The theology of the Cross, the ontological theory of the atonement, the problem of evil, our capacity to know God in the face of evil, and to comprehend an intelligibility within a fallen world; where does all of this come from, where does it intersect in a concrete way in our daily lives? I bet all of these questions and locations of thought run around in your head all day long; if not, they should, among other theological things—we are Christians after all!

Thomas Torrance offers such a rich account of how the Incarnation of God in his dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ engages with and implicates all of the aforementioned topics of consideration that for your benefit and mine I am going to transcribe his lengthy paragraph that engages with each of the points above in his own and unique Torrance way.

It is above all in the Cross of Christ that evil is unmasked for what it actually is, in its inconceivable wickedness and malevolence, in its sheer contradiction of the love of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, in its undiluted enmity to God himself—not to mention the way in which it operates under the cover of the right and the good and the lawful. That the infinite God should take the way of the Cross to save mankind from the pit of evil which has engulfed it and deceived it, is the measure of the evil of evil: its depth is revealed to be ‘absymal’ (literally, ‘without bottom’). However, it is only from the vantage point of God’s victory over evil in the resurrection of Christ, from the bridge which in him God has overthrown across the chasm of evil that has opened up in our violence and death and guilt, that we may look into the full horror of it all and not be destroyed in the withering of our souls through misanthropy, pessimism, and despair. What hope could there ever be for a humanity that crucifies the incarnate love of God and sets itself implacably against the order of divine love even at the point of its atoning and healing operation? But the resurrection tells us that evil, even this abysmal evil, does not and cannot have the last word, for that belongs to the love of God which has negated evil once and for all and which through the Cross and resurrection is able to make all things work together for good, so that nothing in the end will ever separate us from the love of God. It is from the heart of that love in the resurrected Son of God that we may reflect on the radical nature of evil without suffering morbid mesmerization or resurrection and crucifixion events, which belong inseparably together, has behind it the incarnation, the staggering fact that God himself has come directly into our creaturely being to become one of us, for our sakes. Thus the incarnation, passion, and resurrection conjointly tell us that far from evil having to do only with human hearts and minds, it has become entrenched in the ontological depths of created existence and that it is only from within those ontological depths that God could get at the heart of evil in order to destroy it, and set about rebuilding what he had made to be good. (We have to think of that as the only way that God ‘could’ take, for the fact that he has as a matter of fact taken this way in the freedom of his grace excludes any other possibility from our consideration.) It is surely in the light of this ontological salvation that we are to understand the so-called ‘nature of miracles’, as well as the resurrection of Jesus from death, for they represent not a suspension of the natural or created order but the very reverse, the recreation of the natural order wherever it suffers from decay or damage or corruption or disorder through evil. God does not give up his claim that the creation is ‘good’, but insists on upholding that claim by incarnating within the creation the personal presence of his own Logos, the creative and ordering source of the creation, thereby pledging his own eternal constancy and rationality as the ground for the redemption and final establishment of all created reality.[1]

There are so many scarlet threads waiting to be pulled upon in this rich tapestry of linguistic flare and theological acumen that Torrance (in his typical fashion) has offered. But let me just tug on one. You noticed as you read this that Torrance speaks of the ontological depth of the atonement, this gets us back into his view that God in Christ assumed a sinful humanity in the incarnation. That he didn’t just come to pay a penalty (even though he did this too) for our sins, but in fact came to radically save us from the inside out. That he came to give us a new heart, and take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh soft towards God (II Cor. 3). This is one reason why a strictly conceived penal, forensic, juridical view of the atonement simply will not do. A penal view might deal with the consequences of sin in our lives, but it does not engage with the depth reality and cause of sin; sinful hearts (cf. Jer. 17.9).

There is more to be said, of course, but I’ll just refer you to Torrance’s quote.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Divine And Contingent Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 115-16.