Thomas F. Torrance (1913-2007)

[bookslover]

Today (August 30) would have been Torrance's 100th birthday. For an acknowledgement of Torrance and his theological acumen, see the top post, "A Centenary Post," at my "Reiterations" blog listed below.

If you are interested in the doctrine of the Trinity, you should read, if you haven't already, Torrance's masterpiece, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), published when Torrance was 83. It's magnificent, in my opinion.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't Torrance probably the most famous disciple of Barth?

 

[Philip]

Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't Torrance probably the most famous disciple of Barth?

Another great trinitarian theologian. Our disagreements with Barth and his disciples shouldn't keep us from appreciating their accomplishments, particularly in trinitarian theology.

 

[CharlieJ]

Torrance also had a keen eye for the philosophy of science. His work was seminal for Alister McGrath's A Scientific Theology, one of the most ambitious contemporary attempts to establish fruitful relations between theology and science.

 

[DMcFadden]

I sat under one of Torrance's illustrious PhD graduates for three years in college and in also seminary. The experience unfortunately ruined me for appreciating either of the Torrance brothers.

Yes, he was brilliant. Yes, he stood for orthodoxy (of a sort*) against the tides of the twentieth century. He and one of my seminary profs (Geoffrey Bromiley) both translated Barth's Church Dogmatics. Bromiley held to a conservative evangelical view of the Bible. Torrance dilly-dallied with dialectical theology to too great an extent for my tastes.

Like Barth, "whose theology he championed throughout his career," he was very much a dialectical theologian. He denied that revelation could convey information, let alone "propositional truth." What we get from revelation is "God's being in act." Barth regarded him so highly that he originally designated Torrance to be his successor at Basel. Torrance, however, turned down the offer in order to stay at Edinburgh. Unlike Barth, however, he tried to integrate his Barthianism with classical theology.

I agree with the summary in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology:

Torrance’s efforts to integrate such diverse spheres of inquiry have attracted widespread interest in his work. However, the inherent internal instability of his approach opens it to criticism on a variety of fronts. His stress upon the subjective relationship of faith in Christ to generate an objective theology seems at odds with his denial that the subject makes any contribution to this relationship, as does his claim that theology is a rational science, yet with a unique logic. Moreover, limiting God’s objective self-revelation to Christ undermines general revelation as a basis for natural science and devalues the OT.

Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology: Second Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 1210.

* If you put him in with process thinkers, Marxist liberationists, and death of God types, then he is COMPLETELY and STAUNCHLY orthodox. His theology is broadly evangelical in a European way. He built his theology out of an amalgam of Athanasius, Calvin, and Barth. However, if you are comparing him to the conservative Presbyterian seminaries in the US, he would never get a teaching post. And, if you are judging him by PB standards, he might be counted a raving heretic.