This is a 1997 edition of a book published first in 1968 and then in 1970. 

Its purpose is to encourage us to seek to know God in ways that are appropriate to who He is. God reveals who He is in the way He makes himself known, especially, in the way of salvation. 

Some writers and teachers speak down to those they are addressing. In contrast Tom Torrance pays most of us the compliment of assuming we are more educated than we really are.
Yet we should persevere with his writings for they are truly profound, speaking prophetically to Church, theology, and society including the worlds of natural science and modern culture. 
The book’s title together with the titles of its chapters could give the impression that his theology is a dry scholasticism cut off from a warm-hearted knowledge and love of God. However nothing could be farther from the truth. One of the great burdens of the book is 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 although many readers may be put off by what they might consider very technical terms from science and philosophy, the fundamental message of the book could be enthusiastically accepted by a less educated person who has recently opened his/her heart and discovered salvation in Christ in the pages of the Bible.
However to really get to grips with the text the reader 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 book anything other than a difficult read. Not that one should excuse laziness. These are important subjects indeed for anyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. They, together with the message of this book, would help the honest searcher of truth - in any field of knowledge. For the message of this book challenges 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. 
There are many far from difficult books by such authors as John Polkinghorne (Christian minister and quantum physicist) and Paul Davies (non Christian theoretical physicist) who have a great gift for explaining the second group of awe inspiring and mind blowing subjects to the moderately intelligent enquirer. Little or no background in academic science is needed to understand them. Good introductions to philosophy are also not difficult to find. However a good addition to many of Tom Torrance’s writings, when they are re-published, would be an extensive glossary. A glossary for God and Rationality should list the following names and terms: Mechanistic and Instrumentalist view of science, Quantum mechanics, Indeterminacy principle, Newtonian physics, Kantian metaphysics, Einstein and relativity, James Clerk Maxwell, Field theory, Michael Polanyi, Godel’s Theorem, Aristotelianism, Receptacle or Container view of space, Relational view of space, Dualism, Static-ontic structures, Dynamic-noetic structures and many many more. 
It is true that he does give some explanation to these names and terms but not enough for many for whom these are completely new.
In his preface Tom Torrance tells us that the book is meant to be a sequel to his ‘Theological Science’ (for which he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize) and ‘Space Time and Incarnation’. 
The main chapters are divided into three main headings: 
1. Theology Old and New 
2. Theology and Science 
3. Word and Spirit.
Under these headings we meet the following chapters:The Eclipse of God, Ecuminism and Science, The Word of God and the Response of Man, The Epistemological Relevance of the Spirit and others too. Most of these individual chapters are papers that Tom Torrance gave about 30 years ago and one at least refers to writers such as John Robinson and Paul Tillich that many of us have now forgotten. However this should not put us off, for the theological points have a continuing relevance to current debate and the pursuit of knowledge in all ages. Some of the ‘prophecies’ he made in these papers about the coming break up of Western society and civilisation are indeed coming true before our eyes.
The reader will find considerable overlap and some repetition but that is not a bad thing for Tom Torrance’s style is so concentrated and meaty that repetition helps drive the points home.
He tells us that there is only one way of knowing, whatever the object of enquiry. By that he does not mean that there is only one method of enquiry – very far from it. But what he does mean is 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 study with a fixed logical system into which he/she seeks to fit the answers to his 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 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 this reviewer 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 a Person/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 believes 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 believes that this false dualism between reality and what we perceive - this phenomenalim - has bedevilled much of what is called Biblical Studies. 
Indeed one of Tom Torrance’s pet hates is 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 is a Monist who believes `All is One'. He could not possibly be 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 does 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 prefers 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 dislikes most is that of a Detached God and mechanistic universe. Rather in the pages of the Bible he believes 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 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. So, important for Tom Torrance, is the conviction that Christ is not only God’s Word to us but also our human response to that Word. It is here that Tom Torrance has got into trouble with some evangelicals who imagine he is 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 is saying. This is another place in which he assumes some of us know more than we do. Some of us need things from the Bible spelled out more explicitly in Tom Torrance’s writings. (Perhaps footnotes would be a good way to do this). 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, 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 is Tom Torrance’s missionary endeavour to theologians to get 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 is 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 review, 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.
For these reasons I thoroughly recommend this book.
It has a full and helpful index of subjects and a good index of names.

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