine asserts that, as God and man joined in hypostatic union, Jesus acts from within the depths of the fallen humanity he assumed in the incarnation to offer to the Father the perfect response of faith and obedience on behalf of, and in place of, all. This vicarious response includes not only Jesus’ passive obedience on the cross but also the entirety of his active obedience offered to the Father throughout the whole course of his life. The key to this doctrine is found in Galatians 2:20, where Torrance translates pistis christou as a subjective genitive to assert that we live by the faith “of” Jesus Christ. This passage functions in a hermeneutical manner to provide a significant point of access for understanding Torrance’s theological vision of conversion, worship and prayer, the sacraments, and evangelism. In all these important aspects of discipleship, Jesus acts as both representative and substitute, offering to the Father perfect faith, obedience, worship, and prayer on behalf of, and in place of, all. Jesus’ response on our behalf, however, does not undermine our own response, but, rather, undergirds it as he takes our feeble efforts and unites them with his own self-offering to the Father. The sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist are visible forms of the Church’s participation in the self-offering and ongoing priesthood of Jesus Christ. Each sacrament finds its meaning, not in the rite itself, but in the objective reality underlying it, that is, the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ and his self-offering to the Father. When the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ is emphasised in preaching the Gospel, evangelism becomes an invitation for hearers to become what they are, that is, to participate actively in the reality of the salvation that is already theirs in Jesus Christ.

Finally, Torrance models his understanding of the “movement” of grace in redemption on the “logic” of grace in the anhypostasis-enhypostasis couplet. Transcending monergistic and synergistic views of the relationship between divine and human agency, Torrance asserts that “all of grace includes all of man.”

New blog link

Greetings everyone,
I am adding another blog to the "links" in the right-hand column of this page. Bobby Grow, at "The Evangelical Calvinist," is writing his doctoral thesis (dissertation) on Torrance's doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Bobby has been posting for years and has compiled a wealth of material on Torrance, Barth, and many important subjects related to Trinitarian-incarnational theology. Check him out at http://growrag.wordpress.com/. His work is well worth your time.

Martin