Doctrine of the Trinity.

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Torrance warns, in his preface, that some may find the book difficult to read. This is because he thought out each sentence and paragraph very carefully. There are also deliberate repetitions in the text because he wanted to say everything as fully as possible. But don't let that discourage you. It definitely repays careful reading.
Where can that be purchased from?
 
Then again, Torrance's affinity for Barth should be a filter through which all that he writes be read.

One should read Torrance and Barth mining some gold here and there, but disavow their views that would break the ontological gap between the divine and the human natures. It requires a good understanding of theology proper to separate what these Neo's have to say that is meaningful and what requires one to abandon the WCF.

Patrick
 
Then again, Torrance's affinity for Barth should be a filter through which all that he writes be read.

One should read Torrance and Barth mining some gold here and there, but disavow their views that would break the ontological gap between the divine and the human natures. It requires a good understanding of theology proper to separate what these Neo's have to say that is meaningful and what requires one to abandon the WCF.

Patrick

Noted, but Torrance is also clear on where he corrects Barth.

I have read Torrance's stuff just for his exegesis of Athanasius and Hilary of Poitiers, especially during the Evangelical chaos on the Grudem/Ware Trinity stuff this summer.
 
Then again, Torrance's affinity for Barth should be a filter through which all that he writes be read.

One should read Torrance and Barth mining some gold here and there, but disavow their views that would break the ontological gap between the divine and the human natures. It requires a good understanding of theology proper to separate what these Neo's have to say that is meaningful and what requires one to abandon the WCF.

Patrick
Would you mind expanding about what views they held as to the nature of Jesus makes them suspect?
 
Noted, but Torrance is also clear on where he corrects Barth.

I have read Torrance's stuff just for his exegesis of Athanasius and Hilary of Poitiers, especially during the Evangelical chaos on the Grudem/Ware Trinity stuff this summer.
Knew that Dr Grudem and Dr Erickson had some debates over the Trinity, but wha were Dr Grudem and Dr ware contending about?
 
Which might leave one assuming Torrance is not in need of correction.

https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/about-40-thomas-torrance-lectures.88419/

See also Muller's THE BARTH LEGACY: NEW ATHANASIUS OR ORIGEN REDIVIVUS? A RESPONSE TO T. F. TORRANCE, in Richard A Thomist: a Speculative Quarterly Review; Oct 1, 1990; 54, 4; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 673

One can "need correction" on some points (I think Torrance is wrong on Nazianzus's use of the monarchia) and still be an authority in a field.

I take it we agree that Robert Letham is a good scholar on the Trinity? His chapter on Torrance praises Torrance (and Letham rejects the idea Torrance can simply be labeled a Barthian).

As to the Torrance lectures, I know a lot of conservative TR types who privately thanked me for the Torrance lectures and outlines on the Trinity.

And with the exception of volume 4 of PRRD, I've read everything Muller has written. And I think Muller is mostly correct that Torrance kind of cooks the evidence on Barth's being an Athanasian. True, there are quotes from Barth in CD II/2 that sound like Athanasius's Contra Arianos, but I don't think they are as strong as Torrance makes them out to be.
 
Would you mind expanding about what views they held as to the nature of Jesus makes them suspect?

Barth, especially the early barth of the Romans commentary, said God was "wholly other," which makes him unknowable, which really puts Jesus in a bind. Now, to the extent he held that line from his Marburg Neo-Kantian professors, he is wrong. I'm not sure whether his "Anselmian" turn meant a break from "Wholly Other" thinking or no. McCormack says it did, but most disagree with McCormack.
 
And Barth rejects substance metaphysics, so he is wrong on that. Interestingly, I think Torrance moved back closer to orthodoxy on that point, given Torrance's belief in the reality and knowability of God's creation
 
Barth, especially the early barth of the Romans commentary, said God was "wholly other," which makes him unknowable, which really puts Jesus in a bind. Now, to the extent he held that line from his Marburg Neo-Kantian professors, he is wrong. I'm not sure whether his "Anselmian" turn meant a break from "Wholly Other" thinking or no. McCormack says it did, but most disagree with McCormack.

Umm, may I ask what part of God is part of man? Please notice I did not say what part of Jesus is like men. :)
 
Barth, especially the early barth of the Romans commentary, said God was "wholly other," which makes him unknowable, which really puts Jesus in a bind. Now, to the extent he held that line from his Marburg Neo-Kantian professors, he is wrong. I'm not sure whether his "Anselmian" turn meant a break from "Wholly Other" thinking or no. McCormack says it did, but most disagree with McCormack.
That makes sense to me, as hard to see how Jesus would be seen as being God Incarnate and know God by viewing Him if God cannot ever be really known!
And Barth rejects substance metaphysics, so he is wrong on that. Interestingly, I think Torrance moved back closer to orthodoxy on that point, given Torrance's belief in the reality and knowability of God's creation

So he did not see God in supernatural terms than?
 
That makes sense to me, as hard to see how Jesus would be seen as being God Incarnate and know God by viewing Him if God cannot ever be really known!

Well, on one hand the Reformed, unlike the Lutherans, do not believe that Jesus' human nature and mind, especially the latter, is omniscience. We hold to the theologia unionis between archetypal and ectypal knowledge. But I don't think that is what barth was saying.

His Kantian masters would have made a divorce between the noumenal realm, which is the thing in itself, which man can never know, and the phenomenal realm, which man can never know. According to the standard reception and interpretation of Barth, God is in the noumenal realm.

Did Barth actually believe that? I don't know. I'm not a Barthian (indeed, Barth's and Torrance's disciples have attacked me) so I don't have much at stake in whether Barth was a neo-Kantian or not.


So he did not see God in supernatural terms than?

I don't know what that means. He would not have seen God in natural terms (that was part of his whole attack against natural theology). A rejection of substance metaphysics means he rejected the claim that there was a "something" behind the Person of Jesus.
 
Umm, may I ask what part of God is part of man? Please notice I did not say what part of Jesus is like men. :)

I'm not sure what you are getting at. Barth didn't say a part of God is a part of man, if you mean part as a part constituting a whole.
 
Well, on one hand the Reformed, unlike the Lutherans, do not believe that Jesus' human nature and mind, especially the latter, is omniscience. We hold to the theologia unionis between archetypal and ectypal knowledge. But I don't think that is what barth was saying.

His Kantian masters would have made a divorce between the noumenal realm, which is the thing in itself, which man can never know, and the phenomenal realm, which man can never know. According to the standard reception and interpretation of Barth, God is in the noumenal realm.

Did Barth actually believe that? I don't know. I'm not a Barthian (indeed, Barth's and Torrance's disciples have attacked me) so I don't have much at stake in whether Barth was a neo-Kantian or not.




I don't know what that means. He would not have seen God in natural terms (that was part of his whole attack against natural theology). A rejection of substance metaphysics means he rejected the claim that there was a "something" behind the Person of Jesus.

Jesus knew all things in His deity, but learned new ings as to His humanity, correct? And whever we know of and about God comes from His revelation in nature, Bble, and most of all in Jesus Christ, so what would hmean that we cannot know things?
 
Jesus knew all things in His deity, but learned new ings as to His humanity, correct? And whever we know of and about God comes from His revelation in nature, Bble, and most of all in Jesus Christ, so what would hmean that we cannot know things?
Unless you know something about Kantian epistemology, what Jacob is saying will fall on deaf ears. To attempt to clarify, there where two "realms" for Kant: the noumenal realm in which things are as they really are in themselves; and the phenomenal realm in which things are as we experience them. Kant's point, to oversimplify, is that we know the world only as we experience it; all our knowledge is mediated through our experience of it. We never know the Ding An Sich, the thing in itself.

Now, enter Schleiermacher and company. Kantianism essentially attempts (emphasis on attempts) to marry Christian doctrine with Kantian metaphysics and epistemology, and from thence comes modern theology.
 
Not in Barth's sense of the phrase.

In what sense? Jesus was not wholly other according to His human nature, but according to His divine nature was He not wholly other? I ask because I understand Barth erred on accommodated truth but so far as the divine essence I think he was correct in that it (divine essence) is wholly other.
 
In what sense? Jesus was not wholly other according to His human nature, but according to His divine nature was He not wholly other? I ask because I understand Barth erred on accommodated truth but so far as the divine essence I think he was correct in that it (divine essence) is wholly other.

I reject that God is placed in the noumenal realm, and hence on that reading cannot be known.
 
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