A.S. Radcliff: The Claim of Humanity in Christ (in the Torrance tradition), Post 14

Reference

Radcliff, A.S. 2016. The Claim of Humanity in Christ: Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T.F. and J.B. Torrance. (Princeton Theological Monograph Series 222), Eugene, OR: Pickwick. 208 pp.

What is the place of “knowledge” of God in the radical Christology of the Torrance tradition?

Torrance describes our reception of salvation in terms of a subjective “realization” or “actualization” of what has been objectively accomplished for us in Jesus. In contrast to the tendency to make repentance a matter of confession and penance, Radcliff asserts that metanoia means “a change of mind.” In this regard, repentance is better understood as changing our minds about “Who God is,” so that we may live out of that reality. The Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of Truth.” Repentance is an opening of our minds, by the Holy Spirit, to the realization of Who God is as revealed in Jesus. For me, that has to be game-changer (that is, a “life-changer”).

Critics argue that the Torrance’s emphasis on repentance as a “realization” of something already accomplished denies the “necessity” of faith. I see this as a misunderstanding of the Torrance tradition (as well as Barth). Faith and repentance are important in the Torrance tradition—yes, even “necessary.” Yet, for Torrance, faith is not a condition for salvation, for salvation is already objectively accomplished for all in Jesus. Nevertheless, faith is necessary in order to live out of that reality. The gospel summons us to a response. Jesus tells us to “repent and believe the good news.” We must “know” the truth in order to be set free by the truth.

The Spirit is the “Spirit of Truth.” As Torrance argues, the Spirit’s job is to convict people about the truth of who Jesus is. This where preaching and evangelism come in. According to Torrance:

Those outside the Church are to be regarded in the sphere where this [objective] reconciliation has not yet been subjectively actualized but is nevertheless objectively accomplished for them in Jesus Christ.

In other words, there is no “in-group,” “out-group” dichotomy, for all are included in the reconciliation fully accomplished in Jesus. Those outside the Church, however, do not know yet that they are included. Does this mean, however, that the only difference between believers and “not-yet’ believers” is simply a matter of “knowledge.” Critics argue that the Torrance tradition makes faith merely “noetic” (head-stuff). They argue that, for Torrance, we receive salvation merely by “believing” it. This criticism is untenable, however, for the Spirit of Truth is also the Spirit of adoption. As Radcliff argues (p. 107), “The anhypostatic [God-humanward] movement of the Spirit revealing the truth of God to humanity is accompanied by the enhypostatic [human-Godward] movement of the Spirit raising humanity up to participate in God’s triune life.” In plain language, the Spirit both reveals the truth about Jesus to us, while lifting us up to participate in the Father-Son relationship.

Comment: In the Torrance tradition, revelation and reconciliation are dual aspects of a single, unitary reality. In terms of Christology, Jesus is both the revelation of God, and the reconciliation of God and humanity. In terms of Pneumatology, the Spirit both reveals the truth of God and enables us to us cry “Abba, Father.” Hence, revelation and reconciliation are inseparable in the Torrance tradition. (Radcliff doesn’t tell you all that. I threw it in for free. I know she won’t mind!)

My Chart

		Noetic		Relational
Jesus	God-humanward movement	revelation	human-Godward movement	reconciliation
Spirit	God-humanward movement	illumination, awakening	human-Godward movement	participation

As Myk Habets rightly notes, “knowing” in the Torrance tradition is “participatory knowledge” in which one “indwells” the subject. As Hart argues, “knowing” is personal. It is the difference between “knowing God” and “knowing about” God. Thus, in the Torrance tradition, as Radcliff argues, salvation cannot be reduced to a merely noetic concept. “[T]he Torrance’s articulation of the enhypostatic [human-Godward] movement whereby humanity is drawn by the Spirit into God’s triune life is profoundly personal and relational.”

Here’s how I sum it up: “Knowing” is “noetic” and “relational.” The Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of adoption. The Spirit testifies about Jesus, while enabling us to cry “Abba, Father,” and, thus, participate in Jesus’ relationship with the Father.

One more thing. Given that knowledge is both noetic and relational, Radcliff notes that T.F. emphasized the noetic while J.B. emphasized the relational. In case you wanted to know.

Comment: Back in the late ‘80’s (I think), there was an ongoing debate about “Lordship salvation.” “Can I have Jesus as Savior but not as Lord?” “Can I make my personal decision of faith (in order to get “in”) and then go about my business, as if nothing has changed?” The answer is “No!” or, “Nein! as Barth might say. The God we seek to know is the Lord God, who will be known only on his own terms. As an inseparable part of his revelation, the Lord God draws us into relationship by his Spirit and thereby transforms us. To “know” God is to be changed.

Revelation and reconciliation are distinct (not separate) aspects of a single, unitary, movement of grace that is, at once, God-humanward and human-Godward. You don’t get one without the other. Jesus embodies both movements.

Experience

As Radcliff argues, God is known both intellectually and experientially. (These are not mutually exclusive means of participation.) The Reformed tradition, of which the Torrance’s are a part, however, places a premium on propositional truth. Radcliff notes that T.F. was skeptical of both mysticism and charismatic experience. He is critical of the charismatic-Pentecostal emphasis on experiences of the Spirit, for it seems to leave out Jesus and the Father. T.F. is spot on here, for much charismatic jumpin’ up and down preaching seems to leave Jesus out all together. To paraphrase Tom Smail, in lieu of a one-sided emphasis on the experiences of the Spirit, there must be a greater appreciation of “Abba, Father” and Jesus is Lord.”

Radcliff, however, appeals for a greater appreciation of the role of personal “experience” as an important aspect of participation. This is quite natural for her, since she comes from the charismatic-Pentecostal tradition. For Radcliff, charismatic experience can be regarded as a “direct consequence of being drawn by the Spirit into God’s triune life.” Her emphasis on charismatic experience, and later, sanctification is what makes this book unique.

Comment: Most of the Christians I have worked with over the last ten years come from the charismatic-Pentecostal tradition. That should not be surprising since my ministry is to the Global South, where this tradition is spreading like wildfire. Charismatic-Pentecostals tend to be skeptical of “intellectual” approaches to knowledge. I think Radcliff makes a good point, however, when she notes that their personal “experience” of the Holy Spirit tends to trump “intellectual knowledge.” I have been around many wild-eyed, tongues-speaking charismatics in recent years, and I can only admire their zeal and commitment, rarely seen in other traditions. But Radcliff gets it right, I think, by asserting a need for a greater appreciation of the experiences of the Spirit, while not making them as an end unto themselves. The experiences of the Spirit are means to participate in the Father-Son relation.

Thus, let’s remember that knowing God involves the mind, heart and will, for God is not an object to be examined in the detached intellectual manner of academia. God wants it all—mind, heart and will!

Theosis

In the Torrance tradition, soteriology may perhaps be encapsulated in the term, theosis (or, theopoiesis). The classic statement of this doctrine is from Athanasius, who said “God became man that we might become God.” For Torrance, however, theosis is not ontological but relational. T.F. understands theosis as communion rather than a change in our being. As Radcliff notes, theosis is not deification but more properly participation, where, “humanity’s ultimate end is to be drawn by the Spirit to share in the Son’s intimate relationship with the Father.” (In that statement we find the meaning and purpose of our lives!)

T.F. is aware of what he calls the danger of “vertigo.” That is, theosis should not be construed in any way to mean that humanity becomes God. Although we are united to Christ, and thereby participate in the divine life of the Holy Trinity, the Creator-creature difference remains. We share in the life of God through the humanity that Jesus assumed in the incarnation, while remaining the humans we are created to be.

***

For more on faith and knowledge in the Torrance tradition, click here for three previous posts.

For more on theosis and the “”wonderful exchange’’ see my previous post here. 

Knowledge of God and the Homoousion of the Spirit

Here is a great quote on knowledge of God, commensurate with Torrance tradition.

"If the Spirit is not God, without qualification, then God is not known in the biblical sense, where knowledge is not the mastery of information but transformation through engagement with, and surrender to, an “other” who is person. If the Spirit is not God, our knowledge of God is no more than a matter of “reading off” facts about God from the face of Jesus, confusing knowledge as the accumulation of information with that biblical “knowing” which is transmutation. Human knowledge of God, it must be remembered, is precisely the difference, the transformation, arising in the knower through her self abandonment to the Person of God. Where the homoousion of the Spirit is neglected, knowledge of God (so ­called) is a one­-sided cerebralism or “informationism” in which orthodox truths (abstractions by definition) are assimilated while the heart remains unaltered by the concrete Truth which is reality."

Victor A. Shepherd, Thomas F. Torrance and the Homoousion of the Holy Spirit.

http://www.tftorrance.org/meetings/Homoousion-of-the-Holy-Spirit.pdf

T. F. Torrance: Scientific Theology and Critical Realism

In the last two posts ('The Problem of Dualism," I & II), we examined the problem of dualism in relation to the knowledge of God. We noted that the cosmological dualism of the ancient Greeks or the Newtonian-Deism of the Enlightenment asserts that the divine has not, or cannot, intervene in the space-time reality of human history. By shutting God out of worldly affairs, cosmological dualism renders the incarnation problematic if not unthinkable (hence, the Gospel is foolishness to the Greeks as well as to those bound by the dualisms of modernity). We also described the epistemological dualism associated with the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In arguing that we cannot know "the thing in itself" (Ger. Das Ding an sich), Kant posited a disjunction (dualism) between the human knower and that which we seek to know by asserting that our "knowing" is both shaped and constrained by the mental constructs (ideas, images, beliefs, presuppositions) we bring to the act of knowing. For example, according to Kant, the "order" we see in the universe is not a characteristic of the cosmos itself but, rather, is an imposition of a mental construct ("order") upon nature so that we might make sense of an otherwise chaotic manifold of sensory experience. Thus the "laws" of nature are not read from nature but are 'imposed' upon it by the human mind.
Against dualism, Torrance seeks to develop a "unitary" (not dualistic) approach to theology wherein knowledge of the reality under investigation (in this case, God) is developed according to the demands imposed upon us by the intrinsic nature of the object of inquiry. In order to better understand Torrance's approach, we shall explore the closely related topics of "scientific" theology and "critical realism." (In the next post, we will explore the methodology of Torrance's scientific theology.)
Scientific Theology
Torrance (1969:281) describes theology as "a dogmatic, or positive and independent, science operating on its own ground and in accordance with the inner law of its own being, developing its distinctive modes of inquiry and its essential forms of thought under the determination of its given subject-matter."

Comment: Torrance describes theology as a positive science. This may not seem significant, yet it is of major importance. Much western theology arises from the "negative" way (via negativa) promulgated by Thomas Aquinas (12^th C.) and others who articulated their doctrine of God based on a negation of the imperfections of the cosmos (e.g., "God is not this"). For example, the world is changing; thus God is "not-changing," that is, God is "immutable" (see my post, "Tommy A. and the Western Split."). In contrast to a negative theology that often (and wrongly) seeks to tell us what God is 'not', Torrance seeks to develop a positive approach to theology based upon God's self-revelation in Jesus.

Note also that Torrance's theology seeks to develop "its distinctive modes of inquiry and its essential forms of thought under the determination of its given subject-matter." Simply stated, God himself (the Object of scientific theological inquiry) sovereignly determines how he will be known, and he does so through the mediation of the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ.

Theology is "the unique science devoted to knowledge of God, differing from other sciences by the uniqueness of its object which can be apprehended only on its own terms and from within the actual situation it has created in our existence in making itself known." Scientific theological thinking does not arise from a centre within ourselves or from axiomatic assumptions we make in regard to the nature of God. "Theo-logical" thinking arises, rather, from a centre in God and is possible only because it really is God who is the object of our inquiry and the "ground and possibility" of all our knowledge of him.

Comment: "Theological thinking does not arise from a centre within ourselves." Compare this to Schleiermacher who developed his theology from the "feeling" of dependence in the human consciousness or Augustine who based his trinitarianism on an analogy of the human mind (see my post, "NeoPlatonism: Augustine and the Wedding Cake Cosmos"). Nor does theological thinking arise from "axiomatic assumptions we make in regard to the nature of God." Again, compare this to medieval theologies based on what human beings thought it "proper" for God to be (dignum deo). In contrast, Torrance's scientific theology is an a posteriori form of thinking grounded in the prior "given-ness" of God in Jesus Christ.

"Scientific theology," according to Torrance, "is active engagement in that cognitive relation to God in obedience to the demands of His reality and self-giving." A scientific theology seeks to bring knowledge of God into clear focus, so that the truth of God may shine through unhindered and unobscured by the "opacity" of the human mind. "That is to say, we seek to allow God's own eloquent self-evidence to sound through to us in His Logos so that we may know and understand Him out of His own rationality and under the determination of His divine being" (Torrance, 1969:v-viii).

Comment: Against the Kantian disjunction between the knower and the known, God's own "eloquent self-evidence" has sounded through to us both in the mediation of revelation in ancient Israel (see coming post) and particularly and most clearly in the incarnation of the Word (Logos) of God in Jesus Christ, who is "of one being with the Father" (homoousios to Patri).

In summary, Torrance's scientific theology is a positive (rather than negative) approach to knowledge of God developed in accordance with God's historical self-revelation in the history of Israel and the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Critical Realist Epistemology

In regard to the knowledge of God in general, and the mediation of Christ in particular, Torrance adopts a "Christian realist epistemology," that is, a "biblical and scientific realism" that has been called his "greatest contribution to the theological life and mission of the Church for ages to come." For Torrance, we can have real and accurate knowledge of things outside ourselves, including real and accurate knowledge of Jesus Christ (Kelly, 2007:75).
Critical realism arose in the United States in the early twentieth century as a rejection of an "idealist' over-emphasis on human consciousness and experience. Realism makes the "common sense" claim that realities exist independently of human perception. At its core, realism rejects the idealist insistence that esse est percipi ("to exist is to be perceived"), asserting, instead, that an object may exist apart from being perceived. Critical realism concedes to idealism that whenever something is perceived, it is an object of the mind; however, it does not follow from this that a given reality has no existence except in being perceived. Critical realism takes note of the Kantian emphasis on human perception, yet argues that, even though reality may be conceptually mediated, it does not follow that our concepts or apperceptions constitute reality. Theological realism [such as that embraced by Torrance] is committed to the view that the object of religious experience and inquiry (i.e., God) exists independently of human experience. In acknowledging an independent reality beyond our control, there is a basic humility associated with theological realism, wherein human experience is not the sole arbiter of what is real (Patterson, 1999:12-14; Padgett, 2002: 186, 187).
In his typically tortuous fashion, Torrance describes realism as "an epistemic orientation of the two-way relation between the subject and object poles of thought and speech, in which ontological primacy and control are naturally accorded to reality over all our conceiving and speaking of it" (Torrance, 1982:60). His conception of an "ontological primacy" appears to be a 'realist' assertion that the object of inquiry has a reality that is independent of the human subjective pole and open to scientific investigation.
In contrast to the Newtonian-deistic separation between God and the world or natural theology's attempt to develop knowledge of God apart from God's historical self-disclosure (see coming post), Torrance adopts an "interactionist" approach to knowledge of God, wherein God is understood as personally interacting with the world in space and time while remaining distinct from it. Against the Kantian disjunction between the knower and the known, Torrance's "realist" epistemology asserts that reality discloses itself in a way that we can really comprehend (Torrance, 1982:97-99; 1990:136).

Comment: Without doubt, most readers of this blog embrace a "realist" epistemology in the doctrine of God. In simple terms, we believe in the independent reality of God's existence and that God can be known. Against Kant, we do not regard knowledge of God as the result of the imposition of human thought forms on an otherwise unknowable reality; we believe that divine reality can be known because it has been revealed. Against cosmological dualism, we believe that God has (and continues to) intervene in human affairs, particularly in the history of Israel, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the sending of the Spirit. Thus, for Torrance to assert that the divine exists independently of human perception is no big deal to most of us. Yet in the scientific and academic milieu in which Torrance develops his theology, a "realist" understanding of God is not taken for granted.

Moreover, Torrance adopts an interactionist approach to knowledge of God, wherein God is understood as personally interacting in human history. This is an important point. Torrance divides theologies into two overarching types: 1) theologies that operate from the perspective that God has really "interacted" with humanity in the realm of historical space and time, and 2) dualist epistemologies such as that of Bultmann that shut God out of the world.

Torrance's approach accords with "common sense." In everyday experience the human mind operates in such a way that we are able to distinguish between ourselves as knowing subjects and the objects of our knowledge. In common discourse, we employ ideas or words to represent the realities they signify so that ordinary communication is possible. Our attention is not focused on the words we use; rather, it is focused on the realties to which they refer. Hence, for Torrance, the natural operations of the human mind appear to be "realist" (Torrance, 1982:58)
Torrance insists that knowledge is not centred in the rational human subject only, for there is a "universal rationality" or inherent intelligibility woven into the fabric of the cosmos by its Creator. Because the universe not only exists in intellectu, but also in re, our mental operations are coordinated with patterns and structures in the universe that are independent of us. Realities are not merely the conceptual constructs of the human mind; rather there is a "noetic component" to things that make their intrinsic intelligibility accessible to human knowing. As we engage these realities, we become recipients and channels of their inherent intelligibility. Hence, our images and concepts are tools of discovery rather than tools of creation; that is, realities are discovered, not invented (Torrance, 1985:3; Patterson, 1999:14, 17).

Comment: The preceding paragraph is a powerful argument against Kantian epistemological dualism. Remember that Kant argued that the laws of nature are not "discovered" in nature; rather, they are "imposed" upon nature by the human mind.

Like philosophy, theology operates within a dialectical tension between realism and idealism; that is, "theology engages in its movement between the given object and thought about the object." Classical realism holds that all our knowledge of God arises out of actual experience with a given reality; yet, it also recognizes that there are both "inward" and "outward" aspects to our actual experience. The crucial problem for "realist" epistemology is to assert how we can distinguish independent objective reality from our experience of it. As Torrance (1990:52, 53) asks, "How do we know that the God whom we know in our minds has existence apart from our mental knowledge of him, that 'God' is anything more than an empty 'idea' in our minds?" In answer, Torrance's "realist" theology takes as its fundamental proposition that God is; that is to say, God has a reality independent of our knowledge of him, a reality made known to us "concretely" in the historical encounter with Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Torrance (1990:53, 54) writes:

It is in that encounter that we learn that the objective act of God upon us in the freedom of his Spirit is to be distinguished from our inward subjective conditions, and that the God who meets us face to face in Jesus Christ is . . . the living God who really comes to us from beyond us and acts upon us in the midst of all the other actualities and objectivities of our historical and natural existence.

Against all forms of idealism, wherein an encounter with God is reduced to mere subjective experience [as in Schleiermacher], Torrance argues that we must "let God be God"; that is, we must let knowledge of God be grounded in God's objective self-revelation in Christ and the Spirit. Against any "Pelagian" claim on the part of human reason to be able to acquire knowledge of God on its own [as in an independent natural theology], we must allow all our ideas about God to be called into question by God's objective self-revelation in time and space. Proper theological questions must be shaped by "the nature of God who gives himself to us in sheer grace and remains sovereignly free in his transcendent Lordship over all thoughts of him and over all our formulations of the understanding he gives us of himself in his Word" (Torrance, 1990:57). Torrance's realist approach to theology is exemplified in his description of "dogmatics" as "the actual knowledge of the living God as he is disclosed to us through his interaction with us in our world of space and time ‒ knowledge of that God that is ultimately controlled by the nature of God as he is in himself" (Torrance, 1980:15, 16).
Torrance's 'realist' approach to theology reaches back to the theology of the Patristic era, particularly that of Alexandria [Athanasius, Cyril], where "[p]recise, scientific knowledge was held to result from inquiry strictly in accordance with the nature of the reality being investigated, that is, knowledge of it being reached under the constraint of what it actually and essentially is in itself, and not according to arbitrary convention." In accordance with the Alexandrian fathers, Torrance asserts that to know things in strict accordance with their nature is "the only way to reach real, exact or scientific knowledge in any field of inquiry, through the faithful assent of the mind to the compelling . . . claims of reality upon it" (Torrance, 1988:51; cf. Grenz, 2004:204). Torrance also finds this approach to knowledge in the theology of the great Reformer, John Calvin, who saw that knowledge was derived objectively and "actively" from God "through modes of knowing imposed on us from the nature of God and from his self-manifestation through his Word." For Calvin, all knowledge of God must be referenced back to God himself, so that all or presuppositions may be unmasked and the idols of the mind dethroned in light of God's objective self-manifestation. As Torrance notes, this "principle of objectivity," wherein we detach ourselves from all presuppositions and prejudgments in favour of the given-ness of reality, played a forceful role in scientific knowledge following the Reformation (Torrance, 1996:90-92; Hardy, 1997:259).
Torrance argues for a realist approach to knowledge of God wherein the knower participates in Christ's own knowledge of God. Thus, we must get past all cognitive distortions of the knowledge of God in order to apprehend the reality of God independently of received language and culture, so that our minds may be transformed by God's revelation of himself in Christ. Theological realism insists that, in apprehending Jesus Christ, we do, in fact, apprehend God ‒ not merely ideas about God. Because knowledge of God arises from God's self-revelation in Christ, there is no external, independent court of appeal by which such claims to knowledge could be adjudicated. "Knowledge of God in and through Jesus Christ is inevitably a profoundly personal knowledge, the result of the Trinitarian pattern of God's self-revelation becoming stamped on our minds. This is the sine qua non for knowledge of God in which experience and apprehension lead to real knowing" (Purves, 2001:71).
In the next post (on or about January 15), we will discuss the methodology of Torrance's scientific theology.
.References
Grenz, S.J. 2004. Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. 289pp.
Hardy, D.W. 1997. The Integration of Faith with Scientific Thought: Thomas F. Torrance. In D. Ford, ed. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 257-261.
Kelly, D.F. 2007. The Realist Epistemology of Thomas F. Torrance. In G. Dawson, ed. An Introduction to Torrance Theology: Discovering the Incarnate Saviour. London: T & T Clark. Ch. 4.
Padgett, A.G. 2002. Dialectical Realism in Theology and Science. Perspective on Science and Christian Faith, vol 54, pp. 184-192.
Patterson, S. 1999. Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press. 184pp.
Purves, A.P. 2001. The Christology of Thomas F. Torrance. In E. Colyer, ed. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T. F. Torrance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Ch. 3.
Torrance, T.F. 1969. Theological Science. Oxford: OUP. 368pp.
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. 1985. Reality and Scientific Theology. (New Forward by T.F. Torrance, 2001). Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 220pp.
Torrance, T.F. 1988. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. London: T & T Clark. 345pp
Torrance, T.F. 1990. Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.
Torrance, T.F. 1996. (orig. ed. 1965). Theology in Reconstruction. Eugene,OR:Wipf & Stock Publishers. 288pp.