Thomas Torrance is one of the, if not the most Athanasian english speaking theologians one might come across. His focus on the mediation of God’s life to humanity and humanity’s life 
to God in the hypostatic union of God and humanity in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ attests to these Athanasian impulses. Indeed, personally, this is what I have found so compelling and attractive about Torrance’s theology over the years; and it is why I keep coming back to it over and over again. It is the Christological focus and how that conditions all that Torrance writes—again this is the Athanasian influence—how he sees the hypostatic union and God’s Self-revelation therein as the inner-reality of how Christians ought to think salvation (soteriology).
But there is a controversial aspect to this, for some. You will notice in the following quote from Torrance how he understands salvation to be fully participationist; i.e. fully charged with God and humanity’s reality in the singular person of Jesus Christ. In other words, and this is the controversial part, for Torrance salvation is ontological rather than just declarational; for Torrance what it means to be human coram Deo is tied into salvation, such that Incarnation, recreation/resurrection is determinative of what takes place in the justificatory and sanctificatory aspects of salvation in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. So, for Torrance, the conditions for salvation to take place are all inherent to God’s predetermined or pre-destined choice to be for us given full expression in the ensarkos of the eternal Logos; or, salvation is fully actualized and realized in the incarnation of the Son of Man resulting in the elevation and exaltation of humanity, in the resurrected humanity of Christ; in other words, Jesus’s humanity is justified humanity, sanctified humanity, and glorified humanity for us, our only hope is to be united to his—that impossible possibility itself made possible by Jesus’s entering into our humanity opening us up for God in and through his freedom to be for us and for God all at once in, again, his vicarious humanity. As we are spiritually joined to his humanity (a reality that takes place out of his vicarious humanity in the Spirit) we participate in the eternal life that is his priestly life for us (pro nobis), in us (in nobis). Torrance writes:
We have to do here with a two-fold movement of mediation, from above to below and from below to above, in God’s gracious condescension to be one with us, and his saving assumption of us to be one with himself, for as God and Man, the one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ ministers to us both the things of God to man, and the things of man to God. This has to be understood as the self-giving movement of God in Christ to us in our sinful and alienated existence where we live at enmity to God, and therefore as a movement in which the revealing of God to us takes place only through a reconciling of us to God. The incarnation of the eternal Word and Son of God is to be understood , therefore, in an essentially soteriological way. Divine revelation and atoning reconciliation take place inseparably together in the life and work of the incarnate Son of God in whose one Person the hypostatic union between his divine and human natures is actualised through an atoning union between God and man that reaches from his birth of the Virgin Mary throughout his vicarious human life and ministry to his death and resurrection. It was of this intervening activity of Christ in our place that St Paul wrote to the Corinthians: ‘You know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ who though he was rich yet for our sakes became poor that you through his poverty might be rich.
We may express this two-fold movement of revelation and reconciliation in another way by saying two things.
a) Since the Father-Son relation subsists eternally within the Communion of the Holy Trinity we must think of the incarnation of the Son as falling within the eternal Life and Being of God, although, of course, the incarnation was not a timeless event like the generation of the Son from the Being of the Father, but must be regarded as new even for God, for the Son of God was not eternally Man any more than the Father was eternally Creator.
b) Correspondingly, since in Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God became man without ceasing to be God, the atoning reconciliation of man to God must be regarded as falling within the incarnate life of the Mediator in whose one Person the hypostatic union and the atoning union interpenetrate one another….[1]
We see then, for Torrance, how knowledge of God is also part and parcel with the salvific reality precisely because the ontological is tied into the epistemological and the epistemological into the ontological just as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father and we in their life as the Holy Spirit, by the faith of Christ, brings us into this eternal fellowship of resplendent love.
Truly, this is a different way to think about salvation; it is neither juridical nor Augustinian in any meaningful sense; as such it departs most basically from classical Reformed soteriology just at this point. Nevertheless it presents in the spirit of the Reformed teaching insofar as salvation is understood as fully contingent on the gracious unilateral movement of God for humanity in Christ; it’s just that the absolutum decretum or way of the decrees, and attendant theory of causation associated with that, is elided insofar, for Torrance, salvation is a fully personal event mediated directly and immediately by Godself in the Son. Further, sin, total depravity is taken very seriously by Torrance; which again is why it is so necessary for the Son Incarnate to be the all in all of salvation for us—left to ourselves homo in se incurvatus we could never, nor would ever choose God; we’d simply continue to choose ourselves as our highest love.
[1] Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016), 144.
Bobby,
I’m still working through Athanasius en route to reading Torrance more closely. But, in the meantime I want to push back on a couple of points you are making here, if only to help me clarify my own thinking on the issues you are touching upon here. I suppose my classical Reformed instincts make it hard for me to abandon the juridical/forensic elements of salvation, because I do think that the language of the Divine court (as a function of God as King ruling from his throne) is clearly present in the OT and the NT. I am certainly sensitive to the fact that the Augustinian-Reformed paradigm on salvation has traditionally over-emphasized the language of the court in God’s gracious work of rectifying fallen humanity (this can be observed in the almost absurd debates raging in the conservative Reformed world over the minutiae of the ordo salutus). In a sense I think we have been guilty of trying to make the judicial/forensic elements in Paul do all the work for soteriology to such an extent that our monergism leaves almost no room for the participatory and ontological reality of salvation. Scripture presents us with a cacophony of images that relate to the workings of the Kingdom and what life looks like for those who participate in it – there is the court, the marketplace, the family, the field, the wilderness, the marriage, and so much more. So, are you advocating that the juridical be abandoned, or simply placed into a broader constellation of soteriological categories?
The second quibble is somewhat related. I can appreciate your insistence on kataphatic theology, and your identification of overcooked apophaticism – most notably when Aristotelian categories are used. To a degree I even think your criticisms are fair. But, as my own thinking is shifting, I am trying to contextualize my own understanding of classical theism as articulated in the West, which leans heavily on Aristotle through a Thomistic lens. I do see this mode of analysis as limited, but still useful. Of course the categories that we use in the West are abstractions that give us helpful knowledge about God, which should serve to bolster the participatory and ontological experience of life in union with Christ which moves us from knowledge about God into the goal of salvation which is to know God (Jn. 17:3). So, I wonder, as I follow your posts here if your emphases aren’t susceptible to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, at least to some extent. Can’t the Western categories we have inherited be re-purposed to enhance the Evangelical Calvinism that you are advancing?
Jedidiah,
No, I’m not saying the juridical is nowhere present, but that it isn’t the frame; the ontological is. If you go to my page buttons above under my header image and click on KJV Rejoinders you’ll see how I respond to his critique of EC in the main and in this regard. But if you go to my categories and click on the Evangelical Calvinism category or even Critiquing Classical Calvinism many posts will pop up that clarify all of this further. And as far as Scripturally, and the motifs/imagery therein, I think ‘marriage’ is more fitting as the frame rather than the law-court; we start with marriage in Genesis and end with it in Revelation (an inclusio).
No, there’s nothing worth repurposing, in my view, in regard to Thomist intellectualist frame, or the analogy of being way of thinking in regard to God. EC is no friend of what Muller calls Christian Aristotelianism. If you go and click on my category *Richard Muller* you’ll see my response to some of that. My background, even prior to Barth and Torrance, in Reformed theology has always been contra Aristotle mode; Torrance and Barth help to reinforce that in their own ways, but the critique is not solely dependent upon them whatsoever. My mentor and former prof in seminary, Ron Frost, is an Augustinian and Sibbesian; he offers critique of what Janice Knight calls The Intellectual Fathers from who she also calls The Spiritual Brethren. This is from the history, and a critique made by Reformed Augustinian theologians against Reformed Augustinian/Thomist theologians. This is a big part of my background, which goes beyond and even before Barth or Torrance. So posts like this are indeed emphasizing a certain way into my own style of “EC”, but not the only way.
Pingback: The Athanasian, Thomas Torrance: How Soteriology is Christological in the Vicarious Humanity of Christ — The Evangelical Calvinist | Talmidimblogging
Pingback: The Ontological Character of Sin and the Atonement of Jesus Christ: Why TF Torrance’s Offering is So Much Better than Federal Theology’s | The Evangelical Calvinist
Bobby, you are right in identifying marriage as a basic motif in Revelation. And Revelation might well serve as the ground of our discussion on how I would argue for a polyvalent approach to viewing the breadth of the kingdom. Where I would caution is trying to make the marriage motif the central point of the book. There is also a strong warfare motif, which Bauckham so aptly notes in his Theology of the Book of Revelation. The juridical motif is exemplified in the martyr motif, who serve as representative witnesses to the rule of God as described in Revelation 4, culminating in the 2 Witnesses in Revelation 11 (in the OT, valid witness is confirmed by two or more witnesses). Christ is the sine qua non witness of the judgements that will issue from the throne vis-a-vis the seal, bowl, and trumpet judgements. All I am saying is that we should not try to be reductive in describing the various features and motifs of the Kingdom, allowing each its proper place.
I also appreciate your frank discussion on why you insist on abandoning the Thomistic and broadly medieval approach to theology that is subsequently re-purposed in 17th Century Reformed Orthodoxy. To an extent I am sympathetic to your concerns, But at the same time, I cannot endorse a wholesale repudiation of the insights of the classical theists from Augustine to Aquinas on into Reformed Scholasticism. If I could make a scientific analogy, the Scholastic approach is akin to Newtonian physics, which has lead to valid, if incomplete insights into the working of the material world. However, Einstein changed everything by demonstrating the relative nature of space, time, and movement. Theological inquiry, even at its best can only be analytical. And where I see your greatest strength is in your insistence on the priority of ontology. My own sense is that there is a relational, if not koinonia ground of all reality, and should loom large in theological and metaphysical inquiry. But, I am somewhat more circumspect in the value of theological inquiry, not because it isn’t valid, but because it is necessarily limited and contingent. But, inasmuch as various modes of analysis can be helpful I am willing to embrace them, whether kataphatic or apophatic, abstract or relative. But true knowing begins with the basic tenet that knowing the truth is an exercise of faith, namely by the fear of the Lord that opens up the knowledge of (as opposed to knowledge about) God as revealed in Christ. Faith follows a more intuitive and kenotic epistemology that takes account for the limitations of what we can know and how much we can know. So, I am more or less in favor of a synthetic approach that involves rational analysis and the sub and suprarational exercise of faith that complement each other in a quest for knowing God.
Thanks again for your thoughtful comment. Even if I cannot totally agree at this point, I do think there is legitimate validity to the approach you propose.
Jedidiah, I think you misread my comment on marriage. I’m aware of the intratextual realities present in Revelation and how Bauckham works that out which I’m appreciative of indeed; but that’s not what I’m getting at, not at all. I actually have some posts about this in regard to marriage mysticism and affective theology here at the blog where I explain this much further.
As far as an emphasis on ontology; yes, that’s an aspect of what I’m into, but there’s no divorce between that and relational realities—in fact just the opposite is the case. I’m surprised you haven’t picked that up through my posts.
TFT has critique of Newtonian mechanics and appeals to Einstein, Maxwell et al in his engagement with science and theology. I don’t really think I’m making a wholesale rejection of anything, just a reorientation of things. But I have been educated in a certain way in the area of historical theology that challenges things. You also seem to be overly generalizing things in regard to classical theism as if its a monolithic reality; I have to reject that characterization.
But I have written a lot on all of this in my many blog posts—which of course I don’t expect you to read—but there is more to all of this than you seem to be aware of in regard to me. And unfortunately I don’t have the time to try and get into everything here in this comment thread—I’ve spent hours and hours and years responding to some of your concerns thru blog posts. I know one crazy guy who spent the time reading every single blog post I’ve ever written, and he actually understood exactly where I was coming from and the voices and teachings that have shaped my own development. Short of that it will be hard to get exactly where I’m coming just by reading a few blog posts here or there. In other words, it will give you an imbalanced picture of what I’m actually after and saying as a whole; imbalanced because my blogging is very occasional and situational (based upon whatever I happen to be reading at a given moment). I’m only saying this cause your recent comments reflect an unfamiliarity with where I’m actually coming from and what my informing voices and concerns are.
Jedidiah, let me also say in regard to the marriage motif: what I was referring to was an intertextual canonical reading of that. The Apostle Paul, for example, makes it a prominent theme in his own reading of how Christ and the church are related in Eph 5. Dogmatically this touches upon, in a central way, Christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. But we could follow this motif throughout scripture—and its prevalent, even in the OT—and see how it is appealed to as the way of thinking about how God sees himself in relation with his covenant people. Revelation climaxes this with the hope of the marriage supper feast of the Lamb etc.
Bobby, I get it. I can only interact with what I have read so far, so I am aware that I could be painting with too broad of a brush. And, no I don’t expect you to take the time to explain or justify the entire thrust of your theological approach and convictions, that would simply be ridiculous. I’m a busy guy as well and as avid a reader of theology as I am, I wouldn’t be the sort of guy that will comb through everything you have written for the sake of winning an argument. My interests are in discussion, and part of that is friendly probing, so when I present a counter-argument it is simply with the goal of discussion within the context of what I observe, not scoring points. So, I am perfectly fine letting certain disagreements stand. I certainly am not impugning the integrity of your thoughtful convictions even where I might prefer a different approach. Broadly speaking, I do find your Evangelical Calvinism as highly interesting, and it is something I will continue to study as my own time allows.
My major point of contention is that I do not agree with the wholesale repudiation of Thomism, because my own paradigm does not allow me to look at these matters from an either/or approach. I think that there is value in multiple modes of analysis with the caveat that all analytical frameworks have their own relative strengths and limitations.
If I pose questions or point out areas with which I disagree, understand I don’t think you have any obligation to answer these. Feel free to answer or ignore them as your own time and interests allow. The strength of theological blogging is that it is conversational, but, it can be a time sink as well.
BTW, yes I have certainly noticed the participatory elements in your ontology and I am in full agreement with you on this. If my comment did not reflect this, that’s my own fault, not yours.