Stephen D. Morrison's Blog, page 6
November 18, 2017
Jürgen Moltmann on the Rapture and “Left Behind”
November 1, 2017
Our God Loves Justice by W. Travis McMaken (a Review)
October 19, 2017
Jürgen Moltmann and Evangelical Theology: a Review
October 13, 2017
“Love our Country or Leave it”? (Moltmann)
October 5, 2017
The Best Writing Advice I’ve Heard in a Long Time
I Was “Born Again” 2,000 Years Ago (T. F. Torrance)
October 1, 2017
500 Years of Outrageous Grace (R. Capon)
August 18, 2017
Divine Interpretation by T.F. Torrance: a Review
Book: Divine Interpretation: Studies in Medieval and Modern Hermeneutics by Thomas F. Torrance (edited by Adam Nigh and Todd Speidell) (AMAZON LINK)
Publisher: Pickwick Publications (an imprint of Wipf&Stock) (PUBLISHERS LINK)
Overview: Released only this month, this collection of essays by Torrance is a valuable addition to his current body of work. While the two essays on Barth stood out as the high points of the book, each essay was a masterful piece of scholarship.
Undoubtably, the great benefit of this book is the republication of two important essays on Karl Barth written by Torrance and published in the now out of print (and therefore very costly) volume, Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. I’ve wanted to read this book for some time now, but the near $100 price tag has prohibited me from getting my hands on a copy.
The essays “Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy” and “Karl Barth, Theologian of the Word”, were naturally the high point of the book for me. Yesterday I posted an article examining several quotations from the first essay. Reading my article from yesterday will give you a taste of this essay, which you can do so by clicking here.
The second essay on Barth masterfully examines his doctrine of the Word of God, especially in relation to the Bible. Torrance makes many insightful comments regarding Barth’s doctrine of scriptures, such as this paragraph which highlights the dynamic nature of scripture:
“Because Barth thought of the revelation that came to the prophets and apostles in this way as nothing less than God himself, and because he thought of God’s language as God’s act, he used to describe the relation between the Word of God and the Bible in terms of ‘contingent contemporaneity.’ By that he wished to keep in mind the fact that the bond between the Word of God and the Bible is not a static or necessary one but a dynamic one, freely established by God which he is pleased unceasingly to affirm and maintain through the real presence and activity of his Word. The mighty living Word of God is not encapsulated in the written words of the Bible, far less is that Word personally incarnated in the Bible as it is in the Lord Jesus Christ, for there is no hypostatic union between the Word of God and the word of man in the Bible. Nevertheless God has graciously accommodated his revealed Word to the written Word of the Bible, and has thereby adapted its written form to his self-revelation in a profoundly covenanted and sacramental manner such that we may hear the still small Voice of God himself speaking to us in the Bible in the form of human words and statements.” 1
Towards the end of the essay Torrance also writes,
“Biblical statements are true not because they capture the truth in themselves but because they refer to truth independent of themselves.” 2
While I enjoyed these essays on Barth the most, the entire book is well worth reading. Other insightful essays that stood out to me are Torrance’s study of Anselm, Schleiermacher, and Aquinas.
According to editor Adam Nigh, Torrance planned three volumes on hermeneutics. The first on the fathers, the second on the medieval and reformation theologians, and the final on modern theologians. While he never completed this project he did publish two books on hermeneutics, which this collections serves as a companion to. These are his books (sadly both out of print) Divine Meaning and The Hermeneutics of John Calvin. Placed within this trajectory, this collection is an insightful completion of the study initiated in those works.
Overall, this is an insightful book, and without a doubt it is an important contribution to Torrance’s body of work. I’m happy to see books such as this being published as Torrance become more widely read and appreciated.
My thanks to Wipf & Stock Publishers for a digital copy of this book for review. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review, and have presented my honest reflection on this work.
Like this article? Share it!
Notes:
198 ↩216 ↩August 17, 2017
T.F. Torrance on Universalism and Limited Atonement (as Dual Heresies)
I’ve been reading the newly released collection of essays by T.F. Torrance, Divine Interpretation: Studies in Mediaeval and Modern Hermeneutics. Wipf & Stock Publishers were kind enough to send me a review copy, and when I finish reading the book I will be posting my final thoughts here. But I wanted to share an important quote from the book before then.
I was excited to discover that this collection reprints an important essay Torrance wrote, which prior to this book was only available in the costly out of print study, Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. This essay is entitled “Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy”, and includes some profoundly important remarks about how Torrance places Barth within the western tradition.
Especially insightful, however, is how Torrance explains the “dual heresy” of universalism on one side and limited atonement on the other. I’ll let Torrance explain more himself in this insightful quote. Comments in between quotations are my own, and bold text is also mo own emphasis. Enjoy!
“If in Jesus Christ the Word of God, by whom all things are made and in whom they have their creaturely being, became incarnate, died on the Cross and rose again, then we must think of the whole creation as having been redeemed. If in Jesus Chris the Creator himself became a human creature, without of course ceasing to be Creator, and if in him divine nature and human natures are not separable, as Nestorian heresy would have it, then we must think of the being of every man, whether he believes or not, as grounded in Christ and ontologically bound to his humanity. It is precisely in Jesus, as St Paul taught, that every human being (and indeed the whole creation) consists.” 1
This naturally raises the question, what about universalism? First Torrance explains the error of postulating a “logico-causal connection” between universalism/limited atonement and the extent of salvation:
“Behind the charge of universalism against Barth there lies a controlling frame of thought which operates with a notion of external logico-causal connections. If Christ died for all men, then, it is argued, all men must be saved, whether they believe or not; but if all men are not saved, and some, as seems very evident, do go to hell, then Christ did not die for all men. Behind both of these alternatives, however, there are two very serious mistakes.” 2
Torrance thinks these two mistakes are a direct derivation from what he calls the “latin heresy”:
“Let me repeat, the problem of universalism versus limited atonement is itself a manifestation of the ‘latin heresy’ at work within Protestant and Evangelical thought. If Karl Barth is still misunderstood or criticised over his approach to the efficacious nature and range of redemption, it must be through mistaken opposition to his faithfulness in thinking out as far as possible the implications of the oneness of the Person and Work of Christ, or of the inseparability of the incarnation and atonement.” 3
Those who still operate with a form of the latin heresy in their thinking, which by thinking external-relationally separates the incarnation from the atonement, build a logical construction or casual relation between the extent of the atonement necessitating either universalism or limited atonement. Torrance explains further:
“It is a logico-causalism of this kind, with Augustinian-Thomist, Protestant scholastics and Newtonian roots, that appears to supply the deterministic paradigm within which there arise the twin errors of limited atonement and universalism both of which, although in different ways, are rationalistic constructions of the saving act of God incarnate in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 4
The important point Torrance is making here is that the western tendency in theology is to “externalize” the inner workings of the gospel, thereby creating a rationalistic construction out of the atonement in which we mistakenly inject our own logic into the grace of God. This is, in a sense, our attempt to master or control the atonement by reducing it to our own logical connections. Or, in other words, creating an atonement in our own image!
We imagine that A + B must = C, and since we assume C is true, then B must re-interpret the nature of A.
In this case, “A” is the atonement and “C” is the dual heresies of limited atonement and universalism, which makes “B” the logical connection we mistakenly interject into God’s grace, which is in fact foreign to it. There is no logical = between A and C, and only when we inject B into the equation do we result in its necessity.
But the atonement is not under our logical control, it is God’s free work of grace. We wrongly inject human logic into God’s grace, morphing it into a monstrosity of logical deduction that limits God’s freedom and ultimately results in the dual heresy of limited atonement or universalism. This, Torrance brilliantly deduces, is the crucial error both heresies make.
Torrance continues in this line of thought:
“It is because atoning reconciliation falls within the incarnate constitution of Christ’s Person as Mediator, that it is atoning reconciliation which embraces all mankind and is freely available to all in the unconditional grace of God’s Self-giving. Why some people believe and why others do not believe we cannot explain, any more than we can explain why evil came into the world. The Gospel does not offer us a logical or causal explanation of the origin or presence of evil, or of precisely how it is vanquished in the Cross of Christ. But it does tell us what the Lord God has done to deal with evil. It tells us that in his unlimited love God himself, incarnate in Jesus Christ, has entered into the dark and fearful depths of our depraved and lost existence subjected to death and judgement, in order to make our sin and guilt, our wickedness and shame, our misery and fate, our godlessness and violence, his own, thereby substituting himself for us, and making atonement for sin, so that he might redeem us from our alienation and restore us to fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The saving act of God in the blood of Christ is an unfathomable mystery before which the angels veil their faces and into which we dare not and cannot intrude, but before which our minds bow in wonder, worship and praise.“ 5
Western Christianity has a tremendously low tolerance for mystery, and this is perhaps the best reason why we often run into this issue of deterministic logic, i.e., necessitating in our thinking either universalism or limited atonement. I simply love the way Torrance reminds us, in the midst of our reductionistic tendencies, to stand in awe and wonder before Christ’s work of atonement! It is not a work we can master or logically control, even though our western “atonement theories” make it sound like we can do exactly that, but it is something we above all else must be thankful for and praise God for.
Torrance concludes with the certainty we have even in this mystery:
“However, of this we can be perfectly certain: the blood of Christ, the incarnate Son of God who is perfectly and inseparably one in being and act with God the Father, means that God will never act toward any one in mercy and judgement at any time or in any other way than he has already acted in the Lord Jesus. There is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ, and no God but he who has shown us his face in the face of Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ and the Father are one. What the Father is and does, Jesus Christ is and does; what Jesus Christ is and does the Father is and does.“ 6
Like this article? Share it!
Notes:
63-4 ↩64 ↩65-6 ↩65 ↩66 ↩ibid. ↩August 16, 2017
Fortress Press eBook Sale (Barth, Moltmann, Bultmann, and others)
Fortress Press is currently running their eBook sale on Amazon. Every year I have benefited tremendously from this sale and thought this year I should publish a list of some of the best titles up for grabs. Particularly notable books are marked with an asterisk (*). Enjoy!
(This sale is only for a limited time, and I’ll update this article once it’s over. Also please note that all links are associate links.)
Jürgen Moltmann
Primary sources:
The Crucified God — $6.99*
Collected Readings — $4.99
The Coming of God — $4.99*
The Trinity and the Kingdom — $4.99*
The Spirit of Life — $4.99*
The Way of Jesus Christ — $4.99
Ethics of Hope — $4.99
Jesus Christ for Today’s World — $4.99*
In the End—the Beginning — $4.99*
The Source of Life — $4.99
Experiences of God — $4.99
Sun of Righteousness Arise — $4.99
On Human Dignity — $4.99
The Future of Creation — $4.99
Passion for Life — $4.99
Science & Wisdom — $4.99
Secondary sources:
God Will be All in All (includes an essay from Moltmann) edited by Richard Bauckham — $4.99*
The Kingdom and the Power by Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz — $4.99
Karl Barth
Primary sources:
The Call to Discipleship — $4.99
Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom edited by Clifford Green (selections from Barth’s writing) — $4.99*
Secondary sources:
The Sign of the Gospel by W. Travis McMaken — $4.99*
Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Preoccupation by Stephen Long — $4.99
Citizenship in Heaven and on Earth: Karl Barth’s Ethics by Alexander Massmann — $6.99
A Theology of the Third Article: Karl Barth and the Spirit of the Word by Aaron T. Smith — $4.99
Resurrected God: Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology of Easter by John L. Drury — $4.99
Triune Eternality: God’s Relationship to Time in the Theology of Karl Barth by Daniel M. Griswold — $6.99
The Spirit of God and the Christian Life: Reconstructing Karl Barth’s Pneumatology by JinHyok Kim — $4.99
Playful, Glad, and Free: Karl Barth and a Theology of Popular Culture by Jessica DeCou — $4.99
Thomas F. Torrance
Secondary sources:
Theology in Transposition: A Constructive Appraisal of T.F. Torrance by Myk Habets — $4.99*
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Primary sources:
Friedrich Schleiermacher (Making Modern Theology) (selected writings) — $4.99*
Secondary sources:
Deus Providebit: Calvin, Schleiermacher, and Barth on the Providence of God by Sung-Sup Kim — $4.99
Embodied Grace: Christ, History, and the Reign of God in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics by Kevin M. Vander Schel — $4.99
Rudolf Bultmann
Primary sources:
What is Theology? — $4.99*
New Testament & Mythology — $4.99
Rudolf Bultmann (Making of Modern Theology) (selected writings) — $4.99
Secondary sources:
The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology by David W. Congdon — $6.99*
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Primary sources:
The Bonhoeffer Reader ed by Clifford Green and Michael DeJonge — $4.99
Discipleship — $4.99
Creation and Fall — $4.99
Ethics — $4.99*
The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer — $4.99
Life Together — $4.99
Letters and Papers from Prison — $4.99*
Act and Being — $4.99
Kathryn Tanner
Primary sources:
Economy of Grace — $4.99
Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology — $4.99
Spirit in the Cities: Searching for Soul in the Urban Landscape (editor) — $4.99
Secondary sources:
The Gift of Theology: The Contribution of Kathryn Tanner ed. by Rosemary P. Carbine and P. Koster — $6.99
N.T. Wright
Primary sources:
Paul and the Faithfulness of God — $4.99*
The New Testament and the People of God — $4.99
Jesus and the Victory of God — $4.99
The Resurrection of the Son of God — $4.99
Christian Origins and the Question of God (complete series, four volumes) — $19.96
Paul and His Recent Interpreters — $6.99
Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978-2013 — $4.99
The Contemporary Quest for Jesus — $4.99
Robert W. Jenson
Primary sources:
Christian Dogmatics vol. 1 — $4.99
Christian Dogmatics vol. 2 — $4.99
Secondary sources:
Dogmatic Aesthetics: A Theology of Beauty in Dialogue with Robert W. Jenson by Stephen John Wright— $4.99
Dorothee Soelle
Primary sources:
The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance — $4.99*
Suffering — $4.99
Theology for Skeptics — $4.99
Other notable books
Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way by Walter Wink — $4.99*
The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann — $4.99
Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination by Walter Brueggemann — $4.99
Jesus’ Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed by John B. Cobb — $3.99
Systematic Theology: Volume 1, the Doctrine of God by Katherine Sonderegger — $6.99*
Like this article? Share it!
