This is The Evangelical Calvinist blog, as such you’re probably expecting posts on Calvinism. I used to post much more in this area, and still do at points—this will be one of those points. In this post we will engage with a doctrine of human agency in salvation. Since this is the Evangelical Calvinist we will work through a lengthy passage from TF Torrance, and deal with the way he treats this topic. I am happy to own what he communicates in this area as my own. Fair warning: it will leave the classical Calvinist and Arminian rather frustrated. TFT rebuffs the mechanical theory of causation we get from Aristotle as that is imbued into Westminster Calvinism. In Torrance we get a filial approach to these issues, one that is grounded in relational and Triune Grace that thinks in terms of personal relationships rather than in the logico-causal and necessitarian ways that other classical theisms typically work in and from.

Torrance, and Evangelical Calvinists following, receive critique over the very issue this post will seek to redress. We are accused of being either, Universalists or incoherent in our soteriological understanding. The critique is solely based in the fact that we don’t answer the question about human agency in salvation in the ways that our opponents would like us to. They, in petitio principii terms, simply presume that their causal framework for understanding how God works in the world just is and must be the way that God indeed, works in the world. Torrance had a way of undercutting their Aristotelian universe, and theory of causation therein; he did that by appealing to a ‘modern’ development by referring to the work of Albert Einstein, John Clerk Maxwell, and others. He uses, for example, Einstein’s theory of relativity to undermine the sort of stable and static and mechanical universe that Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Newton gave us in their respective theories of the cosmos. But I digress, yet I do so to make the point that Torrance, and us Evangelical Calvinists, work from different premises in regard to a God/world relation; which for us, presents us with a way to articulate the inner-grammar of the Gospel in differing ways from our counterparts in the other iterations of classical theism.

The aforementioned noted, all to get us into this lengthy, but important passage from the very Scottish, TF Torrance. After we read through this pericope from Torrance, I will follow up by further contrasting our respective view on this issue with what we get in classical Calvinism and Arminianism. Torrance writes:

(v) The virgin birth the pattern of grace, the model of faith

That brings us to the point that in the virgin birth we are given at the very beginning Christ’s life a revelatory sign, a semeion, which tells us what the divine act of grace is. Grace takes a form in the birth of Jesus which we may take as a pattern or norm for all our understanding of grace. Here God takes the initiative and approaches Mary through the word of his angelic messenger – the word proclaimed to Mary is the word of election or grace: she is chosen and told God’s choice. She has nothing to do in this matter except what is done in her under the operation of the Spirit. What Mary does is simply to receive the word, to believe, which she does not in her own strength but in the strength given her by the Lord, and she is blessed because of that, not because of her virginity. John of Damascus remarked that Mary conceived through the ear: she heard the Word and the Word spoken by the Spirit in her ear begot himself in her and through her, and so the Word which Mary heard and received and obeyed became flesh of her flesh. That is the normative pattern for the believer in his or her attitude toward the Word announced in the gospel, which tells men and women of the divine act of grace and decision taken already on their behalf in Christ. Mary’s attitude is beautifully expressed in the words: ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ It is an act of glad and thankful and humble submission and surrender to the will of God. And within her there takes place the incomprehensible act of God, the birth of the Son of God in human form.

By that we are guided to think and given to understand something of our own salvation and recreation. As in the annunciation of the word to Mary, Christ the Word himself became flesh, so in the enunciation of the gospel, we surrender in like manner to Christ the Word now made flesh, and there takes place in us the birth of Jesus, or rather, we are in a remarkable way given to share through grace in his birth and to share in the new creation in him. That is the Christian message – the Christmas message. It is not of our self-will or free-will that we are saved and born anew from above. ‘But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.’ Here there is a ‘become’ dependent on the ‘become’ of ‘the Word become flesh’, grounded in it and derivative from it. What happened once and for all, in utter uniqueness in Jesus Christ, happens in every instance of rebirth into Christ, when Christ enters into our hearts and recreates us. Just as he was born from above of the Holy Spirit, so we are born from above of the Holy Spirit through sharing in his birth. Just as in the birth of Jesus there was no preceding action on our part, or human co-operation, such as the co-operation between a human father and a human mother, just as there was no prior human activity there, so in our salvation and in our knowledge of God there is no a priori, no human presupposition, no Pelagian, semi-Pelagian or synergistic activity.

It is from first to last salvation by grace alone – even our faith is not of ourselves for it is a gift of God – salvation for humanity, among men and women and within them, but a salvation grounded on an immediate act of God himself, and not on both God and man. We are saved by faith, but faith is the empty vessel (as Calvin called it) that receives Christ, faith so to speak is the empty womb through which Christ comes to dwell in our hearts. Faith as our reception of Christ, our capacity for Christ is itself a gift of grace. It is not a creation out of nothing, however, but a creation out of man, out of the human sphere of our choices and decisions, capacities and possibilities, a creation out of our fallen humanity but a creation of God – and therefore faith is something that is far beyond all human possibilities and capacities. It is grounded beyond itself in the act of God. In faith we are opened from above and given to receive what we ourselves are incapable of receiving in and by ourselves. Faith is not therefore the product of our human capacities or insights or abilities. The relation between faith and the Christ received by faith is the Holy Spirit: conceptus de Spiritu Sancto. Just as Jesus was conceived by the Spirit so we cannot say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. It is by the operation of the Spirit that we receive the Word of God which is ingrafted into our souls, and, as it were, conceive the truth in our hearts and minds. We do not bring Christ in by our own power, by our own decision or choice, nor do we make Christ real to ourselves or in ourselves. How could we do that? That is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit – our part in being addressed by the Word is to hear the gracious decision that God has already taken, hear the word of the gospel that God has set his love and favour upon us, although we do not in the least deserve it. Although we have done nothing and can do nothing to bring it about, yet when he works in us what he has been pleased to do, it is ours to work it out in obedient living faith.[1]

Plenty there to sufficiently understand Torrance’s offering as ‘Calvinist,’ but in such a way that the ground is fertilized from a variant foment as that is sourced from a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ and a corollary doctrine of Christ condition election. We see how Torrance uses the analogy of the Virgin Birth to do work that we might not normally think it to do. It presents us with a picture of God’s unilateral work of salvation as that is graciously imparted into the life of Mary from above. It is God’s choice, in Christ, according to Torrance that serves as the ground that we ought to think about how human agency is operative in the salvific process. In other words, for Torrance, the choice for salvation has already been made, whether we believe it or not, in God’s election to be for us and with us in the Grace of Christ. For Torrance, if God works this way, over our heads as it were, then we have no place to presume that we have any ground in ourselves to make a choice for Him that He hasn’t ‘already taken’ for us in the Yes of Jesus Christ for us.

This analogy bothers the classical Calvinist, and even the Arminian in significant ways. It doesn’t address the issue of particularity and the individual in salvation under the terms that they would prefer. They do not think about election through the prism of the cosmic Christ; instead they think of individually elect people whom God arbitrarily chose in abstraction from Christ, and under the absolute decree of election. In this scenario, they believe they have found a key for unlocking the ‘problem’ that Torrance seemingly slips right past. They believe they have a way of positing how someone might come to Christ, while also maintaining the effectual means by which that is accomplished. They believe that God has not only ordained the ends of election, but also the means. The means, they posit, is a created grace given to the elect through which the elect will say yes to God and confirm His choice for them. Torrance, clearly, does not think from these terms; he thinks from the mystery of the Incarnation and its inherence in the Virgin Birth of Mary. This troubles classical Calvinists greatly!

Interestingly, I haven’t ever lost any sleep from this apparent conundrum. I don’t see it as a dilemma whatsoever. We know why and even how people come to faith in Christ; it is through the faith of Christ, and God’s choice to present that to all of humanity through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Evangelical Calvinists, following TFT, aren’t much different than Calvin here. Calvin held to an asymmetry between the doctrines of reprobation and election. He believed election was a revealed reality come in the mirror of Christ, but he also believed that reprobation remained a secret in the hidden will of God. This presented some problems for Calvin’s overall theological presentation (which I’ve written about here), but on analogy, Torrance can follow the same distinction. He can say: ‘sure, I can tell you, like any good Calvinist, that people say yes to God because God first chose to say yes to them.’ But Torrance can also say: ‘under these conditions we are at a loss for understanding why people continue to say no to God in Christ; all we can do is recognize the inscrutable mystery of sin and evil operative in the world. We know it’s a reality, but we don’t understand how or even why it is.’ This is not a satisfactory response for the classical Calvinist, or the classical Arminian following (you realize Arminianism is not much different than Calvinism, right?).

But I will only respond with the realization that when we read the Apostle Paul or the dominical teaching itself, ‘freedom for God’ is always already associated with the ‘in Christ’ or union with Christ loci; such that to have this discussion at all leads us into the positive affirmation that to be human, and thus free, in God’s economy is to be in Christ. Torrance believes that this freedom, or to be human before God, is fully available for all of humanity as that is grounded in the archetypal humanity of Jesus Christ. He believes, as we just read, that Christ is the new creation of God, and that in order to spiritually experience this reality we must be in active union with Christ. All of humanity, by virtue of Christ’s humanity for them, has the capacity to say yes from His Yes for them. This is, I would contend, the Pauline teaching; one that focuses on the positive of what God has accomplished for the world through His gracious choice to be for humanity rather than against it; to take our no as His No, and give us His Yes, and allow it to be ours by the grace of the Spirit.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, edited by Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 100-02.