Pt. III, Thomas F Torrance’s Critical Realism

Guest post by © Dr Myk Habets, myk.habets@carey.ac.nz

Given the fact of an ordered universe and a kataphysic way of studying any object we turn now to what is one of the most important scientific and methodological points germane to the architectonic nature of Torrance’s theology and his interaction with science, his critical realism. ‘Torrance is widely credited with having formulated ‘the most highly developed version of realism’ available in modern theology.’[1] For Torrance the Truth can be known and apprehended by the human person and this knowledge represents a genuine disclosure of that which is real. Christian theology and natural science operate with an understanding of knowledge which has its ‘ontological foundations in objective reality.’ Torrance develops his critical realism in two directions, first, from natural science, especially in the work of John Philoponos, Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein and Michael Polanyi, and second, from theology, especially in the work of Athanasius, Anselm, and Barth.[2] Torrance argues that theology and the sciences share a common commitment to a realist epistemology (given an ordered universe), with each responding appropriately to their respective objects of study (kata physin). Each of these disciplines recognises:

The impossibility of separating out the way in which knowledge arises from the actual knowledge that it attains. Thus in theology the canons of inquiry that are discerned in the process of knowing are not separable from the body of actual knowledge out of which they arise. In the nature of the case a true and adequate account of theological epistemology cannot be gained apart from substantial exposition of the content of the knowledge of God, and of the knowledge of man and the world as creatures of God. . . this means that all through theological inquiry we must operate with an open epistemology in which we allow the way of our knowing to be clarified and modified pari passu with advance in deeper and fuller knowledge of the object, and that we will be unable to set forth an account of that way of knowing in advance but only by looking back from what has been established as knowledge.[3]

In regards to natural science Torrance repeatedly turns to the realist approaches of James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein, both of whom he sees as standing at the end of a long line of scientific development spanning from the second to the twentieth centuries.[4] In conjunction with the rise of an adoption of dualistic ways of thinking in science and philosophy, not to mention in theology, Torrance sees the history of scientific thought revolving around three main ‘paradigm’ shifts.[5] The first transition occurred between the second and fourth centuries and involved a move from a primitive Hellenistic cosmology, characterised by a thorough dualism, to a Ptolemaic cosmology. As Christianity grew it was influenced by a Ptolemaic cosmological synthesis which worked its way into Christian theology, most notably in the philosophically defined attributes of God such as aseity and impassability. Torrance singles out Augustine and his Aristotelian theological/philosophical tradition as canonizing this approach in Christian theology for centuries to come.[6]

The second transition occurred between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican and Newtonian cosmology. The Newtonian cosmology resulted in a mechanistic worldview which effectively sidelined God from the world by negating divine involvement or interaction with the world. Torrance views this as a modified form of dualism, a transition from an Augustinian-Aristotelian to an Augustinian-Newtonian dualism. The third transition occurred in the twentieth century with the profound Maxwellian-Einsteinian revolution which replaced the dualist frames of thinking in favour of a unitary approach based on the notion of continuous fields.[7] What has happened in the science of Einstein, Torrance maintains, has also happened in the theology of Karl Barth, the demonstration and construction of a unitary approach to reality.[8]

Torrance has a particularly high regard for the work of Einstein and often returns to his scientific insights as illustrations of a realist epistemology in practice.[9] From Einstein’s ‘scientific realism’ Torrance sees great application for theology through the means of a ‘critical realism.’[10] Torrance is not alone in associating the natural sciences with a realist epistemology. Indeed, a realist epistemology is thought to be the very basis of the natural sciences to explain the world. ‘And what more effective explanation may be offered for this success than the simple assertion that what scientific theories describe is really present?’[11] Accepting the legitimate status of epistemic realism, what is the nature of correspondence between Reality and our understanding of it? The question of correspondence theories of truth is of great importance to our discussion of science in general and Torrance’s theological method in particular.[12]

Torrance is a realist not a positivist. He does not advocate a scientific positivism which argues for a direct correspondence between concepts and experience. He made this clear when he wrote:

The fundamental difficulty with abstractive and positivist science. . . is that it operates with a logical bridge between concepts and experience, both at the start and the finish, that is, in the derivation of concepts from the universe as we experience it and in the verificatory procedures relating concepts back to experience. . . This is not only a difficulty, but an impossibility, for this is not and cannot be any logical bridge between ideas and existence. There is indeed a deep and wonderful correlation between concepts and experience, and science operates with that correlation everywhere, but since there is no logical bridge the scientist does not work with rules for inductive procedures, and cannot finally verify his claims to have discovered the structures of reality by logical means.[13]

Torrance also rejects a ‘naïve realism’ in which there is a direct correspondence between knowledge and reality.[14] What Torrance does advocate is what can accurately be termed a ‘critical realism.’[15] Perhaps one of the better known advocates of critical realism in biblical theology today is that of N.T. Wright. In his 1992 work he defines critical realism as:

A way of describing the process of ‘knowing’ that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence ‘realism’), while also fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence ‘critical’). This path leads to critical reflection on the products of our enquiry into ‘reality’, so that our assertions about ‘reality’ acknowledge their own provisionality. Knowledge, in other words, although in principle concerning reality is independent of the knower, is never itself independent of the knower.[16]

The critical realism advocated by Torrance connects the knower and the known together in personal union thus putting the knower (theologian) under a certain obligation to offer a rational account of that which exists independently of the knower (theology). By this means it is obvious that for Torrance and his scientific theology, as for Einstein and his natural science, epistemology follows ontology. With this critical realism in place in both science and theology Torrance explores, on many occasions, the interrelated and mutual coherence of both disciplines on each other through an historical and a constructive approach.

[1] The quote comes from A.E. McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 211 who is in turn quoting from D.W. Hardy, ‘Thomas F. Torrance,’ in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction, ed. by D.F. Ford (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 1.87. McGrath has himself adopted and developed a commitment to critical realism, see his The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 1-80; idem; Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity (DG IVP, 1995); idem; The Foundations of Dialogue in Science and Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 140-164; idem; A Scientific Theology: Volume 1: Nature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 71-78; and especially idem; A Scientific Theology: Volume 2: Reality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). McGrath’s critical realism draws heavily on the work of Roy Bhaskar. For a critical comparison between the methodology and epistemology of Lindbeck, McGrath and Torrance in which critical realism is treated in some detail see E.M. Colyer, The Nature of Doctrine in T.F. Torrance’s Theology (Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, 2001).

[2] We could also include, albeit on a reduced level, the influence of John Dun Scotus and John Major. In a work on Calvin Torrance wrote: ‘I write this preface a mile from where John Major was born, at Glegornie, in East Lothian, where I have steeped myself in his thought, and found a remarkable continuity between his critical realism and that of John Duns Scotus, on the one hand, and that of the so-called ‘common-sense’ philosophy which used to flourish in Scottish Universities, on the other hand,’ T.F. Torrance, The Hermeneutics of John Calvin (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988), viii.

[3] T.F. Torrance, Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 10.

[4] This is a repeated theme of Torrance’s. See his various works: Theology in Reconciliation: Essays Towards Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975. reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1997), 62-78; God and Rationality. London: Oxford University Press, 1971. reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1997), 29-31; and Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 1-31.

[5] Torrance is here echoing the sense of paradigm shifts articulated by T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962). According to Kuhn’s theory, new hypotheses and theories in natural science do not simply emerge by verification or falsification, nor do they evolve naturally. Rather, one paradigm comes to replace an existing one in what can only be termed a ‘revolution’. See T.F. Torrance, ‘The Integration of Form in Natural and in Theological Science,’ in Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 71. Maxwell and Einstein are the two scientists Torrance turns to most often to illustrate revolutionary paradigm shifts in addition to Polanyi, whom Thomas Kuhn admitted he had taken the concept of paradigm from!, see T.F. Torrance, ‘Michael Polanyi and the Christian Faith-A Personal Report,’ Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical 27/2 (2000-2001), 31.

Torrance does not accept or endorse Kuhn’s theory completely. In addition to Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts Torrance also imports Polanyi’s theory of communication in scientific controversy into theological communication, especially apologetics. See M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962²), 150-160. The little essay ‘Theological Education Today,’ provides a succinct overview of Torrance’s views in this regard, T.F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 13-29.

Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions has engendered much criticism, of which Torrance shows no interest in engaging. See P. Hoyningen-Huene, ‘Kuhn’s Conception of Incommensurability,’ Studies in History of Philosophy of Science 53 (1980), 481-492; M.W. Poirier, ‘A Comment on Polanyi and Kuhn,’ The Thomist 53 (1989), 259-279; C. Strug, ‘Kuhn’s Paradigm Thesis: A Two-Edged Sword for the Philosophy of Religion,’ Religious Studies 20 (1984), 269-279. References taken from A.E. McGrath, ‘Scientific Method and the Reconstruction of Theology: Introducing ‘A Scientific Theology’,’ Lecture for the John Templeton Oxford Seminars on Science and Christianity, Harris Manchester College, (Thursday 24 July, 2003), http://www.metanexus.net/archives/message_fs.asp?ARCHIVEID=8363, paragraph 35, fn.15.

[6] See especially T.F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation: Essays Towards Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975), 27-28; 267-268. 62-78.

[7] T.F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation: Essays Towards Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975. reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1997), 77. In Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 72, Torrance also includes Michael Faraday as a key scientist in this shift. Reflecting on Torrance’s adoption of unitary, relational thinking and ‘field’ patterns as basic to scientific thinking, Palma sees Torrance as moving to a higher plane and a higher unitary theology than the Nicene and Reformed (including Barth) heritage within which Torrance works. R.J. Palma, ‘Thomas F. Torrance’s Reformed Theology,’ Reformed Review 38/1 (Autumn 1984), 24-25. For a study that seeks to elucidate the connection between science and theology within Torrance’s scientific theology see the thesis of J.H-K. Yeung, Being and Knowing: An Examination of T.F. Torrance’s Christological Science (Jian Dao Dissertation Series 3. Theology and Culture 1. Hong Kong: China Alliance Press, 1996), especially 45-72.

[8] Not that Barth was consciously aware of this fact. When Torrance discussed the links between what he saw in Einsteinian science and in Barth’s own theology it is reported that Barth responded with appreciation and general agreement. See T.F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), ix.

[9] A. Fine, The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 86-111 argues for another understanding of Einstein’s realism than the one Torrance presents. This has forced one Torrance commentator to conclude that ‘Torrance’s reading of Einstein’s realism is not correct,’ C. Weightman, Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 193. For other works on Einstein’s ‘realism’ see A. Polikarov, ‘On the Nature of Einstein’s Realism,’ Epistemologia 12 (1980), 277-304; F. Laudisa, ‘Einstein, Bell and Nonseparable Realism,’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (1995), 309-329. Even if Torrance’s reading of Einstein’s realism is ‘not correct,’ and this point is still debateable as the works in the following footnote indicate, the central tenets of his own realism are still valid and operate consistently within his own theological oeuvre; Einstein is ‘illuminative’ for Torrance’s theology, not ‘foundational’ (as is the case with Polanyi as well).

[10] Einstein’s realism has endeared itself to other theological-scientific scholars. See the other works in the ‘Theology at the Frontiers of Knowledge’ series published by Scottish Academic Press of Edinburgh and edited by Torrance such as I. Paul, Science and Theology in Einstein’s Perspective (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986), [and ibid., Science, Theology and Einstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981)], R.G. Mitchell, Einstein and Christ: A New Approach to the Defence of the Christian Religion (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987), and W.P. Carvin, Creation and Scientific Explanation (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988).

[11] A.E. McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 215. See further in M. Devitt, Realism and Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), and J. Leplin (ed.). Scientific Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), especially 41-82.

[12] See the discussion of Torrance’s Christocentric analogy in regards to a ‘created correspondence’ in R. Spjuth, Creation, Contingency and Divine Presence: In the Theologies of Thomas F. Torrance and Eberhard Jüngel (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995), 47-57.

[13] T.F. Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 76.

[14] In a discussion of Torrance’s ‘ana-logic and critical realism,’ Spjuth clearly distinguishes Torrance’s critical realism from a ‘representational position’ (naive realism), see R. Spjuth, Creation, Contingency and Divine Presence: In the Theologies of Thomas F. Torrance and Eberhard Jüngel (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995), 94-101. With a phrase borrowed from Nancy Murphy Spjuth characterizes Torrance’s critical realism as ‘chastened modern,’ ibid., 98.

[15] See P.M. Achtemeier, ‘The Truth of Tradition: Critical Realism in the Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre and T.F. Torrance,’ Scottish Journal of Theology 47/3 (1996), 355-374, and J.D. Morrison, ‘Heidegger, Correspondence Truth and the Realist Theology of Thomas Forsyth Torrance,’ Evangelical Quarterly 69/2 (1997), 139-155, and J.D. Morrison, Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God in the Thought of Thomas Forsyth Torrance. Issues in Systematic Theology Vol 2 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997).

[16] N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992), 35. I am grateful to Professor Max Turner of London Bible College for first pointing out Wright’s critical realism to me.