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The Dimension of Depth: Thomas F. Torrance on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

George Hunsinger
George Hunsinger
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary Box 821 Princeton, NJ08542USA
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Extract

‘All the gifts of God set forth in baptism,’ wrote John Calvin, ‘are found in Christ alone’ (Inst. IV.15.6). The baptismal gifts, for Calvin, were essentially three: forgiveness of sins, dying and rising with Christ, and communion with Christ himself (FV.15.1, 5, 6). They were ordered, however, in a particular way. Communion with Christ, Calvin considered, was in effect the one inestimable gift that included within itself the other two benefits of forgiveness and rising with Christ from the dead. Forgiveness and eternal life were thus inseparable from Christ's person and so from participatio Christi through our communion with him. Only by participating in Christ through communion could the divine gifts set forth in baptism be truly received. Any severing of these gifts from Christ himself would result only in empty abstractions. No spiritual gift—neither forgiveness nor eternal life nor any other divine benefit—was ever to be found alongside Christ or apart from him. Christ's saving benefits were inherent in his living person. Only in and with his person were they set forth and available to the church. Communion with Christ was thus bound up with Christ's person in his saving uniqueness. He himself and he alone, for Calvin and for the whole Reformation, was our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , May 2001 , pp. 155 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2001

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References

1 Quicquid enim in Baptismo proponitur donorum Dei, in Christo uno reperitur. Unless otherwise indicated, I am using my own translations, though I tend to follow Allen closely. Calvin, , Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols, trans. Allen, John (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Education, 1928).Google Scholar

2 Cf. Niesel, Wilhelm, The Theology of Calvin (London: Lutterworth Press, 1956), p. 220.Google Scholar

3 Comm. on Matt. 3:13.

4 These images, of course, have been famously proposed by Karl Barth, who saw what was at stake, and who powerfully urged the first option. For a discussion unsurpassed in its incisiveness, whether in Barth's own corpus or elsewhere, see his Church Dogmatics 1/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), pp. 250–257.Google Scholar

5 Non posse nos gratis iustificare sola fide, quin simul sancte vivamus. Comm. on I Cor. 1:30 (ET, p. 46).

6 Regenerationem vero ita demum ab euis morte et resurrectione consequimur, si per Spritum sanctifecati imbuamur nova et spirituali natura. Here I have cited from the Battles translation: Calvin, , Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1960), p. 1308 (my italics)Google Scholar. My point is not that this translation is necessarily the best rendering of the Latin, only that Calvin's wording is ambiguous enough that it can be pressed in this direction. Allen and Beveridge, in their different translations, both soften the si to ‘when.’

7 In context, in these passages as elsewhere, Calvin is clearly concerned to counter Catholic criticisms that justification, as taught by the Reformation, abolishes sanctification. Too often, however, in countering this allegation, Calvin resorts to formulations that leave him open to misunderstanding on another flank. What he seems to mean is that justification, properly understood, is not only compatible with sanctification, but also includes it. But the perfect tense of sanctification in Christ seems threatened—or at least rendered ambiguous—in various ways, for example, by his use of conditional clauses beginning with the word ‘if’ (or its equivalent).

8 Torrance, Thomas F., ‘The One Baptism Common to Christ and His Church,’ in Theology in Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 82–105Google Scholar; on p. 82. References hereafter in the text.

9 Cf. the phrase drawn from Cranmer's great eucharistic Prayer of Thanksgiving: ‘… that we are members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people’ (The Book of Common Prayer [New York: Oxford University Press, 1979], p. 339 [Rite I]Google Scholar.) For United States Presbyterians, a similar phrase could still be found in The Book of Common Worship (Philadelphia, PA: The Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, 1946, 1960), p. 164Google Scholar. In the newer Presbyterian, Book of Common Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993)Google Scholar, the phrase completely disappears.

10 ‘The implication of this for an understanding of the saving life and activity of Jesus is immense. It laid the emphasis not only on what was called Jesus’ “passive obedience,” in which he submitted to the divine judgment upon us, but also upon his “active obedience,” in which he took our place in all our human activity before God the Father, such as our acts of faith, obedience, prayer, and worship. To be united with Christ is to be joined to him in his life of faith, obedience, prayer, and worship, so that we must look away from our faith, obedience, prayer and worship to what Christ is and does for us in our place and on our behalf.’ Torrance, ‘The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,’ The Donnell Lecture delivered at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, 1988, unpublished MS., pp. 5–6. (Although they share the same basic christocentric emphasis on salvation's perfect tense, Torrance characteristically places much more weight than Barth on the priestly, vicarious and mediating nature of Christ's active obedience.)

11 ‘For Irenaeus Baptism is certainly the sacrament of the whole incarnational reversal of our lost and disobedient estate in Adam which was carried through in the penetration of the Son of God into our alienation in the birth of Jesus, in the whole course of his obedient and saving humanity from infancy to maturity, in his death and resurrection and ascent to the right hand of the Father. As such the reality of our baptism is to be found in the objective reality of what has already been accomplished for us in Christ alone.’ Torrance, , ‘Draft of Interim Report,’ Special Commission on Baptism, The Church of Scotland, 1956, MS., pp. 20–21Google Scholar; cf. Interim Report, May 1956, pp. 13–14.

12 By distinguishing ‘participation’ from ‘communion’ (words which can overlap in meaning), I am using the former in the ontic sense of ‘real union’ and the latter in the more noetic sense involving cognition and volition.

13 Torrance does not reject the Reformation idea of ‘imputation,’ but following Luther, Calvin and Barth, he places it in the context of participation. Justification has to be understood, he writes, ‘not just in terms of imputed righteousness but in terms of a participation in the righteousness of Christ which is transferred to us through union with him’ (‘The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,’ MS., p. 6). The forensic imagery of imputation, as Torrance is keenly aware, although helpful is not sufficient. Its great value lies in clarifying that Christ's righteousness is not bestowed upon us piecemeal but as an indivisible whole. Its insufficiency, on the other hand, lies in the misleading implication, seized upon by opponents of the Reformation, that our righteousness in Christ is no more than a ‘legal fiction.’ The context of union and communion with Christ helps overcome this misunderstanding—as also does the free, gracious and miraculous nature of the transaction that Luther and Calvin in particular grasped especially from their reading of Rom. 4, in which the justification of the godless, through their being clothed in the righteousness of Christ, is perceived as being just as much a free miracle of grace as the creation of the world ex nihilo and the resurrection of Christ from the dead. See Torrance, , ‘Justification: Its Radical Nature and Place in Reformed Doctrine and Life,’ in Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965), pp. 150–168, esp. pp. 153, 155.Google Scholar

14 Two possible mistakes need to be avoided here. One is to reduce the unio hypostatica downwards to the unio mystica. This is the typical mistake of modern liberal theology. The other moves in the opposite direction by dissolving the unio mystica upwards into the unio hypostatica. This is the typical mistake of various high sacramental ecclesiologies. By seeing the unio hypostatica as absolutely sui generis and the unio mystica as pertaining to our union with the person of the incarnate Son by virtue of our participation in his vicarious humanity, Torrance preserves their proper distinction, and so the proper unity-in-distinction (and distinction-inunity) between Christ and his church.

15 'Torrance, , ‘The Pascal Mystery of Christ and the Eucharist,’ in Theology in Reconciliation, pp. 106–138Google Scholar; on p. 120. References hereafter in the text.

16 The focus on Christ's blood, though often repugnant to modern and Gentile sensibilities, is profoundly Hebraic in its priestly significance. See ‘Meditation on the Blood of Christ’ in Hunsinger, George, Disruptive Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 361–363Google Scholar.