I am going to be rerereading Thomas Torrance’s posthumously published Edinburgh Lecture Incarnation: The Person and life of Christ edited by his nephew Robert Walker for the Advent season; won’t you join me? Here is a little quote from him:
[W]e cannot compare the fact of Christ with other facts, nor can we deduce the fact of Christ from our knowledge of other facts. The fact of Christ comes breaking into the continuity of our human knowledge as an utterly distinctive and unique fact, which we cannot understand in terms of other facts, which we cannot reduce to what we already know. It is a new and unique fact without analogy anywhere in human experience or knowledge. [Thomas F. Torrance, “Incarnation,” 2]
Nice quote.
Hey… something I’ve been meaning to ask for a while, as a long time lurker on your blog(s): what would be a good place to start getting into Torrance? I realize it’s a bit tangential to your post, but I hope that’s ok.
Hi Nick,
I always like when a lurker, un-lurks; glad to meet you! π
Probably the best place to start with TFT is his “The Mediation of Christ.” This is his classic little book, and one that will bless your heart (the quote to the right in my sidebar is taken from it).
I hope you will un-lurk more in the future; glad to know of your presence here.
I’m gonna join you, I’ve started that book 3 times now. I get to like chapter 5 or 6 and don’t finish it, though I’ve read parts of all the chapters, looking through different topics.
How do you usually go about reading it? Do read a certain amount of pages a day?
Hey Cody,
Glad to hear it, brother!
No, I just usually read as many pages as I can in a day–so that varies from day to day. But we have awhile until Christmas, so I think a slower pace will be good. I’ve read it couple times already, but I have to say that it is one of my favorite books from TFT (I like it better than Atonement actually).
I was just thinking I need to read through this book start to finish also. I have looked up topics in it and read some sections, but not beginning to end. So what is the reading plan. Maybe it would be helpful to work out certain chapters on certain days (roughly speaking) as a guide for then having a conversation here.
Jon,
I don’t really have a plan on this. I can’t really commit to that; given my time constraints, and other reading that is also a priority for my research. I am just going to try and get at Incarnation again as I can. But maybe you should finally start your blog, and you could do an invitation for folks to read through Incarnation with you; that would be cool π π !
Interesting. I have a little time this week, and was just thinking today, that it might be a good time to get back into Incarnation. Count me in Jon!