T.F. Torrance: The Vicarious Humanity of Jesus Christ, pt. 7

Sanctification 
 

The Pauline principle, “I, yet not I but Christ,” applies not only to justification by faith but also to sanctification. Like justification, sanctification is an objective reality already accomplished in Jesus Christ. Torrance (1960:231) writes:

By the sanctification of our human nature we refer to what was wrought by the Son, not only in his active and passive obedience, but through the union he established in his birth, life, death, and resurrection between our fallen human nature and his divine nature. (emphasis in original)

In the incarnation, Jesus not only assumed our fallen flesh from the Virgin Mary; he also “sanctified it in the very act of assumption and all through the holy Life he lived in it from the beginning to the end.” For Torrance, the incarnation itself is a “redeeming event,” beginning with Christ’s birth in Bethlehem and reaching out to its full telos in his death and resurrection. Thus, sanctification is an intrinsic aspect of the incarnation. Jesus’ incarnational assumption of our fallen flesh deals with our original sin by “sanctifying” our human nature as it is brought into union with his holy nature. As Torrance notes, “In his [Christ’s] holy assumption of our unholy humanity, his purity wipes away our impurity, his holiness covers our corruption, his nature heals our nature.” At the same, the active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ deal with our actual sin and its penalty. As Calvin wrote in a famous section of his Institutes (2008:II.16.19; 338), this applies to the entire life of Jesus, from birth through death, resurrection and ascension, for throughout the whole course of his filial obedience to the Father, as Torrance argues, “he has sanctified our conception, birth, childhood, youth, manhood, and death, in himself” (Torrance, 1960:231, 232). This is “supremely important,” notes Torrance. He continues:

[F]or it is only through this union of the human nature with his divine nature that Jesus Christ gives us not only the negative righteousness of the remission of sins but makes us share in the positive righteousness of his obedient and saving life lived in perfect filial relation to the Father from the cradle to the grave.

If we neglect the sanctifying aspect of the union of divine and human natures in Jesus Christ, argues Torrance, we reduce atonement to a “merely forensic non-imputation of sin.” At the same time, we lose the redemptive significance of the humanity of Jesus Christ by failing to give his entire life its proper place in the doctrine of atonement. Thus, in regard to the atonement, full consideration must be given to the union of divine and human natures in Jesus Christ, for it is this “saving and sanctifying union” in which we are given to share that belongs to the very substance of our faith and life in Jesus (Torrance, 1960:232). In other words, as Torrance continues:

[W]hat we are concerned with is the filial relation which the Son of God lived out in our humanity in perfect holiness and love, achieving that in himself in assuming our human nature into oneness with himself, and on that ground giving us to share in it, providing us with a fullness in his own obedient Sonship from which we all may receive. (emphasis in original)

Thus, for Torrance, both justification and sanctification are objective realities vicariously appropriated for us through the union of God and humanity realised in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Original sin is healed and cleansed through the sanctifying union of divine and fallen Adamic nature, while our actual sin is redeemed through the whole course of Jesus’ obedient life, as he stood in our place, vicariously offering to the Father the perfect response of faith and obedience we are unable to offer.

Rejection of Ordo Salutis

Torrance’s understanding of saving faith as an essential aspect of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ has profound implications for the doctrines of justification and sanctification. Nevertheless, confusion may arise for those who are accustomed to thinking of justification and sanctification as two separate events in a “process” of salvation. In Torrance’s thought, justification and sanctification are objective realities “already” realised in the hypostatic union of divine and human natures in Jesus Christ and subjectively appropriated for us throughout the whole course of his filial obedience to the Father. Both justification and sanctification are integral aspects of the “Godward-humanward,” “humanward-Godward” movement of mediation in Jesus Christ. In his union of divine and human natures, Jesus Christ is, at once, the justifying God and man justified (Torrance, 1960:232, 233).

This objectively realised, “once and for all,” aspect of justification, however, was lost in the ordo salutis of Protestant Scholasticism, wherein justification and sanctification were assigned different, successive stages in an ongoing “process” of salvation (cf. Olson, 2002:276ff). In the Westminster Standards of later Scots theology, notes Torrance, justification was put first, with union with Christ and sanctification following upon the “judicial act” that takes place in justification. In the New Testament, however, argues Torrance, “sanctification” and “consecration” in Christ are spoken of in the perfect tense and express the same thing. “Christ has already consecrated or sanctified himself for our sakes, so that we are already consecrated or sanctified in him - therefore sanctification or consecration is imputed to us by his free grace just like justification.” These are not, however, two different processes or events. Rather, “sanctification” in the Johannine literature and “consecration” in Hebrews correspond closely to the Pauline concept of “justification” (Torrance, 1960:233, 234).

Torrance finds this teaching “deeply embedded” in Calvin’s theology, although it was obscured in subsequent “Calvinism.” In regard to the “subjective” aspects of justification, wherein God’s righteousness and holiness is translated and appropriated into human life, Calvin, in the Geneva Catechism, spoke of the consecrated and sanctified flesh or life of Jesus in which we are given to share, so that even his obedience is “imputed” to us. Through the union Christ wrought with us in the incarnation and throughout the whole course of his filial obedience to the Father, we are given to share in his holy and obedient life. Essentially the same point was made by Knox, who said that justification, regeneration, and sanctification flow out of our “adoption” in Jesus Christ (Torrance, 1960:234).

For Torrance, justification and sanctification are not sequential steps in a logical, orderly process of salvation. While the two terms can be conceptually distinguished, they are inseparable in Torrance’s thought, for both are objective and subjective realities fulfilled once-for-all in the incarnate constitution of Jesus Christ as lived throughout the whole course of his filial obedience to the Father, as our Representative and Substitute. Thus, justification is in no wise dependent upon the believer’s personal decision of faith; rather, it is an objective reality already subjectively realised on behalf of the believer by Jesus Christ (Torrance, 1960:235, 236).

Sola Gratia

In arguing that Jesus acts on our behalf in all aspects of man’s response to God, Torrance follows Barth, and the Reformed tradition in general, in asserting that salvation is “all of grace.”As Torrance notes, however, both liberal and evangelical theologians object to the assertion that Jesus Christ acts in our place in “all” aspects of our response to God. According to their argument, God may do everything else but he cannot act for us in regard to the personal decision of faith and repentance, which, it is argued, each person must choose for himself or herself. Thus, liberals and evangelicals eschew any doctrine of “total substitution,” arguing in a logical-causal manner that “all of grace” implies “nothing of man” and, thereby, threatens human freedom. Torrance argues, however, that both liberals and evangelicals juxtapose God and man, or grace and human freedom, in a “logical” way in which all of grace must necessarily mean nothing of man. This logical connection between divine grace and human freedom betrays the deep entrenchment of the Latin heresy (see post, 3/9/11) in Western theology, with its construal of the “gospel” in dualist and “abstractive” terms. Torrance notes further that it is an “unbaptised rationalism” of this kind that frequently characterises fundamentalist theology, particularly in its apologetics and polemics (Torrance, 1986b:480).

Justification by faith means that we reject all forms of self-justification. We look away from ourselves and exclusively toward Christ for the locus of justification. As Torrance (1960:238) argues:

Justification by grace alone remains the sole ground of the Christian life; we never advance beyond it, as if justification were only the beginning of a new self-righteousness, the beginning of a life of sanctification which is what we do in response to justification. Of course we are summoned to live out day by day what we already are in Christ through his self-consecration or sanctification, but sanctification is not what we do in addition to what God has done in justification.

Sanctification is not something the believer “adds to” justification by a “new self-righteousness.” Rather, both justification and sanctification are realised in Christo; that is, both are intrinsic to Christ’s incarnate assumption of fallen Adamic life and the whole course of his filial obedience to the Father. Torrance argues, however, that there is a tendency in the Westminster Catechisms, evidenced by their emphasis on the Ten Commandments, to return to the old Roman notion of infused sanctification worked out through strict adherence to legal precepts. The insistence that something must be added to justification and sanctification appears in both liberal and evangelical Protestantism in the idea of “co-redemption” and its emphasis on an “existential decision” as the means whereby we “make real” for ourselves the kerygma of the New Testament. This effectively means, argues Torrance, that in the last resort, our salvation depends on our own personal decision. For Torrance, however, justification by faith calls into question everything we have done as believers. As a Reformed theologian, he rejects any idea of co-redemption and aligns himself with the theology of the old Scots Confession and its assertion that “we willingly spoil ourselves of all honour and glory of our own salvation and redemption, as we also do of our regeneration and sanctification.” As Torrance rightly asserts, justification by grace alone guards the Gospel from corruption, whether by Evangelicalism, liberalism, or Roman Catholicism (Torrance, 1960:238, 239).

Next post circa September 1, 2011 A.D.

References

Calvin, J. 2008. Institutes of the Christian Religion (translated by H. Beveridge). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. 1,059 pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1960. Justification: Its Radical Nature and Place in Reformed Doctrine and Life. Scottish Journal of Theology, vol 13, no 3. pp. 225-246. Also available in Torrance (1996b:150-168).

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

Torrance, T.F. 1986b. Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy. Scottish Journal of Theology, vol 39, pp. 461-482.

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

Torrance, T.F. 1994. Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 71 pp.

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

Torrance, T.F. et al. 1999. A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry (edited by G. Dawson & J. Stein). Edinburgh: Handel Press. 150 pp.

T.F. Torrance: The Vicarious Humanity of Jesus Christ, pt. 6

This post is intimately connected to the previous post regarding the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ as it relates to “faith.” This and the following post address the important topics of justification and sanctification. When I began studying Torrance, I could quickly see how salvation was “objectively” accomplished for all humanity in Jesus Christ. Yet it took me several years and much of the writing of a doctoral dissertation to begin to grasp the “subjective” aspects of salvation. “How does it apply to me” “What is required of me?” I now realise my thinking was constrained by a traditional view of the Protestant ordo salutis. Read on to learn more.

Justification

Torrance finds this understanding of faith (see previous post) in St. Paul’s teaching that we are “justified by faith” and that “the just shall live by faith” (cf. Rom 1:17; 3:28). For Torrance, these passages do not refer to the faith of the individual believer; rather, they refer to “the faith of God.” According to Torrance, Paul’s phrase, “the just shall live by faith,” comes from Habakkuk (cf. 2:4) and, in a commentary on the same found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, is interpreted to mean that the just live from “the faith of God,” as also understood by Athanasius, Calvin, and Barth (Torrance, 1994:31; Torrance, et. al., 1999:25). In regard to the locus of justifying faith, Torrance (1960:236) writes:

[Jesus Christ] stood in our place, taking our cause upon him, also as Believer, as the Obedient One who was himself justified before God as his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased. He offered to God . . . a perfect faith and response which we are unable to offer, and he appropriated all God’s blessings which we are unable to appropriate. Through union with him we share in his faith, in his obedience, in his trust and appropriation of the Father’s blessing; we share in his justification before God. Therefore when we are justified by faith, this does not mean that it is our faith that justifies us, far from it - It is the faith of Christ alone that justifies us, but we in faith flee from our own acts even of repentance, confession, trust and response, and take refuge in the obedience and faithfulness of Christ - “Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” That is what it means to be justified by faith. (emphasis in original)

Justification is an objective reality (cf. Torrance, 1960:228, 233) appropriated for us by Jesus Christ, who rendered to the Father the perfect faith and obedience we are unable to offer. In the union with Christ wrought by “the wonderful exchange,” in which he assumed our poverty and gave us his riches, humanity is made to share in the beloved Son’s justification before God. This interpretation, however, does not denigrate the faith of the individual believer. Rather, in Torrance’s understanding of the “polar relation” of faith, the “primary pole” is God’s faith. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is the faithful one who lays hold of us and brings us into relationship with himself. Within that relationship, the “secondary pole” is that of the believer and his or her response of faith; yet, the human response is an act of faith “evoked by,” and “sustained by,” the faithfulness of God, so that far from being an act of worship arising from the individual believer, it is “a gift of God” (Torrance, 1994:31, 32; Torrance, et. al., 1999:25). As Torrance argues elsewhere (1992:84):

Thus the very faith with which we confess is the faith of Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us in a life and death of utter trust and belief in God the Father. Our faith is altogether grounded in him who is “the author and finisher of our faith,” on whom faith depends from start to finish.

Comment: Torrance has been criticised for putting “too much” emphasis on the vicarious faith "of" Christ and, thereby, undermining the importance of the faith of the individual believer. Yet, as Torrance argues, the faith "of" Jesus Christ does NOT undermine your faith and my faith; rather, it undergirds it, establishes it, even makes it possible. Your faith and my faith is a participation in the faith "of" Jesus Christ offered by the Son to the Father on our behalf.

Following John McLeod Campbell, Torrance argues that justification is not merely the “non-imputation” of sin which we accept by “our” faith; rather, it is a “participation” in the righteousness or “actualised holiness” of Jesus Christ, who sanctified himself on our behalf so that we might be sanctified in him. Thus, “to be justified by faith is to be justified in him in whom we believe, not by an act of our own faith as such” (Torrance, 1976a:141).

As Torrance (1960:236, 237) notes, because our faith rests in, and is undergirded by, the faith of Jesus Christ, the great Reformer, John Knox (c. 1510–1572), hesitated to use the expression, “justification by faith,” for its common usage seems to transfer emphasis from Jesus Christ and his faith to our own acts of trust or believing. In later Scots theology, however, anthropocentric questions regarding faith arose because the believer’s heart turned inward to reflect upon the nature of his or her own faith, rather than taking assurance in the faith of Christ. In this regard, argues Torrance, whenever questions arise regarding “justifying faith,” we are thrown back upon ourselves and doubts are cast on assurance, for if we must rely upon our own repentance and faith, who can be sure of his or her own salvation? For both Knox and Calvin, however, questions of assurance had little place because they understood faith as grounded, not upon the believer’s faith, but upon the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Thus, as Torrance rightly asserts, when we use the expression, “justification by faith alone,” we must be “crystal clear” that by “faith alone” we mean by “the grace of Christ alone.”

Moreover, just as justification is “objectively” realised in Jesus Christ, justification is “subjectively” realised for mankind through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. As Torrance argues, what Jesus did in his human nature was not for his own sake; rather, all he did was for our sake. Throughout the whole course of his obedient life and death, he stood in our place, acting vicariously on our behalf. He is the Word of God brought to bear upon man, but he is also man hearing that Word and responding to it by faith. He is “the great Believer,” who vicariously believes for us, in our place, and in our name. Moreover, he is both the will of God enacted in human flesh and man responding perfectly to that will, bending our human will back in perfect obedience to the Father. Likewise, in regard to justification, he is both “the embodiment of God’s justifying act” and “our human appropriation of it” (Torrance, 1960:233). Torrance continues:

In that unity of the divine and the human, justification was fulfilled in Christ from both sides, from the side of the justifying God and from the side of justified man . . . Justification as objective act of the redeeming God and justification as subjective actualization of it in our estranged human existence have once and for all taken place - in Jesus.

Comment: Justification is not a “potentiality” waiting to be “actualised” by our personal decision of faith. Justification is already fully accomplished in our place and on our behalf by Jesus Christ. Jesus has not realised justification in merely an “objective” way that remains to be “subjectively” realised in you and me by something we must do, for example, making a personal decision of faith. To be sure, we are not justified by our own personal act of faith (as in modern evangelicalism); we are justified by the faith “of” Jesus Christ, the one True Believer, who offers the perfect response of faith to the Father on behalf of all. We must rid ourselves of our ingrained Pelagian notions that there must be something we have to do in order to “be saved.” To be sure, nothing remains undone; there is nothing we can add to the salvation already accomplished for us by Jesus Christ. All that is needed for our salvation, including repentance, faith, and obedience, has been accomplished on our behalf and in our place by the incarnate Son of God, the one True Believer.

As the divine Son of the Father, Jesus “embodies” the divine act of justification from the side of God; as the human son of Mary, he “appropriates” justification from the side of man, so that both the objective (i.e., Godward-manward) and subjective (i.e., manward-Godward) aspects of justification are fulfilled in his incarnate person.

Torrance (1960:236) expresses the relationship between the “objective” and “subjective” aspects of justification, and their relation to union with Christ through the Spirit, as follows:

Justification has been fulfilled subjectively as well as objectively in Jesus Christ, but that objective and subjective justification is objective to us. It is freely imputed to us by grace objectively and we through the Spirit share in it subjectively as we are united to Christ. His subjective justification becomes ours, and it is subjective in us as well as in him, but only subjective in us because it has been made subjectively real in our own human nature, in our own human flesh in Jesus, our Brother, and our Mediator.

Note that Torrance does not say justification is subjectively realised in the believer when he or she “accepts” Christ through a personal decision of faith. To the contrary, justification is subjectively realised in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, a reality in which we share through union with the Risen Christ. For Torrance, justification by faith is a “once and for all” reality that has been objectively and subjectively fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who, in the hypostatic union of God and humanity, is, at once, the embodiment of God’s justifying act and the human appropriation of that act on behalf of all humanity.

(next post, on sanctification, August 15)

References

Torrance, T.F. 1960. Justification: Its Radical Nature and Place in Reformed Doctrine and Life. Scottish Journal of Theology, vol 13, no 3. pp. 225-246. Also available in Torrance (1996b:150-168).

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

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

Torrance, T.F. 1994. Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 71 pp.

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

Torrance, T.F. et al. 1999. A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry (edited by G. Dawson & J. Stein). Edinburgh: Handel Press. 150 pp.

T.F. Torrance: The Vicarious Humanity of Jesus Christ, pt. 5

With this and the following posts, we get into the heart of Torrance’s doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.

Vicarious Humanity and Human Response

A clearer understanding of Torrance’s doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ may be gained by an exploration of the relationship between the humanity of Jesus and the mediation of the human response to God.

Following Scottish pastor and theologian, John McLeod Campbell (Torrance, 1976a:141), Torrance identifies Galatians 2:20 as a passage of “primary importance” in his doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, a passage he personally translates as follows (Torrance, 1994:31; Torrance, et. al., 1999:24, 25; cf. Torrance, 1957:113):

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I. But Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Commenting on his translation of this passage, Torrance (1994:31; Torrance, et. al., 1999:25) argues:

“The faith of the Son of God” is to be understood here not just as my faith in him, but as the faith of Christ himself, for it refers primarily to Christ’s unswerving faithfulness, his vicarious and substitutionary faith which embraces and undergirds us, such that when we believe we must say with St. Paul “not I but Christ,” even in our act of faith.

Galatians 2:20 is the paradigmatic text for understanding Torrance’s doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. As Torrance (1992:98) argues, this text informs all our human responses to God, including faith, conversion, worship, the sacraments, and evangelism (cf. Torrance, 1992:81-98). The relationship between the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ and specific aspects of human response to God will be the subject of the remainder of the present chapter.

Faith

Torrance’s early article on faith (1957) ignited a “firestorm” of controversy. In this article, Torrance argues that human faith is grounded in God’s faithfulness, indeed, that faith and believing do not apply to humanity, but to God. Torrance’s understanding of faith and its relation to the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ reveals the “fundamental contours” of his theology, particularly in regard to the “once-for-allness” of what God has accomplished in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ (Thimell, 2008:27, 28).

While we are accustomed to thinking of faith as something we possess, or as an activity in which we engage, faith is not to be construed as an independent, autonomous act which arises from a base within ourselves (Torrance, 1992:81, 82). Arguing that the intellectual aspect of faith (pistis) is grounded in “the basic fact of the faithfulness of God,” Torrance (1957:111) notes that the Old Testament concept of faith (’emunah) mirrors the “constancy” and “steadfastness” of a parent to her child (cf. Is 49:15), and is properly applied to God in his covenant faithfulness, not to man (cf. Dt 7:9). Thus, faith and belief do not properly describe a virtue or quality of human beings; rather, “they describe man as taking refuge from his own frailty and instability in God who is firm and steadfast.”

The biblical conception of faith is rooted in the covenant relationship between God and Israel. In the “community of reciprocity” established between God and his people, there is a reciprocal movement of faith, that is, a “polarity between the faithfulness of God and the answering faithfulness of man.” Even when the people’s faith faltered, God would not let them go. Despite their rebellion and unfaithfulness, God held on to them in “undergirding” and “utterly invariant” faithfulness, as revealed in his covenant love for Israel. Hence, the ultimate ground of Israel’s faith toward God was God’s faithfulness toward Israel. As Torrance argues, the steadfast faithfulness of God is the ground on which redemption rests, as the divinely prepared pattern of Israel’s cultic liturgy attests (Torrance, 1992:82).

The New Testament concept of faith is not different, although it is “intensely personalised” in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. He is “the Truth of God actualized in our midst, the incarnate faithfulness of God” (Torrance, 1971:154; 1992:82). In an important passage for understanding the relation between human faith (pistis), God, and the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, Torrance (1957:113; cf. 1971:154) describes Jesus Christ as the “embodiment and actualisation” of human faith in covenant with God. He writes:

Like the Old Testament, the New Testament also lays emphasis upon the faithfulness of God, and requires from man a corresponding faithfulness. But in the gospel the steadfast faithfulness of God has achieved its end in righteousness and truth in Jesus Christ, for in Him it has been actualised as Truth, and is fulfilled in our midst. Jesus Christ is not only the Truth of God but also Truth of God become man, the Truth of God become truth of man. As such, Jesus is also the truth of man before God, for God, and toward God. Jesus Christ is thus not only the incarnation of the Divine pistis, but He is the embodiment and actualization of man’s pistis in covenant with God. He is not only the Righteousness of God, but the embodiment and actualization of our human righteousness before God.

The Old Testament concept of the faithfulness of God is actualised in Jesus Christ, who, at the same time, is the embodiment and actualisation of man’s faith toward God. In his incarnate constitution as God and man in one person, Jesus Christ manifests a “twofold” faithfulness or steadfastness; that is, “the steadfastness of God and the steadfastness of man in obedience to God.” Jesus Christ is both the Word of God revealed to man and man in steadfast obedience and faithfulness to that Word. As Torrance argues, “He is from the side of man, man’s pistis answering to God’s pistis, as well as from the side of God, God’s pistis requiring man’s pistis: as such He lived out the life of the Servant, fulfilling in Himself our salvation in righteousness and truth.” Torrance finds this truth summed up in the New Testament assertion that Jesus Christ is both the faithful “Yes” of God to man and the faithful “Amen” of man to God (cf. 2Cor 1:18-20). “He offers to God for us, and is toward God in His own person and life, our human response of obedience and faithfulness” (Torrance, 1957:114).

In this regard, Torrance notes two great aspects of the gospel which need fuller consideration in modern theology than they have been given. First, the “whole of our salvation” is dependent upon the “faithfulness of God.” It is God’s faithfulness that undergirds and supports our “feeble and faltering” faith, and enfolds it in his own. In Jesus Christ, we are unable to disentangle our faith from the faithfulness of God, for it is the nature of our faith to be implicated in the faithfulness of Jesus. Second, Jesus Christ is not only the incarnate Word of God; he is also “Believer,” “Believer for us,” “vicariously Believer, whose very humanity is the embodiment of our salvation” (Torrance, 1957:114). Torrance continues:

In Him who is Man of our humanity, we are graciously given to share, and so to participate in the whole course of His reconciling obedience from His birth to His death. That He stood in our place and gave to God account for us, that He believed for us, was faithful for us, and remains faithful even when we fail Him again and again, is the very substance of our salvation and the anchor of our hope.

In his solidarity with humanity, Jesus Christ stands in our place, in his life and in his death, in utter faithfulness to God and man. In his complete filial obedience and faithfulness to the Father, Jesus offers to God the “perfect response of faith” which we are unable to offer; that is, Jesus “offers to God, and is toward God in His own person and life, our human response of faith and obedience to God.” He is man keeping faith and truth with “perfect correspondence” between his life and the word of God. In Jesus, there is “utter consistency” between the revealed word of God and man hearing, believing, and obeying that word (Torrance, 1971:154). Jesus enters into the relationship between the faithfulness of God and the unfaithfulness of human beings to restore the faithfulness of mankind by grounding it in his own faithfulness, thereby perfectly answering God’s faithfulness (Torrance, 1992:82). Torrance continues:

Thus Jesus steps into the actual situation where we are summoned to have faith in God, to believe and trust in him, and he acts in our place and in our stead from within the depths of our unfaithfulness and provides us freely with a faithfulness in which we share. He does that as Mediator between God and man, yet precisely as man united to us and taking our place at every point where we human beings . . . are called to have faith in the Father, to believe in him and trust him.

As Mediator between God and man, Jesus steps into the arena of human faith in order to act in our place from within the depths of our fallen and unfaithful humanity. As Torrance argues, “[I]f we think of belief, trust or faith as forms of human activity before God, then we must think of Jesus Christ as believing, trusting and having faith in God the Father on our behalf and in our place.” Even in regard to our belief, Jesus acts vicariously, that is, in our place, offering to the Father the fullness of faith we are unable to offer. Torrance illustrates his argument with a story about teaching his young daughter to walk. While the little child held firmly to her father’s hand as tightly as she could, it was not her feeble grasp that enabled her to remain steady, but, rather, her father’s strong grip on her hand. As Torrance argues, “This is surely how God’s faithfulness actualised in Jesus Christ has hold of our weak and faltering faith and holds it securely in his hand” (Torrance, 1992:82, 83; cf. 1994:32; et. al., 1999:26).

For Torrance, our response of faith is a “free participation” in the faithful response of Jesus Christ already made on our behalf. Our response of faith is encompassed “within the ring of faithfulness which Christ has already thrown around us, when in faith we rely not on our own believing but wholly on his vicarious response of faithfulness toward God.” Hence, Christ’s faith undergirds our feeble faith and enfolds it in his own. Moreover, since the faith of the incarnate Word includes both the faith of God and the faith of man, “we are unable to disentangle our acts of faith in Christ from their implication in the eternal faithfulness of God” (Torrance, 1971:154).

For Torrance, faith is a “polar concept” that “reposes upon and derives from the prior faithfulness of God which has been translated permanently into our actual human existence in Jesus Christ.” We do not rely upon our own faith, “but upon the faith of Christ which undergirds and upholds our faith” (Torrance, 1960:235). In the “polar relation” between Christ’s faith and our faith, “our faith is laid hold of, enveloped, and upheld by his unswerving faithfulness.” Jesus Christ takes our place, making our cause his own, and offering to the Father the response of faith and love we are altogether unable to offer. Human faith, therefore, has its proper place, not within the autonomous individual, but within the “polar relationship” between God and mankind, a relationship that is “actualised” in Jesus Christ, with whom we are yoked together and made to share in his vicarious faith and faithfulness on our behalf. Through his incarnational and atoning union with us, our faith is implicated in his faith; yet, far from being depersonalised, our faith is made to issue “freely and spontaneously” out of our own lives before God. To be sure, we rest in the faithfulness of the incarnate Saviour, and even the way in which we rest is undergirded by his own faithfulness. For Torrance, therefore, the relation between our responses in faith to the vicarious faith of Christ can be summed up in the Pauline principle, “not I but Christ.” Even in our believing we must say with St. Paul, “I believe, yet not I but Christ” (Torrance, 1992:83, 84; 1994:31, 32; Torrance, et. al., 1999:25; cf. 1957:113).

References

Thimell, D. 2008. Torrance’s Doctrine of Faith. The Princeton Theological Review, vol XIV, no. 2, issue 39. Available at http://www.princetontheologicalreview.org/issues_pdf/39.pdf

Torrance, T.F. 1957. One Aspect of the Biblical Conception of Faith. The Expository Times, vol 68, pp. 111-114.

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

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

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

Torrance, T.F. 1994. Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 71 pp.

Torrance, T.F. et al. 1999. A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry (edited by G. Dawson & J. Stein). Edinburgh: Handel Press. 150 pp.

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.

T.F. Torrance: The Vicarious Humanity of Jesus Christ, pt. 3

The Whole Course of His Obedience

In the manward-Godward movement of mediation, Jesus Christ vicariously fulfils the covenant throughout the entirety of his life, from birth through death, resurrection, and ascension. In older theology it was common to speak of the “vicarious death” of Christ. Yet, with no intent to minimize the importance of Christ’s sacrificial death, Torrance argues that the death of Christ must be seen in the wider context of his whole life. The nature of Christ’s reconciling activity is not accomplished in only the few hours he hung on the cross, but encompasses the entirety of his life, so that the entirety of our lives might be affected (Kettler, 2005:5, 6).

Following the Nicene fathers, Torrance argues that Jesus’ life, not only his death on the cross, was a priestly self-offering on our behalf.  “[T]he priestly self-consecration and self-offering of Christ throughout the whole of his earthly life are to be regarded as belonging to the innermost essence of the atoning mediation he fulfilled between God and mankind. Reconciliation through the life of Christ and reconciliation through the passion of Christ interpenetrate each other” (Torrance, 1988a:167, 168). Torrance continues:

[A]s one of us and one with us, he shared all our experiences, overcoming our disobedience through his obedience and sanctifying every stage of human life, and thereby vivified and restored our humanity to communion with God. He sanctified himself for our sakes that we might be sanctified in him.

In “an agonising union between God the Judge and man under judgment in a continuous movement of atoning reconciliation running throughout all his obedient and sinless life,” Jesus Christ sanctified every phase of human life through his filial obedience to the Father. Atonement, therefore, did not begin at the cross. To the contrary, atoning reconciliation began with the incarnation itself; that is, the assumption of sinful Adamic flesh was redemptive from the moment of Jesus’ “conception and birth when he put on the form of a servant and began to pay the price of our redemption” (Torrance, 1986b:475; cf. 1988a:167). Torrance continues:

As the one Mediator  between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus is not only God with us, but God for us, God who has crossed the chasm of alienation between us and himself, God who has taken our rebellious and corrupt human nature upon himself, God who has made our sin and guilt, our misery and death, our condemnation and godlessness, his very own, in order to intercede for us, to substitute himself in our place, bearing the just punishment of our sin, and offering and making restitution by suffering what we could not suffer and where we could make no restitution at all. That is the doctrine of Jesus Christ as Mediator who is God of God and Man of man in one Person, and who as such reconciles God to man and man to God in the hypostatic union of his divine and human natures.

Throughout his entire life, Jesus Christ is “God for us.” In taking sinful humanity to himself in the incarnation, the eternal Word began cleansing it, and continued to do so throughout what Calvin (2008:II.16.5; 327) called “the whole course of his obedience,” that is, throughout the entirety of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension (cf. Dawson, 2007:56, 62). For Torrance, therefore, atoning reconciliation is accomplished within the incarnate constitution of Jesus Christ (1986b:475), who acts on our behalf throughout the whole course of his obedient life, bending our fallen human will back to the Father and restoring communion between God and humanity. Following Greek patristic theology, Torrance (1993:238) writes:

[I]t is the whole incarnate life of Christ vicariously and triumphantly lived out from his birth to his crucifixion and resurrection in perfect obedience to the Father within the ontological depths of his oneness with us in our actual fallen existence, that redeems and saves us and converts our disobedient alienated sonship back to filial union with the Father. That is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In regard to the “whole course” of Jesus’ atoning life, Torrance (1960:229-231) draws upon the Reformed doctrine of the “active” and “passive” obedience of Jesus Christ. The active obedience of the incarnate Son refers to the positive fulfilment in the whole life of Jesus, who, from beginning to end, lived a life of perfect filial obedience to the Father, perfectly fulfilling God’s will in our name and laying hold of the Father’s love on our behalf.  The passive obedience of Jesus Christ refers to his willing submission to the judgement of the Father upon our sin, especially as manifested in his expiation of our sins upon the cross. Christ’s passive obedience, however, cannot be limited to the cross, for his passion began at his birth, so that his entire life was a bearing of the cross. Here Torrance quotes Calvin’s (2008:II.16.5; 327) assertion that as soon as Christ put on the form of a servant (cf. Phil 2:7), he began to pay the price of liberation for our salvation. As Torrance notes, the Reformed distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ is not intended to divide the work of Christ but to insist that atonement cannot be limited to his passive obedience at the cross; rather, the whole course of Christ’s life of filial obedience to the Father is absolutely integral to our reconciliation. Torrance (1960:230) continues:

How could it be otherwise when in the Incarnation there took place a union of God the Judge and the man judged in one Person, so that all through His life, but especially in His death, Jesus bore in himself the infliction and judgement of God upon our sinful humanity, and wrought out in His life and His death expiation and amendment for our sin?

The “mutuality” of the active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ is important in regard to justification, for it means that we have imputed to us not only the passive righteousness of Christ when he satisfied for our sins in judgement on the cross, but also the active righteousness of Christ in which he “positively” fulfilled the Father’s will in an obedient life. For Torrance, therefore, justification means not merely the “non-imputation” of our sins through the pardon of Christ but also “the positive sharing in his divine-human righteousness” (Torrance, 1960:230, 231). He continues:

We are saved, therefore, not only by the death of Christ [passive obedience] which He suffered for our sakes, but by His life [active obedience] which He lived in our flesh for our sakes and which God raised from the dead that we may share in it through the power of the Spirit. It is in that light, of His atoning and justifying Life, that we are to understand the Incarnation of the Son in the whole course of His obedience from His Birth to His Resurrection.

According to Torrance (1993:238, 239), the “cardinal issue” here is the all-important truth of the “vicarious humanity” of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. When we assign central place to the humanity of Jesus and his atoning acts throughout the whole course of his obedient life, atonement cannot be regarded merely as an “external” juridical transaction that took place at the cross, but “as something made to issue out of the depths of our actual existence through the incredible oneness which Christ forged with us in his vicarious humanity.” Torrance’s view that the entire life of Christ was lived vicariously on our behalf and in our place gives the humanity of Jesus Christ an “essential” and “integral” place (cf. Torrance, 1996b:131) in the indivisible unity of agency of the Father and Spirit and stands in stark contrast to the Latin view that the humanity of the incarnate Son played merely an instrumental role in an external, legal transaction between the Father and the Son at the cross.

As Torrance (1992:80) argues, Jesus’ filial obedience to the Father is not “an answer to God” that arises merely through an external transaction, as in the Latin view of atonement; rather, it is an obedient response that arises from the depths of the fallen humanity Jesus has made his own. Moreover, Jesus’ obedient self-sacrifice is not a mere moral example we may follow; rather, it is a “final answer” to God actualised in “the flesh and blood of our human existence and behaviour” which remains “eternally valid.” Against external forensic and exemplary theories of the atonement, Torrance asserts that “Jesus Christ is our human response to God.”

References (see previous post)

T.F. Torrance: The Vicarious Humanity of Jesus Christ, pt. 2

Torrance’s doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ is rooted in the “covenanted way of response” God graciously provided Israel, so that a sinful people might approach God in an appropriate form of worship.

The ministry of Jesus Christ toward God on our behalf, that is, the manward-Godward movement of incarnational redemption, can be better understood by taking our “initial cue” from God’s relationship with Old Testament Israel, particularly in regard to the “reciprocity” which God patiently and lovingly worked out in covenant relationship with his chosen people. While a covenant is generally thought to involve two parties, there is an all-important “middle term” between the polarities of the covenant. This is the “covenanted way of response” God provided his people, “a divinely provided sacrifice replacing the best that the human partner may think he can offer,” as in the paradigmatic example of the offering God provided in place of Isaac, Abraham’s beloved son (cf. Gen 22:13, 14). In establishing the covenant at Sinai, God knew that Israel would not be able to fulfil its side of the covenant relationship by walking before him as a holy and obedient people, nor could sinful Israel draw near to God in appropriate worship. Hence, as an act of sheer grace, God freely provided the people a covenanted way of responding to him, a “vicarious” way in which the covenant might be fulfilled in their midst and on their behalf, so that Israel could come before God forgiven and sanctified in covenant partnership with him and fulfil their priestly mission to the world (Torrance, 1992:73, 74).

The Covenanted Way of Response

In the general pattern of the cultic liturgy, God had made it clear to the people of Israel that they were not to appear before him with offerings they had devised themselves. In contrast to pagan worship, there were to be no offerings embodying their own self-expression or representing their own natural desires: no unprescribed oblations, no “strange fire,” no rituals of their own invention were to be introduced into Israel’s worship of God. Instead, God graciously provided the people a covenanted way of response, a divinely prepared pattern of liturgy and worship, designed to testify to the fact that only God can expiate guilt, forgive sin, and bring about propitiation between himself and his people. This cultic liturgy, including the liturgical ordinances, sacrifices, offerings and oblations, and even the priesthood itself, constituted the “vicarious way of covenant response in faith, obedience and worship which God had freely provided Israel out of his steadfast love” (Torrance, 1992:74, 75).

God intended the covenanted way of response he provided for Israel to be worked into the hearts and minds of the people as a liturgical witness to God’s revealing and reconciling purpose. Over time, the covenanted way of response was worked into the flesh and blood existence of Israel, so that it might control the whole pattern of its priestly mission in history. The mediatorial and priestly roles of Moses and Aaron, as well as the notions of guilt-bearer and sacrifice, were gradually conflated, appearing in the Isaianic prophecies as the “servant of the Lord,” the “hypostatized actualisation” within the flesh and blood existence of Israel of the divinely provided covenant way of response set forth in the cultic liturgy. A messianic role was attributed to the servant of the Lord in which “mediator and sacrifice, priest and victim were combined in a form that was at once representative and substitutionary, corporate and individual, in its fulfilment.” In the Isaianic prophecies, Israel, the servant of the Lord, and the “Redeemer,” the “Holy One of Israel” were conflated and brought together, as though the prophet wanted to say that “the real servant of the Lord is the Lord himself,” the divine Redeemer who has bound himself in covenant kinship with Israel, taking upon himself Israel’s affliction in order to make it his own (Torrance, 1992:75, 76).

The Fulfilment of the Covenanted Way of Response

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is seen as the historical incarnation of this prophetic vision (cf. Torrance, 1971:158). In him, the prophesied servant of the Lord and the promised Redeemer come together, as he bears away the iniquities, transgressions, and guilt not only of Israel, but of the whole world. Torrance regards the identity of servant and Redeemer as “the essence of the Gospel.” As the incarnate Son of the Father, Jesus Christ came to fulfil all righteousness as both priest and victim. Through his one self-offering in atonement for sin, he mediated a new covenant of universal range, wherein humanity is presented to the Father as redeemed, sanctified, and perfected forever in Jesus. As Torrance notes, “Jesus Christ constitutes in his own self-consecrated humanity the fulfilment of the vicarious way of human response to God promised under the old covenant, but now on the ground of his atoning self-sacrifice once for all offered this is a vicarious way of response which is available for all mankind (Torrance, 1992:75-77).

As Torrance (1992:77) argues, this is surely how we are to understand the twofold ministry of Jesus Christ, from God to man and from man to God. Jesus Christ himself fulfils the covenant from both sides. In regard to the Old Testament commands, “I shall be your God and you shall be my people,” “I am holy, be you holy,” and “I will be your Father and you will be my son,” Jesus Christ is both the covenant-making God and the one true Israelite, who, as the obedient and faithful servant, fulfils both polarities of the covenant. Our immediate concern in upcoming posts is the “manward-Godward” movement of the covenant, that is, the fulfilment of the covenant in the body and blood of Christ, “from the side of human beings toward God the Father as the divinely provided counterpart to God’s unconditional self-giving to mankind.”

References

Calvin, J. 2008. Institutes of the Christian Religion (translated by H. Beveridge). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. 1,059 pp.

Dawson, G.S. 2007b. Far as the Curse is Found: The Significance of Christ’s Assuming a Fallen Human Nature in the Torrance Theology. In G. Dawson, ed. An Introduction to Torrance Theology: Discovering the Incarnate Saviour. London: T & T Clark. Ch. 3.

Kettler, C.D. 2005. The God Who Believes: Faith, Doubt, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books. 205 pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1960. Justification: Its Radical Nature and Place in Reformed Doctrine and Life. Scottish Journal of Theology, vol 13, no 3. pp. 225-246. Also available in Torrance (1996b:150-168).

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

Torrance, T.F. 1986b. Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy. Scottish Journal of Theology, vol 39, pp. 461-482.

Torrance, T.F. 1988a. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. London: T & T Clark. 345 pp.

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

Torrance, T.F. 1993. The Atonement. The Singularity of Christ and the Finality of the Cross: The Atonement and the Moral Order. In N. Cameron, ed. Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker House. Chapter 8.

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