Thomas Forsyth Torrance (30 August 1913 – 2 December 2007), commonly referred to as T. F. Torrance, was a Scottish Protestant theologian and Presbyterian minister. He was a member of the famed Torrance family of theologians. Torrance served for 27 years as a professor of Christian dogmatics at New College, at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his pioneering work in the study of science and theology, but he is equally respected for his work in systematic theology.
In addition to writing many of his own books and articles, he also edited the translation of several hundred theological writings into English, including the thirteen-volume, six-million-word Church Dogmatics of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, as well as John Calvin's New Testament Commentaries.
Torrance has been acknowledged as one of the most significant English-speaking theologians of the 20th century. In 1978, he received the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion. Torrance remained a dedicated churchman throughout his life, serving as an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland. He was instrumental in the development of the historic agreement between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Eastern Orthodox Church churches on the doctrine of the Trinity, who released a joint statement of agreement on 13 March 1991.I. John Hesselink, "A Pilgrimage in the School of Christ: An Interview with Thomas F. Torrance", Reformed Review 38, no. 1 (Autumn 1984): p. 50. Torrance also served on the Reformed-Roman Catholic Study Commission on the Eucharist in Woudschoten, Holland (1974). Also see, Thomas F. Torrance, ed., Theological Dialogue Between Orthodox and Reformed Churches, p. 199
After retiring from the University of Edinburgh in 1979, he continued to lecture and publish extensively, including several influential books on the Trinity: The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (1988); Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement (1994); and The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (1996).
Biography Education and academic career
Thomas Forsyth Torrance was the son of the Revd Thomas Torrance (1871–1959) and Annie Elizabeth Torrance (1883–1981), both Scottish missionaries of China Inland Mission in Chengdu, Sichuan, West China,Alister E. McGrath, T. F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography, p. 12. where he spent the first 13 years of his life. He was named after his great-grandfather, also Thomas Forsyth Torrance.McGrath, p. 13.
He began studying in Edinburgh in 1931, focusing on classics and philosophy. At that time his own realist views of philosophy, theology and morality started to take shape. He moved to the study of theology at the Faculty of Divinity (New College) in 1934, and began to question the theological methodology of Schleiermacher for its lack of realist scientific objectivity.
For Torrance, such objectivity meant that theological concepts must be shaped by the unique nature of the object of reflection.Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian, p. 121; see also Thomas F. Torrance, "My Interaction with Karl Barth" in How Karl Barth Changed My Mind, pp. 52–64, 52, and Hesselink, "Pilgrimage," p. 52. In this regard, theology differed from science only in the object being reflected; while science reflects the world, theology reflects the Creator of the world — who was no distant God, but became incarnate within time and space to reconcile the world to himself. Therefore Torrance opposed every form of dualism, because it kept God from interacting with people throughout history. He also opposed subjectivism because he held that it was impossible for people to know God objectively by reflecting upon themselves. Torrance was strongly influenced by Hugh Ross Mackintosh,David W. Torrance, "Thomas Forsyth Torrance: Minister of the Gospel, Pastor, and Evangelical Theologian" in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, pp. 1–30, 7. who stressed the centrality of Christ and the connection between theology and mission; and by Daniel Lamont, who stressed the relationship between Christianity and scientific culture.David. F. Wright and Gary D. Badcock (eds), Disruption to Diversity: Edinburgh Divinity 1846–1996, p. 140.
Torrance was awarded the Blackie Fellowship in 1936 to study in the Middle East. In Basra, he was accused of being a spy and sentenced to death. However, he was able to convince the authorities that he was a theological student and was allowed to proceed to Baghdad and then Syria.Paul D. Molnar, Thomas F. Torrance: Theologian of the Trinity, p. 6 He eventually returned to Scotland and graduated summa cum laude, specialising in systematic theology.
He taught at Auburn Theological Seminary from 1938 to 1939. He was offered a position in religion at Princeton University, which he rejected in order to return home to Scotland before the start of World War II.Molnar, p. 9
From 1939 to 1940, Torrance studied at Oriel College, Oxford, and he was ordained as a minister on 20 March 1940. During the war, he provided pastoral and practical support to Scottish soldiers in North Africa and northern Italy. On more than one occasion, he escaped with his life after coming under fire.David W. Torrance, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, pp. 16–17. After the war, he returned to his parish in Alyth and later became minister at Beechgrove Church in Aberdeen, following in the footsteps of his Hugh Ross Mackintosh, his former professor.
He married Margaret Edith Spear on 2 October 1946 at Combe Down Parish Church near Bath. His children include Thomas Spear Torrance (3 July 1947, now an economist and philosopher of science at Heriot-Watt), Iain Richard Torrance (13 January 1949) and Alison Meta Elizabeth Torrance (15 April 1951, now a general practitioner in Edinburgh).
Also in 1946, he completed his doctorate with Karl Barth in Basel and graduated magna cum laude. His dissertation was titled "The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers". In 1948, he was the founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal the Scottish Journal of Theology, which his son Iain continues to edit along with Bryan Spinks of Yale.
Ecumenism
As a Reformed churchman and theologian, Torrance worked throughout his career for ecumenical harmony with Anglicans, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics.
He represented the Church of Scotland in conversations with the Church of England from 1949 to 1951, and fought tirelessly for the visible union of the Church;Thomas F. Torrance, Conflict and Agreement in the Church, Vol. I, Order and Disorder, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1996, p. 138 From 1954 to 1962, he was the Convener of the Church of Scotland Commission on Baptism (with John Heron, the father of Alasdair Heron, acting as secretary), and in 1954 he was present at the World Council of Churches meeting in Evanston, Illinois.
Torrance' ecumenical work with the Eastern Orthodox Church was recognised in 1973 when the Archbishop of Axum made him an honorary protopresbyter in the Patriarchate of Alexandria.McGrath, p. 102 He served on the Reformed–Roman Catholic Study Commission on the Eucharist which met at Woudschoten in the Netherlands in 1974. At that time, he formed a personal relationship with the Roman Catholic cardinal and renowned ecumenist Yves Congar.
Torrance believed that Karl Rahner's work on the Trinity offered an opportunity for genuine ecumenical convergence between East and West, and between Catholics and Evangelicals. He led a colloquy in Switzerland to discuss Rahner's work in March 1975. He also made significant contributions to Reformed and Roman Catholic discussions of Justification by Faith and by Grace, and there is also much in Torrance's writing that could form the basis for fraternal dialogue between Christians and Jews.
From 1976 to 1977, Torrance served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (as did his son Iain from 2003 to 2004). He received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1983.
Legacy
Dogmatic theology
One of the reasons that Torrance's theology is now becoming the focus for many doctoral students is that his was a profoundly Christ-centred theology that exhibits no Christomonism (one that reduced all theology to Christology), but instead integrated all Christian doctrine in such a way as to offer sensible and compelling explanations of the Christian faith. This integration of doctrine began for Torrance with the Nicene homoousion (the idea that the eternal Son was and is one in being with the Father and Spirit in eternity and with us by virtue of the incarnation), and included the doctrines of the Trinity, Creation, Incarnation, Atonement, Eschatology, Pneumatology, the church and the sacraments as well as a theology of ordained ministry.
Interpreting each of these doctrines from within the perspective of an ecumenically open doctrine of the Trinity, with which most Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians would substantially agree, Torrance forged an understanding of Justification by Grace that demonstrated exactly how and why Christ, in his uniqueness as God become man acting from within the human situation marked by sin and evil, overcame sin, suffering, evil and death once and for all both from the divine and the human side. This enabled Torrance to offer a theology that was at once full of depth and meaning and yet joyful and hopeful because he knew that Jesus was no mere moral example of the good life, but God himself who suffered the God-forsakenness associated with human enmity against God on the cross out of unconditional love for humanity, and did so effectively precisely because he was the Word of God incarnate.
He once said that if Jesus was just a man dying on a cross, then Christianity would be immoral, offering a picture of a vindictive God along with the image of a pagan human attempt to appease God through human sacrifice—a form of self-justification. But put God on the cross and the whole picture changes because then the depth of God's costly love could be seen to include the fact that God was not aloof from human suffering but willing himself to experience this suffering in his own Son in order to overcome all that threatens true human existence in fellowship with God. All of this was accomplished and demonstrated in Christ's resurrection and continues to be lived as part of the new creation in the Church, as the community is united through faith and hope with the ascended and advent Lord by the Holy Spirit, through partaking of the Sacraments and through preaching and teaching the Gospel.
Theology and science
Torrance was awarded the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion in 1978. His contributions to the dialogue between science and theology led Alister McGrath to observe that many of those theologians he studied were unfazed by their lack of experience with the method and norms of natural science, but wrote about science nonetheless. In contrast, "Torrance’s writings were, quite simply, of landmark significance."McGrath, p. xii P. Mark Achtemeier describes Torrance's work in this area as "magisterial and highly original."P. Mark Achtemeier "Natural Science and Christian Faith in the Thought of T. F. Torrance" in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 269–302, 269 Christopher Kaiser noted that if Einstein was the person of the century from the perspective of the secular media, then Torrance would qualify as the theologian of the century from the perspective of people who are science-minded.Christopher B. Kaiser, "Humanity in an Intelligible Cosmos: Non-Duality in Albert Einstein and Thomas Torrance" in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 239-267, 240