Thomas Torrance has been something of a revolutionary figure for me. His approach to Christian theology, inclusive of a general hermeneutic which includes, of course, engagement with and exegesis of Holy Scripture, has been nothing short of ground breaking. From his theology of nature and social coefficientsโwhich is reminiscent of the Patristic logoi; to his kata physin or heuristic 
science, wherein he seeks to penetrate past what he sees as an inherent dualist Latin way of thinking in the Augustinian West, and by way of contrast he wants to allow the reality under consideration (the Triune God) to unfold and determine its own categories and emphases of inquiry and self-disclosure; to the way he appeals to the homoousion and hypostatic union as regulative towards thinking all things Christological; all of this and more has been at the forefront of what has attracted me to TF Torranceโs theological project. He is a rare bird figure of the type that the theological student will be hard-pressed to find a parallel in the history of the Christian church. His internecine engagement with the Orthodox, Reformed, and the whole range of Christian reality; his ecumenical posture, his catholic impulses are of the rarest sort. Take for example how he opens his book Divine Meaning in the very first paragraph of his Preface. Here he encapsulates in prรฉcis all it is that I find so attractive about him; note:
.[1]
If you still havenโt partaken of the theology of Thomas Torrance, what are you waiting for? Whether youโre Reformed, Orthodox, evangelical, or somewhere in the complex of it all, Torrance is going to be someone who enriches and challenges you; he will take your sacred cows to task, and point you to the living Word of God in compressed and concentrated ways. I hope if you have never found yourself lost (in a positive way) in Torranceโs writings that this post will at least pique your interest enough to crack open one of his books.
[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 1-2.
Thanks, Bobby, for the encouragement to read TFT. Iโve read excerpts of his writings in many articles. Which of his books would you recommend I start with?
One of the things I admire about him is his pastors heart. His work as a chaplain with the British military during WW2 encouraging soldiers receiving dear John letters from their wives or a dying soldier who asked him if God was like Jesus! And there are other stories like those as well. Also, he was the son of missionaries in China and had a missional heart as well.
Yeah, TFT was a true churchman, and all those stories are great (Alister McGrath’s Intellectual Biography of TFT retells many of those, as do some of the other biographies of course). I’d start with his The Mediation of Christ and then move to his New College Lectures Atonement and Incarnation. These are the most accessible ways in, and the lectures give a good insight into the way he taught etc.
I am planning on going to one of our theological libraries here at the University of Toronto to “taste and see”
Got both The Mediation of Christ as well as Divine Meaning. It has become clear to me, that in any theological or Biblical studies, hermeneutics is EVERYTHING. Or at least one’s assumptions or presuppositions are massive. This applies at all levels of our engagement with the Biblical text.
Quistian,
Great to hear. And I couldn’t agree more, hermeneutics is a basic reality. Often people mistakenly think that hermeneutics, for Christians, only refers to biblical studies; I see it more broadly than that. I see it relating, even more, to our theological ontology/epistemology and how that forms our hermeneutic. And of course this would tilt towards how I view biblical exegesis itself; i.e. as theological-exegesis.