Torrance on Suffering and Incarnation

Lately I've been thinking about the problem of pain, suffering, and evil as related to God. In pastoral matters, it seems that God's sovereignty has a component, but left alone is insufficient when dealing with the topic. Ultimately, the answer to the problem of pain, suffering and evil is the Incarnation (and the Atonement). That lead me back again to Torrance's masterful work on the Incarnation which (despite its few errors) is so wonderful on the Incarnation:

"The agony of Jesus - and how he was constrained until it was accomplished - was that he was the judging God and the judged man at the same time, the electing God and the elected man at the same time, and in this unspeakable tension he remained absolutely faithful as the Son of God and Son of Man." (113)

"[Christ] stooped to shoulder our weakness, astheneia, and to bear it as our high priest, as our shepherd priest before God, so that by his stripes we are healed. The term astheneia on the pages of the New Testament is a profound term speaking of the disease of the body and of the soul, and so his compassion met the double need of the sick and the sinful." (134)

"'From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence'...How does the kingdom of God press in, how does it storm into the hearts of men and women? By the cross. But the cross is the kingdom of God suffering violence, and there we that the weakness of God is stronger than man, so that the preaching of this cross, where the kingdom suffers violence, is the power of God...like Elijah, John had misunderstood the violence of God and was offended at the weakness of Jesus, but in Jesus the still small voice of God has become flesh, and that was more powerful than all the imaginable forces of nature put together and unleashed in their fury" (149-150)

T.F. Torrance. Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ

Torrance on Christ's Deity

Torrance as a theologian works in words the way painters work in paint. Here's Torrance on the necessity of the deity of Christ:

"The full reality of Christ's deity is essential for salvation, for the reality and validity of salvation are grounded upon the reality of Christ's deity. Man's salvation must be an act of God, else it is not salvation. The deity of Christ tells us that the action of Jesus in the incarnation and on the cross is identical with God's own action. How can man be saved? The answer is given in the words, "You did not choose me, but I chose you' (John 15:16) - but if the 'I' is not God himself, it is ultimately an illusion. Everything depends on the fact that the whole course of Christ's life is identical with the course of God's action towards humanity. The whole of our salvation depends n the fact that it is God in Christ who suffers and bears the sin of the world, and reconciles the world to himself.

The validity of our salvation depends on the fact that he who died on the cross under divine judgment is also God the judge, so that he who forgives is also he who judges. The reality of our salvation means that its reality is anchored on the divine side of reality, that the lamb is slain before the foundation of the world, that he has ascended to the right hand of God the Father almighty, and sits down with God on his own throne because he is God. Everything depends upon the fact that the cross is lodged in the heart of the Father.

It is important to see that if the deity of Christ is denied, then the cross becomes a terrible monstrosity. If Jesus Christ is man only and not also God, then we lose faith in God and man. We lose faith in God because how could we believe in a God who allows the best man that ever lived to be hounded to death on the cross - is that all that God cares about our humanity and its search after God, after truth and righteousness and peace? Put Jesus Christ a man on the cross and put God in heaven, like some distant god imprisoned in his own lonely abstract deity, and you cannot believe in him, in a god such that he is monstrously unconcerned with our life, and who does not even lift a finger to help Jesus...But put God on the cross, and the cross becomes the world's salvation. The whole gospel rests upon the fact the it is God who became incarnate, and it was God who in Christ has reconciled the world to himself...He who reveals God to man, and reconciles man to God, must be both God and man, truly completely God, and truly and completely man. If the Son was to redeem the whole nature of man, he had to assume the whole nature of man; if in the Son man is to be gathered into the fellowship and life of God, it must be by one who is truly and completely God.Only he can be mediator who is himself the union of God and man."

-T.F. Torrance. Incarnation pg. 189-190

Torrance on the Incarnation

T.F. Torrance went to be with the Lord over a year ago. But I just picked up an adaptation of some of his final lectures in book form called "Incarnation." In it, the learned theologian explores what to him was the highest part of theology: Christology. In my experience of learning theology with a Christological focus, I more and more sympathize with the language used by the early church that knew the doctrines surrounding salvation as implications of the Person and Work of Christ. In reading Torrance, I think I have a teacher to teach me further how to do this.

These below, are the first few lines of a "Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ," that I am starting on as my devotional reading:

"Our task in christology is to yield the obedience of our mind to what is given, which is God's self-revelation in its objective reality, Jesus Christ...We cannot compare the fact of Christ with other facts, nor can we deduce the fact of Christ from our knowledge of other facts. The fact of Christ comes breaking into the continuity of our human knowledge as an utterly distinctive and unique fact, which we cannot understand in terms of other facts, which we cannot reduce to what we already know. It is a new and unique fact without analogy anywhere in human experience or knowledge.

And yet Jesus Christ gives himself to be known as the object of our experience and knowledge, within our history and within our human existence - but when we know him there, we know him in terms of himself. We know him out of pure grace as one who gives himself to us and freely discloses himself to us. We cannot earn knowledge of Christ, we cannot achieve it, or build up to it. We have no capacity or power in ourselves giving us the ability to have mastery over this fact. In the very act of our knowing Christ he is the master, we are the mastered. He manifests himself and gives himself to us by his own power and agency, by his Holy Spirit, and in the very act of knowing him we ascribe all the possibility of our knowing him to Christ alone.

But let us note: it is only when we actually know Christ, know him as our personal savior and Lord, that we know that we have not chosen him but that he has chosen us; that it is not in our own capacity to give ourselves the power to know him...we acknowledge that in knowing God in Christ, we do so not by our own power, but by the power of God."

T.F. Torrance. R.I.P.

The brilliant Reformed theologian and player in the Church of Scotland, T.F. Torrance died yesterday. He was a student of the theology of Karl Barth, and a pioneer in the work of a theology of science. He wrote "The Trinitarian Faith" which I have only glanced through, but should read now that his death sparked my interest and he is officially inducted into the guild of Dead Theologians and the communion of saints. R.I.P.