Part II, Scientific Theology

Guest post by © Dr Myk Habets, myk.habets@carey.ac.nz

Torrance’s published works indicate that a central concern of his is to explicate the deep interrelation between Christian theology and the natural sciences.[1] In 1978 Torrance was awarded the prestigious Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion on account of his contributions to the discussion of the interaction of Christian theology and the natural sciences. For Torrance, all theological exploration is a scientific endeavour, and so it is bound by a common scientific methodology. What Torrance is most concerned with in this regard is to expound the right methodology and epistemology by which a truly Christian scientific theology operates.[2] While Torrance followed his mentor Karl Barth to some extent here, he did not follow Barth’s reticence over the interaction between theology and natural science.[3] In fact, Torrance’s position is significantly different from Barth’s at this point and is perhaps to be regarded, as McGrath does, as his most significant point of difference from Barth.[4] In this area Torrance has leaned more heavily on his minor mentors such as Daniel Lamont[5] and natural scientists such as Einstein, than he has on his major influences such as Karl Barth. Clearly, it will not be necessary to offer a comprehensive analysis and critique of Torrance’s interaction with the natural sciences, as has been attempted numerous times elsewhere.[6]

Torrance’s approach to scientific theology has five central concerns that will be examined here in part.[7] The first major point Torrance makes in his various and voluminous writings is that the natural sciences and theology share common points in their view of the universe, the most fundamental of which is that the universe is ordered. The second major point for Torrance is that all sciences share one common methodological dictum, and that is the kataphysic nature of scientific enquiry. Third, Torrance has adopted and adapted a particular epistemology known as ‘critical realism,’ which he shares in common with many natural scientists and has sought to work out his own theological enterprise consistently in accord with this philosophy. It will be seen that this is not an a priori philosophy imposed on science or theology but rather one that recognises the a posteriori nature of knowledge. As a result of this critical realism we note a fourth feature of Torrance’s work in this area, that of his relation to various philosophers of science that he consistently and repeatedly draws on, most notably, Michael Polanyi.

An Ordered Universe: Beyond All Dualisms

Torrance reads the history of scientific endeavour through the lens of an inherent and ingrained cosmological and epistemological dualism, especially cemented by the Copernican-Newtonian revolution.[8] This form of dualism took its definitive shape, argues Torrance, through the thought of Kant and Descartes or of Newton and Galileo,[9] but goes back to the foundations of classical Western culture in Greece, as found in the philosophy and cosmology of both Plato and Aristotle.[10] After outlining the various dualisms which these thinkers introduced – such as the empirical and the theoretical, the physical and the spiritual, the temporary and the eternal, the mortal and the divine – what resulted was the solidified system of the Ptolemaic cosmology with its dualism between the supralunar and infralunar realms, which, according to Torrance, ‘inevitably affected all life and thought within its framework right up to the scientific revolution associated with Copernicus and Galileo.’[11] It is this dualistic nature of science and knowing that Torrance has reacted to so strongly in favour of a unitary frame of knowing.[12]

In applying this dualism to the realm of theology Torrance sees the most damaging effects. When dualisms were adopted into Christian thinking Neoplatonic Hellenism came to prevail and found its most enduring expression in the Augustinianism of Western Christendom.[13] Here the dualism is between God and the world, the eternal and the temporal, heaven and earth.[14] When these dualisms were felt to threaten knowledge of God a failed attempt was made to unite them together with the help of a resurrected Aristotelian philosophy and science (Aquinas). Not surprisingly, this did not achieve the goal of unity but simply introduced a modified form of the old dualisms.[15]

With Locke, Descartes, and Newton was introduced the ‘massive dualism between absolute mathematical time and space and relative apparent time and space that was to become programmatic for all modern science and cosmology up to Einstein.’[16] Torrance sees this development as giving rise to deism as the cleavage or dualism between God and the world was seen to be so immense that it could not logically be crossed. But it is to Kant that Torrance reserves his most scathing critique, for his introduction of ‘the synthetic a priori’[17] in which Kant combined sense experience, not with innate ideas, but with built-in structures of the consciousness through which the human knower imposed conceptual order on all he perceived, so that it was impossible for him to ever penetrate behind his cognitive activity to what things are in themselves, independent of his perceiving and conceiving.[18] The resultant Kantian epistemology involved a rejection of the possibility of any knowledge of things in themselves, limiting knowledge of them to what we can make out of their appearances. It demanded a bifurcation between unknowable ‘things in themselves,’ to be treated as no more than hypothetical entities, and what is scientifically knowable, namely, completely determined and necessary objects. More generally, with Kant a dualism was established between the realm of noumenal essences and ideas from the realm of phenomenal objects and events.[19] The result for Christian theology was that ‘Kant severed the connection between science and faith, depriving faith of any objective or ontological reference and emptying it of any real cognitive content.’[20]

The way beyond this scientific impasse is to turn to thinkers both old and new. First, to notice how the early Christian thinkers, notably Athanasius, rigorously applied their Christian theology to all the realms of knowing, and then, within the field of the natural sciences themselves, to James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein and Michael Polanyi. Torrance argues forcefully and repeatedly that Christian theology and natural science must move from a dualist to a unitary outlook upon the universe.[21] According to Torrance, a ‘unitary outlook upon the universe’ is collapsing these ‘pseudo-interpretations’ and ‘pseudo-theologies.’[22]

It was long held that the basis to all scientific methodology was the application of a priori dictums to everyday knowledge. However, Torrance seeks to work within the post-Newtonian, post-Einsteinian scientific climate of today and to construct and be true to a scientific theology. J.D. Morrison defines what Torrance means by ‘science’ in the following way:

By ‘science’, then, Torrance refers neither to the ‘natural’ sciences necessary nor to some supposed ‘scientific’ method as abstracted from one particular discipline to then be imposed upon another science. ‘Science’ refers rather to appropriate procedures which each science has developed and must develop in relation to the rationality of its own proper object in which ‘it has solved its own inductive problem of how to arrive at a general conclusion from a limited set of particular observations.’ There occurs then critical and controlled extension of ordinary ways of knowing for the goal of real, positive knowledge of the object which is ‘transcendent’ to the self, but in strict accordance with the object’s actual nature as it has disclosed itself to be in itself. Therefore, the appropriate mode of rationality and inquiry will be ‘dictated’ by the object in the process of ‘questioning.’[23]

In case Torrance is misunderstood to be saying that theology must be built upon the methodological dictates of science, which would simply impose upon it a new a priori, Torrance asks:

What am I saying here? Not that theology today must be grounded upon the new science, but rather that this science, in point of fact, rests upon foundational ideas that science did not and could not have produced on its own, ideas that derive from the Christian understanding of the relation of God to the universe.[24]

Torrance reiterates the point that ‘science as we understand it in the modern world rests upon the basic ideas produced by Christian theology.’[25] By this means Torrance retains what is a foundational principle in his theology, the fact that knowledge of God is derived from his self-revelation, not by forming any logical bridge between the world and God.[26] In other words, epistemology is founded upon ontology. This point shall be made again later in this section, especially when we come to consider Torrance’s position on the place and role of natural theology.

The Kataphysic Nature of Science

The point was made above that epistemology is founded on or correlated with ontology.[27] This holds true throughout Torrance’s method and theology. Like Barth before him, Torrance holds that the distinctive nature of theology is determined by its object, which is defined as God revealed in Jesus Christ. Hence theology and any and every other true science, is under an intrinsic obligation to give account of reality according to its distinct nature, that is, kata physin.[28] The fundamental axiom that Torrance develops throughout his theological exploration is that ‘We know things in accordance with their natures, or what they are in themselves; and so we let the nature of what we know determine for us the content and form of our knowledge.’[29] He goes on to argue that:

science, in every field of our human experience, is only the rigorous extension of that basic way of thinking and behaving.’[30] By natural extension, ‘all this applies as much in our relations with God as in our relations with nature or with one another. There is no secret way of knowing either in science or theology, but there is only one basic way of knowing, which naturally develops different modes of rationality in natural science and in theological science because the nature of what we seek to know in each is different.[31]

The final application of this principle is expounded by Torrance in the following way, ‘In each field of inquiry, then, we must be faithful to the reality we seek to know and must act and think always in a relation of relentless fidelity to that reality.’[32] In this way Torrance has expressed a fundamental and unifying method for all scientific investigation. Not least of which includes scientific theology.

As we have seen, Torrance is thus critical of the use of a priori notions in both science and theology, believing that both should respond to the objective reality with which they are confronted, and which they are required to describe.[33] Theology, like the natural sciences, is to be seen as an a posteriori activity, conditioned by what is given. Working under this ‘new science’ the question has to be asked as to the definition of both Christian theology (dogmatics) and science itself. Torrance defines dogmatics as:

. . . the pure science of theology: not some system of ideas laid down on the ground of external preconceptions and authorities, not some useless, abstract stuff concerned with detached, merely academic questions, nor again some man-centred ideology that we think up for ourselves out of our socio-political involvements with one another, but the actual knowledge of the living God as he is disclosed to us through his interaction with us in our world of space and time – knowledge of God that is ultimately controlled by the nature of God as he is in himself.[34]

We can see in this definition the elements of a kataphysic nature. God has given himself in Jesus Christ and so our theology of him is a posteriori. In and through Jesus Christ God has made space for himself to be known and for humanity to respond in a certain way. And so we are under an obligation to respond in faith in accordance with God’s self-revelation. In a similar way to his definition of theology Torrance defines science for the most part as:

. . . natural science in its pure rather than in its applied forms: that is, not something worked up in accordance with a priori assumptions and imposed as law upon nature nor merely convenient arrangements of observational data that we can put to practical use in our human attempts to triumph over nature, but rather the knowledge we reach of things in any field under the compulsion of their independent reality, in controlled reference to their inherent nature, and formulated in the light of their internal relations.[35]

From both definitions we can see how Torrance works as a theologian within the field of science (theological and natural science). Torrance’s ultimate concern is to provide a scientific explanation for the knowledge of God.[36] This cannot be achieved logically or directly from the phenomenological to the noumenal but rather more in accordance with the nature of the object being studied – in this case God. God must reveal himself if knowledge of him is to be achieved. This knowledge of God is given, according to Torrance and the Christian tradition, in diverse ways but ultimately through the Person of the Son, Jesus Christ.

In the face of that dualist outlook in religion and thought invading the Church from the surrounding culture of the ancient world, what line did classical Christian theology take? It was committed to the Gospel of the incarnation of the Son of God, the Word made flesh, and was concerned with a way of believing and thinking imposed upon it by the sheer fact of Christ, in accordance with which it was held that this world of ours in space and time is actually intersected and overlapped, so to speak, by the divine world in the parousia, or advent and presence, of Jesus Christ. He was acknowledged and adored, therefore, as one who is God of God and yet man of man, who in his own being belongs both to the eternal world of divine reality and to the historical world of contingent realities.[37]

The essential formulation of this belief was given in the great ecumenical creed of all Christendom at Nicaea and Constantinople, formalised in what Torrance describes as the ‘linchpin of this theology,’[38] in the homoousion, the confession that Jesus Christ the incarnate Son is of one being or of one substance with God the Father. Why is this so crucial to a truly scientific Christian theology? Because it provides the realist basis for knowledge of God. Because Jesus Christ is God of God and man of man in himself; in or through Jesus Christ we who are creatures of this world may truly know God in such a way that our knowledge of God (the object) rests upon the reality of God in himself. It is not simply a phenomenological phantom or a mythological projection into God, but is grounded and controlled by what God is in himself.[39]

Nicene theology thus gave basic shape to the doctrine of the Trinity that was found to belong to the essential structure of faith in God and to the intrinsic grammar of Christian thought. In this way Torrance moves from a treatment of method or epistemology to his more doctrinal material specifically relating to the doctrine of the Triune God. What is also of importance to note is that this is the way in which Torrance’s soteriology and indeed his doctrine of theōsis will be seen to function in such a system. In Jesus Christ is revealed Very God of Very God. He is in his own being what he is as God’s revealing word and saving act toward us. Through Christ and the Spirit we are given access to God as he is in himself. This access to God is, in part, in the form of knowledge of God as he is in himself, in his internal relations as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The epistemological strength of the homoousion works here with full force for it represents the consubstantial relation between Jesus Christ the Word made flesh and God himself. As the image of God, identical with his reality, knowledge of the Incarnate Son through the Holy Spirit has a unique and controlling finality in our knowledge of God.[40]

By this means, according to Torrance, the theology of the early Church challenged the very dualistic foundations of ancient Greek and Roman culture in philosophy, science, and religion.[41] This challenge, if Torrance’s position be accepted, must be the work of theologians today as well:

What, then, is the task of Christian theology today? It must be the same as that of Christian theology in the early centuries when it undertook this reconstruction of the basis of Greek culture as part of the evangelizing activity of the Church, with the hope that Christianity would take root in a developing Christian culture. Today we live in a world being changed by science, which is far more congenial to Christian theology than any period in the history of Western civilization. Here the task of Christian theology must be the recovery of the doctrines of creation and incarnation in such a way that we think through their interrelations more rigorously than ever before, and on that ground engage in constant dialogue with the new science, which can only be to the benefit of both.[42]

[1] Among his major writings to deal with this theme, the following are widely regarded as being of particular significance: T.F. Torrance, Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969. Reprint, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996); Divine and Contingent Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Reprint, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998); Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984); Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985); The Christian Frame of Mind: Order and Openness in Theology and Natural Science (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1985. Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1989²); The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980). See E.L. Mascall, Theology and the Gospel of Christ: An Essay in Reorientation (London: SPCK, 1977), 25. See the bibliography of Torrance’s essays and lectures on this theme.

[2] When we understand Torrance’s scientific theology in terms of its form, content and method we will be able to comprehend his theological statements. E.M. Colyer, The Nature of Doctrine in T.F. Torrance’s Theology (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 79. E.L. Mascall wrote that Torrance is ‘one of the very few British theologians of recent years who have seriously enquired into the nature of the discipline to which they are committed,’ E.L. Mascall, Theology and the Gospel of Christ: An Essay in Reorientation (London: SPCK, 1977), 46.

[3] Barth treats Christian theology and the natural sciences as non-interactive disciplines and repeatedly turned down invitations to interact with natural scientists such as Max Planck, Günter Howe, and Karl Heim. See G. Howe, Die Christenheit im Atomzeitalter: Vortlage und Studien (Stuttgart: Klett, 1970), and L. Gilkey, Nature, Reality and the Sacred: The Nexus of Science and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), ibid., Religion and the Scientific Future: Reflections in Myth, Science and Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 26-29, and H. Nebelsick, Theology and Science in Mutual Modification (Belfast: Christian Journals, 1981), 159-166.

According to Andrew Louth, this reticence on Barth’s part was more than simple disinterest in natural science but actually one of dis-ease. According to Louth Barth was adamant that theology does not learn its content from the natural sciences nor is it dependent upon them for its method. Louth considers Torrance is have misunderstood or at the very least illegitimately adopt Barth as his sponsor for the interaction between theology and science. For Barth, Louth points out, ‘science’ is the translation of ‘Wissenschaft,’ the German word having a much broader meaning than the English word ‘science.’ ‘To say that theology is a science means for Barth that it is a ‘human effort after truth,’ [Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, 10] … Barth is not at all interested in pursuing analogies that might exist between theology and any other sciences; theology ‘cannot allow itself to be taught by them the concrete meaning which that involves in its own case.. As regards method it has nothing to learn from their school’ [Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1, 7],’ A. Louth, ‘Science and Mystery,’ in Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 51.

Does this mean Torrance’s work on science and theology, as derived from his (mis)reading of Barth is worthless? Not according to his critic Louth. ‘If this reading of Torrance’s position is accepted, then it must mean that Torrance is mistaken in the fundamental thrust of his enterprise [i.e. that theology is a ‘science’ rather than one of [the Queen] the humanities]. But it does not mean there is not much to be learnt from the kind of considerations he raises in the course of his books,’ A. Louth, ‘Science and Mystery,’ in Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 53. Louth specifically mentions the analysis of the notions of space-time.

[4] A.E. McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 197. See R.J. Palma, ‘Thomas F. Torrance’s Reformed Theology,’ Reformed Review 38/1 (Autumn 1984), 24.

[5] Especially Lamont’s work Christ and the World of Thought (1934). A.E. McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 204 discerns the influence of Lamont in Torrance’s Auburn Lectures on theology and science in 1938-1939.

[6] See for instance the ‘Secondary Literature’ listed in the bibliography along with the various theses conducted on this aspect of Torrance’s oeuvre.

[7] In an appreciative article Palma presents four areas in which he believes Torrance has made the most significant contributions to theology: 1) theological discipline through obedient listening; 2) theological integrity through real integration; 3) theological advance through scientific understanding; and 4) theological relevance through real relations. R.J. Palma, ‘Thomas F. Torrance’s Reformed Theology,’ Reformed Review 38/1 (Autumn 1984), 2-46.

[8] Dualism is an important concept for Torrance and is defined in a theological lexicon attached to the end of T.F. Torrance (ed), Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 136 as:

the division of reality into two incompatible spheres of being. This may be cosmological, in the dualism between a sensible and an intelligible realm, neither of which can be reduced to the other. It may also be epistemological, in which the empirical and theoretical aspects of reality are separated from one another, thereby giving rise to the extremes of empiricism and rationalism. It may also be anthropological, in a dualism between the mind and the body, in which a physical and a mental substance are conceived as either interacting with one another or as running a parallel course without affecting one another. In the Judeo-Christian tradition man is regarded as an integrated whole, who is soul of his body and body of his soul.

[9] According to Torrance Descartes’ cogito ergo sum effected the epistemological separation of subject from object, Newton’s rigid, mathematical system of cause and effected resulted in a mechanistic scientific methodology bringing about the separation of absolute mathematical space and time from relative space and time, Kant’s synthesis of rationalism and empiricism was effected at the cost of the bifurcation formed between the noumenal and the phenomenological. See the overview of Torrance’s critique of dualism in J.D. Morrison, Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God in the Thought of Thomas Forsyth Torrance. Issues in Systematic Theology Vol 2 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 48-51.

[10] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 21.

[11] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 21.

[12] For an endorsement of Torrance’s unitary approach to knowledge related to natural scientific claims see W.J. Neidhardt, ‘Thomas F. Torrance’s Integration of Judeo-Christian Theology and Natural Science: Some Key Themes,’ Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 41/2 (1989), 87-98.

[13] Dualist ways of thinking are not exclusive to the West but are also found in Byzantine Christianity. T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 60-61.

[14] Other consequences of dualist ways of thinking mentioned by Torrance include Gnosticism with its bifurcation between two widely disparate realms: a suprasensual, utterly transcendental realm of eternal and divine realities and an earthly, material realm of transient existence. The gap between them was so wide that it had to be spanned through mythological hierarchies of semi-divine beings. The other form of dualism was found in the Arian movement according to which the disparate realms of the uncreated and divine and of the creaturely and human touched each other only tangentially at the point of Jesus Christ. See T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 37-39.

[15] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 22.

[16] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 23.

[17] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 25.

[18] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 25-26.

[19] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 26-27.

[20] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 27.

[21] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 15.

[22] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 27.

[23] J.D. Morrison, Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God in the Thought of Thomas Forsyth Torrance. Issues in Systematic Theology Vol 2 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 105, with a citation from T.F. Torrance, Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 106.

[24] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 73.

[25] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 110. This point is illustrated in the analysis of C. Weightman, Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 181-201. As Weightman makes clear on page 194:

Torrance is not arguing from science to God here, though it might appear so. The position which Torrance holds is that the relational, non-dualistic Trinitarian theology of the early Church stands behind the relational non-dualistic cosmology of Einstein and so, by the nature of the case, Einsteinian science is compatible with the pre-Augustinian theology of the Greek fathers since its own existence and character is dependent on this relational and on-dualistic theology.

This is an important point. Torrance is well aware that it would be foolish to rely too heavily on contemporary scientific theories to build a theology on, a practice entertained by certain eighteenth-century British theologians, see J. Gascoine, ‘From Bentley to the Victorians: the Rise and fall of British Newtonian Natural Theology,’ Science in Context 2 (1988), 219-256. McGrath provides a helpful warning against this practice in his lecture A.E. McGrath, ‘Scientific Method and the Reconstruction of Theology: Introducing ‘A Scientific Theology’,’ Lecture for the John Templeton Oxford Seminars on Science and Christianity, Harris Manchester College, (Thursday 24 July, 2003), http://www.metanexus.net/archives/message_fs.asp?ARCHIVEID=8363, paragraph 34.

[26] In the Auburn lectures of 1938-39 this idea was already established in Torrance’s Christology and science. See T.F. Torrance, The Doctrine of Jesus Christ: Auburn Lectures 1938-39 (Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 74 and A.E. McGrath, ‘The Auburn Lectures on Science and Theology,’ in T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 199-205.

[27] A point made forcefully in his T.F. Torrance, Preaching Christ Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 44 with reference to Einstein, Polanyi and Karl Popper.

[28] T.F. Torrance, Theological Science (1969. Reprint, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 10. The kata physic nature of T.F. Torrance’s theology is derived from that of Karl Barth in theology (who in turn derived this from his own reading of Anselm, albeit with a rigorous Christological orientation), and his reading of Einstein in science. Torrance’s reading of Barth on ratio (rationality and method) is most clearly developed in T.F. Torrance, Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910-1931 (1962. Reprint, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 180-198. Torrance summarises the method of the Church Dogmatics as follows: ‘We may express this otherwise by saying that in scientific theological activity the reason is unconditionally bound to its object and determined by it, and that the nature of the object must prescribe the specific mode of the activity of the reason,’ idem., 192. For a concise summary of how Torrance views scientific method see T.F. Torrance, Preaching Christ Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 45-49. Beyond Barth and Einstein Torrance attributes John Philoponos with being one of the first to work with a consistent kata physic method in science. This is most obvious throughout the various essays comprising as T.F. Torrance, Theological and Natural Science (Eugene, OR.: Wipf & Stock, 2002).

[29] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 8. Torrance develops this with especial force in his Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969. reprint, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996).

[30] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 8.

[31] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 9.

[32] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 10. Torrance attributes this insight to Karl Barth in T.F. Torrance, Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990), 67-68 when he writes:

All scientific activity is one in which the reason acts strictly and precisely in accordance with the nature of its object, and so lets the object prescribe for it both the limits within which it may be known and the mode of rationality that is to be adopted toward it. . . this is precisely the procedure which Barth adopted in scientific dogmatics – as we can see very clearly in his brilliant interpretation of Anselm’s theological method, and in the way in which he has worked out his own epistemology in strict obedience to the nature of the concrete object of theological knowledge, God come to us in Jesus Christ . . . The procedure common to theological science and all other genuine science is one in which the mind of the knower acts in strict conformity to the nature of what is given, and refuses to take up a standing in regard to it prior to actual knowledge or in abstraction from actual knowledge.

[33] Torrance describes four main changes in scientific method that correspond to this unitary way of knowing: 1) it has shed its abstractive character, 2) atomistic thinking is replaced by relational thinking or ‘fields of force’ (Einstein), 3) science is applied to open as opposed to closed systems (Prigogine), 4) ‘depth dimensions’ inherent to the universe are recognised (Polanyi). See T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 10-13.

[34] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 15-16. The very term ‘dogmatics’ Torrance traces back to philosophers of the first two centuries before and after Christ who devoted themselves to questions yielding positive answers as opposed to New Academy philosophers, the ‘skeptics,’ who simply asked questions that do not yield the kind of answers that commit you to decision and change. ‘Thus the ‘dogmatic’ person turns out to be, not a philosopher, but a scientist who thinks only as he is compelled to think by the objective and intrinsic structures of nature,’ ibid., 49-50. Torrance stands self-consciously in the long line of what Cyril of Alexandria called dogmatike episteme, ‘dogmatic science,’ ibid., 50-52. For the same thought see T.F. Torrance, Preaching Christ Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 45-48 where he compares the scientific work of scientists and theologians ‘working within the same room,’ as it were.

In his essay on Mackintosh Torrance defined dogmatics as follows:

As Mackintosh used to teach us, dogmatics is not the systematic study of the sanctioned dogmas of the Church, but the elucidation of the full content of revelation, of the Word of God as contained in Scripture, and as such is concerned with the intrinsic and permanent truth which church doctrine in every age is meant to express. It is ‘systematic’ only on the sense that every part of Christian truth is vitally connected with every other part. No doctrine can be admitted that does not bring to expression some aspect of the redemption that is in Christ. Thus for mackintosh as for Barth it is in Christ alone that the truth of dogmatics finds it organic unity.

T.F. Torrance, ‘Hugh Ross Mackintosh: Theologian of the Cross,’ Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 5 (1987), 161.

[35] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 16. Torrance is clearly siding here with his mentor Karl Barth in the debate between Barth and Heinrich Sholz and also against the definition of science proposed later by Wolfhart Pannenberg. See T.F. Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1976), xi-x; H. Sholz, ‘Wie ist eine evangelische Theologie als Wisseschaft moglich?’ Zweschen den Zeiten 9 (1931), 8-53; A.L. Molendijk, ‘Henirich Sholz-Karl Barth: Ein discussie over de wetenschappelijkheid van de theologie,’ Nederlands Theologisch Tijchrift 39 (October 1985), 295-313; and W. Pannenberg in Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans., F. McDonagh (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1976), especially 269-276.

[36] Torrance’s commitment to the ‘doing’ of theology as a science was ingrained very early as can be seen in his response to the invitation extended to Torrance by Princeton University in 1939 to teach theology on an ‘objective basis’ and in a ‘dispassionate way.’ Torrance responded by declaring that he could only teach theology as a science. When asked to elaborate on this statement he explained that in science ‘you don’t think in a detached way; you think as you are compelled to think by the evidential grounds upon which you work. It’s a much more rigorous way of thinking, but it is a much more objective way of thinking because all your thinking is controlled by the realities you are inquiring into,’ I.J. Hesselink, ‘A Pilgrimage in the School of Christ – An Interview with T.F. Torrance,’ in Reformed Review 38/1 (1984), 54. Torrance was, to his surprise, appointed to the position. He subsequently turned it down due to the impending outbreak of World War II. See A.E. McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 57-58.

[37] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 39.

[38] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 39.

[39] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 40.

[40] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 40.

[41] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 44-74.

[42] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 74.

Part I, A Realist Approach to Science and Theology

Guest post by © Dr Myk Habets, myk.habets@carey.ac.nz

In his work The Ground and Grammar of Theology, Torrance traces the development of Christian theology on the natural sciences and argues for a Christian science for today such as that developed by the early Church.[1] Through the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo the early Church developed ‘three masterful ideas’[2] that powerfully effected all subsequent thought in natural science as well as theological science.[3] The first idea was the rational unity of the universe, given the fact that God is the Creator of all. This provides the world with one pervading taxis or order. The second idea was the contingent rationality or intelligibility of the universe.[4] In Greek thought the human mind was eternal, it was the spark of the divine, due to the influence of the Orphic ideal. This led to the Greek idea of the divinization of the creature.[5] Christian theology rejected this dualism and instead operated with the distinction between created and uncreated light and rationality that exists between God and humanity. Creation ex nihilo meant that even the mind of the human person was created by the Creator in time. The consequence is that God gives human intelligence its own (contingent) rationality. The third idea is the corollary of the first and second points, the freedom of the universe – a contingent freedom.

This freedom is also found in the very Being of God. When medieval theology adopted Aristotelian philosophy the Greek notion of God as impassible and immutable was also adopted. In this way Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover became associated with the God of the Scriptures. However, in Patristic theology immutability and impassibility, as applied to God, were not associated with these philosophical ideas but were actually a challenge to it. It is true that God is not moved by, and is not changed by, anything outside himself, and that he is not affected by anything or does not suffer from anything beyond himself. But this simply affirms the biblical fact that God is transcendent and the one who created ex nihilo. What the Fathers did not mean is that God does not move himself and is incapable of imparting motion to what he has made.[6] It does not mean that God is devoid of passion, of love, mercy and wrath, and that he is impassibly and immutably related to our world of space and time in such a way that it is thrown back upon itself as a closed continuum of cause and effect.[7]

I grant that patristic theology was tempted constantly by the thrust of Greek thought to change the concepts of impassibility and immutability in this direction, but it remained entrenched within the orbit of the Judeo-Christian doctrine of the living God who moves himself, who through his free love created the universe, imparting to its dynamic order, and who through the outgoing of his love moves outside of himself in the incarnation.[8]

This is the God who was not always Creator but became Creator. This implies the notion that even in the life of God there is change. Nor was God eternally incarnate, for in Jesus Christ he became what he was not without ceasing to be what he was. This teaching altered the whole concept of God, of his Being and Act, in the early centuries of our era. T.F. Torrance sees this doctrine being clearly articulated first by Athanasius and then in our own day by Karl Barth[9] in his account of the Being of God in his Act, and of the Act of God in his Being, inseparably bound up with the transcendent freedom of God in his love.[10] In fact, this principle that God is revealed in his Being and Act and Act and Being is one of the principle tenets of both Barth and Torrance’s theological work.

According to Torrance and the scientific tradition within which he stands, the order evident in the natural world is totally contingent and yet ordered and so conforms to the Christian truth of the creative action of God. Drawing on the work of James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Torrance seeks to drive out all dualisms in our understanding and method in favour of what Maxwell presented in terms of unitary modes of thought about nature.[11] Torrance has repeatedly argued that Maxwell’s strong Christian faith was the foundation of his scientific method, like John Philoponos before him.[12] Torrance suggested that for Maxwell, the Christian doctrine of creation offers a lens through which the rationality and intelligibility of the created order can be understood and pursued.[13] Here again Torrance is arguing that proper theological reflection (science) has affected and driven natural scientific investigation and not vice-versa.

With an understanding of a unitary and ordered universe and scientific reflection on it that refuses to operate with inherent a priori foundations, together with a kataphysic approach to Reality and truth, Torrance built up a form of critical realism. When applied to theology Torrance is clear that objective reality, which in this case is God in his self-givenness, has ontological priority over all of our human referencing. Theological thinking, as with all scientific thinking, must be properly realist. It is out of this ‘theological realism’ that Torrance sees the homoousion doctrine as a faithful expression and disclosure model of the oneness in being in the relation of the incarnate Son with the Father. Ultimately, Torrance’s theological realism is grounded in God and calls the Church back to a truly ‘rational worship of God’ (logike latreia).[14]

Polanyi and a Philosophy of Science

Throughout our surview of Torrance’s theology and method we have seen that he draws on many philosophers of science repeatedly, especially Michael Polanyi. Given the fact that Torrance is referred to as a philosopher of science in his own right,[15] it is necessary for us to examine further Torrance’s insights derived from Polanyi.

Throughout Torrance’s writings the name of the Hungarian medical doctor, chemist, and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), appears repeatedly and has by Torrance’s own admission had a pervasive affect on his philosophy of science and on his philosophy of religion. Polanyi’s work has been utilised by numerous theologians and an examination of his philosophy of science is of importance to an understanding of Torrance’s own position.[16] In Weightman’s study of the interaction between Torrance and Polanyi he argues that ‘the part Polanyi plays in Torrance’s attempt to relate his Barthian theology to the modern scientific world. . .is crucial to comprehending what Torrance is all about.’[17] While a detailed examination of Polanyi’s philosophy is not necessary to the aims of this thesis a brief study of Torrance’s relation to his philosophy is in order.

It is clear from the Torrance’s own comments and the evidence itself that Torrance has used the philosophy of Polanyi at key points in his theology to further clarify or illustrate basic axiom’s and commitments that Torrance has already formed. That Torrance has not read Polanyi into his theology like some a priori philosophy imposed upon the biblical evidence is obvious.[18] Torrance distinguishes between what may be termed ‘foundational’ and ‘illuminative’ roles for philosophies such as Polanyi’s. Clearly, Torrance uses Polanyi’s philosophy in the sense of illumination, not foundation. According to Torrance, his first association with Polanyi was in reading a work of his around the year 1958, well after Torrance’s fundamental thoughts on the relation between science and theology, and his natural theology, had been formulated. The first use of Polanyi by Torrance can be dated to May 1963 as found in a paper on ‘The Problem of Theological Statement Today.’[19] This was followed in his first extensive interaction with Polanyi’s thought in Theological Science (1969). Torrance maintains that while these lectures were originally given in the United States in 1959, the material relating to Polanyi was written during the revision of the work for publication during the 1960’s.[20] From the 1960’s on Torrance has consistently drawn on insights from Polanyi to illustrate his own theological points.[21] In 1968-69 Torrance joined Polanyi as a member of the Académie Internationale de Philsophie des Sciences, and over the years 1970-74 Torrance and Polanyi became friends.[22] An examination of Torrance’s use of Polanyi shows that he considers Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge (1958)[23] to be amongst the most important of Polanyi’s works.[24]

Torrance regards Polanyi as standing at the end and so representing the capstone of the Maxwellian-Einsteinian restructuring of the epistemological foundations of natural science and he does do with ‘unrivalled delicacy and refinement.’[25] The appeal of Polanyi’s philosophy of science on Torrance is in relation to the ability of his philosophy of science to make room for religious belief.[26]

Of central importance to Torrance’s theological programme is the nature of the correspondence between knowing and being. For Torrance, as for Polanyi on whom he draws, knowing is correlated to being. We advance in knowledge as we ‘hook our thoughts onto the structures of reality. In doing so ‘we presume that a correlation is possible between our human conceiving and the inner structure of reality itself, and we carry out all our operations in that belief.’’[27]

Knowing, for Einstein, Polanyi and Torrance, involves hierarchical structures.[28] Einstein outlined a hierarchical structure that could be applied to each particular science: the physical, the theoretical, and the meta-theoretical. Polanyi advanced beyond this and proposed a hierarchy of sciences. The various scientific disciplines themselves could be stratified from lower to higher levels with the higher levels having an influence over the lower levels and not, as in Newtonian science with a mechanistic reading of the lower levels up into the higher. Torrance calls this the principle of coherent integration from above.[29] When Torrance adopts this stratified structure of the sciences he, not surprisingly, places theology as the highest level of knowing as it is the science of theology that has to do with the knowledge of God and this is the highest form of knowing possible.[30]

One of the more important themes that Polanyi develops and that Torrance uses is that of the fiduciary component of human knowledge. Over and against what had come to dominate modern scientific activity, the triumph of reason over belief, Polanyi argues convincingly for a ‘post-critical philosophy,’ as the sub-title of his magnum opus Personal Knowledge runs, similar to that of Augustine in the fourth-century.[31] According to Polanyi Augustine taught that all knowledge was a gift of grace for which we must strive under the guidance of antecedent belief. He then cites Augustine ‘Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand.’[32] This fiduciary basis of knowledge ruled for a thousand years until Locke introduced an inherent dualism between knowledge and faith. ‘All belief,’ writes Polanyi, ‘was reduced to the status of subjectivity: to that of an imperfection by which knowledge fell short of universality.’[33] To remedy this Polanyi offers the following corrective:

We must now recognize belief once more as the source of all knowledge. Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an idiom and of a cultural heritage, affiliation to a like-minded community: such are the impulses which shape our vision of the nature of things on which we rely for our mastery of things. No intelligence, however critical or original, can operate outside such a fiduciary framework. While our acceptance of this framework is the condition for having any knowledge, this matrix can claim no self-evidence.[34]

It is this fiduciary element or post-critical philosophy of Polanyi’s that has had an enormous effect on theologians including Torrance as they can see that theological statements are developed in manners which are analogous to those associated with the natural sciences.[35] In both theology and the natural sciences discovery begins with faith (belief) which leads to the truth, truth being a fundamental insight into the real, as it is independent of the knower. This does not mean that whatever one thinks is true or real. Rather, one works from one’s own personal beliefs to explore them and test them and refine them. Again using Augustine as his example, this time his Confessions Polanyi writes:

His maxim nisi credideritis non intelligitis expresses this logical requirement. It says, as I understand it, that the process of examining any topic is both an exploration of the topic, and an exegesis of our fundamental beliefs in the light of which we approach it; a dialectical combination of exploration and exegesis. Our fundamental beliefs are continuously reconsidered in the course of such a process, but only within the scope of their own basic premises.[36]

Carl Henry, the pre-eminent theological foundationalist of contemporary theology has criticised aspects of Torrance’s scientific theology over several publications, the most sustained being in volume three of his magnum opus God, Revelation and Authority.[37] Henry is particularly critical of what he sees as the illogical presuppositions of Torrance’s intuitive theology. Torrance rejects the form of propositional revelation espoused by Henry in favour of a ‘personal knowing.’[38] Reality is to be known in faith through an existential encounter with the ultimate Reality – Jesus Christ the incarnate Word (Logos).

Henry sees the critical mistake of Torrance’s epistemology, derived in part from Kierkegaard but more from Polanyi, to lie in his seeming rejection of any objective revelational knowledge.[39] From Kierkegaard Torrance is committed to the idea that the Truth of God is communicated through personal relations, not, as Henry would have it, objectively. However, Torrance holds that theology which accepts the absolute primacy of its proper object of inquiry can be considered both rational and scientific – hence objective. Torrance understands Kierkegaard’s ‘truth as Subjectivity’ as in fact theological objectivity and realism, the subject’s proper relation to the Object.

Henry appears to misread Torrance (and Polanyi) at this point and interprets the notion of personal knowledge, which acknowledges the necessity for ‘responsible commitment,’ Polanyi’s term for personal knowledge, in terms of subjectivism. This is especially so when ‘personal knowledge’ applied to religious knowing and is virtually equated with biblical ‘faith.’[40] Utilizing as he does Polanyi’s epistemology, Torrance would no doubt react to this criticism that Henry, and other critics, are perhaps looking to an impersonal procedure which operates along detached and mechanical lines and ultimately appeals to the concept of autonomous reason. This autonomous reason is then directed at an external authority, in this religious case the Holy Scriptures, and a system of propositional truth is worked out in a purely impersonal but logical way. It is this programme that Torrance is particularly concerned to eradicate.

This use of Polanyi further explains Torrance’s form of realism that we have already examined. It is this commitment to realism that constitutes one of Torrance’s main reasons for drawing on the work of Polanyi. In Polanyi Torrance finds a philosophical ally and one who has illustrated Torrance’s own point in the natural sciences as Torrance is seeking to do in Christian theology.

[1] Similar themes and treatments can be found throughout his Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), and Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985).

[2] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 48.

[3] For a good recent history of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo within the same general context as we are here investigating see A.E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology: Volume 1: Nature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 159-166.

[4] This theme was also forcefully made by E.L. Mascall, Christian Theology and Natural Science: Some Questions in Their Relations (London: Longmans, Green and co, 1956), 94, when he asked and answered the question of what kind of world the Christian God might be expected to have created, on the basis of what could be known of that God. His answer: a contingent and orderly one, the investigation of which would proceed by means of a posteriori examination. See T.F. Torrance’s approving remarks in Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 61. In more recent times W. Pannenberg has also dealt with the idea of contingency but uses it to establish the priority of the future. See his Systematic Theology, vol 2, trans. by G.W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 69-72. For critique of Pannenberg’s model of contingency see R.J. Russell, ‘Contingency in Physics and Cosmology: A Critique of the Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg,’ Zygon 23/1 (March 1988), 23-43 and C. Mostert, God and the Future: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Eschatological Doctrine of God (London: T & T Clark, 2002), 97-104, 167-169.

[5] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 55.

[6] See T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), 235-256.

[7] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 65. See a modern Thomistic support for this reading of the fathers in T.G. Weinandy, Does God Change? The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation (Petersham. MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1985); and Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000).

[8] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 65-66.

[9] For his indebtedness to Barth on this matter see T.F. Torrance, ‘Introduction to Karl Barth,’ in Theology and Church, Shorter Writings 1920-1928 (London: SCM, 1962), 7-54. It should be noted that Torrance first received insight into this key doctrine from his Edinburgh mentor Hugh Ross Mackintosh. See T.F. Torrance, ‘Hugh Ross Mackintosh: Theologian of the Cross,’ Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 5 (1987), 162-163.

[10] ‘Dogmatic thinking arises from the fact that God has acted in human history in a final and saving way, and that what he has given us in His revelation is Himself, His own divine being: His Being in His Act; His Act in His Being,’ T.F. Torrance, Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 343, and ibid., The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 67.

[11] On November 4, 1979 Torrance preached the sermon at the James Clerk Maxwell memorial service, held at Corsock Parish Church in Kirkcudbrightshire, marking the centenary of Maxwell’s death, and in 1982 Torrance would edit and write the Preface and Introduction to James Clerk Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982).

[12] T.F. Torrance, ‘John Philoponos of Alexandria, Sixth Century Christian Physicist,’ Texts and Studies, vol 2. (London: Thyateira House, 1983), 261-265. Torrance’s collected essays on John Philoponos are published as T.F. Torrance, Theological and Natural Science (Eugene, OR.: Wipf & Stock, 2002). Also see R.K. Sorabji, (ed.). Philoponos and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press, 1987), 1-40 and E.M. Macierowski and R.F. Hassing, ‘John Philoponus on Aristotle’s Definition of Nature: A Translation from the Greek with Introduction and Notes,’ Ancient Philosophy 8 (1988), 73-100.

[13] T.F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 216-220.

[14] This point is made clear in T.F. Torrance, ‘Theological Realism,’ in The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology: Essays Presented to D.M. MacKinnon, edited by B. Hebblethwaite and S. Sutherland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 193:

It is as our communion with God the Father through Christ and in the Spirit is founded in and shares in the inner Trinitarian consubstantial or homoousial communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that the subjectively-given pole of conceptuality is constantly purified and refined under the searching light and quickening power of the objectively-given pole in divine revelation. Within that polarity Christian theology becomes what it essentially is and ought always to be, logike latreia, rational worship of God.

[15] R.J. Palma, ‘Thomas F. Torrance’s Reformed Theology,’ Reformed Review 38/1 (Autumn 1984), 26-29.

[16] Polanyi’s use by numerous theologians has been well documented. See for instance A. Dulles, ‘Faith, Church and God: Insights From Michael Polanyi,’ Theological Studies 45 (1984), 537-550 (especially 537). One commentator sees Polanyi as a modern Martin Luther (!) R. Gelwick, ‘Michael Polanyi – Modern Reformer,’ Religion in Life 34 (Spring 1965), 224-234.

[17] C. Weightman’s thesis Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 1.

[18] C. Weightman’s thesis Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), has as its basic premise that Torrance has adopted Polanyi’s philosophy in toto and built his own theology upon it. This is not supported by the evidence and is a distortion or over emphasis of the facts. Torrance’s Auburn lectures from 1939 on science and theology illustrate this point well. Also see T.F. Torrance, ‘Michael Polanyi and the Christian Faith-A Personal Report,’ Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical 27/2 (2000-2001), 26-32.

[19] Originally a lecture delivered in the University of Tübingen, May 1963 and found in T.F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 46-61.

[20] A.E. McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 230.

[21] C. Weightman’s suggestion that Torrance first heard of Polanyi through Sir Bernard Lovell as early as 1946 is, while plausible, not probable and Torrance himself dismisses such an early link. See C. Weightman’s thesis Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 203, and A.E. McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 230-231.

[22] T.F. Torrance, ‘Michael Polanyi and the Christian Faith-A Personal Report,’ Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical 27/2 (2000-2001), 26-32. On Polanyi’s death in 1976 Torrance became his Literary Executor, and upon the death of Magda, Michael Polanyi’s wife, Torrance handed the role over to their son John Polanyi, a Nobel Laureate Professor of Chemistry in Toronto. In 1978 Torrance delivered a lecture on Polanyi’s thought at the opening of the ‘Michael Polanyi Seminar Room’ in the Philosophy Department of the University of Manchester. T.F. Torrance, ‘The Framework of Belief,’ in Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life, edited by T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 148.

[23] M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962²). Other works of Polanyi of importance for our study include his The Tacit Dimension (New York: Doubleday, 1966), and Meaning with Harry Prosch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

[24] This is the main work Torrance interacts with specifically in his article T.F. Torrance, ‘The Framework of Belief,’ in Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life, edited by T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 1-27.

[25] T.F. Torrance, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 61.

[26] T.F. Torrance (ed.), Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 15. This point is also made by W.R. Thorson, ‘Scientific Objectivity and the Listening Attitude,’ in Objective Knowledge: A Christian Perspective, edited by P. Helm (Leicester: IVP, 1987), 62.

[27] C. Weightman’s thesis Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 235, quoting T.F. Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 27.

[28] T.F. Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1976), 188-192.

[29] T.F. Torrance, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 36. In another work appearing in the same year, Divine and Contingent Order (1981. Reprint, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), 20, Torrance explains:

[there is] an ontological stratification in the universe comprising a sequence of rising levels, each higher one controlling the boundaries of the one below it and embodying thereby the joint meaning of the particulars on the lower level.

For further insights into this methodology, with special reference to the methodological insights of Duns Scotus and Kurt Gödel see T.F. Torrance, ‘Intuitive and Abstractive Knowledge: From Duns Scotus to Calvin,’ In De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti. Congressus Scotisticus Internationalis. Studia Scholastico-Scotistica 5, edited by C. Balic (Rome: Societas Internationalis Scotistica, 1968), 291-305; and T.F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 86-90.

[30] T.F. Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1976), 190.

[31] Polanyi was a Jew who’s religious life is ambiguous at best. He was influenced early on by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s visions of God and religion, later to become baptised into the Roman Catholic Church (1919). Through the 1940’s he regularly attended an Anglican church and through the 1950’s and 60’s had regular contact with a number of protestant theologians, amongst whom we could include Paul Tillich and later (early 70’s) T.F. Torrance. Finally Polanyi was influenced later in his life by the ‘cosmic theologian’ Mircea Eliade. See the account of Polanyi’s religious life in C. Weightman’s thesis Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 7-26.

[32] M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962²), 266.

[33] M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962²), 266.

[34] M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962²), 266-267.

[35] Leslie Newbigin in particular has developed many Polanyian themes in his works, especially The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (London: SPCK, 1989). See also the extensive use made of Polanyi in C. Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay Towards a Trinitarian Theology (Basingstoke: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1985).

[36] M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962²), 267.

[37] C.F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority. Vol 3 (Waco, TX.: Word, 1980), especially 214-224.

[38] For his definition of this term see T.F. Torrance (ed.), Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 141.

[39] C.F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority. Vol 3 (Waco, TX.: Word, 1980), 221.

[40] For the convergence between Polanyi’s ‘personal knowledge’ and biblical faith see W.R. Thorson, ‘The Biblical Insights of Michael Polanyi,’ Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 33/3 (1981), 129-138.