Author: Jason Goroncy

Kierkegaard on Protestantism

One of my brighter students recently charged the Apostle Paul with ‘self-congratulatory arrogance’. It reminded me of Kierkegaard’s biting words about the form that Protestantism is taking, and perhaps increasingly so:

‘Protestantism is the crudest and most brutal plebeianism. People will not hear of there being any difference of quality between an apostle, a witness to the truth and oneself, in spite of the fact that one’s existence is completely different from theirs, as different as eating from being eaten’. – Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard (ed. Alexander Dru; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 245.

I wonder what the Dane would say if he spent a week or so with the average Protestant church today? Ouch! The fundamental issue, of course, is that of authority, coupled with a noxious and mendacious understanding of creaturely freedom. There can be no true freedom where there is no true authority. Where the latter is lost, the former disappears. So O’Donovan reminds us, ‘To be under authority is to be freer than to be independent’. – Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment, 132.

Advent Reflection 5: The Great Dividing Issue for the Soul

‘Questions about immanence may concern philosophers. And questions about miracles may agitate physicists. But the great dividing issue for the soul is neither the Bethlehem cradle nor the empty grave, nor the Bible, nor the social question. For the Church at least (however it be with individuals) it is the question of a redeeming atonement. It is here that the evangelical issue lies. It is here, and not upon the nativity, that we part company with the Unitarians. It is here that the unsure may test their crypto-unitarianism. I would unchurch none. I would but clear the issue for the honest conscience. It is this that determines whether a man is Unitarian or Evangelical, and it is this that should guide his conscience as to his ecclesiastical associations. Only if he hold that in the atoning cross of Christ the world was redeemed by holy God once for all, that there, and only there, sin was judged and broken, that there and only there the race was reconciled and has its access to the face and grace of God-only then has he the genius and the plerophory of the Gospel’. – Peter T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), 73-4.

Dawkins on Christmas

In today’s New Statesman, Richard Dawkins reflects on what he was taught about Christmas, and what he thinks now:

We never wondered why God would go to such lengths simply to fulfil a prophecy. Nor, indeed, why God would go to the even greater lengths of sending his son into the world in order that he should be agonisingly punished for the sins that mankind might decide to commit at some time in the future (or for the past scrumping offence of one non-existent man, Adam) – surely one of the single nastiest ideas ever to occur to a human mind (Paul’s, of course). We never wondered why God, if he wanted to forgive our sins, didn’t just forgive them. Why did he have to scapegoat himself first? Where religion was concerned, we never wondered anything. That was the point about religion. You could ask questions about any other subject, but not religion.

…

For better or worse, ours is historically a Christian culture, and children who grow up ignorant of biblical literature are diminished, unable to take literary allusions, actually impoverished. I am no lover of Christianity, and I loathe the annual orgy of waste and reckless reciprocal spending, but I must say I’d rather wish you “Happy Christmas” than “Happy Holiday Season”.

Fortunately, this is not the only choice: 25 December is the birthday of one of the truly great men ever to walk the earth, Sir Isaac Newton. His achievements might justly be celebrated wherever his truths hold sway. And that means from one end of the universe to the other. Happy Newton Day!

Read the whole article here.

God taking shape in community

 

My old theology professor, Dr Frank Rees, has posted a great Advent reflection on Incarnational Community. He writes:

‘Right now, in the Advent and Christmas seasons, there is a lot of talk about Christ being born: about God becoming a human person, appearing in human form and so on. Making some sense of the reality of this claim is an enormous task: God, in one human person, within God’s own creation.

For many people, of course, the question is whether such a claim can possibly be true. I would tackle this question in a different way: I think it helps to ask, ‘How can we know this?’ Or, to put it in another way, if we were to know this, what kind of knowledge is it?

I don’t think it’s a matter of believing some things, about something which is said to have happened a long time ago, and refusing to consider other evidence or possibilities. I don’t think that’s faith at all. It has no creative and life-giving dimensions whatsoever.

What I think this means is something to be known in a personal and communal experience, in the present, which in some ways helps us to understand the past, and yet is also shaped by the past.

Recently, I found this quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. I must have read it before, but it struck me this time: p. 359, “One has to live for some time in community to understand that Christ is ‘formed’ in it’.” There is a reference here to Galations 4. 19, where Paul uses an image of childbirth, saying that he (the Apostle) is ‘in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.’ For Paul, too, there is this idea not only that Christ was a human person who lived in his recent past, but that Christ yet lives, and yet embodies, takes shape: Paul was convinced that the community of Christians, made alive in the Spirit, really is a living body of Christ, an incarnation of the same God who appeared to us as Jesus of Nazareth.

Bonhoeffer, especially in his Ethics, was interested in the idea that Christ ‘takes shape’ and ‘is formed’ in the world. This was his idea of whatever is meaningful in ‘the church’. It is a community in which Christ is taking shape. And to put it another way, his view was that wherever Christ is taking shape in the world that is where the church needs to be, where Christian people need to find themselves involved.

Incarnation is not an idea about once upon a time. It is a divine habit, indeed a divine habitation. It is something God perpetually does, and invites us to know, to be part of. This knowing is a present experience. We can discover ourselves becoming part of the ‘taking shape’, and Bonhoeffer rightly sees that this is something we learn in community, in deep and committed relationships.

More than that, such communities, usually informed and shaped by the story and vision which Jesus offered, his Gospel of God, also find that through these experiences of community, this sense of Christ taking shape among, within, between them, they can also more clearly comprehend the historic claims, the idea of God being ‘incarnate’, born among us, in the person of Jesus, in a messy world of power games and political intrigues, and little people being pushed aside, abused, slaughtered, and religion playing along with it all, for its own self-preservation.

We can believe that, because this is our reality too, and yet, —yet— we dare to acknowledge that within us, in our community, even , Christ is formed.

There’s a lot to think on, and to hope for, amidst the words and music and all the rest which is called ‘Christmas’, the birth of Christ.’

‘Reviews in Religion & Theology’ is out

The latest issue of Reviews in Religion & Theology (Volume 15, Issue 1, January 2008) is now available and includes following reviews:

John L. Drury’s Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Karl Barth’s Analogical Use of the Trinitarian Relation by Peter S. Oh

Vítor Westhelle’s The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross by Adam Kotsko. [This is a book that I have enjoyed immensely, though not without some concerns]

After outlining the book’s contents, Kotsko concludes his review with the following critique:

Westhelle not only provides a strong argument for regarding the theology of the cross as a style of doing theology but also provides a good model. He is at his best when working within the Christian tradition, and he particularly shines in his reading of gospel texts. When he ventures outside of this familiar territory, however, his readings sometimes seem to move too quickly in assimilating the text to his own project. Another notable shortcoming stems from his desire to be faithful to Luther while remaining accountable to Latin American liberation theology. In his eagerness to portray Luther as a forerunner of liberation theology and a ‘contextual theologian’ (p. 58),Westhelle fails to even mention the well known facts of Luther’s political interventions against the peasants and tirades against the Jews. Given the ways that he later brings the theology of the cross into dialogue with liberation theology, Westhelle could likely have made a persuasive case that Luther’s own actions contradicted the true subversive force of his thought, but as it stands, his treatment of Luther seems like something of a whitewash. Overall, though, Westhelle has given us a thought-provoking and often quite poetic text, one that offers many suggestive avenues for further reflection.

Advent Reflection 3: Born for the Cross

‘That Cross was deep embedded in the very structure of Christ’s Person, because nowadays you cannot separate His Person from His vocation, from the work lie came to do, and the words He came to speak. The Cross was not simply a fate awaiting Christ in the future; it pervaded subliminally His holy Person. He was born for the Cross. It was His genius, His destiny. It was quite inevitable that, in a world like this, One holy as Jesus was holy should come to the Cross. The parable [of the prodigal Son] was spoken by One in whom the Cross and all it stands for were latent in His idea of God; and it became patent, came to the surface, became actual, and practical, and powerful in the stress of man’s crisis and the fullness of God’s time. That is an important phrase. Christ Himself came in a fullness of time. The Cross which consummated and crowned Christ came in its fullness of time. The time was not full during Christ’s life for preaching an atonement that life could never make’. – Peter T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), 107-8.

Scott Cairns: ‘The Entrance of Sin’

Yes, there was a tree, and upon it, among the wax leaves, an order of fruit which hung plentifully, glazed with dew of a given morning. And there had been some talk off and on—nothing specific—about forgoing the inclination to eat of it. But sin had very little to do with this or with any outright prohibition.

For sin had made its entrance long before the serpent spoke, long before the woman and the man had set their teeth to the pale, stringy flesh, which was, it turns out, also quite without flavor. Rather, sin had come in the midst of an evening stroll, when the woman had reached to take the man’s hand and he withheld it.

In this way, the beginning of our trouble came to the garden almost without notice. And in later days, as the man and the woman wandered idly about their paradise, as they continued to enjoy the sensual pleasures of food and drink and spirited coupling even as they sat marveling at the approach of evening and the more lush approach of sleep, they found within themselves a developing habit of resistance.

One supposes that, even then, this new taste for turning away might have been overcome, but that is assuming the two had found the result unpleasant. The beginning of loss was this: Every time some manner of beauty was offered and declined, the subsequent isolation each conceived was irresistible.

– Scott Cairns, Philokalia: new and selected poems, p. 52.

Biblia Clerus

The Vatican Congregation for the Clergy has launched Biblia Clerus which allows researchers to access Bible verses with exegesis from doctors of the Church or cross-reference liturgical texts with commentaries from some Church Fathers. The site promotes a program which ‘offers Sacred Scripture, its interpretation in light of Sacred Tradition and the teachings of the Magisterium, with appropriate theological commentary and exegesis’. It is available in French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, English and Italian.

The Soul of Prayer: A Review

Jeffrey Bruce has recently posted a review on PT Forsyth’s The Soul of Prayer. He writes:

One of my great failures as a Christ-follower pertains to prayer. Throughout my life, I have consistently failed to cultivate this spiritual discipline. Sure, I throw up a few petitions each day, and set aside times for focused prayer every now and again; but, it does not characterize my living. Frankly, I find this disconcerting. Great Christians seems to pray…all the time…like Paul commands (1 Thess 5:17). In High School, I remember reading about Martin Luther, and how he would lament when constrained to spending only three hours in prayer at the beginning of the day.

Given my deficiency in this discipline, I deemed it wise to read a book on prayer. I began by going to one who, in my opinion, is an expert on the subject; Bud Burk, the children’s pastor at Whittier Hills. Bud immediately recommended The Soul of Prayer, by P.T. Forsyth. Sometimes described as an English pre-cursor to Karl Barth, Forsyth (1848-1921) was a leader in the Congregational church in Scotland. Early in his tenure as a minister, he was inimical to orthodoxy, and sought to reformulate Christianity according to his liberal sensibilities. However, in 1878 he had a conversion experience, wherein he went from (in his own words), “a lover of love to an object of grace.” He gained notoriety as a British non-conformist, who taught his generation the depth and reality of God’s grace. This book is dense, brief (only 107 pages), and chalked full of theological grist. Though his writing suffers at times from awkward phraseology,
and some of his theologizing raises the eyebrow, this tome remains a gem, and, as Eugene Peterson says, “goes straight for the jugular.”

Forsyth divides his discussion into various qualities of prayer; viz. the inwardness of prayer, the naturalness of prayer, the moral reactions of prayer, the timeliness of prayer, the ceaselessness of prayer, the vicariousness of prayer, and the insistency of prayer. In each section, Forsyth hones in on misconceptions regarding prayer, and tries to get behind the inner workings of the divine-human interaction.

He is eminently quotable. Allow me to demonstrate.

“Prayer has its great end when it lifts us to be conscious and more sure of the gift than the need, of the grace than the sin…We shall come one day to a heave where we shall gratefully know that God’s great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayer. Our soul is fulfilled if our petition is not.” (12)

“God is the answer to prayer.” (35)

“If it be true that the whole Trinity is in the gospel of our salvation, it is also true that all theology lies hidden in the prayer which is our chief answer to the gospel.” (51)

“Prayer is not identical with the occasional act of praying. Like the act of faith, it is a whole life thought of as action. It is the life of faith in its purity, in its vital action. Eating and speaking are necessary to life, but they are not living.” (69)

“Petition is not mere receptivity, not is it mere pressure; it is filial reciprocity. Love loves to be told what it knows already. Every lover knows that. It wants to be asked for what it longs to give. And that is the principle of prayer to the all-knowing Love.” (72-73)

“Let prayer be concrete. actual, a direct product of life’s real experiences. Pray as your actual self, not as some fancied saint. Let it be closely relevant to your real situation. Pray without ceasing in this sense. Pray without a break between your prayer and your life. Pray so that there is a real continuity between your prayer and your whole actual life.” (74)

“…as we learn more of the seriousness of the gospel for the human soul, we feel the more that every time we present it we are adding to the judgment of some as well as to the salvation of others. We are not like speakers who present a matter that men can freely take or leave, where they can agree or differ with us without moral result.” (83)

“Prayer is given us as wings wherewith to mount, but also to shield our face when they have carried us before the great throne. It is in prayer that the holiness comes home as love, and the love is established as holiness.” (85)

“Our public may kill by its triviality a soul which could easily resist the assaults of oppositions or wickedness.” (91)

“Strenuous prayer will help us to recover the masculine type of religion – and then our opponents will at least respect us.” (95)

“Prayer is not really a power till it is importunate. And it cannot be importunate unless it is felt to have a real effect on the Will of God.” (95)

What struck me most deeply were the following points;

(1) Prayer must be (in Forsyth’s words) importunate. Indeed, Jesus wanted to actually teach us something through the parable of the persistent widow! Prayer is strenuous, a mental exercise, and the passive resignation that so often characterizes prayer is not always a sign of piety. God wants us to pray mightily. We need not be afraid of urging and pleading with God to act. This is what he wants from us.

(2) Take public prayer seriously.

(3) Good theology can be prayed, and good prayer is theological.

(4) God is the answer to prayer.

I still have a few misgivings about Forsyth. In his attempts to be profound, I feel he sounds a tad pantheistic (though I know he is no pantheist). Moreover, his thoughts on resisting the lower will in God to arrive at his higher will need copious nuancing. Overall though, this book definitely hits hard, and presents a challenge to any alacrity in one’s heart for the discipline of prayer.

It is always encouraging to see Forsyth’s work being read. A pdf version of many of Forsyth’s books, including The Soul of Prayer, is available from here.

The Theology of the Christian Life in J. I. Packer’s Thought: A Review

Don J. Payne, The Theology of the Christian Life in J. I. Packer’s Thought: Theological Anthropology, Theological Method, and the Doctrine of Sanctification (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007). 321 pages. ISBN: 9781842273975. Review copy courtesy of Paternoster/Authentic Books.

I am one among millions who in their early Christian pilgrimage read and benefited from reading J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. It was here that I first discovered the rich truth of what the Bible means when it talks about God as our ‘Father’. Some years later, I read and profited from his books Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God, Concise Theology, and his Keep in Step with the Spirit, among others. But it was his A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life which had the most lasting impact on me, feeding my love for the Puritans and my conviction that Protestantism desperately needs to recover the model of spirituality that they encouraged. Throughout all his writing, Packer is concerned that ‘theology’ and ‘godliness’ walk together and, as Thomas Noble writes in the forward, that ‘Truly Christian theology can never be an abstract intellectual pursuit. It is never enough to know about God. True Christian theology is Knowing God’ (p. xiii–xiv).

There is little debate that British-born Anglican theologian, James Innell Packer (b. 1926) is one of the most influential evangelical theologians of the late 20th century, defining in not a few ways the shape that some branches of evangelicalism has taken. Therefore, it is about time that his theology was given the serious and critical evaluation that it deserves. In his revised PhD thesis, Don J. Payne seeks to do precisely that.

Payne begins by confessing that a comprehensive analysis of Packer’s thought is beyond the scope of one book. This study, he maintains, examines aspects of Packer’s thought that have made what he considers a ‘significant contribution to evangelical piety’ (p. 1). Payne believes that such an examination involves a description and analysis of Packer’s theology of sanctification, and therefore Payne proceeds to examine the logic and ethos of Packer’s theology of sanctification by examining the theological anthropology and theological method that support it. This relationship between sanctification, anthropology, and methodology is then viewed against the backdrop of twentieth-century evangelicalism, primarily in the UK and the USA in order to gain understanding into Packer’s influence. He notes:

Though he is British in origin and education, Packer’s greatest influence has been in the context of North American evangelicalism. His particular brand of Reformed theology has found common ground with theological values that have been significant in shaping the ethos of twentieth-century evangelicalism in the United States. Likewise, his writings, both theological and popular, have had and continue to exhibit intense concern with Christian piety, especially as it is sustained by the doctrine of sanctification. (p. 2)

Payne proceeds to argue that Packer’s understanding of sanctification is sustained by a predominantly individualistic and rationalistic theological anthropology and methodology. He notes that significant qualifying factors are found in his anthropology and piety, reflecting an attempt on Packer’s part to ameliorate the risks of individualistic and rationalistic extremes. Thus, the inherent rationalism and individualism tend to be obscured from view. However, he suggests, the influence of these tendencies can be seen in the practical expectations and disciplines Packer enjoins for Christians.

The opening chapter establishes a general backdrop, parameters, and rationale for the theological analysis Payne wishes to follow. Chapter two offers definitions and genealogies of the British evangelicalism from which Packer emerged and the American evangelicalism in which he has exercised most influence, pointing up salient factors that help account for that influence. Chapter three traces Packer’s personal theological development in order to relate his views to the context of his overall life and theology. Chapters four to eight consider piety, theological anthropology (with specific attention to the imago Dei and the Incarnation), and theological method respectively. ‘This organisational schema’, he suggests, ‘intentionally moves from the phenomena of piety to the theology and then to methodology so as to best illuminate causal and systemic relationships’. In the final chapter, Payne summarises the trialogue between Packer’s piety, anthropology and method in order to identify patterns and implications of his theology, before suggesting some directions for further research.

Payne rightly identifies that the Christian life, for Packer, can adequately (though not exclusively) be denoted by the word ‘piety’, a term that Packer uses interchangeably with ‘spirituality’, ‘holiness’, and ‘godliness’, and apart from the reality of which ‘there is no true communion with God’ (p. 11). Payne proceeds to highlight Packer’s tendency to see the objective aspects of salvation in legal categories and to subordinate the subjective aspects to a distinct, separate and dependent relationship. He writes:

Though [Packer] seeks to anchor piety within a Trinitarian framework, insisting on the unique and essential role of each Person in the Godhead for the realisation of evangelical spirituality, the objective and subjective dimensions of piety find their integration elsewhere, that is, within a covenantal framework that is sustained by the doctrine of predestination. Covenantal predestination constitutes the framework for understanding the unique role of each Person of the Trinity in securing salvation and effecting holiness for the elect. (p. 79)

Payne identifies in Packer’s thinking that piety or holiness necessarily depend upon and involve an increasing precision in the quality of one’s ethical perception and obedience. This level of precision in holiness, he suggests, depends also upon precise transmission of God’s law to the human conscience. Scripture fulfils this role, he argues, as it communicates God’s revelation through precise, inerrant propositions. Since holiness involves the restoration of the imago Dei in conformity to the character of Jesus Christ, the rational faculties necessary for comprehending and responding to the message of Scripture are therefore critical if the image is to be restored. Packer states, ‘God is rational and unchanging, and all men in every generation, being made in God’s image, are capable of being addressed by him.’ Holiness, for Packer, therefore, depends upon the notion of an inerrant Scripture communicating the Law of God with precision to human rational faculties. ‘Precise knowledge of God’s will and obedience to God’s will’, Payne notes, ‘is possible, and only possible, through this precise, rational formula’ (p. 92). Payne concludes:

J.I. Packer’s theology of the Christian life follows a distinct anthropological and soteriological trajectory. The Christian life is a life of godliness or holiness as defined by God’s law. This genuine, biblical piety is a life of heartfelt obedience to God’s law which in turn depends upon inerrant, propositional communication of God’s will through Scripture and also on the human faculty of reason to comprehend that self-revelation. Holiness, true piety, is humanity restored to God’s original intentions as expressed in the imago Dei. However, this restoration is obstructed by the pervasive and tragic effects of original and indwelling sin, even in the life of the Christian. God provides and effects forgiveness and restored legal standing for the elect through Jesus Christ’s penal, substitutionary atonement for sin in his death on the cross. This formal justification before God then leads to sanctification, the existential transformation of the believer’s character into the image of Jesus Christ, who in his own obedience provided the model of godliness for which God intended humanity. Sanctification is enabled by God but demands ongoing, strenuous struggle in faith that God is working in and through the Christian’s efforts to bring about deep, genuine, and lasting transformation (pp. 128–9).

While some readers may desire a more critical engagement with Packer’s thought than this volume provides, those with a general interest in twentieth century conservative evangelicalism and its theological methodology would be well served by reading Payne’s work. Although it has one of the most unbecoming and out-of-focus photographs I’ve seen on the front cover of any book, this sympathetic study concludes with a most becoming and in-focus 18 page bibliography (!) of Packer’s work, a rich testimony in itself of the gift that Packer has been to the Church. This book is, therefore, both a helpful compendium to Alister E. McGrath’s book, J.I. Packer: A Biography, and an invitation for a more critical (in both senses of the word) reading of Packer’s enormous contribution.

Kevin Rudd on the Gospel

Most of us have grown understandably suspicious of politicians and their ‘God-talk’. In this speech (24 mins) given to New College at the University of New South Wales in 2005 Kevin Rudd (who is now Australia’s Prime Minister) outlined his vision of the appropriate relationship between Church and State in Australia. He stresses that while Jesus teaches compassion for the marginal, Catholic social teaching emphasises the proper balance between the rights of organised capital and labour. Whether you’re an Aussie or not, Rudd’s speech is well worth listening to.

Engaging with Barth

While PhD’s and monographs on Karl Barth’s thinking continue to be produced in greater numbers than ever before (and deservedly so, despite my question here), very few volumes have given us an evaluation both critical and fair of Barth’s massive theological legacy in a multi-author source.

January 2008 will witness the launch of Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques, edited by David Gibson & Daniel Strange. I must confess to being a little sceptical when I first surveyed the list of contributors to this title, some of whom I was surprised to see mentioned in a collection on Barth (not to mention the obvious omission of some leading evangelical experts on Barth). However, my tune has somewhat changed since I heard Andy McGowan read his chapter recently and despite remaining unconvinced on a few points, his paper was engaging and served as a model of clarity and fairness, of taking Barth seriously and extending the discussion into some helpful trajectories. If McGowan’s chapter is a true indication of the desire for this book’s authors to engage fairly with Barth, then I can honestly say that I’m now looking forward to reading (and reviewing) the rest, though still some chapters more than others.

The books contents are:

Foreword
Carl R. Trueman

Introduction
David Gibson & Daniel Strange

1. Karl Barth’s Christocentric Method
Henri Blocher

2. Does it matter if Christian Doctrine is Contradictory? Barth on Logic and Theology
Sebastian Rehnman

3. Karl Barth as Historical Theologian: The Recovery of Reformed Theology in Barth’s Early Dogmatics
Ryan Glomsrud

4. Karl Barth and Covenant Theology
A. T. B. McGowan

5. The Day of God’s Mercy: Romans 9-11 in Barth’s Doctrine of Election
David Gibson

6. Witness to the Word: On Barth’s Doctrine of Scripture
Mark D. Thompson

7. A Private Love? Karl Barth and the Triune God
Michael J. Ovey

8. Karl Barth and the Doctrine of the Atonement
Garry J. Williams

9. Karl Barth and the Visibility of God
Paul Helm

10. Karl Barth and Jonathan Edwards on Reprobation (and Hell)
Oliver D. Crisp

11. ‘Church’ Dogmatics: Karl Barth as Ecclesial Theologian
Donald Macleod

12. A Stony Jar: The Legacy of Karl Barth for Evangelical Theology
Michael S. Horton

An Obituary to TF Torrance by David Fergusson

Today’s The Independent includes this obituary to TF Torrance by David Fergusson:

The Very Rev Professor Thomas F. Torrance: Distinguished theologian and leading exponent of the work of Karl Barth

Thomas Forsyth Torrance, theologian: born Chengdu, China 30 August 1913; ordained minister 1940; minister, Alyth Barony Parish 1940-43, 1945-47; Church of Scotland chaplain, MEF and CMF 1943-45; MBE 1945; minister, Beechgrove Church, Aberdeen 1947; Professor of Church History, New College, Edinburgh University 1950-52, Professor of Christian Dogmatics 1952-79; Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1976-77; FBA 1983; married 1946 Margaret Spear (two sons, one daughter); died Edinburgh 2 December 2007.

Thomas F. Torrance was a theologian of international distinction. His long academic career, at New College, Edinburgh, was marked by a prolific scholarly output and a range of projects that were of significance for Reformed and ecumenical church life. With an early enthusiasm for the work of Karl Barth, the most influential theologian of the 20th century, Torrance became his foremost exponent in the English-speaking world.

This involved, with Geoffrey Bromiley, the supervision of the English translation of the 13 volumes of the Church Dogmatics and a full-length study of the development of Barth’s theology. Together with J.K.S. Reid, Torrance founded the Scottish Journal of Theology, a periodical that has since remained at the forefront of the field. He was also a co-founder of the Scottish Church Theology Society and the (UK) Society for the Study of Theology in 1952.

A series of essays produced in the 1950s on doctrinal disagreement and convergence were later gathered into two volumes (Conflict and Agreement in the Church, 1959 and 1960), these remaining among his most useful contributions to international ecumenical dialogue. In 1957, he supported the famous “Bishop’s Report” at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Had it been approved, it would have led to the union of the national churches north and south of the border. Yet, despite the backing of Torrance and other leading Scottish churchmen of the day, the proposals suffered defeat following a campaign of resistance led by the Scottish Daily Express. Torrance, however, would often say that he was proud to have been born in China to an Anglican mother and later to have married an Anglican wife. Narrow nationalist or ecclesiastical sentiment were alike abhorrent to him.

Within the Church of Scotland, he led the highly influential Baptismal Commission which concluded its work in 1963. This affirmed a high doctrine of sacramental grace together with the catholic practice of infant baptism. His position on baptism dominated the doctrine of the Church of Scotland until its more recent gesture towards dual practice, a flexibility that he would surely have deplored just as he had earlier regretted Karl Barth’s abandonment of infant baptism.

His ecumenical enthusiasm was particularly marked by his cordial relations with the Orthodox churches. Deeply committed to the theology of the early church, Torrance stressed the catholic dimension of the Reformed tradition, never losing an opportunity to note the indebtedness of Calvin to the Greek Fathers. For many years, he led the Reformed-Orthodox doctrinal conversations and had the unusual distinction as a Reformed minister of being made a Protopresbyter of the Greek Orthodox Church by the Patriarch of Alexandria in 1973.

Torrance’s own theological publications exhibited his extraordinary energy, determination and erudition. As a scholar of Christian dogma, he published on almost every topic, but especially on the doctrines of the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, the Holy Spirit and the sacraments. His position was broadly Barthian but increasingly shaped by his reading of the Greek tradition, especially Athanasius, Cyril and Gregory Nazianzus. He championed the theology of the Nicene Creed, his important study The Trinitarian Faith (1988), being structured by its teaching.

Although Torrance was viewed as resolutely orthodox by more liberal thinkers, he could be deeply critical of a hyper-Calvinism, particularly its doctrines of predestination, substitutionary atonement and biblical inerrancy. All these he regarded as displacing in different ways the person and work of Christ from the centre of a properly evangelical theology. He had almost nothing positive to say about the 17th-century Westminster Confession of Faith, the Church of Scotland’s subordinate standard for over 350 years.

His most original work comprised a body of writings from the late 1960s onwards which sought to form a disciplinary alliance between the natural sciences and Christian theology. Although sometimes difficult to follow, this work brought him into close contact with several leading scientists, particularly Michael Polanyi, whose literary executor he became.

Torrance’s commitment to a rapprochement with the natural sciences led him beyond the work of Karl Barth, who was more inclined to stress the unique character of theology. Torrance strove to identify common methodological approaches, a shared commitment to a critical objectivity, and an implicit belief in the intelligibility of the physical universe which, he believed, must point unmistakably to a transcendent ground of its rationality.

This rehabilitation of natural theology was never allowed to compromise the distinctive commitments of his doctrinal work, yet it represents one of the most determined efforts in the 20th century to establish a fruitful conversation between theology and science in search of a unified worldview.

Born in Chengdu, in the province of Sichuan, China in 1913 to missionary parents, Thomas Torrance carried their evangelical devotion and sense of vocation into his career. The eldest of six children, he came to Lanarkshire in 1927, where he was raised by his mother after their father’s return to China.

After schooling at Bellshill Academy, he took an arts degree at Edinburgh University before proceeding to its Faculty of Divinity at New College. There his teachers included H.R. Mackintosh and John Baillie. A period of graduate study was undertaken with Karl Barth in Basel from 1937. Torrance was later to complete his doctoral dissertation begun under Barth on the theology of the second-century church while at Oriel College, Oxford. By that time, he had already acquired teaching experience during a brief sojourn at Auburn Seminary in New York.

In 1940, Torrance was inducted as a Church of Scotland minister at Alyth in Perthshire. His ministry there was interrupted by wartime chaplaincy service, initially in the Middle East and later with the 10th Indian Division in Italy. Returning to parish ministry in Scotland, he moved to Beechgrove Church, Aberdeen in 1947 – the previous year, he had married Margaret Spear – where he remained until his appointment three years later as Professor of Church History at his Alma Mater in Edinburgh. In 1952 he translated to the Chair of Christian Dogmatics, a position he held until his retirement.

As a teacher at New College in Edinburgh, Torrance was a dominant figure for almost 30 years. He attracted large numbers of students from across the world, particularly the United States. To a large extent, theology in Edinburgh was synonymous with his name during his time there. Other members of his family shared his vocation and theological commitments: his late brother James held the Chair of Systematic Theology at Aberdeen University; his son Iain is now President of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Torrance’s forceful personality and combative style, however, could generate conflict as well as command allegiance. This became most intense with the public attack on aspects of his work by his distinguished colleague James Barr in Semantics of Biblical Language (1961). Barr was later to leave Edinburgh for a chair in Manchester. Years afterwards, Torrance would remark ruefully that Barr had been a brilliant tail-gunner in the RAF and had carried on shooting throughout his academic life.

Choosing to remain in Edinburgh until his retirement, Torrance exercised a significant influence over several generations of ministers. In 1976-77, he was appointed Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland when he welcomed the Queen to Edinburgh during her jubilee celebrations.

It is not unreasonable to claim Torrance as the leading British theologian of the past century. Several full-length discussions of his work have already appeared, while a scholarly society devoted to the study of his theology has been formed in the US. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy, and awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize (1978) for his work on theology and science. In retirement he maintained his prolific output, publishing a steady stream of monographs, while continuing to lecture throughout the world.

Although his final years in a nursing home were frustrating, his interest in theology remained undiminished. Always he was sustained by his wife and family, the still point at the centre of an extraordinarily energetic lifestyle.

Advent Reflection 2: No Longer the Day of The Child

‘In our secularized Western society Christmas offers a good occasion to experience [an] illusory happiness that offers a short break in our fear-filled lives. For many, Christmas is no longer the day to celebrate the mystery of the birth of God among us, the God hidden in the wounds of humanity. It is no longer the day of the child, awaited with prayer and repentance, contemplated with watchful attentiveness, and remembered in liturgical solemnity, joyful song, and peaceful family meals. Instead, Christmas has become a time when companies send elaborate gifts to their clients to thank them for their business, when post offices work overtime to process an overload of cards, when immense amounts of money are spent on food and drink, and socializing becomes a full-time activity. There are trees, decorate streets, sweet tunes in the supermarkets, and children saying to their parents: I want this and I want that.’ The shallow happiness of busy people often fills the place meant to experience the deep, lasting joy of Emmanuel, God-with-us’. — Henri Nouwen, Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective (New York: Image, 1986), 98.

(HT: Aaron)

Advent Reflection 1: In Christ God Has Come Together With Us

Each year between 1926 and 1933, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth penned a Christmas meditation for a German daily newspaper. In his 1931 reflection, ‘It gives new lustre to the world’, Barth began by asking a question asked each Advent by Christians generally, and perhaps especially by those called upon to preach: ‘What does it mean to hear the Christmas message?’ He proceeds to say that if the question is put like that, ‘then it behoves us all, especially if we happen to be theologians, to keep our mouths shut and first to consider that the Christmas message is not a philosophy, nor an ideology, nor a moral system or anything like that’. Instead, the Christmas word is ‘the Word of God to which no one has the key and whose real meaning for us, now as in former ages, is God’s secret. Hidden is the point where the Christmas message concerns each one of us and our whole generation, where its grace and judgement, its promise and command affect us’.

However (and it is a big ‘however’), as Barth proceeds to note, the question posed above does not need to be put like that. We could ask, for example, ‘What does it mean that we have heard the Christmas message?’; in which case, while we cannot lay hold of the full reality of the Christmas message, interpret and apply it, as if it were some human wisdom, neither can we or should we ignore its testimony which speaks to us of its hidden reality, of its way and nature, whereby both we and every other generation are reminded of certain possibilities, which are, so to speak, the outer garb of an incomprehensible but real encounter between God and humanity. In the grace of God, we can and must speak that which we know and have heard. In the grace of God, we can and must bear witness, testimony, to God’s self-disclosure. And in the grace of God, this testimony is preserved for us in Holy Scripture.

When, therefore, the Christmas word seems too incredible to believe, we can hear … and believe again. And what is this word? Barth again:

If God had wanted to deal with us as He is free to do, and as we well deserved it, according to His principle, He would never have become man. But He was and is merciful, and therefore in Christ He has come together with us (with us!), though His holiness and our weakness and wickedness should really exclude any coming together on His part and any thought of cooperation on our part. But God did and does just this, the impossible or – should we say? – that which is practical only for Him the Merciful One, which must happen so that His free and merciful will be done. The fact that also in this respect human beings can believe the eternal Light, means that we do perhaps have the will to do that which concerns us most, and which under any circumstance must be done in common with others. – Karl Barth, Christmas (trans. Bernhard Citron; Edinburgh/London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 47.

(NB. This is a reposting of my contribution to the Advent reflections at Hopeful Imagination)

Edwin Muir – ‘The Transfiguration’

I’ve been reading some poems by the Orkney writer Edwin Muir (1887-1959). In 1901, when Muir was 14, Muir’s family was forced to move to Glasgow after loosing the family farm, ‘The Bu’. This move from the peaceful Orkney to industrialised Glasgow was significantly traumatic for Muir, and he would later describe it as a descent from the innocence of a rural Eden into Hell. Not only was the Glasgow environment hard, but within a few years two of his brothers and both his parents were dead.

One particular poem that I keep returning to is ‘The Transfiguration’. In this poem, Muir describes visionary experiences he had while undergoing analysis. The result is one of the most theologically-rich visions I’ve ever read, with not a few similarities to Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV/1.

So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists
As fresh and pure as water from a well,
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed
Till earth and light and water entering there
Gave back to us the clear unfallen world.
We would have thrown our clothes away for lightness,
But that even they, though sour and travel stained,
Seemed, like our flesh, made of immortal substance,
And the soiled flax and wool lay light upon us
Like friendly wonders, flower and flock entwined
As in a morning field. Was it a vision?
Or did we see that day the unseeable
One glory of the everlasting world
Perpetually at work, though never seen
Since Eden locked the gate that’s everywhere
And nowhere? Was the change in us alone,
And the enormous earth still left forlorn,
An exile or a prisoner? Yet the world
We saw that day made this unreal, for all
Was in its place. The painted animals
Assembled there in gentle congregations,
Or sought apart their leafy oratories,
Or walked in peace, the wild and tame together,
As if, also for them, the day had come.
The shepherds’ hovels shone, for underneath
The soot we saw the stone clean at the heart
As on the starting-day. The refuse heaps
Were grained with that fine dust that made the world;
For he had said, ‘To the pure all things are pure.’
And when we went into the town, he with us,
The lurkers under doorways, murderers,
With rags tied round their feet for silence, came
Out of themselves to us and were with us,
And those who hide within the labyrinth
Of their own loneliness and greatness came,
And those entangled in their own devices,
The silent and the garrulous liars, all
Stepped out of their dungeons and were free.
Reality or vision, this we have seen.
If it had lasted but another moment
It might have held forever! But the world
Rolled back into its place, and we are here,
And all that radiant kingdom lies forlorn,
As if it had never stirred; no human voice
Is heard among its meadows, but it speaks
To itself alone, alone it flowers and shines
And blossoms for itself while time runs on.

But he will come again, it’s said, though not
Unwanted, unsummoned; for all things,
Beasts of the field, and woods, and rocks, and seas,
And all mankind from end to end of the earth
Will call him with one voice. In our own time,
Some say, or at a time when time is ripe.
Then he will come, Christ the uncrucified,
Christ the discrucified, his death undone,
His agony unmade, his cross dismantled –
Glad to be so – and the tormented wood
Will cure its hurt and grow into a tree
In a green springing corner or young Eden,
And Judas damned take his long journey backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done.

Philip Pullman on CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien

In a recent interview, Philip Pullman not only properly reminds us of the challenges of talking to fundamentalists – ‘You can’t communicate with people who know they’ve got all the answers’ – but also makes one of the most ridiculous and ignorant statements I’ve read in a long time:

‘I dislike his Narnia books because of the solution he offers to the great questions of human life: is there a God, what is the purpose, all that stuff, which he really does engage with pretty deeply, unlike Tolkien who doesn’t touch it at all. ”The Lord of the Rings” is essentially trivial. Narnia is essentially serious, though I don’t like the answer Lewis comes up with. If I was doing it at all, I was arguing with Narnia. Tolkien is not worth arguing with.’

You can read the full interview here.

For those in, or near enough to, St Andrews, Dr Grant Macaskill (who is not only a really great guy and an engaging speaker, but also a good musician) will be speaking on Christianity and the Philip Pulman novels on Sunday the 16th of December at 6pm, Martyr’s Church in North Street. The title of his talk, ‘Killing God Softly: Does “The Golden Compass” undermine Christianity?’ For more information, contact Matt.

Ratzinger on Salvation and Hope

Within the past week, on the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle and on the eve of Advent, Pope Benedict XVI released an encyclical letter, Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope). In his introduction he writes, ‘Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey’.

Even if not convincing at all points, it is a rich document that deserves close reading and reflection. Here’s a particularly rich taster:

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning-it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice-the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together-judgement and grace-that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).