RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Torrance, Thomas F. The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons. 1998.
In 2016, as we battled for the doctrine of the Trinity, this book was an anchor to which I turned over and over again. This covers much of the same ground as his earlier *The Trinitarian Faith,* though with some new material. Such material, however, does not replace The Trinitarian Faith and if money is a factor, then get TTF instead.
Being and Act
God reveals himself out of himself.
God gives himself as a whole. In knowing God we do not know God as a part, but we apprehend the Whole (though we do not comprehend the whole). But in apprehending the whole, we know that full comprehension eludes us (26). We know God as Totum, but not en toto.
In the Communion of the Spirit our own way of knowing is lifted up into the transcendent life (33). By our indwelling the Scriptures our minds form a structural kinship.
Torrance centers his argument around the homoousion. It guarantees how we understand the internal relations in the Trinity. Not only are the persons homoousion, but so are the relations. Only in Christ is God’s self-revelation identical with himself” (Torrance 1). In Christ God has communicated his Word to us and imparted his Spirit. God’s revelation of himself as Father, Son, and HS in the economy of salvation is grounded in and derived from the eternal being of God” (80).
The Trinitarian Mind
The mystery of Godliness means thinking about God in a Trinitarian way.
“The Son is the knowledge of the Father, but the knowledge of the Son is in the father and has been revealed through the Son” (Irenaeus 4.14.5).
P1: Our conceptual statements must be open-ended and point beyond themselves.
Top Level: More refined scientific theory/Trinitarian relations in God
--------------------------------------------------------
Middle Level: Theory/ Economy of Christ
--------------------------------------------------------
Ground level: day to day experience/ Evangelical apprehension and experience
Each level is open to the others. When we move from one level to another, we seek to order the basic concepts from the lower level to the higher. The intuitive mind takes its first principle at once and as a whole, naturally and tacitly (84). Since the Act and Word of God are internal to his being, we may know God through the Act and Word in the inner reality of his being (Contra Ar. 1:9ff). Since the Spirit is not embodied in space and time, we cannot know him in the concrete modalities. Our knowledge of him rests directly on the objectivity of God, unmediated.
One Being/Three Persons
Ousia--not a static being but the living and speaking being (116). Athanasius preferred to use verbs when speaking of God (De Synodis 34). Ousia is to be understood in terms of the divine “I am.” Being-in-Act and Act-in-Being.
Torrance makes several key, epistemological gains in this work. Knowledge of new realities calls for new ways of thinking--new concepts and new thought patterns (Contra Arianos, 1:23; 4:27; De Synodis 42). We interiorize what we seek to know and rely not just on external evidence (38). The object naturally integrates into us and we let it disclose its depths of meaning to us.
Torrance has an illuminating discussion of the Divine Monarchy. The monarchy means there is a specific order to the divine Persons. It is the order manifested in the history and revealing of God’s saving acts (176). The Son is begotten of the Father, not the other way around. If one presses the Cappadocian distinctions too far, then we are left with the claim that the person of the Father causes, deifies, and personalizes the Being of the Son, Spirit, and even Godhead!
We can say, however, that the monarchia of the Father is cause not of their being, but of their mode of enhypostatic differentiation (179). Torrance wants to see the monarchia referring to the Being of the Father, rather than strictly the Person. For him this points back to the intrinsic relations of the Being: The Being of the Father as Father means the Being of the Son of the Father.
Conclusion:
This is a good book, but it repeats a lot of material from his earlier work and the discussions aren't always clearer.
In 2016, as we battled for the doctrine of the Trinity, this book was an anchor to which I turned over and over again. This covers much of the same ground as his earlier *The Trinitarian Faith,* though with some new material. Such material, however, does not replace The Trinitarian Faith and if money is a factor, then get TTF instead.
Being and Act
God reveals himself out of himself.
God gives himself as a whole. In knowing God we do not know God as a part, but we apprehend the Whole (though we do not comprehend the whole). But in apprehending the whole, we know that full comprehension eludes us (26). We know God as Totum, but not en toto.
In the Communion of the Spirit our own way of knowing is lifted up into the transcendent life (33). By our indwelling the Scriptures our minds form a structural kinship.
Torrance centers his argument around the homoousion. It guarantees how we understand the internal relations in the Trinity. Not only are the persons homoousion, but so are the relations. Only in Christ is God’s self-revelation identical with himself” (Torrance 1). In Christ God has communicated his Word to us and imparted his Spirit. God’s revelation of himself as Father, Son, and HS in the economy of salvation is grounded in and derived from the eternal being of God” (80).
The Trinitarian Mind
The mystery of Godliness means thinking about God in a Trinitarian way.
“The Son is the knowledge of the Father, but the knowledge of the Son is in the father and has been revealed through the Son” (Irenaeus 4.14.5).
P1: Our conceptual statements must be open-ended and point beyond themselves.
Top Level: More refined scientific theory/Trinitarian relations in God
--------------------------------------------------------
Middle Level: Theory/ Economy of Christ
--------------------------------------------------------
Ground level: day to day experience/ Evangelical apprehension and experience
Each level is open to the others. When we move from one level to another, we seek to order the basic concepts from the lower level to the higher. The intuitive mind takes its first principle at once and as a whole, naturally and tacitly (84). Since the Act and Word of God are internal to his being, we may know God through the Act and Word in the inner reality of his being (Contra Ar. 1:9ff). Since the Spirit is not embodied in space and time, we cannot know him in the concrete modalities. Our knowledge of him rests directly on the objectivity of God, unmediated.
One Being/Three Persons
Ousia--not a static being but the living and speaking being (116). Athanasius preferred to use verbs when speaking of God (De Synodis 34). Ousia is to be understood in terms of the divine “I am.” Being-in-Act and Act-in-Being.
Torrance makes several key, epistemological gains in this work. Knowledge of new realities calls for new ways of thinking--new concepts and new thought patterns (Contra Arianos, 1:23; 4:27; De Synodis 42). We interiorize what we seek to know and rely not just on external evidence (38). The object naturally integrates into us and we let it disclose its depths of meaning to us.
Torrance has an illuminating discussion of the Divine Monarchy. The monarchy means there is a specific order to the divine Persons. It is the order manifested in the history and revealing of God’s saving acts (176). The Son is begotten of the Father, not the other way around. If one presses the Cappadocian distinctions too far, then we are left with the claim that the person of the Father causes, deifies, and personalizes the Being of the Son, Spirit, and even Godhead!
We can say, however, that the monarchia of the Father is cause not of their being, but of their mode of enhypostatic differentiation (179). Torrance wants to see the monarchia referring to the Being of the Father, rather than strictly the Person. For him this points back to the intrinsic relations of the Being: The Being of the Father as Father means the Being of the Son of the Father.
Conclusion:
This is a good book, but it repeats a lot of material from his earlier work and the discussions aren't always clearer.