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Thomas Forsyth Torrance had planned, soon after the turn of the millennium, to

publish revised material gathered from his Edinburgh University lectures on the doctrines of the

incarnation and atonement.1 He lectured church history at Edinburgh from 1952 until 1978,

which was appropriate work for a student whose doctoral dissertation, “The Doctrine of Grace in

the Apostolic Fathers,” was completed under the tutelage of Karl Barth.2

On Tuesday January 28th, 2003, Torrance suffered a stroke, which eventually laid

claim to his life on Advent Sunday, December 2nd, 2007.3 The task of publishing his work fell to

his nephew, Robert T. Walker, who successfully edited the lecture material into the recently

published two-volume set (1) Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, and (2) Atonement:

The Person and Work of Christ.

Due to the dual influences of Karl Barth and church history in his academic training,

Torrance's presentation of Jesus is none other than the Christ of faith, which confessional

Christianity has stood by for two millennium. As a result of his confessional interest in Jesus

Christ, Torrance does not engage the many faces given to Jesus by modern historical-critical

methods. It is not that he is incapable, as this paper is sure to demonstrate, Torrance simply

preferred instead to present the Church's Christ as opposed to the skeptic's Jesus. The many

addendums of his Incarnation volume, the book which the present essay will focus on

1Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, edited by Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008) ix.

2Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, vii.3Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, ix.

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exclusively, reveal considerable competency in handling formidable thinkers such as Rudolf

Bultmann, who was given entirely to the primacy of modern historical-criticism.

The present essay aims to accurately present Torrance's work on Jesus Christ, but this

may mean departing at times from Christology and the doctrine of the incarnation itself. It is

further the purpose of this paper to provide commentary on the influence of Karl Barth's doctrine

of election, and his theological method of analogia fides, both of which evidence themselves in

Torrance's Christology.

This paper will also provide a tangential discourse on Martin Heidegger, who

curiously appears at the heart of Torrance's Christology. The discussion of Heidegger and onto-

theology will continue with a general discussion of modernity, before continuing again with a

few post-modern reflections.

Analogia Fides and Analogia Entis

An important theological axiom for Karl Barth is his dedication to analogia fides (i.e.

the analogy of faith), as opposed to analogia entis (i.e. the analogy of being). This approach of

Barth's is known to follow after Anselm's famous creed fides quaerens intellectum (“faith

seeking understanding”), as well as his admiration for Soren Kierkegaard, who was himself

committed to faith as a fundamental component in understanding Holy Scripture.

Kierkegaard emphasizes the dynamic nature of faith, such that he describes it as a

“leap” – the sort of leap which brings the modern student of Holy Scripture into contact with its

content, rather than any proposed philosophical speculative ideal, or historical-critical

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reconstruction empty of any meaningful Christian kerygma. “Faith knows God.” Says Barth.4

“Urgent warnings that theologising is powerless unless there is a relationship between the theme

and the theologian in which the true and total man is claimed may be found already in Anselm.”5

Barth further says of Protestant liberalism that “the anthropologising of theology [is] complete.”6

What he means here is that the naturalistic canons of Enlightenment thought had a devastating

effect on the science of theology, as historical-critical methods became more and more accepted.

But faith for Anselm, for Kierkegaard, for Barth, and for Torrance, is the light of

Christ illuminating the path of the theologian, whether that path be contrary to natural laws

governing a closed space-time continuum. The theological truths of the Bible, for these thinkers,

is therefore recoverable only by involving faith in methods and presuppositions. Faith is

essential in making sensible the face of Christian Scripture, something which liberal

Protestantism has yet to image with any consensus.

Faith is also deeply involved in Karl Barth's theologically artistic Church Dogmatics,

where he returns to the “great concepts of God, Word, Spirit, revelation, faith, church, sacrament,

and so on.”7 While very capable of handling his opponents in philosophical departments and

their analogia entis thinking, Barth establishes his method in Church Dogmatics by making use

of the gospel itself: (1) faith in Jesus Christ, as one example, and (2) Jesus Christ as the Word of

God made flesh, as another.

4Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 14 vols., trans. G. W. Bromiley, eds. G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance (London and New York: T&T Clark, 1975; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010), I.1:17.

5Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.1:18.6Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.1:207Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Grand Rapids, MI:

Eerdmans Publishing, 1994), 214.

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But this theological method of Barth's is quickly revealed by the conspicuous use of

what appears to be philosophical being. However, while Barth frequently uses this philosophical

language, it is a Christianized form, so that being in Church Dogmatics is said to be none other

than Jesus Christ himself. It is therefore a Christological re-working of philosophical being. For

Barth, if it is not Christ himself, than it is not being. They are one and the same. We have here

an emptying of analogia entis into analogia fides. The rule of faith being championed over, to

use Barth's language, “pagan” philosophy.

These theologians of faith typically found metaphysical philosophy as an unwelcome

invasion of Greek concepts into the sphere of theology. However, Torrance is more welcoming

than the rest, as will be demonstrated in the discourse on Heidegger. Although he champions

theology primarily, he seems interested in both theology and philosophy as they relate to

Christology. Nevertheless, faith remains an essential component of his method, which is

evidenced by his statement that, “Our mode of knowing Christ must be analogous to the mode of

Christ's coming into being in history. This entails on our part a movement of reason which

Kierkegaard called the 'leap of faith.'”8

The Foundation of Torrance's Christology

For those unfamiliar with Karl Barth's doctrine of election, it is very prescriptive of

God's nature and the ministry of Jesus Christ. Election for Barth begins by answering the Latin

cur Deus homo? (Why the God-man?) What Barth is at pains to demonstrate is that election is

the free choice of God to gift man with grace, through his pre-temporal decision of electing Jesus

8Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 25-28.

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Christ, inclusive of his person and work. The artistry and theological prowess of Barth's work on

election is one of the more significant in recent theological memory. While the medieval church

discussed absolutum decretum (i.e. the absolute decree of God) and predestinationis (including

the magisterial Reformers who were especially interested in the latter, particularly the obiectum

predestinationis, whether created man or fallen man, whether supralapsarian or infralapsarian),

Barth introduces a novelty that cuts to the theological heart of the NT – Jesus Christ is God's

elect. Though Barth dialogs charitably of the Reformation doctrines, he ultimately finds in the

election of Jesus Christ a crystallization of God's mercy and compassion; a crystallization of the

absolutum decretum. This absolute decree of God is his free choice to extend fallen man grace.

It is the divine “yes” in response to the divine “no.” Barth states,

. . . this foreordination of [the] elected man [Jesus Christ] is God's eternal election of grace, the content of all the blessings which from all eternity and before the work of creation was ever begun God intended and determined in himself for man, for humanity, for each individual, and for all creation.9

Just as Barth dismisses the previously stated Reformation doctrines for their failure to

identify the right object of predestination, so does the reader of Torrance never encounter these

doctrines. Not because election or predestination are not discussed, but because Torrance has

clearly followed suit with Barth's teaching on election. Jesus Christ is the elect of God.

Torrance presents the primal election of God by discussing three important NT Greek

terms. The first is μυστήριον. Μυστήριον refers to the mystery of God and his primal will being

realized and revealed in the incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It

is not a hidden μυστἠριον, but an uncovered mystery; a revealed mystery.

9Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2:142.

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The second term is πρόθεσις. Torrance's understanding of this lexeme is influenced by

the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, which states that “Paul adopts πρόθεσις in a

wholly new sense when he uses it for the primal decision of God.”10 Torrance states:

Prothesis or election means, then, the eternal beginning of all the ways and works of God in Jesus Christ, in whom God in his free grace bestows himself in love upon sinful mankind and destines them for himself as children of God. [This] prothesis is manifested or set forth in the incarnation in which God himself has come to make our lot his own, to choose us and love us in our actual situation in spite of our sin and guilt. Election means, therefore, that Christ assumes our flesh, assumes our fallen estate, assumes our judgment, assumes our reprobation, in order that we may participate in his glory, and share in the union of the Son with the Father. [This] is the eternal mystery, the great secret hid from the ages but now revealed in the gospel.11

Third, and lastly, he discusses the Greek term κοινωνία. Although it primarily means

fellowship, for Torrance, it “means participation through the Spirit in Jesus Christ, participation

in the union of God and man in him.” The fellowship of the elect people of God, therefore, is

modeled after the existent fellowship within the Godhead itself. Torrance states:

God's prothesis operates in a way true to himself, by way of communion or koinonia

analogous to and grounded in the communion which he has eternally in himself in the relation of the Father to the Son, and the Son to the Father.12

Cur Deus Homo

Obviously the question presupposes some theology, but is this not suggestive of as

many positive implications, as, perhaps, any negative? It is a responsive question. A question

the church fathers encountered in their studies of the NT. Christology was paradox. Who was

10J. Schneider, “Προτιθημι,” in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. VIII, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, and translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: 1972) pp. 166-167.

11Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 178.12Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 179.

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this mysterious person called Christ? Or as Torrance, reflecting on the NT teaching, has put it,

How can we be faithful in our theological statements to the nature of the eternal being of the Son who became man and who yet remains God, and at the same time be faithful to the nature and person of the historical Jesus Christ?

[This] has been the constant problem of theology. We see it already in the early church, in the contrasting emphases between Antioch and Alexandria. . .13

From these early Antiochene and Alexandrian initiatives, which respectively

emphasized the humanity and deity of Christ, we come to the ecumenical councils. Since we are

short on space, I have found the brevity of John Stott's summary more useful than Torrance's:

Progress toward agreement was charted by what came to be acknowledged as the first four ecumenical councils. They are perhaps best seen in two pairs. Thus the Council of Nicaea (in AD 325) secured the truth that Jesus is truly God, while the Council of Constantinople (in AD 381) secured that Jesus is truly human. Next the Council of Ephesus (in AD 431) secured that, although both God and man, Jesus is only one person, while the Council of Chalcedon (in AD 451) secured that, although one person, he had two natures, divine and human.14

The concerns of Alexandrian theology are protected by the first two councils, while

the concerns of Antiochene theology are guarded by the last two.15 Reflecting on the ecumenical

councils Torrance writes,

If Christ is not God, then the love of Christ is not identical with God's love, and so we do not know that God is love. We may know that Christ is love, but if he is not really God in the complete sense, then all we have in Jesus Christ is a revelation of man, of humanity at its noblest reaching up into the clouds. If Christ is not God, then we do not have a descent of God to man.16

If Christology indeed involves the God-man, how did God become man? How did he

“incarnate?” In the gospels it is accomplished by virgin birth; a means of conception which does

13Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 182.14John Stott, The Incomparable Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001) 89. 15Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 208.16Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 188.

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not involve the standard biologically required actions of a mother and father. Further distinct is

John's prologue and his emphasis on the Word of God “become” flesh, where of course the

underlying Greek term, γίνομαι, is a stative verb, perhaps indicative of a change of state.

In Paul we find a similar phenomenon, most clearly evidenced in Galatians 4, where

the lexeme for “birth” is used three times in regards to the natural births of Ishmael and Isaac.

These individuals are provided an ordinary word for birth by Paul – γεννάω “to be born.” But

Paul will use the same stative verb of John 1 to describe Christ's own birth, γίνομαι, within the

very same context (v. 4). The lexemes being chosen when narrating the person of Christ and

how he came to be as a man seem deliberate by the NT authors.

The locus classicus (or classic passage) on the incarnation of the Son of God is, of

course, Philippians 2:6-11. Here it is said that Christ “did not regard for himself the having

equality with God something to be grasped (or taken advantage of).” This is my own translation.

The phrase “having equality with God” is strong stative language of Christ's apparent

preexistence. The stative lexeme εἰμί is correctly parsed as a present active infinitive, which

conceptualizes the verbal aspect as continuous or progressive. Further, the equality lexeme

carries with it an definite article, with the infinitive coming between them. This is a strong

grammatical construction, one that exegete Gordon Fee says is too often overlooked.17

This same verse begins with “Who in the form of God existing. . .” The stative verb in

this clause is correctly parsed as a present active participle, which, like the infinitive from above,

indicates continuous verbal action. Jesus Christ preexisted in a state of equality with God.

Further, Torrance points out, as have many theologians, that μορφή “means form in the ordinary

17Gordon D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007) 379-380.

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sense, but the sort of form, nevertheless, which corresponds to inner nature.” This definition of

“inner nature” is also agreed upon by the Luow Nida Greek lexicon, which accompanies the 27th

edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek NT in its compacted form. Such language presupposes that

the person Jesus of Nazareth shared existence previously with God.

So we have seen his divine nature, and his human nature, but the cur Deus homo

remains. For Torrance, this can only be answered by examining the mission of Jesus Christ in

light of his person. He writes, “the significance of the cross does not lie simply in the death or in

the blood of Christ shed in sacrifice, but it lies in the fact that the person of Christ is the one who

sheds his blood for our sin – it lies in the identity of his person and work.”18

The actions of Jesus in his ministry of reconciliation are none other than the actions of

God himself and his thoughts toward us. The gospels speak revealingly of how the passion of

Jesus came at considerable personal cost and anguish for him. Such anguish is evident, writes

Torrance, in the way that Jesus groaned in agony as he forgave and healed.19 Matthew 8:17 says

that Jesus, in fulfillment of Isaiah 53:4, “took our illnesses and bore our diseases.” It was not

just our sin but also the misery of our fallen nature that Jesus assumed. “Thus the teaching and

preaching, the healing of the sick and the driving out of the demons, the feeding of the

multitudes, are all acts of the pure compassion of God himself.”20 God entered into man “from

within, into the very heart of the blackest evil, and making its sorrow and guilt and suffering his

own.”21

18Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 108.19Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 134.20Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 132.21Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 151.

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“The unassumed is the unredeemed,” Torrance frequently writes. If Christ has not

assumed fallen flesh, fallen flesh has not been redeemed. If Christ is not God, his work did not

reconcile man to God – he is only a man. This is why for Torrance, as for Barth, Christology

cannot be separated from election and redemption. They are all one in Jesus Christ. Fallen

existence was assumed. And fallen existence was redeemed, because of the God-man. Because

the nature of the Christian God who judges in righteousness is grace and forgiveness.

Discourse: Martin Heidegger, Modernity, and Postmodernity

At the heart of his discussion of the nature of Christ, Torrance exegetes the Greek

lexeme φύσις.22 And in doing so, he embraces Martin Heidegger's Aristotelian understanding of

φύσις, which is philosophical being in the classical sense. Φύσις, Torrance says, is being itself,

and he proceeds to show how this classical meanings speaks rightly of Christ's nature.

While φύσις certainly appears in the NT, the word is always marshaled in passages

where Gentile φύσις is in view, such as Romans 1:26-27, where Gentile sexual misconduct is

said to be against “nature.” Since it is always used in proximity with Gentile, or during

discourse about Gentiles, its Hellenistic semantics are not clearly represented by the NT authors.

Further, so far as the Septuagint translates the Hebrew Bible, the lexeme never appears, largely

because it is alien to Hebraic concepts; there is no word in Hebrew which seems to necessitate its

use in translation.23 (Although it does appear in deuterocanonical literature originally composed

in Greek, such as the Maccabees.) The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament states that

Φύσις in the NT,

22Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 202-203.23Helmut Koster, “Φύσις,” in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, volume IX, edited by

Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, and translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: 1974) 266.

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. . . does not follow the usual pattern of Hellenistic literature, which is marked by frequent use of the word group, whether as an unconscious but common expression of a widespread understanding of existence, or as the conscious result of a corresponding philosophical and theological interpretation of the world and of being.24

Returning to Heidegger's adoption of the classical view, Aristotle used the word in a

two-fold paradigmatic manner: the first use being “origin,” and the second “constitution.” And

through these two senses he sought to “arrive at a uniform definition of the word by clarifying

the two components.”25 Subsequent philosophy in the classical world from the early period also

worked in accordance with this two-fold sense, although with some modification. One meaning

was “concerned with the true nature of things, the second [with] the origin of all being, i.e.,

universal nature.”26 Here, we can clearly and excitedly see the coming to life of the Western

mind, which boasts a long and impressive pedigree.

“When Heidegger speaks of the onto-theological 'constitution' or 'essence' of

metaphysics he means Western metaphysics as such, stretching from Anaximander to

Nietzsche.”27 Heidegger uses this understanding of philosophical being in what he calls “onto-

theology.” While he takes great care to appropriate ontology in relation to theology in a positive

manner, what remains unclear are the distinctions Heidegger sees in the “Highest Being” of the

metaphysician, and the God of Christian literature.28 “Philosophy, which here means onto-

24Koster, “Φύσις,” 271.25Koster, “Φύσις,” 257.26Koster, “Φύσις,” 256.27Merold Westphal, “Onto-Theology,” in the Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of the Bible,

edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006) 547.28Westphal, “Onto-Theology,” 547-548.

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theologically constituted metaphysics, only allows God. . . into its discourse on its own terms

and in the service of its own project.”29

But this classical sense of being that Heidegger discusses is preferable for the theology

of Torrance most likely because he spent a large part of his career dialoguing in science and

theology, something with which onto-theology may concern itself. It allows for a conceptual

bridge between theology and natural philosophy, with the hopes of rendering “the whole of

reality intelligible to human thought and understanding.”30 This bridge is indeed desirable, but

only so long as it does not reveal itself a Procrustean bed.

It is interesting to note that Heidegger saw Western metaphysical philosophy ending

with Friedrich Nietzsche. If this impressive circuit of metaphysical philosophy does indeed

perish with Nietzche and his claim that “God” is dead, then it remains true that the God of

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has indeed been reduced to metaphysics, which had seemed to finish

its course with the close of the modern era. At least its veracity was questionable enough for

philosophers of the post-modern period to speak of post-metaphysical, or anti-metaphysical

thought. Thomas Carlson finds in this quote of Nietzsche a verdict on the “godless thinking to

which Heidegger appeals” which “might hold real theological promise” since it was an idol all

along.31

The modern era, among other truths, was largely an anthropocentric turn, and as such

it triggered the search for an invulnerable area for the Christian faith; a place of locating

29Westphal, “Onto-Theology,” 547-548.30Westphal, “Onto-Theology,” 547-548.31Thomas Carlson, “Postmetaphysical Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern

Theology, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 61-62.

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Christian truth that would be free from the canons of Enlightenment reason. Theology boasted

much which contradicted the natural laws of modernity. This naturalism of the modern era

resulted in an increasing immanence of the divine in theological discourse, such that to speak of

God was to speak of creation, or some other escapist realm, whether in the moral theology of

Immanuel Kant, the religious consciousness of Friedrich Schleiermacher, or in the speculative

ideals of G. W. F. Hegel. Further, process theologians such as Pierre Teilhard de Charden, Alfred

North Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne, although having made sincere and impressive efforts

to reformulate Christian theology within evolutionary science, nevertheless sacrificed the

transcendent God of the Bible when they moved from spatial understandings of Christian

thought (such as God in heaven, and man on the earth) to temporal understandings which

mistakenly equated God with the evolution of creation itself. Lastly, the post-liberalism of

George Lindbeck, although popular and useful for ecumenical dialog, was unable to escape

criticisms that declared his “rule theory” a method, which identified theology with the

sociological impression of religion without remainder.

Evangelical theologian Stephen Long says that remembering our “theological roots

turns the modern [era] back upon itself to expose what it has forgotten, what it could never fully

abandon, and yet what it cannot account for – the theological.”32 And Evangelical Robert Jenson

echoes similar sentiment in his expression that “modernity was defined by the attempt to live in a

universal story without a universal story-teller.”33

32D. Stephen Long, “Radical Orthodoxy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, edited by Kevin J Vanhoozer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 127.

33Robert W. Jenson, “How the World Lost Its Story,” in First Things (2010): 34.