T.F. Torrance: The Womb of the Incarnation, pt 6

The Prehistory of Reconciliation 

The prehistory of mediation in Israel involves reconciliation as well as revelation. According to Torrance (1996b:194), God chose Israel to be both the medium of revelation and “the special sphere of his redemptive acts leading throughout history to the fulfilment of his promise of salvation.” In keeping with the unitary, holistic character of his theology, Torrance (1992:24) sees the mediation of revelation and the mediation of reconciliation “intertwined” in God’s interaction with Israel; that is, “revelation and reconciliation belong together, so that we cannot think out the mediation of revelation apart from the mediation of reconciliation”  

God’s election of Israel to be the mediator of reconciliation must be viewed against the background of God’s eternal purpose in creating the universe. According to Torrance, God created the universe in order to pour out his love upon humanity and to enjoy communion with us. Notwithstanding the fall of Adam, God’s resolute purpose to commune with humanity is undeterred by human sin. Torrance (1957a:190) writes:

Behind all that we hear in the Gospel lies the fact that in creating man God willed to share His glory with man and willed man to have communion with Himself; it is the fact of the overflowing love of God that refused, so to speak, to be pent up within God, but insisted in creating a fellowship into which it could pour itself out in unending grace. Far from being rebuffed by the disobedience and rebellion of man, the will of God's love to seek and create fellowship with man established the covenant of grace in which God promised to man in spite of his sin to be His God, and insisted on binding man to Himself as His child and partner in love. God remained true and faithful to His covenant. He established it in the midst of the people of Israel, and all through their history God was patiently at work, preparing a way for the Incarnation of His love at last in Jesus Christ, that in and through Him He might bring His covenant to complete fulfilment and gather man back into joyful communion with Himself.  

In this statement, notes Kruger (1989:23), Torrance looks back to creation and eternity and then forward to Israel, and within Israel to the fulfilment of God’s redemptive purpose for humanity in Jesus Christ. Embedded in this passage are three essential points that are constitutive of Torrance’s doctrine of the mediation of reconciliation (cf. Kruger, 1989:23, 24): 1) Creation is an act of “overflowing love,” that is, an act of grace, whereby God freely wills to include humanity in communion with himself. 2) Redemption is not separate from God’s gracious, loving act of creation. Despite human sin, God remains “true and faithful” to his purpose in creating humanity for fellowship with himself. God is not “rebuffed” by human sin; rather, after the fall of Adam, God’s creative purpose for humanity becomes a redemptive purpose with an eschatological goal; God establishes a covenant of grace whereby he binds himself to man as “his child and partner in love.” In Kruger’s pithy words, “God is committed.” 3) Israel is chosen as the corporate medium of redemption, in the midst of whom, God is “patiently at work,” preparing the way for the incarnation of Jesus Christ, “that in and through Him He might bring His covenant to complete fulfilment and gather man back into joyful communion with Himself.” God’s resolute purpose in creating humanity for communion with himself, unwavering even in the face of human sin, is always in the background of Torrance’s discussion of Israel as the corporate medium of reconciliation.  

As Kruger (1989:27) notes, grace, creation, and redemption are interrelated throughout Torrance’s writings. For example, in an essay on baptism, Torrance (1960a:120, 121) writes:

When God made His Covenant of grace with Abraham it was none other than the Covenant of grace which He established with [the] creation of the world, and which took on a redemptive purpose with the rebellion and fall of man. But with Abraham that Covenant assumed a particular form within history and with one race elected from among all the races of mankind in order that God might prepare a way within humanity for the fulfilment of His Covenant Will for all men. 

In the light of human sin, God’s creative plan to pour out his love on all humanity takes on a redemptive purpose with the calling of Abraham (Torrance, 1971:141). The covenant of grace God established with the creation of the world begins to take definitive shape in human history in Israel, where God prepares the way for the salvation of all humanity. Torrance follows Barth (1957d:22ff; 1957f:28-31; 42ff; 1959:52ff) in asserting a relationship between creation and the covenant. According to Torrance (1959:lii):

As Karl Barth has interpreted it, the Covenant is the inner ground and form of creation and creation is the outer ground or form of the Covenant, and the very centre of the Covenant is the will of God to be our Father and to have us as His dear children. Creation is thus to be understood as the sphere in space and time in which God wills to share His divine life and love with man who is created for this very end.

 

For Torrance, the covenant of grace is intrinsically bound to creation. God established his covenant of grace at creation in his resolute purpose to create humanity in order to pour out his love in communion with us. Torrance (1959:li) refers to the covenant of grace established at creation as “the one all-embracing Covenant of the overflowing love of God.” As Kruger (1989:28 n. 22; 29, 30) perceptively notes, in contrast to Westminster theology, with its [dualist] separation of creation and redemption, Torrance seeks to allow the light of Jesus Christ to illuminate the mystery of creation and God’s covenant relation with humanity (cf. Torrance, 1959:lvi). To be sure, as Kruger rightly argues, Torrance is aligned with the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel [and the Nicene creedal assertion] that all things were made through the eternal Word who became flesh “for us and our salvation” (cf. John 1:1-3, 14). Nevertheless, as Kruger rightly contends, it is a weakness in Torrance’s writings that he fails to thoroughly develop his understanding of the relationship between creation and covenant, for redemption actually informs Torrance’s understanding of creation; that is, Torrance interprets creation in the light of God’s redemptive purpose in Israel and its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. 

In the following posts, we will consider four important aspects of the “prehistory” of the mediation of reconciliation in Israel: 1) Israel’s communal transformation in relation to God’s holiness; 2) the covenanted way of response provided for Israel by God; 3) Israel as the suffering servant, and 4) Israel’s rejection of the Messiah.

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.