The Bosque Boys

I eulogized the late Dr. Thomas Torrance in this earlier post. He was a brilliant theologian, a faithful churchman, family man, and folower of Christ. In constructive theology he wrote especially on the nature of God, and on religion and science.

He recently was honored by Presbyterians Pro-Life. This notice also links to Torrance's booklet The Being and Nature of the Unborn Child.

Here is a direct link to Torrance's address. Scroll down to view the unedited version.

Thomas F. Torrance has died. One of the theological giants of the latter half of the 20th century. In constructive theology, he will be remembered for his writings on the Trinity, and on the relationship of science and Christianity. He was a minister of the Church of Scotland, a Reformed theologian, a Barthian, a scholar.

A remembrance here on the Faith and Theology blog.

Here is the Widipedia entry; the first paragraph of which reads:

Thomas Forsyth Torrance (30 August 1913 - 2 December 2007) was a 20th century Protestant Christian theologian who served for 27 years as Professor of Christian Dogmatics at New College, Edinburgh in the University of Edinburgh, during which time he was a leader in Protestant Christian theology. While he wrote many books and articles advancing his own study of theology, he also translated several hundred theological writings into English from other languages. Torrance edited the English translation of the thirteen-volume, six-million-word Church Dogmatics (germ. "Die Kirchliche Dogmatik") of celebrated Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Torrance's work has been influential in the paleo-orthodox movement, and he is widely considered to be one of the most important Reformed theologians of his era.

This scholarly organization studies his work, and does constructive theological reflection in dialogue with Professor Torrance's writings. The Torrance biography on that site does a very good job of presenting his contributions in theology.

Professor Torrance was a hero of mine, the kind of person I want to be like when I grow up. He was a churchman, the son of missionaries in China who himself served two parishes in the Church of Scotland; he had courage and a sense of duty, as war threatened in Europe in 1939 he left the United States, walking away from a job offer at Princeton University, in order to serve as a military chaplain with the British Army in the Middle East and Italy; he was a family man, married with three children whose welfare he valued, turning down an offer to serve as Karl Barth's handpicked successor at Basel because he did not want to uproot his children and transplant them into a foreign culture and language; he was an academic of amazing productivity, rigorous thought, who did theology not to impress other academics, but to help the Church understand its beliefs; he was a man of faith, a devout Christian. Brother Torrance, R.I.P.

My previous post, musing about referring to God, prompted this response from Loy Mershimer that I think deserves posting. (Any friend of Barth is a friend of mine.)

Great questions.

I believe the discussion distills to this issue: to what degree does one trust divine Revelation over one's personal revelations [and declared self-need in defining the Other]?

Barth framed this issue in the nature of God [unknowable except by self-revelation] and the nature of that divine Revelation as salvific. I've yet to hear a good answer to his objection to renaming God...

Here is Barth’s argument in a nutshell: To arrogate to oneself the ability to subjectively rename the Trinity is to assume that one apprehends the objective essence of the revelation itself, the ‘infinite and spiritual essence’ of the One being named -- a categorical impossibility.

Barth thus reveals the human renaming of divinity [re-imagining, etc.] a failure of human arrogance: mere postmodern idolatry.

All we know of God is what God graciously self-reveals. And that revelation is the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: relational, integral ontology.

Regarding the pronouns of God and the images of God, James Torrance notes that there are zero feminine metaphors for God in Scripture; there are three similes which are feminine.

Of course, the linguistic value of such distinction is simple: metaphor is used to show something of essence, simile something of function.

Perhaps the whole discussion would be more simple if people understood that God is Spirit -- not male or female -- and that reasoning back onto Him from flawed earthly fathers is faulty 'theology from below,' with self as the arbiter of right [subjective epistemology].

It is deeply regretful that hurtful masculine models have apparently wounded a generation of sensitive sons and daughters from receiving God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit...

George MacDonald, in his sermon "Abba! Father" describes the whole of human misery in the inability of human children to call God Father:

The refusal to look up to God as our Father is the one central wrong in the whole human affair. The inability to do so is our one central misery. Whatever serves to clear any difficulty from the way of the recognition of the Father will more or less undermine every difficulty in life.

He goes on to say that the very key of healing for those wounded by earthly fathers is in the recovery of God as their real Father: Provocative, practical considerations of this whole discussion!

Great thoughts! Thank you...

Loy
p.s. Torrance has a little book entitled Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace -- it might be worth a read!

Loy's website is here.