Scientia Dei (Part Three): T.F. Torrance (Section One)
[This is a lengthier section than the prior Barth section, which itself was regrettably long for a blog post. I have thus opted to divide this part on Torrance into further sub-sections. Thus for those blessedly patient people who are reading these posts, I apologize because as the section on Torrance was originally a single section, the divisions here necessary for a blog post are somewhat arbitrary. I hope the divisions do not affect readability too much.]
A physicist is the atom’s way of knowing about atoms
George
Wald[i]
The human soul is a kind of
horizon, and a boundary, as it were, between the corporeal world and the
incorporeal world, but not just a horizon, but also a frontier.
St.
Thomas Aquinas[ii]
The biological evolution has
transcended itself in the human ‘revolution.’
A new level or dimension has been reached…the transcendence does not
mean that a new force or energy has arrived from nowhere…no component of the
humanum can any longer be denied to animals, although the human constellation of these components [and their emergent
properties] certainly can.
Theodosius
Dobzhansky[iii]
Having
briefly covered Barth, it seems easiest to now turn to Torrance, who I think it
is fair to say is closer to Barth in execution than Pannenberg is, thus easing
the transition while we still have Barth freshly in our minds. After Torrance we will turn to Pannenberg and
a comparison of the German theologian with Torrance for points of overlap and
points of tension.
I say
Torrance is “closer to Barth than Pannenberg is,” but as we shall see, given
some of Pannenberg’s theories, this relative position marker is not the most
helpful descriptor. Not only is this
much like giving directions to the state of Oregon by claiming “its that state
between Canada and Mexico,” but also we must keep in mind that neither
Pannenberg’s nor Torrance’s theology can be described merely in its relative
position to Barth. This is perhaps why
we get several different descriptions of Torrance’s relation to Barth’s program
in regards to a scientific theology in the secondary literature, because as a
descriptor it does not sufficiently encapsulate the multiple influences upon
Torrance, or is even representative of the trajectory of his own project. Thus Ted Peters describes Torrance as
“extending the Barthian heritage into the theology-science interaction,”[iv]
while Alister McGrath has a somewhat different interpretation, and suggests that
“Torrance’s position [on the natural sciences]…must be regarded as the most
significant point of difference from Barth—especially when taken together with
the issue of natural theology, to which it is closely linked conceptually.”[v] To both of these positions I think we will do
best to stick with Daniel Hardy, who offers a third position, which appears to
encompass both Peters and McGrath’s slightly different takes, noting that
Torrance is not interested in Barth (or Calvin) per se, but he is “attracted by the possibility for theology which
their approaches exemplify, the possibility of a scientific theology.”[vi] He appropriates them as it suits his own
interests.
Thus,
despite the fact that Torrance often represents himself as extending Barth’s
basic insights,[vii]
we must remember the issue here is not whether Torrance got Barth “right,” or
how much his scientific theology represents Barthianism.[viii] He himself was quite aware that whatever his
affinity with Barth, Barth’s lack of engagement with the natural sciences was
his greatest weakness.[ix] His relation to Barth in this presentation
remains a helpful heuristic nonetheless, as suggested in the opening
paragraphs, because it is illustrative of certain concepts at stake in the
discussion.
In April of
1952 an article ran in the Scotsman
by then Yale-philosopher Brand Blanchard, who accused Barth, Torrance, and Emil
Brunner of “irrationalism,” because they refused to allow human reason to stand
as an independent criterion in determining what is true. Even from the limited information we have
presented here on Barth we can see that this is not really a fair claim because
it begs the question of just what “rationality” is.[x] If by rational we mean: “that [methodology,
criteria, idea, or whatever] that allows one to see the truth,” then Barth is
hardly irrational because in the definitions of rationality as he has set them
up, the only way to the truth of God is by God’s own self-revelation. Independent human criteria, for Barth, would
precisely be irrational and unscientific. Blanchard’s criticism, replied Torrance, is
not really an argument against Barth or himself so much as it is a rhetorical
favoring of Blanchard’s particular presuppositions. Barth’s point, said Torrance, is that “human
rationality must find its true meaning outside of itself…and not in any sort of
idealism…or existentialism.”[xi]
Torrance
thus is in a basic agreement with the scientific character of Barth’s theology
as we outlined above. It is evident,
too, that Torrance’s doctrine of the Trinitarian God and the incarnation of the
Son are fundamental and not accidental to the characteristics of his scientific
theology, much as was Barth’s:
I myself like to think of the doctrine of the
Trinity as the ultimate ground of
theology knowledge of God, the basic
grammar of theology, for it is there that we find our knowledge of God
reposing upon the final Reality of God himself, grounded in the ultimate
relations intrinsic to God’s own Being, which governs and controls all true knowledge of him from beginning
to end.[xii]
He writes that any form of scientific
knowledge, which includes Christian theology, must be reached “strictly in
accordance with the nature (kata physin)
of the reality being investigated, that is, knowledge of it reached under the
constraint of what it actually and essentially is in itself, and not according
to arbitrary convention (kata thesin).”[xiii] Theology as a science cannot operate by
deductive or a priori theoretical
demands which define in advance the criteria by which an object is accessible
to investigation. Scientific
investigation always proceeds a
posteriori. Torrance follows this
logic and concludes “thus for theological knowledge at all levels God is its
one controlling and ultimate object.”[xiv] Everything hinges on the reality of God’s
self-communication to us in Jesus Christ.[xv]
The concept of homoousios is of the
utmost importance in Torrance’s scientific theology.[xvi] The homoousios
for the Nicene theologians, says Torrance, “was both a hermeneutical and
theological instrument,” which allowed them to affirm
that what God is “towards us” and “in the midst of
us,” in and through the Word made flesh, is that He is really Himself, that He is in the internal relations of his
transcendent being the very same Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that He is in His
revealing and saving activity in time and space toward mankind.[xvii]
And
again:
The homoousion
crystallizes the conviction that while the incarnation falls within the
structures of our spatio-temporal humanity in this world, it also falls within
the Life and Being of God…Jesus Christ is not a mere symbol…etched from God,
but God in his own Being and Act come among us…the homoousion is the ontological and epistemological linchpin of
Christian theology.[xviii]
Yet
it is here that Torrance begins to diverge from Barth. Whereas for Barth this principle of
investigation according to the nature of the object led more or less to the
isolation of theology from other disciplines, as we saw, Torrance begins to orchestrate
how fields of inquiry might relate to one another through the idea of
incarnation and the fact that God has revealed Himself as Christ in the structures of space and time to
which we are bound: “the only knowledge possible for us is that which he
mediates to us in and through the world.
We do not and cannot know God in disjunction from his relation to this
world, as if the world were not his creation or the sphere of his activity
toward us.”[xix] Thus the homoousion
as a rule of interpretation for the incarnation means that in order to elaborate
a theological science we must operate
within the “triadic relation,” of God/man/world or God/world/man, “for it is
this world unfolding under man’s scientific inquiries which constitutes the
medium in which God makes himself known and in which man may express knowledge
of Him.”[xx] To circumvent an understanding of the world,
or in other words to turn the triadic relation into a dyadic one of God/man, is
to avoid a scientific theology and lapse into a mythological mode of thinking
which values things not on the basis of their own objective ontological reality
but only on their symbolic value as they effect an inward response in us.[xxi] It is, moreover, a sort of docetism which
denies the physicality of the incarnation in the world, and its implications,
creating a fundamentally dualist mode of bifurcating spirit and mind from
matter.[xxii] The triadic relation does not mitigate the
principle that investigation must proceed “according to nature,” however:
Theological science and natural science have their
own proper and distinctive objectives to pursue, but their work inevitably
overlaps, for they both respect and operate through the same rational
structures of space and time, while each develops special modes of
investigation, rationality, and verification in accordance with the nature and
the direction of its distinctive field.
But since each of them is the kind of thing it is as a human inquiry
because of the profound correlation between human knowing and the space-time
structures of creation, each is in its depth akin to the other…natural science
and theological science are not opponents but partners before God, in a service of God in which each may learn
from the other how better to pursue their
own distinctive function.[xxiii]
Reading
this, however, one becomes somewhat reminiscent of Brunner’s similar language
of a “point of contact,” between man and God, given Torrance’s language of
“inevitable overlap,” “correlation,” and of theology and science as
“partners.” Granting Torrance’s
continued emphasis of investigative procedures “according to nature,” what
exactly then is the relation between
theology and natural science in Torrance?
Here we come to his reformulation of natural theology. This is not a conscious movement away from
Barth, however because Torrance believes not only that the way he restructures
natural theology alleviates Barth’s objections, but that his own reformulation
is actually latent in Barth’s
thought. “What Barth objects to in
natural theology,” he writes, “is not its rational structure as such, but its independent character, i.e. the
autonomous rational structure which it develops on the ground of ‘nature alone’
in abstraction from the active self-disclosure of the living God.”[xxiv] Torrance thus notes that one of Barth’s most
fundamental objections to natural theology is the human tendency to use such
natural knowledge to justify himself over against the grace of God.[xxv] Barth fears that natural theology will be
treated (as it often has been) as a route to knowledge of God valid independently
from revelation, under conditions we ourselves have set. More importantly Barth fears the historical
tendency to then allow this natural knowledge, once supposedly achieved, to set
the terms and limits of the discussion in which revelation and doctrine
appear—thereby creating a Procrustean bed into which orthodox insights are
awkwardly fitted.[xxvi]
Or, put
another way, if the God whom we have actually come to know through Jesus Christ
really is Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit in his own eternal and undivided Being, “then what are we to make of an
independent natural theology that will terminate not upon the Being of the
Triune God…but upon some being of God in general? Natural theology by its very
operation abstracts the existence of God from his act, so that if it does not
begin with deism, it imposes deism on theology.”[xxvii] The world seen as “pure nature,” viewed
independently of revelation does not speak
of God, or at the most it suggests a remote designer. As such Torrance
approaches this problem head on by arguing that natural theology has a place within the orbit of revealed theology:
Barth can say that theologia naturalis is included and brought to light within theologia revalata, for in the reality
of divine grace there is included the truth of the divine creation. In this sense Barth can interpret and claim
as true the dictum of St. Thomas that grace does not destroy nature but
perfects and fulfills it, and can go on to argue that the meaning of God’s
revelation becomes manifest to us as it brings into full light the buried and
forgotten truth of the creation. In
other words, while knowledge of God is grounded in his own intelligible
relation to us, it requires for its actualization an appropriate rational
structure in our cognizing of it, but that rational structure does not arise
unless we allow our minds to fall under the compulsion of God’s being who he
really is in the act of his self-revelation and grace, and as such cannot be
derived from an analysis of our autonomous subjectivity.[xxviii]
This
is a dense passage so let me summarize its key points. Knowledge of the natural
sciences can be appreciated when viewed
from the perspective of the incarnation, that is, when nature is “viewed
as” creation by allowing natural theology to be controlled within the ambit of
revealed theology.[xxix] In this manner the structures of our thought
which see God through creation, are not spawned from our hubris or
self-assertion, but are “grounded in God’s intelligible relation to us,” i.e.
the incarnation. Torrance gives an analogy
via Einstein:
In order to explain and develop Barth’s position
here, let me borrow an analogy from Einstein’s essay Geometry and Experience. The
rise of four-dimensional geometries of space and time has revealed to us that
Euclidean geometry is an idealization, a distorting abstraction of geometry
from experience or from empirical reality, in which it has been erected into a
self-contained conceptual system on its own, pursued as a purely theoretic
science antecedent to physics, in which we develop our actual knowledge of the
world. Thus it is evident that physics
as we now pursue it in the spatio-temporal structures of the real world, cannot
be subjected to the framework of Euclidean geometry without radical distortion
and loss of its essential dynamic and material content. Rather geometry must be put at the heart of
physics, where it is pursued in indissoluble unity with physics as the
sub-science of its inner rational or epistemological structure… As such,
however, the character of geometry changes, for it takes on the character of a
natural science, that is, a science natural to the space-time structures of the
real world. There it remains
geometry—but not as a conceptual system complete in itself, for it is
consistent as geometry only as it is completed beyond itself in the material
content of physics.[xxx]
In
the same manner Torrance says, we must bring natural theology “within the body
of positive theology,” and pursue it in rigorous accordance to the self
disclosure of God.[xxxi] No longer extrinsic, but now intrinsic to the
actual knowledge of God “[natural theology] will function as the essential substructure within theological science.”[xxxii] Torrance argues that this is essentially
Barth’s position as well, though Barth himself was not consistent because he
withdrew from positive interaction with the sciences. Torrance considers this a mistake because if
what he has just elaborated is true, “I…believe that there must be a deeper
connection between the basic concepts of theological science and natural
science than he [Barth] would seem to allow.”[xxxiii]
To
summarize so far, what we have is Torrance’s concept of a “stratified”
universe. Whereas with Barth the
methodology of investigation kata physin or
“according to nature,” led to the general isolation of theology from other
disciplines which, by such a definition, would have completely different
methodology, goals, and conclusions given the objective differentiation of
their subjects, Torrance, while maintaining the “according to nature,”
differentiation relates all these different inquiries of knowledge together by
seeing them as hierarchical strata
within a single field of knowledge.
The new science characterized by Einstein and Polanyi, says Torrance, is moving
steadily away from “old fashioned science,” which attempts to explain higher
levels of order (i.e. consciousness) by lower levels of order (i.e. chemical
and physical properties of the brain).[xxxiv] Rather “the universe that is steadily being
disclosed to our various sciences is found to be characterized throughout time
and space by an ascending gradient of meaning in richer and higher forms of
order,” where “the lower levels are found to be explained in terms of higher,
invisible, intangible levels of reality.”[xxxv] Or as he says elsewhere, “each level is
coordinated with other levels ‘above’ or ‘below’ it in such a way that its own
organization is open at its boundary conditions to the one above it, that it is
finally explicable only through reference to the organization of that higher
level, and that it plays the same role in relation to the level below it.”[xxxvi]
[i] Quoted in Cunningham, Darwin’s Pious Idea p.159.
[ii] Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Liber III,
Pro.
[iii] Quoted in Ibid p.165.
[iv] Peters, “Theology and
Natural Science” p.657. It should be
noted that Peters is fully aware that Torrance differs from Barth in that he
does not believe theology can be methodologically isolated from the sciences.
[v] McGrath, T.F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography
p.197.
[vi] Hardy, “Thomas F. Torrance,”
p.74
[vii] T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980) p.87.
[viii]
In this way too we
should keep in mind the diverse array of other influences on Torrance, for
example the place of Athanasius is of the utmost importance. At one point when asked who was the most
important contemporary theologian on his own thinking Torrance replied
“Athanasius.” (I could not track down this reference, so it may be
legend). Yet other sources are just as
important, for example Irenaeus (Matthew Baker, “The Place of Irenaeus of Lyons
in Historical and Dogmatic Theology According to Thomas F. Torrance” in Participatio: The Journal for the Thomas F.
Torrance Theological Fellowship No.2 p.5-44) or Calvin and the Reformed
tradition (Alasdair Heron, “Calvin in the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance
(1949)” in Participatio No.2 p.44-64)
or the legacy of Scottish theology on Torrance, or H.R. Mackintosh in
particular (Robb Redmann, “Mackintosh, Torrance, and the Reformulation of
Reformed Theology in Scotland,” in Participatio
no.2 p.64-77; David Fergusson, “Torrance as a Scottish Theologian,” Participatio no.2 p.77-88). Many others like the philosopher and chemist
Michael Polanyi should be mentioned as well (though he will receive more
attention later in this essay).
[ix] T.F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame
of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological
Enterprise (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1998) p.x.
[x] That Barth changes what is
considered rational needs to be taken into consideration by anyone who attempts
to make the charge of fideism or irrationalism stick. This is a key point of McDowell, “Barth on
Natural Theology.”
[xi] Cited in Molnar, Theologian of the Trinity p.23n.96. C.f. Torrance, Ground and Grammar p.87.
[xii] Torrance, Ground and Grammar p.158-159.
[xiii] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical
Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988)
p.51.
[xiv] Thomas F. Torrance, Reality & Evangelical Theology: The
Realism of Christian Revelation (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2003) p.22.
[xvi] Helpful overviews of this
topic for Torrance include: Kang Phee Seng, “The Epistemological Significance
of homoousion in the Theology of
Thomas F. Torrance” in The Scottish
Journal of Theology 45 no.3 1992 p.341-366; and C. Baxter Kruger, “The
Doctrine of the Knowledge of God in the Theology of T.F. Torrance: Sharing in
the Son’s Communion with the Father in the Spirit,” in The Scottish Journal of Theology 43 No.3 1992 p.366-390.
[xvii] Torrance, Trinitarian Faith p.129-130.
[xviii] Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being,
Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996) p.95.
[xix] Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology p.24.
[xxii] Torrance, Trinitarian Faith p.47. As we shall see in a moment, the critique of
dualism absolutely saturates Torrance’s works.
[xxiii] Torrance, Ground and Grammar p.6-7.
[xxiv] Thomas F. Torrance, “The
Problem of Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth,” Religious Studies 6 (1970), p.128-129.
[xxvi] One of course immediately
thinks of Schleiermacher and neo-Protestant Liberalism. However at stake too is essentially the
entire gambit of the philosophical and theological environment after the
so-called “Wars of Religion,” in which many, including for example John Locke,
attempted to ease the apparent tensions between confessional religions by
analyzing the “natural,” and so “universal,” aspects of each in the name of
creating a common space of interaction.
[xxvii] Torrance, Ground and Grammar p.89.
[xxviii] Torrance, “The Problem of
Natural Theology,” p.129.
[xxix] This is the helpful way of putting
the matter by McGrath, Nature
p.132-133.
[xxx] Torrance, Ground and Grammar p.91-92.
[xxxiv] See: Ground and Grammar of Theology p.13, 142; Transformation and Convergence p.62; Divine and Contingent Order p.18-21.
[xxxv] Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology
p.ix. There is affinity between this
description and what has come to be called “supervenience theory,” namely that
not only do higher states of complexity (i.e. consciousness) exhibit properties
not explainable merely by their constituent parts, even if they only consist as
a relation of these parts, but also
once the higher order exists, it actually begins to exert its own type of
causal control on the lower orders (what is often called “top-down” causation).
[xxxvi] Torrance, Christian Frame p.60.
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