Thomas F. Torrance

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Thomas F. Torrance bigraphy, stories - British theologian

Thomas F. Torrance : biography

30 August 1913 – 2 December 2007

Thomas Forsyth Torrance, MBE FRSE, (30 August 1913 – 2 December 2007), commonly referred to as T. F. Torrance, was a Scottish Protestant theologian. Torrance served for 27 years as Professor of Christian Dogmatics at New College, Edinburgh in 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. While he wrote many books and articles advancing his own study of theology, he also edited the translation of several hundred theological writings into English from other languages, including the English translation of the thirteen-volume, six-million-word Church Dogmatics of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, as well as John Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries. He was also a member of the famed Torrance family of theologians.

Torrance has been acknowledged as one of the most significant English-speaking theologians of the twentieth century, and in 1978, he received the prestigious Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion.http://www.templetonprize.org/previouswinner.html#torrance 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 Reformed and Eastern Orthodox Churches on the doctrine of the Trinity when a joint statement of agreement on that doctrine was issued between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Church 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 He retired from the University of Edinburgh in 1979, but continued to lecture and to publish extensively. Several influential books on the Trinity were published after his retirement: 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).

Theology and science

As indicated by the fact that he was awarded the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion in 1978, Torrance made singular contributions to the dialogue between science and theology. His contributions in this area led Alister McGrath to observe that many of those theologians he studied did not seem bothered by the fact that they had no first-hand knowledge of the method and norms of natural science, but wrote about science nonetheless! But it was different with Torrance. "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 In his groundbreaking book Theological Science, Torrance argued that theological and natural science held in common the same need to understand reality through our thoughts by pointing beyond ourselves and not letting our subjective experiences and knowledge distort the objective reality we are attempting to conceptualize. Theology and science should be seen as "allies in a common front where each faces the same insidious enemy, namely, man himself assuming the role of Creator . . ." (Torrance, Theological Science, xiii). As long as the dialogue is conceived to be between science and religion, Torrance contended, "we shall not escape from romantic naturalism." Instead, he insisted that we must focus on the dialogue between science and theology and thus between the "philosophy of natural science" and the "philosophy of theological science" because these two methods have in common the "struggle for scientific method on their proper ground and their own distinctive fields" (Torrance, Theological Science, xiii). Torrance did a great deal to foster this discussion in his books Space, Time and Incarnation and Space, Time and Resurrection where he showed the connections between the two sciences by allowing theology to understand what it means to think of God acting in new and distinctive ways within created time and space, while respecting the distinctive nature of creation itself in its fallen and reconciled condition. Torrance famously argued for a non-dualist and non-monist view of theology and science in the school of the renowned physicist and theologian John Philoponos (490-570) whose thinking stood in stark contrast to Aristotelian and Neoplatonic thinking which Torrance believed was harmful both to science and to theology. Such thinking led to ideas of God as an unmoved mover, and thus one who was not a living God capable of acting within creation without being conditioned by creation or limited by it. Torrance approved of Einstein, Maxwell and Polanyi in their attempts to hold together thought and reality, experience and ideas, instead of tearing them apart and believed that theologians could learn from this. Such unitary thinking in science, Torrance believed, could help theologians overcome Kantian and Cartesian dualism. His theology demonstrates exactly how he thought this should be done, especially as this relates to interpreting Scripture. When form and being are separated, as they are when our ideas are separated from objective reality, then it becomes impossible to know Jesus as he is in himself; we only know Jesus as he appeared to be to his followers and this leaves the door open to the idea that Jesus could be created and re-created according to people’s faith. This was especially problematic with respect to the risen Lord. When the chord is cut between idea and reality, then it is thought that the resurrection is only a mythological way of reflecting on the death of Jesus instead of as a description of a unique occurrence in his life history that enabled a true understanding of his person and work as recorded in the scriptures.