T.F. Torrance: The Womb of the Incarnation, pt 9

The New Covenant 

In the fullness of time, Jesus Christ is identified with the suffering servant. According to Torrance, the incarnation must be understood in this context, wherein the Son of God gathers up in himself the prehistory of the mediation of reconciliation in Israel and the concomitant intensification of Israel’s conflict with God. The “prehistory of the crucifixion” in Israel (cf. above) prefigured the suffering of Christ, the one true Israelite, who recapitulated in himself the plight of the suffering servant in order to stand in the gap, in the midst of Israel, on behalf of all humanity. As Torrance notes, from the moment of Christ’s birth, the road ran straight to the crucifixion (cf. Lk 2:34, 35). Beginning at Bethlehem, the contradiction between humanity and God was set for its fulfilment. The intense conflict between God and humankind, vicariously embodied in Israel’s historical dialogue with God, reached its climax in the incarnation of Jesus Christ (Torrance, 1992:29; 2008:50; Colyer, 2001a:67, 68). Torrance (1992:29, 30) continues:

Hence, throughout the earthly life of Jesus the fearful tension he embodied ... and the reconciling love of God which he incarnated, advanced toward their climax in the crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah, when all things in Israel and in humanity as a whole, were set within the frame of the new covenant of forgiveness and reconciliation through the body and blood of Christ. 

For Torrance, the Sinaitic covenant becomes “new” when it is finally cut deep into the heart of Israel’s existence, that is, into the “inner man. This is precisely what occurs in Jesus Christ (Torrance, 1956:309). Once the old covenant came to be enacted in the flesh of Israel in the person of Jesus, becoming a total “circumcision” that penetrated into the heart of the “inner man,” the new covenant was inaugurated and a new and living way to God was opened up in the humanity of the Son of Man. For Torrance, the ultimate self-giving of God to Israel, narrowed down in “historical particularity” to one particular Jew, meant the “universalization and transcendence” of the Old Testament form of the covenant, so that redemption takes on the cosmic dimensions of a new creation (Torrance, 2008:48, 52). Nevertheless, as Kruger (1989:45) notes, Torrance does not regard the “new” covenant as an abrogation of the “old”; rather, the essential pattern God established at Sinai (“I will be your God, you will be my people”) is fulfilled in the new covenant and raised to a higher level of intimacy and communion through the outpouring of the Spirit. 

Penetrating the Ontological Depths of Israel 

Torrance (1992:30, 31) notes that Jesus did not come as a “political” Messiah who would reshape the social, economic, and political structures of Israel. Rather than effect change at the surface level of Israel’s life, Jesus, as Son of God incarnate as Son of man, penetrated into “the ontological depths of Israel’s existence where man, and Israel representing all mankind, had become estranged from God, and there within those ontological depths of human being to forge a bond of union and communion between man and God in himself which can never be undone.” Torrance continues:

Jesus did not come, therefore, to reorganise the human, social and political structures on the surface level of Israel’s life, which could not touch the forces of evil underlying them but only provide them with a new disposition of structures to use for their own ends, for he knew that those forces of evil are most deadly when they clothe themselves with the structures of what is right and good. He came, rather, to penetrate into the innermost existence of Israel in such a way as to gather up its religious and historical dialogue with God into himself, to make its partnership and its conflict with God his own, precisely as they moved to their climax with the Incarnation, and thus in and through Israel to strike at the very root of evil in the enmity of the human heart to God. 

Rather than effect change merely at the surface level of human existence, argues Torrance, Jesus penetrated into the heart of Israel, gathered its conflicted existence to himself and, thereby, transformed it. At the cross, through the reconciliation between God and humanity wrought there, God encounters, suffers, and triumphs over the enmity entrenched in the human heart (Torrance, 1992:31). 

Israel Elected to Reject the Messiah 

As God drew a “circle of reconciling love” around Israel, notes Torrance (1992:32), it was separated from all other nations and brought into a unique partnership of covenant love with God. Israel was called to be the “earthly medium” and “human counterpart” of both divine revelation and reconciliation. Israel, therefore, was given a “vicarious mission and function” for the purpose of the reconciliation of all mankind. Yet, just as the mediation of revelation triggered an ongoing, agonising struggle in the life of Israel, so also did the mediation of reconciliation. Torrance continues:

[I]n the progressive embodiment of his self-revelation to Israel and in his patient remoulding of its existence and life in the service of divine revelation to all men, God became locked in a profound struggle with Israel. The Word of God pressed hard upon Israel throughout its history, informing its worship with the knowledge of the living God and impregnating its way of life with divine truth, thereby evoking obedience but also provoking disobedience, in order to lay hold upon both as the instrument of its ever-deepening penetration into the inner recesses of Israel’s being and soul and understanding, thus preparing Israel as the matrix for the Incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ. 

According to Torrance, God gave himself to Israel and assumed the nation into covenant partnership with himself, thus revealing, in the midst of the people, God’s will to be humanity’s God despite human sin. Even in the face of Israel’s rejection, God bound himself to the people in covenant love, so that Israel was unable to escape its covenant partnership with God. As Torrance argues, Israel was called to be the “covenanted vis-à-vis” on earth in the movement of God’s reconciling love for all humanity (Torrance, 1992:32).  

Israel’s persistent attempts to break free of its covenant partnership with God, however, merely intensified its recalcitrance and sharpened the tension between God and humanity. As Torrance (1992:32, 33; cf. 2008:49) observes:

In that state of affairs the mediation of divine reconciliation to all mankind in and through the people of Israel could be worked out only in the heart of its conflict with God in such a way that its deep-seated human estrangement from God became the very means used by God in actualising his purpose of love to reconcile the whole world to himself. 

According to Torrance, human resistance and estrangement were incorporated into God’s gracious plan for the reconciliation of humankind. Noting that this is one of the ways of God that is difficult for us to appreciate, Torrance finds something quite similar after the Last Supper, when the disciples denied and abandoned Jesus when he was taken prisoner by the authorities. Out of fear for their lives, the disciples left Jesus utterly alone, separating themselves from him by an “unbridgeable chasm of shame and horror,” for they had forsaken and betrayed the very love whereby he had bound them to himself. Yet, in enacting the new covenant for the remission of sins by giving them his body and blood in the bread and wine of the Holy Supper, Jesus meant the disciples to understand that even their denial of him (e.g., Peter; Mt 26:34) was the very means by which he bound them to himself. The disciples finally realized, therefore, that Jesus’ passion was not for the holy saint but, rather, was precisely for the sinner. As Torrance argues, “It was their sin, their betrayal, their shame, their unworthiness, which became in the inexplicable love of God the material he laid hold of and turned into the bond that bound them to the crucified Messiah, to the salvation and love of God forever” (Torrance, 1992:33, 34). 

For Torrance, this is surely how we must understand God’s election of Israel to be the bearer of divine revelation and reconciliation. Urging that we clap our hands over our mouths and speak with fear and trembling within the forgiving love of God, Torrance (1992:34) asserts that “Israel was elected also to reject the Messiah”:

If the covenant partnership of Israel with God meant not only that the conflict of Israel with God became intensified but was carried to its supreme point in the fulfilment of the Covenant, then Israel under God could do no other than refuse the Messiah. 

In Jesus Christ, it is revealed that the election of one for all becomes salvation for all in the rejection of one for all. The events surrounding the cross of Christ reveal what was happening to Israel in its election by God. According to Torrance (2008:52):

The election of Israel as an instrument of the divine reconciliation, an instrument which was to be used in its very refusal of grace so that in its midst the ultimate self-giving of God might take place, meant, then ... that Israel was elected to act in a representative capacity for all peoples in its rejection of Christ.  

To be the sphere in which the Son of God freely allowed himself to be crucified meant that Israel could only fulfil God’s gracious purpose by rejecting Christ and condemning him to death. This is not to suggest, Torrance argues, that God made the Jews guiltier than others; rather, through them, God exposed humanity’s hatred of grace, drawing it out at the cross in all its intensity, so that Christ, as the Lamb of God, might take away the sin of the world in “holy and awful atonement.” According to Torrance, Jesus bore the infinite guilt, not only of Israel, “but of all mankind revealed in the guilt of Israel,” thereby acquitting and justifying the ungodly, Jew and Gentile alike, and even bearing away the guilt of those who, representing all humanity, actually carried out his terrible crucifixion (Torrance, 2008:53). 

As Peter announced on the Day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:23), the rejection of the Messiah is exactly what God intended in his determination to deal with sinful humanity at its worst, even at the point of its ultimate denial of the saving will of God. At the cross, Jesus took upon himself all the sin and guilt of Israel, including Israel’s scorn and rejection. According to Torrance, if Israel was blinded in its role as the servant of God (cf. Is 42:19), and, hence, could not help but react as it did, it was blinded for the sake of all humanity. “The Jew” vicariously represents our own rejection of God, so that reconciliation might also be ours. The ultimate refusal of God which took place in Israel was the very means by which the loving God achieved final victory over sin, for by the cross, humankind was reconciled to God (cf. 2Cor 5:19). As Torrance notes, “Our indebtedness to the Jew and our faith in Jesus Christ are inextricably woven together in the fulfilled mediation of reconciliation” (Torrance, 1992:34, 35; 2008:49, 50, 53). Therefore, Jesus must not be detached from ancient Israel or the incarnation from its “deep roots in the covenant partnership of God with Israel.” To detach Jesus from ancient Israel, argues Torrance, is to obscure the nexus of relationships within which God’s self-revelation in Christ becomes intelligible. If we are to know Jesus Christ, we must seek to understand him “within the actual matrix of interrelations from which he sprang as Son of David and Son of Mary, that is, in terms of his intimate bond with Israel in its covenant relationship with God throughout history” (Torrance, 1992:3, 23; cf. Colyer, 2001a:69).

T.F. Torrance: The Womb of the Incarnation, pt 8

Intensification of the Covenant 

According to Torrance (1992:75), the institution of the cultic liturgy, set out in the Torah and interpreted by the prophets, reinforced Israel’s separation from other nations as “a people imprinted with a priestly character and invested with a vicarious mission” as mediator of divine revelation and reconciliation. This was not, however, a mere formal rite designed to guarantee propitiation between God and the people. Torrance writes:

[T]he covenanted way of response had to be worked into the very flesh and blood of Israel’s existence. It had to be impregnated into its understanding and sculptured into its very being. It had to be built into the reciprocity between God and Israel and be allowed to control the whole pattern of its life and mission in history. 

 

For Torrance (1960a:121), the covenanted way of response had to be “translated from the realm of symbolic ritual into the actual existence of His people,” for the covenanted way of response was never intended to be a dead liturgy or an empty ritual. He continues:

The worst thing that could be done with such a covenant would be to turn the symbolic ritual into an end in itself, as a means of acting upon God and bending His will to serve the ends of men. That is precisely what Israel tried to do again and again, so that God sent the prophets to protest against their use of the Cult and to demand obedience rather than sacrifice. 

As Purves (2001:63) notes, by its very nature, the covenanted way of response was intended to be written on the hearts of the people and incorporated into their existence in such a way that Israel was called to pattern its entire life after it. Similarly, notes Colyer (2001a:100), if Israel was to be a light to the nations as mediator of revelation and reconciliation, the vicarious way of response provided the people by God had to be embodied in Israel as a whole, that is, in the totality of Israel’s existence as a people charged with a priestly and vicarious life and mission. 

As God drew nearer to Israel in reconciling love, Israel’s sin was not only revealed but also intensified. As Torrance notes, this was not an accidental feature of the covenant: “[God] used the suffering and judgement of Israel to reveal the terrible nature of sin as contradiction to God’s love and grace, to uncover the deep enmity of humanity in its persistent self-will before God in his divine self-giving.” The intensification of Israel’s sin was incorporated into the “full design” of the covenant, Torrance argues, for “it was the will and the way of God’s grace to effect reconciliation with man at his very worst,” that is, in a state of stiff-necked rebellion against God. “In that ordeal,” notes Torrance, “the word and the cult were not mere letter and liturgy, but were worked out into the very existence of Israel,” as indicated in Deutero-Isaiah (Chapters 40-55) and Jeremiah (Torrance, 1992:28, 29; 2008:47). In this regard, argues Scandrett (2006:59), Torrance sees a connection between sin and human suffering, for Israel’s condition of enmity and rebellion against God was always the occasion for its suffering. For Torrance, notes Scandrett, sin may be regarded as the “disease,” with suffering the inevitable “symptom,” from which Israel (and all humanity) needs to be healed. 

As Torrance argues, in unswerving love for Israel, God worked out a way of reconciliation that did not depend on a worthy response from humanity, but made Israel’s sin and rebellion the means by which he bound it to himself in “unsullied communion.” God used the history and suffering of Israel to reveal his infinite love for humanity and to serve his unrelenting purpose of forgiveness and reconciliation, until his love achieved its ultimate purpose of final union and communion of humanity with God in Jesus Christ (Torrance, 1992:28, 29; 2008:47). More succinctly, Torrance shows how a sovereign and gracious God can use even human sin as a means of further address to his people (cf. Kruger, 1989:60). 

The great sign of the covenant was circumcision, notes Torrance, whereby the covenant was “cut into the flesh” of the people as the sign that the promises of God would be fulfilled in the life of Israel only as the word of God was “translated into its flesh,” that is, into its very existence. Circumcision was the sign that the covenant had to be written into the heart, in the “‘crucifixion’ of self-will” and the “putting off of ‘the enmity of the flesh.’” Astonishingly, however, the more God gave himself, Torrance argues, the more he forced Israel to be what, in its sin and self-will, it truly was: a “rebel.” Because the self-giving of God intensified the enmity and contradiction between Israel and God, Torrance argues that Israel was, in fact, “the suffering servant.” Israel suffered as it was broken, remade, and realigned into conformity with the covenant will of God. For Torrance, the whole concept of the “suffering servant” represents the activity of God, whereby he begins “to draw together the cords of the covenant” between himself and Israel (Torrance, 2008:47-52). 

The Servant of the Lord 

Israel’s corporate role of suffering servant is gradually associated in the mind of the people with one individual who identifies himself with the nation’s suffering. Torrance sees the vicarious embodiment and mediation of the covenant beginning to come to expression in the Isaianic “servant of the Lord,” as particularly and poignantly illustrated in Isaiah 53. Here the mediatorial and priestly figures of Moses and Aaron respectively, and the notions of guilt-bearer and sacrifice for sin, are conflated to provide the “interpretive clue” for the intercessory and vicarious role of the servant in the redemption of Israel (Torrance, 1992:75, 76; 2008:51, 52). For Torrance, notes Scandrett (2006:55, 56), this is the “penultimate stage” of mediation in Israel and reflects Torrance’s image of the “ever-deepening, spiral movement” of divine revelation (cf. Torrance, 1992:8). Torrance’s treatment of the Isaianic material, argues Scandrett, demonstrates his understanding of the “unifying and narrowing thrust of the Old Testament toward the ultimate goal of the Incarnation.”  

Moreover, the “fundamental antinomy” (Scandrett, 2006:60) between Israel’s sin and God’s holiness will be gathered up and reconciled in this one individual, for, as Torrance (1992:75, 76; 2008:51, 52) argues, the servant of the Lord is the “hypostasised actualisation” of the divinely provided way of covenant response set forth within the flesh and blood existence of Israel; that is, the entire covenanted way of response is gathered up in this one individual (cf. Scandrett, 2006:56).  Moreover, Torrance sees a messianic role envisioned for the servant, wherein both mediator and sacrifice, as well as priest and victim, are combined in a form that is both representative and substitutionary, as well as corporate and individual in its fulfilment. 

For Torrance, the Isaianic writer is struggling to articulate a vision wherein the servant of the Lord is identified with Israel as a whole, the divine Redeemer (goel) is identified with the Holy One of Israel, and the roles of Servant and Redeemer are combined and spoken of together.  Torrance argues, “It is as though the prophet wanted to say that the real servant of the Lord is the Lord himself who as goel-Redeemer has bound himself up in such a tight bond of covenant kinship with Israel that he has taken upon himself Israel’s afflicted existence and made it his own in order to redeem Israel.” For Torrance, this implies an actual state of incarnation which finally takes place within the matrix of Israel in the birth of the Son of God to the Virgin Mary (Torrance, 1992:76; cf. Colyer, 2001a:100). Thus, while Israel itself is the suffering servant, assumed into oneness with the word of God, in the servant songs of Isaiah, it is evident that the word becomes one with Israel, becoming more and more “one Israelite,” for that is the only way in which the word assumes human nature and existence into oneness with itself. For Torrance, therefore, the suffering servant is primarily to be understood as “the Word” identifying himself with Israel, and becoming “one particular Israelite, an individual person, the Messiah” (Torrance, 2008:51, 52). 

As Scandrett (2006:61) notes, Torrance clearly identifies the suffering servant of Isaiah Fifty-Three with Jesus Christ. For Torrance, the suffering servant acts from within the ontological depths of Israel’s troubled, sinful existence and, therefore, “vicariously” on behalf of Israel, that is, “as Israel in a participatory sense” (Scandrett, 2006:63). As Scandrett rightly emphasises, “The Servant’s suffering moves beyond the forms of Israel’s covenanted way of response to penetrate the essential disjunction which exists between God and Israel because of sin” (emphasis in original) and, thereby, “binds” himself to Israel in such a way as to reconstitute the nation’s relation to him so that “their true end is fully and perfectly realised in unsullied communion with himself (Torrance, 1992:29). As will be shown below (cf. Chapter Six) the servant’s participatory, ontological penetration into the depths of Israel’s existence in order to bind the nation to himself in communion is paradigmatic for Torrance’s understanding of the atoning reconciliation of Jesus Christ. 

For Torrance, argues Scandrett (2006:57, 58), the repeated juxtaposition of the Isaianic servant of the Lord and the Holy One of Israel is of new and critical importance in regard to divine revelation in Israel. “Most remarkably,” notes Scandrett, it juxtaposes God and humanity in a single individual. Moreover, it brings together the legal and sacrificial  dimensions of Israel’s life [as represented by Moses and Aaron], which, together, form the “two complementary poles” of the people’s entire existence, as encompassed in the covenanted way of response in Israel. “In emphasizing the juxtaposition of these entities as pointing beyond itself toward a single reality,” argues Scandrett, “Torrance’s basic commitment to the centrality of the Incarnation is once again made clear.” In addition, the juxtaposition of the servant of the Lord and the Holy One of Israel brings together in an unprecedented way the liturgical concepts of Mediator and Sacrifice with the moral and legal concept of Redeemer. For Torrance, argues Scandrett, this marks a “stunning development in the mind of Israel regarding the character and role of the Messiah as a Mediator between God and humanity.” This “new combination of forms” by which the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ can be apprehended shows the “progressive, unifying, and narrowing character” of God’s self-disclosure to Israel, wherein the Servant of the Lord and the Holy One of Israel are brought together, as the “ever deepening, spiral movement” (cf. Torrance, 1992:8) of revelation progresses toward its goal in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

T.F. Torrance: The Womb of the Incarnation, pt 7.

Divine Holiness and Communal Transformation 

In regard to his scientific theology, Torrance finds a basic epistemological principle in the “profound reciprocity” established in the intertwining of revelation and reconciliation in Israel that accords with his fundamental methodological axiom that realties must be known in accordance with their natures. All genuine knowledge, argues Torrance, requires a “cognitive union of the mind with its object,” wherein estrangement and alienation are removed, so that we may know reality only in accordance with its nature. The nature of the object of inquiry determines the “mode of knowing” appropriate to it, as well as the behaviour required toward it. To know God in strict accordance with the divine nature as it is disclosed to us requires an adaptation of our personal relations toward him. “Knowing God requires cognitive union with him in which our whole being is affected by his love and holiness. It is the pure in heart who see God.” For Torrance, we cannot know God without love (Torrance, 1992:25, 26).

Here again we find Torrance’s theological holism. For Torrance there is no “head-heart” dualism; rather, theology must be engaged both rationally and devotionally if we are to truly apprehend the nature of the Object of inquiry. For Torrance, theology is not merely an academic endeavour to be practiced in isolation from communal worship and personal piety; rather, theology and doxology, academics and personal devotion, form a single integrated whole, wherein knowledge of God is developed with the full engagement of both head and heart. As stated above (cf. Chapter Two), Torrance insists that true knowledge of God must be developed within the context of faith and godliness. Similarly, Torrance (1992:26) writes:

To know God and to be holy, to know God and worship, to know God and to be cleansed in mind and soul from anything that may come between people and God, to know God and be committed to him in consecration, love and obedience, go inseparably together. 

As we draw nearer to God, argues Torrance, the more “integrated” our spiritual and physical existence becomes, and the more integrated our spiritual and physical existence becomes, the more we are able to draw nearer to God. Torrance finds this principle at work in the ascetic theology of the patristic era, where stress was laid upon askesis, or “spiritual discipline in mind and life,” to facilitate an understanding of God worthy of him. Torrance sees this principle at work in Israel, wherein “intensifying conflict” and “deepening conformity” with God were being worked out in time and space. The unconditional self-giving of God required an unconditional response on the part of Israel: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Lev 19:2). By entering “relations of holiness” with God, the foundation and character of Israel’s existence as God’s “peculiar people” were affected in distinctive and idiosyncratic ways (Torrance, 1992:26, 27). Torrance continues:

Israel was the people which became so intimately involved with the holy presence of God that it was completely spoiled for any naturalistic existence as an ordinary nation, but became the means through which God worked out in the midst of the nations a way of reconciliation with himself in which the tensions embedded in man’s alienated existence are resolved and the peace of God is built into the whole of creation. Israel thus became the people impregnated with the promise of shalom for all mankind. 

As Colyer (2001a:62) notes, for Israel to know God, its communal worship, life, and thought had to be cleansed and transformed, so that Israel might be moulded into an appropriate medium of revelation and reconciliation for all humanity. Similarly, Kruger (1989:71, 72) notes that revelation and reconciliation go together as surely as God gives himself to fallen Israel and summons the nation into communion with himself. For Torrance, notes Kruger, the mediation of revelation achieves its end and completes the circle of its own movement in and through reconciliation between God and “carnal” Israel. Likewise, as Chung (2011:6) rightly notes, for Torrance revelation is not merely a business of cognition; it also involves and affects the entire corporate life of the nation. As Chung (2011:8) argues, the “key” to understanding the agonising reciprocity between God and Israel is the realisation that, unless the corporate heart or being of Israel is changed, the people’s innate weakness will “eclipse” the revelation of God and prevent the fulfilment of their role as the corporate medium of divine revelation. Hence, rather than engage Israel in a merely “tangential fashion, rippling the surface of its moral and religious consciousness” (Torrance, 1992:15), the searing light of divine revelation penetrates deep into the depths of Israel’s existence in order to transform the corporate heart of the nation. Not only does the intense reciprocity between God and Israel transform the nation, but also brings forth what Chung (2011:8) describes as “appropriate forms of articulation and a renewed being,” so that the nation may become the “ordained medium of God’s self-revelation.” “The participative response of Israel in her critical self-revision,” notes Chung, “constitutes the movement of human understanding to divine revelation.” Chung’s observation is consistent with Torrance’s scientific theological emphasis on faith, piety, and devotion as essential aspects of the epistemological process. 

From the above, we see that the reshaping and restructuring of Israel’s corporate existence, not only in terms of language and conceptual structures but also in terms of “mind,” “heart,” “soul,” and “being,” is a vital aspect of Torrance’s view of the mediation of revelation and reconciliation. Torrance’s emphasis on the transformation of Israel’s corporate “being” as a result of the nation’s encounter with God reflects not only the two-way movement of revelation and response in Israel but also the inseparability of “knowing and being” in Torrance’s scientific theology (cf. Kruger, 1989:68). Thus, we can confidently assert that, for Torrance, the mediation of revelation and reconciliation in Israel are two aspects of a single, unitary reality that is both epistemological and ontological in character. As will be shown in subsequent Chapters of the present thesis, as in Israel, the mediation of revelation and reconciliation of Jesus Christ is also both epistemological and ontological in character. 

The Covenanted Way of Response 

In electing Israel to be the mediator of revelation and reconciliation, Torrance argues, God knew the people would not be able to fulfil the provisions of the covenant by walking before God in perfect holiness. Nor would Israel be able to worship God in an appropriate way, for the covenant between God and Israel was not a covenant between God and a holy people; it was a covenant of grace between God and a sinful, rebellious people. According to Torrance, the validity of the covenant did not depend on a “contractual” fulfilment of its terms on the part of Israel; rather, it was a “unilateral covenant,” which depended solely for its fulfilment on “the unconditional grace of God and the unrelenting purpose of reconciliation which he had pledged to work out through Israel for all peoples [and therefore] it depended upon a vicarious way of response to the love of God which God himself provided within the covenant.” No matter how rebellious and sinful Israel became, it could not escape the covenant love and faithfulness of God, an aspect of the covenant brought out so poignantly in Hosea. As Torrance notes, the covenant was conditioned only by the “unstinted outflowing love of God in the continuous act of grace, of grace for grace” (Torrance, 1992:27, 28, 74; 2008:46, 47). 

The gracious nature of God’s relationship with Israel becomes more apparent when the covenant is contrasted with a “contract,” as helpfully noted by Kruger (1989:40, 41; cf. Torrance, J., 1970:51ff). Unlike a contract, that is, a “bilateral” agreement that requires fulfilment by both parties to be valid, the covenant God established with Israel was a “unilateral” agreement that depended solely upon the faithfulness of God for its fulfilment. In a unilateral movement of divine grace, God fulfilled the covenant “from both sides,” not only by freely entering into relationship with sinful humanity but also by graciously providing the means whereby sinful humanity could respond to the divine initiative. As Kruger correctly notes, “God filled Israel's hands with His own provision so that Israel could draw near to God in worship and communion. [God] provides what He requires.”                        

As Torrance (1992:73, 74) notes, in his love and mercy, God provided the means whereby weak and beggarly Israel could respond to the love of God, so that the liturgy of atonement might be incorporated into the ongoing life of the people. In an act of sheer grace, God provided Israel the all-important “middle term” between the “polarities of the covenant” (i.e., God and humanity), that is, a “covenanted way of response,” so that the people might respond in a vicarious way to God’s grace. This divinely-prepared way of sacrifice replaced the very best humanity could offer, as in the paradigmatic case of the sacrifice God provided for himself in lieu of Abraham’s offering of Isaac (Gen 22:1ff). As Torrance notes, God graciously and unilaterally provided for his people the means by which they could respond to him as covenant partner, so that Israel could come before God forgiven and sanctified in their covenant partnership and consecrated in their priestly mission to the world as mediator of revelation and reconciliation. Torrance (1960a:16) describes the covenanted way of response as a way “of response to his Will, a way of obedient conformity to His Covenant which He is pleased to accept as from his people in the Covenant.”  

In regard to God’s provision of the means of response to the divine initiative, we believe that Torrance’s concept of the “covenanted way of response” facilitates greater appreciation for divine grace in God’s relations with humanity, as revealed in Israel. As Torrance argues, God’s sovereign commitment to be God for Israel was not dependent on any salutary quality that made Israel worthy of communal relationship with a holy and righteous God; rather, divine graciousness toward Israel was prior to any worthy response by the people. God willingly entered relationship with a stiff-necked, rebellious people, so that he might be their covenant partner. At Sinai, God declared, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Ex 20:2). Only after he had declared himself their God, did God stipulate the means by which the people were to respond to his covenant love (Ex 20:3ff). God’s covenant commitment to his people was both prior to, and unconditioned by, any appropriate response on the part of Israel; that is, God’s covenant commitment was an act of sheer grace. In the words of Torrance’s younger brother, James, “[T]he indicatives of grace are always prior to the imperatives of law and human obligation” (Torrance, J., 1970:56). 

The covenanted way of response God provided Israel, however, did not imply that Israel’s liturgical sacrifices had any power to undo iniquity or expiate sin. Rather, argues Torrance, the function of the sacrificial system was to bear witness to the fact that, while the Holy One of Israel could not be approached apart from atoning reconciliation, God himself had promised to provide the propitiation for the sin of the people. Noting that the great sacrifice on the Day of Atonement occurred behind the veil in the Holy of Holies, Torrance argues that the hidden, mysterious nature of the ritual teaches us that atonement lies hidden in the mystery of God’s own being, where we are not at liberty to intrude. Yet, the cultic liturgy of sacrifice and offering gave the minds and hearts of the people something to lay hold of, even as it pointed far beyond itself to that which God alone could and would do for his people (Torrance, 1992:36). 

The pattern of the covenanted way of response becomes clear in the establishing of the covenant between God and Israel at Mount Sinai. According to Torrance, the covenant relationship between God and Israel “came to rest upon the twin foundation of the Sinaitic law and the Levitical liturgy, as represented supremely in Moses and Aaron, prophet and priest in essential complementarity and unity” (Torrance, 1956:307). Noting that even in its Sinaitic form, the covenant remains essentially a covenant of grace, Torrance (1996b:194) sees God as providing his people “a way of obedient response to his loving-kindness, a way of cleansing and restoration to fellowship with himself.” He continues:

In spite of their sin God did not give up his people but maintained with them a covenant of grace, in which he allied himself with his creatures as their God and Saviour, and committing himself to them in paternal kindness took them into communion with himself as his dear children.  

The vicarious means by which Israel was to respond to God was elaborated in the ordinances of worship described in the Pentateuch. According to Torrance (1992:74):

Not only the general pattern of the cult but the details of the liturgy were clearly designed to bring home to the people of Israel that they were not to appear before the Face of God with offerings embodying their own self-expression or representing their own naturalistic desires, or with kinds of sacrifices thought up by themselves as means of expiating guilt or propitiating God, for that was how the heathen engaged in worship, as ways of acting upon God and inducing his favour. Thus no unprescribed oblation, no uncovenanted offering, no strange fire, no incense of their own recipe, and no ritual of their own inventing, were to be intruded into their worship of God. 

Here Torrance highlights the “judgement” of grace. God’s gracious provision for Israel of the covenanted way of response carries with it a judgement and a verdict on human offerings to God. The completeness and sufficiency of God’s provision of what he requires renders all human offerings redundant (Kruger, 1989:41). The cultic liturgy was designed to witness to the fact that only God can expiate guilt, forgive sin, and bring about propitiation between himself and his people. Thus, the sacrifices, offerings, and oblations, as well as the priesthood itself, constituted the “vicarious way of covenant response in faith, obedience and worship” which God graciously provide in his steadfast love for his people (Torrance, 1992:74, 75). 

From the above, we argue that Torrance’s discussion of the mediation of reconciliation emphasises the “gracious,” “unilateral,” and “vicarious” nature of the covenanted way of response that God provided Israel, so that a sinful nation could approach a holy God in appropriate and reverent worship. These essential aspects of the mediation of reconciliation in Israel bear directly on Torrance’s understanding of the mediation of Jesus Christ. For Torrance, as Scandrett (2006:33) correctly argues, the covenanted way of response that God provided Israel sets the stage for a true understanding of God’s redemptive acts in history. While the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is “categorically unique,” for Torrance, notes Scandrett, “the Old Testament progressively reveals a pattern of relationship between God and Israel that is ultimately recapitulated and fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.” This “basic hermeneutical assumption,” argues Scandrett, has profound implications for understanding Torrance’s view of the mediation of Jesus Christ in the economy of salvation. In agreement with Scandrett, we note that the “vicarious way of covenant response” God provided Israel will finally be fully realised and faithfully enacted in the incarnate Son of God, who, as both Lamb of God and High Priest, vicariously embodies in his incarnate constitution as God and man joined in atoning reconciliation the covenanted way of response between God and humanity.

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: 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.”

T.F. Torrance: The Vicarious Humanity of Jesus Christ, pt. 4

The Unity of Revelation and Reconciliation

According to Torrance (1996b:132), the incarnation shows that revelation and reconciliation are “inseparable,” for “revelation does not achieve its end in humanity apart from reconciliation.” Though Jesus Christ was obedient throughout the whole course of his life, he had to “learn” obedience. Though conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus was born in the womb of a sinner, within the compass of sinful flesh. Torrance continues:

As the Son of Adam he was born into our alienation, our God-forsakenness and darkness, and grew within our bondage and ignorance, so that he had to beat his way forward by blows, as St. Luke puts it, growing in wisdom and growing in grace, before God as well as before men. He learned obedience by the things which he suffered, for that obedience from within our alienated humanity was a struggle with our sin and temptation . . . fought out with strong crying and tears and achieved in desperate anguish and weakness under the crushing load of the world’s sin and the divine judgment. Throughout the whole course of his life he bent the will of man in perfect submission to the will of God, bowing under the divine judgment against our unrighteousness, and offered a perfect obedience to the Father, that we might be redeemed and reconciled to him.

Finally, at Calvary, Jesus “penetrated to the utmost extremity of our self-alienating flight from God where we are trapped in death, and turned everything around so that out of the fearful depths of our darkness and dereliction we may cry with him, ‘Our Father.’” In his anguished experience at Gethsemane, where he wrestled with God over the cup he had been given to drink, Jesus cried out, “Yet not my will but thine be done.” As Torrance notes, it is “your will and my will,” that is, our Adamic self-will that Jesus appropriated in the incarnation, which is “bent back in the agony of Gethsemane in total obedience to the will of the Father . . .” Thus, we must think of “the whole life and activity of Jesus from the cradle to the grave” as constituting the vicarious human response which God has graciously and unconditionally provided for us (Torrance, 1992:79, 80; cf. 1988a:167).

In the midst of our sinful humanity, the incarnate Word of God takes the way of “vicarious” suffering and judgement. The revelation he embodies is not complete apart from reconciliation, “for only through reconciliation can revelation complete its own movement within man, bringing out of our humanity the obedient reception of revelation which is an essential part of its very substance.” As he who is both God and man, Jesus Christ penetrates to the depths of our sinful existence in order to overcome our estrangement and reconcile us to the Father. He acts from the side of God in the faithful revelation of divine truth and, at the same time, acts from the side of man “in the faithfulness of a life wholly obedient to the Father” (Torrance, 1996b:132, 133).

Comment: Note here the continued “holism” of Torrance’s theology. He does not allow a dualism (separation) between revelation and reconciliation. Both revelation and reconciliation occur “simultaneously" as the eternal Son of God assumes human flesh. Jesus both reveals the Father and reconciles us to the Father in one unitary movement of revelation and reconciliation.

Representation and Substitution

Torrance (1992:80, 81; cf. 1988a:168) asserts the “radical nature of Jesus’ mediation of our human response to God” by bringing together, and “thinking into each other,” the concepts of “representation” and “substitution.” It will not do, argues Torrance, to think of what Jesus has done for us merely in terms of “representation,” for that would imply that Jesus represents our response merely as the “leader” of humanity in its response to God. On the other hand, if Jesus is merely a “substitute” in detachment from us, who simply takes our place in an external forensic way, then his act has no ontological bearing upon us, but, rather, is “an empty transaction over our heads.” As Torrance argues, a “merely representative” or “merely substitutionary” concept of vicarious mediation is “bereft of any saving significance.” He continues:

But if representation and substitution are combined and allowed to interpenetrate each other within the incarnational union of the Son of God with us in which he has actually taken our sin and guilt upon his own being, then we may have a profounder and truer grasp of the vicarious humanity in the mediatorship of Christ, as one in which he acts in our place, in our stead, on our behalf but out of the ontological depths of our actual human being.

Here Torrance plainly reveals the necessary connection between his assertion of the incarnational assumption of fallen Adamic flesh and the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Against “external” concepts of representation and substitution, Jesus Christ acts on our behalf, and in our place, from “within” the ontological depths of his incarnational penetration into the fallen flesh he assumed in common with sinful humanity. Because Jesus has identified himself with us in the assumption of our diseased and sinful humanity, there is an ontological connection between us and what he does as our representative and substitute; that is, Jesus acts on our behalf and in our place, throughout the whole course of his life, from within the depths of fallen Adamic flesh. As Torrance (1976a:136) notes elsewhere:

[T]he Son of God united himself with us in our actual human condition so intimately and profoundly that through his healing and sanctifying of our human nature in himself we may be made with him sons of God. As such he acts with us and for us and on our behalf towards the Father in all our distinctive human experiences as children of God, such as confession, penitence, sorrow, chastisement, submission to the divine judgement, and faith, obedience, love, prayer, praise adoration, that we may share with him what he is in his ascension and self-presentation before the Father as the beloved son in whom he is well-pleased.

The Son of God assumes sinful human flesh, then “as man,” as son of Adam and son of Israel, acts vicariously for us, as our representative and substitute, in all our human experiences as children of God, so that we may share in his intimate experience as the Father’s beloved Son. As Torrance notes elsewhere (1986b:479):

Although atonement was certainly the Act of God himself, it was the Act of God as Man, and thus act of God translated into our human existence and made to issue out of it as a fully human act in the obedient self-offering of man in holiness and filial love to God the Father and in unbroken fellowship with him.

Because it is God who acts “as man” on our behalf and in our place, “central place” must be given to the representative and substitutionary aspects of the humanity of Jesus Christ in atoning reconciliation. As Torrance (1986b:479) argues:

Now if it was as Man as well as God that Jesus Christ took our place, he must be recognised as acting in our place in all the basic acts of man’s response to God: in faith and repentance, in obedience and prayer, in receiving God’s blessing and in thanksgiving for it.

Jesus Christ acts “as man,” “in our place,” in all aspects of humankind’s response to God. In the gospel, therefore, we do not have to do simply with the Word of God and the human response to it; rather, we have to do with the “all-significant middle term,” that is, “the divinely provided response in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.” Because he is the one in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), the humanity of Jesus Christ occupies a “unique place in the creative ground of our humanity” (Torrance, 1971:145). Torrance continues:

[The vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ] fulfils a representative and substitutionary role in all our relations with God, including every aspect of human response to Him: such as trusting and obeying, understanding and knowing, loving and worshipping. Jesus Christ is presented to us in the Gospels as He who in and through His humanity took our place, acting in our name and on our behalf before God, freely offering in Himself what we could not offer and offering it in our stead, the perfect response of man to God in a holy life of faith and prayer and praise, the self-offering of the Beloved Son with whom the Father is well pleased.

For Torrance, Jesus is our representative and substitute in every aspect of our response to God. “[E]ven in our believing, praying, and worshipping of God . . . he has yoked himself to us in such a profound way that he stands in for us and upholds us at every point in our human relations before God (Torrance, 1994:30, 31).

In this regard, a clear description of what Torrance means by “the vicarious humanity” of Jesus Christ is found in Torrance (2008:205 n 32), edited by R.T. Walker:

“Standing in our place” (Lat, vicarius, substitute). Christ in his humanity stands in our place and represents us, and hence the term the “vicarious humanity” of Christ in which the humanity of Christ takes our place and represents us, so that what is true of him is true of us, and what he did in his (our) humanity is ours.

Hart (2008:87, 88) is particularly helpful in his articulation of the relationship between the substitutionary and representative aspects of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ and its connection to humanity in general. As Hart asks, if the humanity of Jesus Christ is the locus of God’s regenerative and redemptive activity, then in what sense are we actually healed and reconciled in the process? Is Torrance guilty of an “ontological fiction” that leaves humanity unhealed and unchanged? The answer is, of course, “No,” because as the material quoted above illustrates, Torrance understands that all Jesus is and does, he is and does “for us.” In assuming fallen Adamic flesh, the Son of God unites humanity to himself, thereby establishing an ontological bond by virtue of which, notes Hart, “his particular humanity was rendered inclusive in its relationship to ours.” All human beings have drawn near to God in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ and are “included” in him, prior to, and apart from, any salvific response on our part. Because we have no existence apart from the “ontological solidarity” God has established with us in the hypostatic union of God and humanity in Jesus Christ, what takes place in the incarnation and throughout the whole course of Jesus’ life of filial obedience to the Father is no ontological fiction but, rather, impacts us in the depths of our being. As Hart notes, this is no mere philosophical notion of “concrete universals” or “primitive notions of ‘corporate personality’”; rather, this is the specifically Christian claim that Jesus Christ is the Creator Logos, the one in whom we live and move and have our being and who, in taking human flesh to himself, binds us to himself by virtue of both his humanity and his deity.

Following Torrance, Hart (2008:88) goes on to state, quite correctly, that “all” humans are united to the regenerated and sanctified humanity of Jesus Christ and are, thereby, granted access to the life of “sonship.” Yet, substitution is “not the whole story,” for substitution must be complemented by, and come to fruition in, our active participation, as we are led by the Spirit to become what we are by virtue of our ontological union with Christ. The union Christ established with us in his body and blood demands our union with him in his body and blood, as we draw near to him in worship and the sacraments. Our participation in baptism and the Eucharist (cf. below) bear witness to our appropriation, by faith, through the Spirit, of what is already ours in Jesus Christ (cf. Torrance, 1976a:111).

By bringing together and thinking into each other the concepts of “representation” and “substitution,” Torrance is in complete harmony with the New Testament (cf. Hebrews) description of Christ as both our High Priest (representative) and sacrifice (substitute), the “Offerer” and the “Offering” (cf. Torrance, 1988a:173-178). In representing our humanity before the Father, Jesus Christ is the High Priest representing the people before God. At the same time, he is also the sacrifice, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Rev 13:8; Jn 1:29). He is our substitute, taking our place and offering to the Father the life of perfect filial obedience we are unable to offer. As Kettler (2005:6) notes, this is the true sense of “vicarious”: doing something for another in their place, doing for them what they are unable to do for themselves. This is the heart of Torrance’s understanding of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.

References

see Vicarious Humanity, pt 1.