T. F. Torrance – Personal reflections from a former student.

One of my first memories of T.F. Torrance was his radiant face which greeted me in New College in the 1960s. I soon learned about his pastoral heart through one of my fellow students who had suffered a nervous breakdown. In my final year, I was a young married student. My wife had given birth to a new baby. Our first visitor was Tom Torrance! As the end of his life approached I visited him often in a nearby nursing home. He always had a copy of Daily Light by his bed and so I read it to him before praying and leaving. He appreciated the words of the Bible very much. Indeed I gather from members of his family that he sometimes read the Bible through four times per year.  

As a teacher he refused to accept the legalistic measures of achievements of his students, that so dominate academia these days, preferring to give weight to his own estimate of ability – an estimate that was deeply personal and cannot be put into human words.

What were my recollections of his teaching?

My first impression was of a man who made a profound analysis of the needs of our culture and he spoke prophetically to Church and society including the worlds of natural science and popular modern ideologies.

Some writers and teachers speak down to those they are addressing. In contrast Tom Torrance paid most of us the compliment of assuming we were more educated than we really were.

In those early days I didn’t understand much of what he was teaching but recognised that I did recognise that what he was saying was very important. Because of the inspiration which he gave, I taught myself quantum theory, relativity and Gödel’s Theorem which he often referred to. Suddenly everything fell into place and I saw its relevance for theology, This enabled me to gain a Templeton Award much later in my career. Tom Torrance gained the prestigious Templeton Prize later. I would not have obtained such an Award were it not for Tom Torrance’s inspiration.

For some the impression was given that his theology was a dry scholasticism cut off from a warm-hearted knowledge and love of God. However nothing could be farther from the truth. One of his great burdens was to show that there can be no knowledge of God, and therefore no true theology, unless we approach Him with a humble, earnest, worshipping heart open to the deeply personal revelation of Himself that He has made in the person of Jesus Christ. This indeed is the ‘scientific’ way to know God for it is the way appropriate to the Subject Matter of Theology – God Himself. Fundamental to this way of doing theology is the conviction that the way of knowing God is the same as the way of salvation. So a person with little education who believes that the Bible only came alive for him/her when he/she knew Christ would be one with this theme. However to really get to grips with the teaching of Tom Torrance the reader or listener needs to know what certain terms mean. Unfortunately it is only a relatively few people who have sufficient grasp of both: 1. The history of philosophy and also 2, Clerk Maxwell’s Field Theories, Einstein and relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, in order to find the teaching anything other than difficult.

His message challenged us to liberate our minds from preconceived logical structures which we might unconsciously impose upon the subject matter of our enquiry but which are inappropriate for the object of the enquiry and therefore are likely to distort the results of the quest. 
He believed that there is only one way of knowing, whatever the object of enquiry. By that he did not mean that there is only one method of enquiry – very far from it. But what he did mean was that all methods of knowing must be appropriate to the subject of enquiry so that (against Aristotle and Kant [say]) the enquirer must not approach the object of his/her study with a fixed logical system into which he/she seeks to fit the answers to his/her questions. Rather the subject matter itself will contain its own, at first, hidden logic or rationality, so that the scientist (be he/she a physicist or theologian) must seek to uncover a rationality that is inherent in the object of his/her quest. This is how all great advances of knowledge in the natural sciences take place. For example if we had simply studied the universe with a belief that space is the mere container of objects such as the stars and planets, we would never have resolved apparent contradictions that arise from our observation of the universe. We would never have grasped the nature of light. It took Einstein to discover a deeper logic in nature in which light, space, time, matter and energy are bound together in relationships – relationships which come from the very being of their existence. That is to say they are relationships which are not dependent on independent external and eternal laws. Gravity, for example, is not, as Newtonian physics assumed, an independent external law which relates one object to another but rather belongs to the internal structure of what matter, energy, space and time actually are in themselves. 
If I (this commentator) could be permitted to take a human example (mutatis mutandis of course), one might consider what binds two human beings together. It could be a rope, a contract or something else which is an external third thing holding them in relationship. Alternatively it could be friendship or a covenant of love which are not external third things but things that flow out of what the human beings are in themselves and help define their very being. Theologically speaking we are called to live by grace and faith, (which belong to the very nature of what the Person of God or person is), not law (which is a temporary third thing added by God because of our transgressions). That is part of the inner rationality of theology that we so easily miss if we impose our legalistic ways of thinking upon the data of theological enquiry.
Imposing our own way of thinking upon our studies is what Tom Torrance believed is the problem with much of what is called `Biblical Scholarship' which tries to understand the Bible solely from the various ways we think it came to have been written - the phenomenon of the Bible. But this, again, is to separate the data of our enquiry from the fundamental nature of God's self-revelation, trying to understand the data by fitting it into our self made mental constructs. He believed that this false dualism between reality and what we perceive - this phenomenalism - has bedevilled much of what is called Biblical Studies. 
Indeed one of Tom Torrance’s pet hates was dualism in some of its many forms which itself becomes a kind of false rationality imposed upon its subject matter and thus incorrectly separates two qualities of reality into quite separate categories. This does not mean he was a Monist who believed `All is One'. He could not possibly have been accused of such a belief because one of the foundations of his theology is that God created the universe distinct from Himself and out of nothing. Two of the other dualisms which he objects to are:   space and matter, (as if space were the mere container of the created order rather than an aspect of the creation which is redeemed in Christ.); cause and meaning (as if one could separate off the natural sciences from the moral sciences)

He also did not like the `mechanistic-vitalist' controversy about the nature of life. (Can life have a mere physical explanation or does it need something `magical' added to it?). He preferred rather to speak of the bipolar and non-picturable nature of much of reality (so amazingly exposed at the fundamental levels of natural existence in quantum physics). 

The dualism that he disliked most is that of a Detached God and mechanistic universe. Rather in the pages of the Bible he believed we meet a God who, though He created the universe out of nothing, is - through His Word and Spirit - personally and deeply related to it. This is seen especially and uniquely in the Incarnation and Atonement in which He makes Himself known to us by redeeming the world from evil. This act of revelation and redemption is made known, not apart from our physical world in some spiritual realm, but in our ‘flesh’.

The appropriate way to respond to Word is by listening and answering. As we listen we find that the Word challenges us deeply so that we cannot do theology in a detached way but must allow ourselves to be challenged and changed in our inmost being. Even in the natural sciences the scientist must be open enough to the object he/she seeks to know to allow its hidden logic engage with his/her mind so that he/she is able to grow in understanding. How much more must this be true in our knowledge of God. 
Our problem, though, is that we cannot answer and respond to that Word from God because as sinners we are alienated from it. It was important for Tom Torrance and a central theological conviction that Christ is not only God’s Word but also our human response to that Word. (So, important for Tom Torrance was the conviction that Christ is not only God’s Word to us but also our human response to that Word.) I have personally found his emphasis on the vicarious humanity of Christ most liberating. He often tried to discourage us from examining our own faith, repentance and worship, but rather look away from ourselves to Christ. He used the particular gesture of pointing in his chest to emphasise what we shouldn’t do. Yet it is here that Tom Torrance got into trouble with some evangelicals who imagined that he was saying that we don’t need to repent and believe because Christ has done it all for us in our place. Of course this is not what Tom Torrance was saying. This is another place in which he assumes some of us know more than we do. For the fact that Christ makes our response for us, taking our prayer to the heaven of heavens, is the major theme of the Epistle to the Hebrews. So when we fix our eyes upon Jesus the originator and completion of faith, we are set free from assurance destroying worries so evident in both 17th Century Calvinism and 17th Century Arminianism. For whether we believe there is an irresistible causal relationship between the Holy Spirit and our faith or whether we think we need to co-operate with the Spirit, it is still our faith that becomes the subject that we are driven to consider. That is bound to lead to great doubts as to whether our experience of faith, prayer and worship are sufficient to please God. When we are open to Christ we cease to examine neurotically our own personal experience of faith and prayer (wondering whether we have the signs of election or whether we have co-operated enough with God’s grace). Rather we find that we are indeed born from above, we do indeed believe in Him and turn from our sins.

Since this way of salvation is the same as the way of knowing God, it was Tom Torrance’s missionary endeavour to theologians to persuade us to us to think in Christ so that we do not cut off our theological or even the Biblical statements from Christ himself. He uses as an example the statement: ‘God is Love’. We see the meaning of that in Christ. However if we use it as an independent free standing statement from which we deduce other propositions apart from Christ then we will reach false conclusions. Language must not be cut off from that to which it refers. This was his quarrel with what he calls ‘rationalist fundamentalists’. They are those who think they can treat Biblical statements as independent from the ultimate Being to which they refer and apply preconceived rational structures to fit them into a dogmatic system. But this would be to commit the error that is referred to elsewhere in this article, namely to impose our own systems of logic on the subject matter of enquiry rather than letting it teach us its own inherent logic. Such systems of doctrine tend to be legalistic constructs of our own minds where we may seem to put grace (say) at the centre of the system but instead end up perhaps with a new legalistic system that does not really set people free in Christ.

Something else that always impressed me in Tom Torrance’s lectures and books was his emphasis on Israel. It is this subject, in my view, that is missed out in so many studies of Tom Torrance’s theology. God really did engage with humanity personally in Israel’s long and painful history, Fulfilment of this relationship between God and man was the incarnation and the death of Christ. Therefore Tom Torrance’s teaching about such subjects as Incarnation and Ecclesiology should take into account what he says about Israel. He often said that the deepest division in the Church’s life was the division between the Christian part and Israel. About his book ‘The Mediation of Christ’ he says:

I have also developed further the way in which the mission of Israel and mission of Christ are deeply interlocked in faithful understanding of revelation and reconciliation, particularly in the way in which the Jews and Christians need one another in seeking to understand more of the way in which God has given us access to know him from himself and in himself.”

Much of the Church has operated with an absolute theory of time and therefore ‘fulfilled’ had in its meaning ‘put an end to’. This is a mistake. He believed the Bible that Christ fulfils Israel’s destiny from Abraham to the end of time.

The content of Creation and redemption has always been God, people and nature Just as there is a chosen people - in peculiar intensity – (Tom Torrance’s often repeated phrase) to represent all peoples, so there is a Promised Land to represent all lands. Therefore a rejection of Israel is a rejection of God’s way of saving the world in Christ.

Some may respond that by saying that Israel rejected Christ and so they must have been cut off from God’s purposes. He would respond to that by pointing out that so has most of humanity rejected Christ but God still has His purpose for us all in Christ.

His emphasis on Israel could be an embarrassment nowadays. However Tom Torrance was not embarrassed. He always believed that the criticism of Israel’s existence was unfair. Indeed he quoted Joan Peter’s book ‘From Time Immemorial’ in Israel’s defence. Perhaps his political and theological defence of Israel could be summed up in the following way:

Political

If we sincerely believe that, in 1947/48 the Jews turned up from Europe and, with overwhelming odds, expelled much of the long standing local population and then expanded this conquest in 1967 it will be very difficult to believe that the hand of God was in such clearly unjust events. [1]

Further if we sincerely believe that, if only Israel would withdraw to the pre-1967 boundaries, the huge Islamic world would give up its former aim of destroying Israel then we will certainly put the blame for the continuing tragic events with Israel. If however we believe that an Israeli withdrawal would greatly increase its vulnerability to suicide bombs and invading armies then we will understand why a withdrawal just now would be near to suicidal. (Israel would be a mere nine miles wide at its middle-populated area). If we believe that over half the Israeli population were from the Middle East and not from Europe and were fleeing Arab persecution then we will be more sympathetic to these new Jewish immigrants. This sympathy will be strengthened if we believe that the Arab nations started the 1967 war with the declared purpose of killing the Jews in Israel. It will be strengthened even further if we remember that in 1968 Israel offered to give everything back in exchange for peaceful co-existence, and that the reply to this offer was ‘No peace, no recognition and no negotiations with Israel’.[2]

Theological Issues.

1.     If we believe that God’s relationship with his creation is purely spiritual (i.e. He does not interact with the physical space-time of this world) then we will find it difficult to believe that He is active in history so as to give the Jews a unique history among the nations – a history which now has resulted in their re-gathering. If we do hold this view (a form of Deism) we must still come to terms with, what is widely observed (even by the non-religious), namely that Jewish history in remarkable in its uniqueness.

If on the other hand we believe that God can and does act in the space-time of this world then will not have this theological problem with the uniqueness of Jewish history and perhaps its restoration to the land.

2.     If we believe that the Old Testament is concerned with a particular people and land and not with all the world, and that the New Testament gives this a universal application, then we will find it difficult to see how God could have any continuing special purpose for Israel and its land. If however we believe that both Old and New Testaments hold particular and universal together (this is the argument of St. Paul in Romans 2-3 and 9-11) then we will find it easier to see the continuing significance of land.

3.    If we believe that the salvation of Christ is only for the spiritual part of human beings then we will find it difficult to believe that land is significant. If we believe, however, that the redemption of Christ embraces all creation then we will be able to see that land is significant. Since Paul (Rom 9-11) re-affirms God’s ancient covenant with Jewish Israel and that at the heart of this ancient covenant is ‘land’ we will see why Paul does not need explicitly to refer to their restoration to the land – especially as, at the time when St. Paul was writing, they were not even in exile from the land.

4.     If we believes that Christ fulfils Israel’s unique destiny and that ‘fulfils’ includes in its meaning a ‘putting an end to’ then we will find it difficult to see the continuing relevance of Israel in the story of redemption. If, however, we believe that Christ fulfils Israel’s destiny from Abraham to the end of time then we will see Israel’s continuing history as ‘in Christ’ – even if Israel itself does not recognise it.

5.     If we believe that the Temple and OT sacrifices (a temporary sign of the covenant) is equivalent to the ‘land’ then we will believe (on the basis of the letter to the Hebrews[3]) that ‘land’ has lost its significance. If however we distinguishes between ‘sign’ (e.g. temple and its sacrifices) and ‘content’ (God, people, land – which were the content of Creation) then we will see the continuing significance of land as part of Creation needing to be redeemed.

It is with ideas such as these that the writings of fairly conservative Reformed writers can be examined especially the writings of T.F. Torrance as they relate to the continuing recent history of the Jewish people and what they regard as their land.

I began this article by recounting Tom Torrance’s influence on me in my early adulthood. I finish by saying that it was he, together with his oldest son Thomas, who phoned me and suggested to me that I apply for the vacancy at Heriot-Watt University. I would not have given the vacancy a second thought had it not been for that phone call. It was for me one of the most beneficial calls I have ever had.

Howard Taylor. September 2008.