Category Archives: Vicarious Humanity

The unBondage of the Will: Liberum Arbitrium

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Latin theological word for the day: LIBERUM ARBITRIUM=‘Freewill.’

Biblically, only God genuinely has liberum arbitrium. But He is a gifting God. Never in abstraction from Himself, but only concretely within Himself, and thus for us in Jesus Christ. As such humanity comes to have liberum arbitrium only because God has freely elected that we come to actually have it, to be for Him rather than against Him, in and through participation with the only humanity that is truly for God; Christ’s vicarious humanity for us. So, the path for human agency, human freedom for God, is only blazed first, by Christ’s humanity for us; indeed, as He is the firstborn from the dead. It is by the Holy Spirit that human beings are awakened to the fact that this is already the objective and subjective reality for them, as Christ has already accomplished that for them, whereby by a node of corresponding faith with Christ’s for us, that the human being can say Yes and Amen for God, just as Christ is God’s Yes and Amen for us, in both the No (to sin) and Yes (for God) that Christ freely chose to be for ALL of humanity, as His humanity is ALL of humanity as humanity’s free turn to God and away from the incurved hearts they have lived in bondage to since conception.

Divine and Human Agency Betwixt a Doctrine of Sanctification

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Human agency, a Theanthropology will be a central piece of development in treating a doctrine of Sanctification in the theologies of Barth and TFT, respectively. Without genuine human agency, human freedom before God, even as that is somehow unilaterally grounded by God’s Self-freedom, it isn’t really meaningful to think of a Christian doctrine of sanctification. That is, because agency without real human freedom only reduces the human to metaphysical abstractions acting out an automated history already done for them absolutely by God. But in reality, if thought well, both accounts of agency, Divine and human, must and can be thought together—hypostatically so.

Spitballing on God’s Sovereignty and Contingent Freedom

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How does God’s sovereignty work, in a God-world relation? First, to speak of God’s sovereignty can never be done so in abstraction from God’s cruciform life for the world in Jesus Christ. It is from within this unio mystica (‘mystical union’) of God and humanity, in the particularity of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, wherein God’s actions, where His power, His sovereignty and everything else must be thought. When we ponder the end for which God humiliated Himself in the Son for the world, we recognize that this ponderance goes back even before the foundations of the world; indeed, the Lamb being slain even before the foundations of the world. So, it is as we think back from the analogy of the incarnation of God, that we might arrive upon an answer to how God’s cruciformed, Son-faced sovereignty comes to penetrate and engage this world; particularly within its fallen status. We know that God’s sovereignty is first and foremost grounded in His Divine Freedom, within His inner life of triune life, wherein He has the Self-capacity to choose what His act will be for the world which He has created; indeed, created from the seed of the women, in the man from Nazareth. As we attempt to reason from within this inner theological reality of God’s life, indeed, as we have arrived upon this primordial point of liminal access, through first encountering this God in the economy of His life for the world in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ, we come to realize that all things, as Self-determined from within the fellowshipping life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are free and open for God to act as He will. Not from an abstraction, but from the concretion of His eternally triune life. It is here that God’s a-se life Has the freedom to determine an elected contingency, first for Himself, as the Son, God’s image, freely elects to be human, which entails within that space of chosen contingency, within His to-be assumed humanity, wherein human freedom comes to find its starting point. Not as a non-contingent freedom, as the ground of His freedom is sourced by, as the eternal Logos, but as a corresponding contingent freedom with His freedom; one that is finally given agency within even His own assumed humanity for us by the Holy Spirit. So, again, things come back to this Theanthropic mystery wherein God and humanity kiss, unite, in the hypostatic union of God and humanity in the singular person of Jesus Christ.

So, God’s sovereignty works, in such a way, that humanity, and then the rest of the created order (cf. Rom 8.18ff), invades the contingent world order, which He first created, and then re-created in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, in and through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. It is as His non-contingent Logos life interfaces with the human contingent life that the miracle of God’s sovereignty comes to shape the world; both the world now, and not yet. It is within this mediating space as that inheres within the conversating person of the humanity of God in Christ, and Godself. The fact that non-contingency and contingency can communicate, and interface one with the other, whilst the non-contingency of God’s triune life circumscribes the whole event of the contingent, is indeed, the fact of God’s sovereignty in action for the world. Contingency finds its freedom to act only as an asymmetrical correspondence with God’s act within His own humanity for the world. So, ultimately, God’s freedom, as the ground of human freedom, as that is mediated for the world in the archetypal humanity of Jesus Christ, yeasts in such a way that God’s purposes, within the cruciform of His life, are made manifest as humanity in union with Him, through His union with humanity in Christ can be accomplished without violating, indeed quite to the contrary, the contingent events of created and recreated history. His will is done first and foremost because He is the One who is free within Himself. And it is within this freedom in His eternal life of love wherein He has come to sovereignly Self-determine to not be God without us, but with us for all eternity; indeed, in the face of Jesus Christ. It is within the economy of this determinate choice to be for, with and in us, wherein the contingent order comes to serve His purposes, whilst the contingent humanity finds their respective freedom with His.

But then of course there is always the “unelected” and inscrutable reality of sin and evil in the world. This complicates things. Not as far as thwarting God’s sovereignty (as we have already defined that), but by introducing a perversion into the mix of human freedom that attempts to gain a life of its own, whilst parasiting on the real freedom God has determined for humanity in His Free Grace choice to be not-God without us; that is, not without humanity and the created order He has made humanity, His humanity in us, and ours in His, stewards over. And yet, even in the facet of sin and evil God’s cruciform humanity perdures, it yeasts in such a way that it finally gives birth to a babe, wrapped in swaddling cloths, born in a manager in Bethlehem. It is here where, when finally eventuated in the ascension, that humanity comes to have the capacity to make genuinely free choices that are in keeping with God’s sovereignly Self-determined plan and purpose for the world; indeed, as that purpose and plan has always already found its fund and orientation by its reality and elevation in the supra planned incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. And yet, there remains a battle between the old first Adam world, and the now greater and new second Adam world. Even so, God’s plan has been pervasive throughout both epochs of the first and second Adams. That is, because God first elected all of the sundry events of created history to unfold in the reality of the Deus incarnandus (God to be incarnate). This has always already been the inner reality, the beating im-pulse of the created order; i.e., God’s choice to become Creator, even as He was first Father of the Son by the Holy Spirit.

Really, all I’m saying is that the relationship between God’s sovereignty and humanity in the created order, turns out to be rather miraculous. And there remains many holes in what I have been torturously attempting to articulate. But you gotta start somewhere. And I had the urge to just sit down and spitball.

Against the Augustinian-Lombardian Penitential Theology: From the Singular Person of Christ

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TF Torrance often refers to what he calls ‘The Latin Heresy,’ when discussing Western theology; especially with reference to its fountainhead, Augustine. The Latin Heresy for TFT entails the neo-Platonist dualism that funds Augustine’s theology, and all other theologies that follow Augustine’s categories. For TFT, this dualism involves a competitive relationship between God and humanity; such that, humanity is thought in abstraction relative to God’s life, rather than finding its concrete ground therein. This shows up most clearly in Augustine’s doctrine of election. JND Kelly masterfully describes this,

The problem of predestination has so far only been hinted at. Since grace takes the initiative and apart from it all men form a massa damnata, it is for God to determine which shall receive grace and which shall not. This He has done, Augustine believes on the basis of Scripture, from all eternity. The number of the elect is strictly limited, being neither more nor less than is required to replace the fallen angels. Hence he has to twist the text ‘God wills all men to be saved’ (1 Tim. 2, 4), making it mean that He wills the salvation of all the elect, among whom men of every race and type are represented. God’s choice of those to whom grace is to be given in no way depends on His foreknowledge of their future merits, for whatever good deeds they will do will themselves be the fruit of grace. In so far as His foreknowledge is involved, what He foreknows is what He Himself is going to do. Then how does God decide to justify this man rather than that? There can in the end be no answer to this agonizing question. God has mercy on those whom He wishes to save, and justifies them; He hardens those upon whom He does not wish to have mercy, not offering them grace in conditions in which they are likely to accept it. If this looks like favouritism, we should remember that all are in any case justly condemned, and that if God makes His decision in the light of ‘a secret and, to human calculation, inscrutable justice’. Augustine is therefore prepared to speak of certain people as being predestined to eternal death and damnation; they may include, apparently, decent Christians who have been called and baptized, but to whom the grace of perseverance has not been given. More often, however, he speaks of the predestination of the saints which consists in ‘God’s foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits by which those who are to be delivered are most assuredly delivered’. These alone have the grace of perseverance, and even before they are born they are sons of God and cannot perish.[1]

As Kelly describes Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, election-reprobation, what stands out is the way God stands over humanity, as if humanity has no correspondence to God by God’s grace. As if humanity must find a way to God, even as God finds His way to humanity. And for Augustine God only finds His way to humanity through an ad hoc arbitrary election of certain individuals, who he snares out of the ‘massa damnata’ (the ‘mass of damnation’ of humanity). But it is this that represents the inorganic notion of a God-human/God-world relation for Augustine; i.e., that humanity has no ground in God’s life organically, creatively; that it is only by God’s voluntary act that He brings ‘some’ into a contractive relationship with Him—as some would call it later, the absolutum decretum (the absolute decree of election/reprobation/predestination).

So, all of the aforementioned to bring up another application of this type of Augustinianism as it relates to soteriology. In Book 4 of Peter Lombard’s infamous Sentences, he writes the following:

Chapter 2 (110)

  1. CONCERNING THOSE WHO DO NOT COMPLETE THEIR PENANCE. But if it is asked whether those who do not complete their penance in this life will pass through the fire to complete there, as it were, what they have left unfinished here, we say that the same is to be supposed concerning these as of those who repent at the end.—For if their contrition of heart and their disapproval of crime were so great as to suffice for the punishment of sin, they will pass into [eternal] life free from other punishments, even if their penance was not completed, because they perfectly repented and groaned in their heart.—But as for those who are not so contrite in heart, or who do not so groan for sin, if they died before the completion of penance, they feel the purging fire, and are punished more gravely than if they had completed their penance here, for it is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
  2. For since God is merciful and just, he forgives the penitent from mercy, not reserving the sin for eternal punishment; but from justice, he does not leave a crime unpunished. Either man punishes it, or God. Man punishes it by repenting. And penance is inward and outward. And so, if the inner sorrow is such as to suffice as retribution for sin, God, who knows this, does not exact any further punishment from someone who repents in such fashion. But if the inward sorrow does not suffice as retribution for sin, and the external penance is not fulfilled, God, who knows the ways and measures of sins and punishments, adds a sufficient punishment.
  3. “Let each one, then, see to it that he so corrects his crimes, that it will not be necessary to sustain a punishment after death. For some mortal sins become venial in penance, but are not immediately healed. Often a sick person would die, if he were not given medication; but he is not healed as soon as he receives medication: he who is going to live languishes, who before was about to die. But one who dies impenitent, dies wholly, and is tormented eternally. For if he were to live forever, he would sin forever.”[2]

The above longform to simply point out one simple, but profound reality: if humanity is not thought from God’s grace for us in His hypostasized life for us in the person of Jesus Christ; if humanity is not from God’s unilateral givenness for us in His election to be for all of humanity, indeed as He assumes all of humanity into His vicarious humanity pro nobis (for us) in Jesus Christ; then, humanity will always be left destitute, even ‘elect’ humanity, not to mention the mass of humanity who God does not elect, to pursue God and fill up the gap between God and humanity through the various means of grace God has given them. The dualism, if not obvious, is present in the penitential theology of Augustine, and the Latins, both on the Catholic and Protestant sides, insofar that the human being must constantly strive, and constantly reach out and hope that ‘they’ have done enough to be found worthy before God; even in the supplicant of His freely given grace. Grace in this frame becomes detached from God’s personal and triune life in Christ for the world, and instead it becomes a created grace, a quality, that the elect (they hope they are) must rightly habituate in and handle in the right ways if they ever hope of being in the Beatific Vision, and maybe, just maybe getting to avoid the ‘purging fires’ (Purgatory) along the way.

It ought to be clear though, in a soteriological frame, how Augustine’s “individualistic” understanding, as detailed by Kelly, and illustrated by Lombard in an Augustinian penitential theology, throws the would-be elect individual upon themselves, rather than upon Christ, in their pursuit of salvation and eternal life, coram Deo. God forbid this! God has singularly brought Godself and humanity together in His pre-destination, within His own life, in His elected elect humanity in the eternal Logos, the Son of God, as He hypostatically united His divine life with our human life, in His assumptio carnis (‘assumption of the flesh’), and made His human life our life, as we rose from the dead with His humanity, which is total humanity, by which all of humanity has been objectively saved (note: this does not entail a universalism, per se).

[1] J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Revised Edition (New York: Harper Collins, 1978), 368-69.

[2] Peter Lombard, The Sentences: Book 4, On the Doctrine of the Signs, translated by Giulio Silano (Toronto-Ontario Canada: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), 122–3.

Miscellanies On Barth Reception and the Homoousious as Hermeneutic

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I wrote these for other social media outlets of mine. I thought I’d share them here as miscellanies. 

People reject Barth out of hand simply because they’ve been told that Barth is ultimately a liberal (still). But these same people have never actually read Barth enough to know whether that be true or not. Coming from someone, an evangelical conservative Christian (me), who has both read Barth and Barth literature extensively, and published on Barth, these people are simply living in a willful land of ignorance. Granted, Barth’s 𝑜𝑒𝑢𝑣𝑟𝑒 is extensive. But there are ways into Barth that can introduce you to him without having to read all of him, or even a substantive amount of him. But most will never give him a fair hearing.

One reason Barth is pertinent to theology today is because he elides so much of the pop debates surrounding Reformed and non-Reformed theology; among many other important offerings. He truly offers an 𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑐ℎ 𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 way forward that is actually true and correspondent with the best of what even a North American evangelical theology has striven for.

There is a hermeneutical logic inherent to the ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑠 articulated and thought out at the Council of Nicaea (and post). It offers a ‘depth dimensional’ understanding of Holy Scripture that functions well within what can be called the 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠. That is, it understands that the Bible has an ontology (a givenness by God), and thus an antecedent context wherein it comes to make meaningful sense in the 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑛 (face) of God in Christ. It realizes that Scripture is simply a 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑢𝑚 (sign) to its 𝑟𝑒𝑠 (reality) in Christ in the triune life. The fact that so many would-be exegetes of Scripture gloss right past this in favor of a higher critical approach, ought to be a warning of what being a theologian of glory looks like rather than a theologian of the cross (seeing the unseen things as seen).

The Elect of God: Jesus, the Torah-Keeper

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Interesting, as Jesus becomes human for us, and fully obeys and keeps the Torah (Law) for us, at the same time, because He is for us, He dies as if He hadn’t kept the Law for us, cursed, hung on a tree. And yet because He remained perfectly complete to the Law for us, all the way to suffering the consequences of no-Law-keeping, He is understood as simultaneously both the reprobate and elect of God for us in His consubstantial nature as fully God and fully Man for the world. There is a double election—an election for our reprobation and His elect status for us as the Holy One (for the many) of Israel, wherein through His participation with us, and thus ours with Him, we might experience both His death which is indeed for us (which should have been our death alone), and His resurrected, elevated and ascended life for us, as He has taken us in His Torah obedience—all the way down and up—to the Right Hand of the Throne of the Father. Through His vicarious humanity He has graciously given us not just the letter of the Torah, but the spirit of the Torah, which has always already pointed beyond itself to its reality in Jesus Christ.

God’s Humanity Against Annihilation

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The ground and continuity of human being is first God’s election to be human being for us in Jesus Christ. It is upon this solid rock that the wick of humanity can never be extinguished. There are some out there who affirm what they call ‘conditional immortality,’ or what of old was called ‘annihilationism,’ which affirms the idea that the human being can be thrown into the ‘outer darkness’ of non-existence. That is to say, this position holds that people who reject Christ will indeed suffer ‘eternal judgment’ by being snuffed out of existence. They contend that human being only has the possibility for immortality, as this is contingent upon the person’s response to God’s gift of salvation for them in Jesus Christ. The annihilationist contends that as humans are born in their sins, that in this state they are simply born into a status of vanishment. That is to say, that their beings as human do not have an inherent vouchsafe that keeps them “existing” from conception into eternity. And yet, as already noted: since the anchor of what it means to be human is universally and archetypally grounded in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, it is my contention that it is impossible for human being, whether on the left or right side, to be vanquished into non-existence at any point.

Karl Barth writes:

On this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, it is decided, and continually decided, that the creature may have permanence and continuity. Without this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, without the continuity in which God abides by His election, by His free but overflowing goodness, and finally, without the election of His grace which is the basis of His goodness, the creature could not and would not continue. But the living and trustworthy basis in God continues, and therefore the creature continues. Because of God it cannot not continue; it cannot perish.[1]

You see God’s humanity stands against non-human being. He has so freely tied Himself to us by His free election to be God with us in Jesus Christ, that it would require that that choice be undone in order for humanity to perish into a final non-existence.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [071] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 31.

On the Mundanity of Learning vis-à-vis the Humanity of Christ

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Genuine learning is much more tedious and mundane than many would like to think. In the tedium of the process exciting horizons and ideas confront the learner in the types of ways that only time and commitment can bring to fruit. Genuine learning leads to further learning, and is a never-ending process. There are peak moments along the way, but those moments are never (or should never be) an end in themselves.

As a Christian, learning is in fact what eternal life is all about. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (Jn 17:3). Christian learning is an embodied knowledge compelled by a heart set aflame by the love of Christ. Its inner reality is being in relationship with the triune God; participant in the interpenetrating and eternal interchange between the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, by the Holy Spirit’s bondage of love. This is the Christian’s school of faith wherein there are peace and joy forevermore in the knowledge and presence of the triune God. So, genuine learning, for the Christian in particular, while in these bodies of death (see Rm 7), entails what might seem tedious and mundane; but no more so, than the veiled Godness of the living God in the everyday humanity of Jesus Christ for us.

The Spoken Word of God Theology for Us: On a Dialogical Theology

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Dialogical theology. It is one of our theses we put forward in our first Evangelical Calvinism book. What is it; what are its entailments; and why am I such a strong proponent of it? In nuce, dialogical theology is exactly what it sounds like: it is a theological “method” that allows the object of theology, who is also Subject for us, to confront us, to speak to us first that we might speak to Him; that we might come to know Him as He knows Himself from a center in Himself for us in Jesus Christ. So, this approach, this theological prolegomenon, starts as God starts with us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. This prolegomenon ingresses as God invades our humanity in and through His assumption of humanity in the humanity of Jesus Christ. It is in this [hypostatic] union that humanity comes to have the capacity to hear God’s Word, as God’s Word becomes us in the grace of Jesus Christ. It is here where a theological coinherence of knowledge can obtain, insofar as God has pre-destined Himself for this coinherence in His free election to become humanity in Jesus Christ; and all of this, in order that humans might come into the parousia (presence) of God, as God presences Himself with us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit’s free unction of adoptive grace. Underneath this total covenantal relationship between God and humanity in Jesus Christ there are the everlasting arms of God’s triune life of love for us. It is a purely relational, even marital and filial relationship wherein a genuinely Christian theology comes to have wings to breathe and fly freely over and within the hinterland of God’s city; where God’s Word serves as the foundation of everything.

As Evangelical Calvinists (or now, Athanasian Reformed), we have taken our cue from TF Torrance (along with Karl Barth) on thinking a dialogical theology. It will serve us well then to read along with Torrance as he develops his own thinking on a dialogical theology; indeed, as he does so as he engages with Barth’s ‘double objectivity’ of God (see CD II/1), in both God’s archetypal and ectypal reality for us (ab intra, ad extra).

We may note three important implications from this double objectivity.

(i) The object of theological knowledge is creaturely objectivity bound to divine objectivity, not just creaturely objectivity in general but that specific creaturely objectivity which the divine objectivity has assumed, adapted and bound to Himself, Jesus. Thus theological activity is concerned with that special creaturely objectivity in its relation to divine objectivity, and therefore with that creaturely objectivity as it is given ultimate objectivity over against all other objectivity within the created universe. We shall see how this distinguishes theological science from other sciences.

(ii) In the nature of the case we cannot break through to ultimate objectivity, to the sheer reality of God, simply by an examination of this creaturely objectivity, for of itself it can only yield knowledge of the empirical world of nature.

(iii) Nevertheless we are bound unconditionally to the creaturely objectivity of God in the Incarnation of His Word in Jesus Christ. What scandalizes rationalist man is that in his search for ultimate objectivity he is bound unconditionally to contingent and creaturely objectivity, in fact to the weakness of the historical Jesus. To try to get behind this creaturely objectivity, to go behind the back of the historical Jesus in whom God has forever given Himself as the Object of our knowledge, and so to seek to deal directly with ultimate and bare divine objectivity, is not only scientifically false, but the hybris of man who seeks to establish himself by getting a footing in ultimate reality. Scientific theology can only take the humble road in unconditional obedience to the Object as He has given Himself to be known within our creaturely and earthly and historical existence, in the Lord Jesus Christ.

(d) A fourth scientific requirement for theology arises from the centrality of Jesus Christ as the self-objectification of God for us in our humanity, that is, from the supremacy of Christology in our knowledge of God. All scientific knowledge has a systematic interest, for it must attempt to order the material content of knowledge as far as possible into a coherent whole. It would be unscientific, however, to systematize knowledge in any field according to an alien principle, for the nature of the truth involved must be allowed to prescribe how knowledge of it shall be ordered. In other words, the systematic interest must be the servant of objective knowledge and never allowed to become its master. The order is in the Object before it is in our minds, and therefore it is as we allow the Object to impose itself upon our minds that our knowledge of it gains coherence. In theological knowledge the Object is God in Christ whom we know as we allow Him to impose Himself upon our minds or as we allow His Word to shape our knowing in conformity to Him. Scientific theology is therefore the systematic presentation of its knowledge through consistent faithfulness to the divine, creaturely objectivity of God in Christ.

It is the centrality of Christ that is all-determinative here, for He is the norm and criterion of our knowing and it is out of correspondence to Him that theological coherence grows. Scientific theology is systematic, therefore, only through relation to Christ, but its relation to Christ cannot be abstracted and turned into an independent systematic principle by means of which we can force the whole of theology into one definite and fixed pattern. Some use of formal Christology is necessary in systematic theology for the way that the Word of God has taken in the Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is the way in which God has revealed Himself to us and the way in which He continues to do so, but we cannot abstract it from dialogical encounter with God in Christ for it is only through sharing in the knowledge of the Son by the Father and the knowledge of the Father by the Son, that we can know God as He has given Himself to us in Jesus Christ.

Thus the organic unity of theology goes back to Christ to the unity of the Godhead, but in the nature of the case theology cannot, and must not try to seek knowledge of God apart from His whole objectivity, divine and human, in Jesus Christ. Therefore the modes and forms our theological knowledge must exhibit an inner structural coherence reflecting the nature of Christ. Moreover, it is because mystery belongs to the nature of Christ as God and Man in one Person that it would be unfaithful of us not to respect that mystery in our knowing of Him and therefore in our systematic presentation of our knowledge. It is upon this fact that every attempt to reduce knowledge of God to a logical system of ideas must always suffer shipwreck.[1]

The astute reader, among other things, will see how the above from TFT implicates a so-called natural theology, or a speculative theology. The aforementioned becomes an impossibility in the type of ‘dialogical’ ‘kataphysical’ ‘epistemological inversion[al]’ theology TFT is proposing. That is to say, for TFT (and me following), to do a genuinely Christian theology first presupposes that Godself in the objectivity of His own eternal and internal life as triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, freely chooses to make His objective Self known to His ‘very good’ creation; indeed, as that very good creation, that is “us,” was created to be a counterpoint of koinonia-fellowship that God might share His superabundant life with forever and into His eternal life of pleroma and bliss. The ground of this type of theological endeavor, for TFT, isn’t reducible to a ‘systematic’ frame wherein the would-be knower of God comes with an a priori and immanent frame of reflection to think ‘godness’ from. Instead, as TFT has made clear, it is a matter of God, the God who freely chose to become Creator because of who He eternally is in triune relationship, to impose Himself upon is, with the patterns and emphases of life and love that have always already formed His life as the Monarxia (‘Godhead’).

If you understand what Torrance is getting at in the “short” snippet above, then you will understand what has animated my own theological work for these last couple of decades. It really isn’t a matter of pointing to “my work,” or even “Torrances” though, it is a matter of pointing beyond ourselves to the risen and ascended Christ who intends on coming once again bodily; even as He comes to us moment-by-moment now by the Holy Spirit.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 137–39.