I thought this quote from Paul Molnar on Thomas Torrance’s Trinitarian Theology of 
Creation would be timely:
Torrance’s view of God the Creator was strictly determined by his Trinitarian theology so that, in order to understand his explication of the doctrine of creation, it is important to realize that his thinking remains structured by Athanasius’ insight that it is better to “signify God from the Son and call him Father, than to name God from his works alone and call him Unoriginate”. What this means is not only that, following the Council of Nicaea, Athanasius stressed the centrality of the Father/Son relation for understanding God the Father Almighty who is the Creator, but that he wanted to stress that this same relation must have “primacy over the Creator/creature relation. The latter is to be understood in the light of the former and not vice versa”. Or, to put it another way, “while God is always Father he is not always Creator” and “it is as Father that God is Creator, not vice versa”. . . .[1]
And then how Thomas Torrance understood theological method as Christological method. This might help, for some, to illustrate how and why Torrance would not be an advocate for what is known as natural theology (knowing God from a naked creation), or an analogy of being (using humanities’ reflection upon itself and as the analogy for what God’s being must be like—this is also extrapolated out as man reflects on nature in general, conceiving of what kind of God it must have taken to create (or what kind of power)—it is through this kind of abstractive reasoning that concept of godness is constructed (Philosophers like Aristotle and Plato would be prime examples of this kind of work). Instead, Torrance, in the footsteps of Barth (although with his own rationale and emphases) works through an analogy of faith (the idea that knowledge of God, as Athanasius articulates in Molnar’s quote above, only comes through relation to God in and through Christ’s vicarious faith for us). Here is what Torrance conceives:
Our task in christology is to yield the obedience of our mind to what is given, which is God’s self-revelation in its objective reality, Jesus Christ. A primary and basic fact which we discover here is this: that the object of our knowledge gives itself to us to be apprehended. It does that within our mundane existence, within our worldly history and all its contingency, but it does that also beyond the limits of previous experience and ordinary thought, beyond the range of what is regarded by human standards as empirically possible. Thus when we encounter God in Jesus Christ, the truth comes to us in its own authority and self-sufficiency. It comes into our experience and into the midst of our knowledge as a novum, a new reality which we cannot incorporate into the series of other objects, or simply assimilate to what we already know. Thomas F. Torrance says in his, “Incarnation: The Person And Life Of Christ,” 1
So for Torrance, and me, there is no “natural” knowledge of God available; it is strictly limited to God’s Self-revealed knowledge of Himself in Christ. Just as Jesus said, “Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” As Athanasius and Torrance press, knowledge of God, for the Christian, must be knowledge of God as Triune or it is not truly knowledge of God; nor, is it Christian.
[1] Paul D. Molnar, Thomas F. Torrance: Theologian Of The Trinity, (Ashgate Publishing Limited, England, 2009), 73.
So – before the revelation of God in Christ (by which I take you mean the incarnation and all that follows) – there was no “true knowledge” of God?
Hmmmm…. I thought God had revealed Himself in the Old Testament. Surely you must agree with this. As Jesus said, “It is they (the OT scriptures) which speak of me…”.
And, analogously, certainly in some more oblique yet fundamental and under-girding way, the divine Logos (the pre-incarnate Son) “speaks” and witnesses of Himself to us – in such a way that when He becomes flesh – while though a novum in some truly magnificent sense – is on a revelatory continuum with what he was before the incarnation. As I see it – this does not rob Christ of authority and self-sufficiency – it can only add to it!
Wayne,
Just read TF Torrance’s The Mediation of Christ, and it will answer all your questions and points here.
Thanks Bobby – I fully intend to.
This is a place I can’t follow — that the Father is Creator, as though without the Son and Spirit. Opera trinitatis ad extra, and all that. I have to see this as the residue of the Arian monarchy of the Father left over in the creedal answer to it. It suggests that the Father is God in ways the Son and Spirit are not. Besides which I have to echo Wayne — I don’t think Torrance is right, here, in light of the larger tradition. Christ is both radical and a novum, but his novelty is not as the exclusive revelation of the knowledge of God. It cannot be, and have the narratives of scripture cohere. He is not a novum radix of the knowledge of God.
@Matt,
I take it you haven’t read TFT’s Trinitarian Faith? He deals with your issue of concern, therein. There is no residual of the Arian Monarxia in TFT’s theology; in fact he provides a very helpful and corrective/instructive reading of this issue by developing his ‘onto-relations’ such that the Monarxia finds reference in the onto-relations of the persons of God, such that the Being of God (through the subject-in-relation of the persons) is the Monarxia. So there is no subordinationism in TFT’s construal, in contrast to the Cappadocians. Here is TFT’s approving quote of Epiphanius:
I don’t agree with you about Christ being (or not) the exclusive revelation of the knowledge of God. I am wondering at what level you disagree with Barth then? Have you read David Gibson’s book on Barth and Calvin’s “Election?” Gibson makes a hermeneutical distinction (pace Richard Muller) between the two; Barth he describes as principial and intensive and Calvin, soteriological and extensive relative to their methodology and interpretation of the text of Scripture (here is an article I wrote on it: http://growrag.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/an-intensively-christocentric-way-to-interpret-scripture-karl-barth/ & http://growrag.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/are-you-more-like-calvin-or-barth-in-your-hermeneutical-approach/ & http://growrag.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/the-men-the-method-barth-calvin/). Why do you think TFT’s approach does not allow for coherence amongst the narrative of Scripture, Matt? Again, do you think this to be the case with Barth (since I assume you know him better)?