About 40 Thomas Torrance lectures

[RamistThomist]

Recently released. Looks to be good stuff on Nicene Theology.

Disclaimer: I realize his Barthian subtones, but since he was a genius on Patristic theology and Trinitarianism, it is too good to be missed. Hegel is bad.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Torrance writes some really good stuff. Some of his insights on the nature of union with Christ are excellent except that I got the impression that he thinks that such is the possession of all people (hence the Barthian warning). I found myself delighted and simultaneously frustrated when reading his book on worship.

 

[MW]

What did this man teach about the gospel? That God in Christ could fail and sinful fallen man must make the difference. T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” p. 94:

"We preach and teach the gospel evangelically, then, in such a way as this: God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease.”

There is no good news. There is only an assertion that the love of God and the mediation of Christ can fail eternally. It provides no basis for faith and assurance. It can only motivate men to think that they can do for themselves what God in Christ was unable to do for them.

What did this man teach about union with Christ? That Christ assumed our fallen humanity. T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” 48-9:

“Perhaps the most fundamental truth which we have to learn in the Christian Church, or rather relearn since we have suppressed it, is that the incarnation was the coming of God to save us in the heart of our fallen and depraved humanity, where humanity is at its wickedest in its enmity and violence against the reconciling love of God. That is to say, the incarnation is to be understood as the coming of God to take upon himself our fallen human nature, our actual human existence laden with sin and guilt, our humanity diseased in mind and soul in its estrangement or alienation from the Creator. This is a doctrine found everywhere in the early Church in the first five centuries, expressed again and again in the terms that the whole man had to be assumed by Christ if the whole man was to be saved, that the unassumed is unhealed, or that what God has not taken up in Christ is not saved. The sharp point of those formulations of this truth lay in the fact that it is the alienated mind of man that God had laid hold of in Jesus Christ in order to redeem it and effect reconciliation deep within the rational centre of human being.”

The denial of the forensic element of salvation led him to espouse serious doctrinal error and to assume that error as fundamental to his theology and message.

 

[RamistThomist]

I should have seen where this would be going.

 

[MW]

I should have seen where this would be going.

Yes, you should.

 

[RamistThomist]

I thought people would like good scholarship on Nicene theology.

mea culpa.

 

[MW]

I thought people would like good scholarship on Nicene theology.

They might. First, his simplified appropriation of what is not assumed is not healed is not very good scholarship. Secondly, the linked audio is mostly concerned with the areas of theology in which he consciously rejected and deviated from confessional orthodoxy. It should be no surprise that a warning would ensue on a confessionally orthodox forum to watch out for specific deviations from the truth.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

That is to say, the incarnation is to be understood as the coming of God to take upon himself our fallen human nature, our actual human existence laden with sin and guilt, our humanity diseased in mind and soul in its estrangement or alienation from the Creator.

I once read/heard someone argue that Tom Torrance was heavily influenced both by Karl Barth and by John McLeod Campbell, both of whom were supposed to have espoused this very error that Christ took on a fallen human nature. Thus it was argued that when Dr Torrance read the Reformed tradition, he read it through the lens of these two writers. Apparently, this trend comes out most clearly in his book, Scottish Theology. I cannot remember who made this observation, but it may have been Robert Letham or Donald McLeod.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

I thought people would like good scholarship on Nicene theology.

Jacob,

What do the big shots in the world of the Reformed seminaries, mainly systematic theology professors, think of the Torrance brothers? Was there not a professor at one of the RTS campuses who did his doctoral work on Karl Barth in the Torrances, or something to that effect? I got the impression that Robert Letham was something of a cautious admirer of Tom Torrance.

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

I do not know the particular professor you are speaking of, but when I was struggling with neo-orthodoxy, liberalism, and confessional Presbyterianism while a student at Pittsburgh someone sent me (I wish I could remember who) this article which I found helpful (on Barth and Torrance).

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

While sitting here transcribing old newspaper articles I am listening to the lecture on The Exaltation of the Son, in which he argues (very passionately) that Christ took on a fallen human nature. In fairness, he does denounce the immaculate conception of Mary as a "Roman Catholic heresy".

Is it just me or does he have a very weird accent; it seems to be a mixture of a southern English, Chinese, and Scottish accents?

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

He was born in China to Scottish missionary parents, which explains it.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

What did this man teach about the gospel? That God in Christ could fail and sinful fallen man must make the difference. T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” p. 94:

"We preach and teach the gospel evangelically, then, in such a way as this: God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease.”

There is no good news. There is only an assertion that the love of God and the mediation of Christ can fail eternally. It provides no basis for faith and assurance. It can only motivate men to think that they can do for themselves what God in Christ was unable to do for them.

What did this man teach about union with Christ? That Christ assumed our fallen humanity. T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” 48-9:

“Perhaps the most fundamental truth which we have to learn in the Christian Church, or rather relearn since we have suppressed it, is that the incarnation was the coming of God to save us in the heart of our fallen and depraved humanity, where humanity is at its wickedest in its enmity and violence against the reconciling love of God. That is to say, the incarnation is to be understood as the coming of God to take upon himself our fallen human nature, our actual human existence laden with sin and guilt, our humanity diseased in mind and soul in its estrangement or alienation from the Creator. This is a doctrine found everywhere in the early Church in the first five centuries, expressed again and again in the terms that the whole man had to be assumed by Christ if the whole man was to be saved, that the unassumed is unhealed, or that what God has not taken up in Christ is not saved. The sharp point of those formulations of this truth lay in the fact that it is the alienated mind of man that God had laid hold of in Jesus Christ in order to redeem it and effect reconciliation deep within the rational centre of human being.”

The denial of the forensic element of salvation led him to espouse serious doctrinal error and to assume that error as fundamental to his theology and message.

That's very helpful. I haven't consumed Torrance in big doses. What I did read was "good" in the sense that you could read him for a long time as he reflects upon the ongoing effects of union with Christ that resonate with Scripture but then you realize that he thinks this is everyone's possession and that everyone is elect.

 

[MW]

this article which I found helpful (on Barth and Torrance).

It appears the earlier two articles are available at the same site:

http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1087&context=lts_fac_pubs

http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1099&context=lts_fac_pubs

 

[bookslover]

I have found his book The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (1996) to be very helpful.