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The Epistemological Significance of ‘Ομοοσον in the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Kang Phee Seng
Kang Phee Seng
Affiliation:
Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist College, 224 Waterloo Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong
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Extract

Central to the whole of Thomas Forsyth Torrance's theology is the μοοΣιον between the incarnate Logos and the eternal God, or the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. The immense significance of this Nicene μοοΣιον is best understood against the background of the axiomatic χωριΣμΣ which lies at the heart of Hellenism, Gnosticism and Arianism. Once such a radical separation between τ νοητ and τ αἰΣθητ is posited, there arise the inevitable questions: (a) How do we regard the biblical statements of the eternal God within the history of the Jewish people in the realm of τ αἰΣθητ (b) On which side of the demarcation does the Logos of the eternal God belong? For the dualist thinkers, the dilemma is — How can the eternal God who is impassible and changeless be thought of as actually entering the spatiotemporal history of this changing and decaying world, and alas, even living within our creaturely and contingent order? To be sure, the biblical notion of a Creator who actively and creatively interacts with his creation is incompatible with the prevailing Hellenic thought-form and secular culture of the early Church. It was as unthinkable and unintelligible to them as it is to Bultmann and the myth-of-God-incarnate theologians of our day.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , August 1992 , pp. 341 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1992

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References

1 Cf. Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCM, 1965), p. 34Google Scholar; The Trinitarian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), pp. 133f.Google Scholar

2 Although Torrance may speak of, and rightly so, the μοοΣιogr;ν as ‘a fundamental dogma’ of the Christian faith, it is far from the fundamentalist sense of dogma. (Reconstruction, 33) He adopts a functional use of the term μοοΣιogr;ν, and allows it to be critically controlled by the reality it signifies in such a way that the reality signified is constantly kepi in view. As such the dogma of μοοΣιogr;ν is, and has to be, stretched beyond its natural sense and reference so that its full meaning and significance lie not in our own rigid, precise definition but in the actual oneness of the mutual loving and knowing relation between the Father and the Son.

3 Cf. Theology in Reconciliation (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975), p. 222.Google Scholar

4 For the inseparability of revelation and reconciliation, see Reconstruction, 128–49, especially 132–34.

5 EIS here connotes the personal dynamic relation of the Son towards his Father, like πρΣ τν θεν (in 1:1) and πρΣ τν πατρα (in 13:1).

6 Reconciliation, 226, his italics; cf. 222. Thus not only did Jesus say that ‘Iand the Father are one’, i.e. equality in Being, but also‘I am in the Father and the Father in me’, i.e. mutual indwelling. The inhere should not be interpreted in terms of Aristotelian-Newtonian receptacle notion of space, where the containing substance is thought of as having an empty space to enclose the substance contained. As Torrance often points out, this straight away falls into Arianism. [Cf. Space, Time and Incarnation (London: U.P., 1969), p. 63.Google Scholar] With God the indwelling is mutual. The Father and the Son are equally receptive and permeative (χωρητικoΣ ‘capable of containing’) of each other and are mutually inter-penetrative. Thus the ‘in’ belongs to the full mutuality of the Son and the Father just as the other preposition of does: ‘The Son is in the Father as the Father is in the Son’ and the Son is ’the Son of the Father just as the Father is the Father of the Son’. Both the prepositions ‘in’ and ‘of’ connote the dynamic, personal relation between the Father and the Son, and may be expressed in terms of the περιχώρηΣιΣ or circumincessio of the Godhead.

7 Peconstruction, 36, italics mine.

8 Cf. The Trinitarian Faith, 130, 215. This ana-logical movement refers to the movement of our thoughts and concepts across another or higher logical levels back to the source which give rise to them (Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), pp. 70f.Google Scholar

9 Reconstruction, 33, 36; ‘The Hermeneutics of StAthanasius’, Ekklesiastikos Pharos, 52 (1970): 98f. It is important to note that Torrance is fully aware of the fact that ‘(biblico) theological statements are worldly statements and have ihis-worldly reference … and as such come under the demands for verification according to the criteria that operate in these various realms of experience and use of language’. Theological statements thus ‘have a meaning and truthfulness in relation to other-inira-mundane statements that have to be examined and set forth. Just because the Truth of God has come into this world, ison this side, we have to respect its earthly and worldly form and its this-worldly objectivity — on earth, in history, in Israel, in the Church. Todeny thatwould be disrespect of God's Truth as it is in Jesus. But to identify God's Truth with the truth of the worldly forms into which it enters, would not only mean the identification of theology with mere phenomenology and therefore the rejection of theo-logical thinking, but would bring ‘God’ under the compulsion of our observation and thinking, and make “Him” a prisoner of mere historical happening and relativity. This kind of ‘God’ could only be the apotheosis of man.’ Theohgical Science (London: Oxford U.P., 1969), pp. 187f., italics mine:.)Google Scholar

10 Theobgical Science, 187.

11 Cf. Reconstruction, 44. Also ‘The Hermeneutics of Si Athanasius’, 52: 460f. ‘Properly “orthodox” means rightly related to the truth in accordance with the truth itself, not (necessarily) in accordance with official or accepted opinion.’ (Theobgical Science, 194 n. 2, his italics.)

12 The Trinitarian Faith, 133.

13 The Mediation of Christ (Exeter: Paternoster, 1983), p. 33Google Scholar, his italics; also Reconstruction, 130f.

14 Reconciliation, 222, his italics.

15 Ibid., 237, his italics. Thus the ineffability of God does not imply his unknowability or unintelligibility. Moreover, this ineffability belongs to the positive, genuine knowledge of God as God, for God ‘reveals himself as infinitely greater lhan we can conceive’. (The Trinitarian Faith, 214.)

16 The Trinitarian Faith, 138; also 202, 305.

17 Reconciliatu n, 238.

18 The Trinitarian Faith, 131, 215, 311. Cf. The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Belfast: Christian Journals, 1980), pp. 152fGoogle Scholar; God and nationality (London: Oxford U.P., 1971), pp. 176–181.Google Scholar

19 Reconstruction, 88.

20 Ibid., 41.

21 See the temptation narratives, also such incidents as in Matthew 12: 38–40, Mark 8: 11–12, Luke 20: 1–8.

22 God and Rationality, 156.

23 Cf. John 8: 43. Also Conflict and Argument in the Church (2 volumes, London: Lutterworth, 1959–1960), volume 2, pp. 62f.Google Scholar; Space, Time and Resurrection (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1976), p. 167Google Scholar. Cf. Bultmann, Rudolf, The Gospel of john (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), p. 316.Google Scholar

24 Matthew 11:27, Luke 10:22, John 6:46, 7: 29, 8:55, 10:15 and 17: 25 respectively.

25 Cf. The Trinitarian Faith, 62, 112, 124, 135f.

26 Ibid., 135ff, 146ff, 186ff. For the significance of the human mind of Christ and the problem of Apollinarianism in worship and episiemology, see Reconciliation, chapter 4. Torrance pointed out that the young Bonhoeffer in his Actand Beinghad ‘a distinctelement of epistemological Apollinarianism’ in his thought when he insisted that ‘knowledge of God as God is possible “only if God is also the subject of the knowing of revelation since, if man knew, then itwas not God that he knew”.’ (Theological Science, 292, his italics.)

27 The Mediation of Christ, 88.

28 The Trinitarian Faith, 202. Though the patristic insight ‘only by God is God known’ was mainly used with reference to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, it appliesequally well in the self-revelation of the divine Logos in Jesus Christ.

29 Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology, 1910–1931 (London: SCM, 1962), p. 46, set; also 102, 142, 152, 155Google Scholar.

30 Cf. ‘Hermeneiitics according to F. D. E. Schleiermacher’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 21 (1968): 257–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Karl Barth, 61.

32 Ibid., 102, his italics.

33 Mackey, James P.Jesus, the Man and the Myth: A Contemporary Chritology (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 232f.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 240 (italics mine), 238 respectively.

35 Ibid., 220f.

36 God and Rationality, 176, his italics, d. 179.

37 Cf. Reconstruction, 27, 270.

38 God and Rationality, 1811., italics mine.

39 Reconstruction, 223f.

40 God and Rationality, 176f.

41 Reconciliation, 181f.

42 I Corinthians 2: 9–16.

43 God and Rationality, 165, italics mine. Also The Trinitarian Faith, 203.

44 Cf. ‘Karl Barth’, Expository Times, 66 (1955): 209Google Scholar, and ‘Karl Barth’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 2 (1956); 31Google Scholar. Klsewhere, Torrance laments that pneumatology is the weakest ot all Christian doctrines, for ‘it has never been given the disciplined attention it requires’. Although massive attention was given to it in the nineteenth century idealist theology, the identification of the Spirit of God with man's spirit, or theologically speaking, the substitution of filioque by a homineque, gave rise to a doctrine which is ‘the exact opposite of ihe Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit’. [The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church (London: James Clarke, 1959), p. cxvGoogle Scholar; cf. Reconstruction, 190.]

45 God and Rationality, 175. To put in Wittgensteinian language, ‘You cannot picture in a picture how a picture piciuressome reality, hecause if you did everything would become picture, with no reality.’ (Ibid., 36, also Reconstruction, 56f., Theological Science, 24, 118, 113, See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Traclatus Logicp-Philosophicus, 4.01f., 4.12f.)

46 Ibid., italics mine.

47 Tneological Science, 223n. 2, his italics. Cf. Tillich's, PaulThe Dynamics of Faith, (New York: Harper & Row, 1957Google Scholar) and his three volumes of Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963)Google Scholar, especially volume 3.

48 Reconstruction, 19; God and Rationality, 46; Reality and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982), p. 160Google Scholar. Cf. Barr, James, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London: Oxford U.P., 1961).Google Scholar

49 Theological Science, 183.

50 God and Rationality, 186.

51 Ibid., italics mine. Cf. Reconciliation, 236.

52 Reconstruction, 93, his italics.

53 Ibid., italics mine.

54 Cod and Rationality, 186, his italics.

55 Ibid., 175 (his italics), Reconstruction, 56.

56 For ‘intuitive knowledge’ and ‘abstractive knowledge’, see The Hermeneulics of john Calvin (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988), 4ff, 13ff, 24ff, 86ffGoogle Scholar. Hence the internum in Calvin's doctrine of testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti does not refer to some word or light which is internal to our soul but only to Cod's Word or his Light which is internal to God himself. The testimonium internum is thus God's articulating himself within our minds, his ‘self-witness inherent in his own Truth…which he causes to echo within us’ in our hearing of his Word, (Reconstruction, 95; God and Rationality, 181).

57 God and Rationality, 187. Also Reconstruction, 93–6.

58 Cf. Reconstruction, 83, 213, 229. The impropriety of human language seems to be a stumbling block to both the fundamen lalists and to the Roman Curia who seek to justify the certainty and authority of biblico-theological statements or papal decrees on this our side of the created realm out of a closed system of linguistic structure and/or historical succession, and attempts to construct a rigid canon of truth outoflogico-historical relation. To do so is to by-pass the propriety of the Holy Spirit and seek justification in the impropriety of human language such as the interrancy of the Scriptures or the infallibility of the Pope.

59 The Trinitarian Faith, 194f.

60 Theological Science, 19f.

61 Reconstruction, 223f.

62 It is not surprising therefore that Alhanasius, the champion of the μοοΣιον of the Son to the Father, should also take the lead in defending the μοοΣιον of of the Spirit to the Son (and the Father).

63 1Ibid., 230.

64 Ibid., 26.

65 Ibid., 121.

66 Cf. Ibid., 125.

67 Ibid., 26.

68 Theological Science, 2061f, italics mine. On ‘The Logic of Grace’, see also Ibid., 128, 214ff, 233, 269; Reconstruction, 33f, 60f. By ‘the irreversibility of the relation of Truth to us’. Torrance refers to the irreversible ‘God-man’. ‘Lordservant’ relationships, It means that theological thinking which is bound to the action and nature of Christ as Grace and Truth must think ‘economically’ (κατ' οἰκονομἰαν), following the actual, irreversible movementof ‘the Word became flesh’ which falsifies all demonic temptations of ‘the flesh became Word’.

69 Ibid., 206, italics mine.

70 Reconstruction, 270.

71 KarlRarth, 102f.Here we must not neglect Barth's profound contribution to the Reformation theology in his relentless rejection of natural theology when applying jusüfication by grace ‘to the whole realm of man's life, to the realm of his knowing as well as the realm of his doing’ (Reconstruction, 163).

72 Cf. the chapters in Reconstruction ‘Justification: Its Radical Nature and Place in Reformed Doctrine and Life’ (150–68) and ‘Questioning in Christ’ (117–27).

73 Reconstruction, 164; Cod and Rationality, 67.

74 God and Rationality, 67f, italics mine.