T.F. Torrance sees theology as a science. This does not mean that theology proceeds by a method analagous to the natural sciences; for Torrance, the essence of a true science is that it allows the nature of the object being investigated to determine the method of investigation. A science is radically open to external, objective reality, to the point of allowing that reality to determine the very approach to knowledge. Theological science, for Torrance, is at one level similar to natural science - it approaches an objective reality and makes enquiry about it - but on another level utterly distinct from natural science - because the nature of the object investigated in theology is unique, and therefore the approach must be unique.
Torrance maintains that the object of theological science is primarily Jesus Christ, 'God in his revelation'. It is in Christ that God makes himself objective for us, in our human sphere, in our space and time and history. Theological science, then, must allow Christ to shape its investigations.
Theological knowledge, Torrance maintains, occurs at three levels; he is drawing here on the work of Michael Polanyi. At the most basic, but also most important, level, God is known in personal experience, through the believer's encounter with Christ and through the liturgical and ecclesial life. This knowledge of God is not conceptually refined, being rather lived than analysed, but it is profound - the person who encounters God in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is caught up in a deep, albeit implicit, knowledge of who God is. The focus here is Christ, and the awareness of genuinely seeing God in Christ.
Christ remains the focus at the second level. Here the believer's experience of Christ is analysed and clarified conceptually. For Torrance, the process of doctrinal development which culminated in the Counicll of Nicaea represents the paradigmatic move to the second level. Aware that in Christ she encounters God himself, the church moves to conceptualise this knowledge. The homoousion - the genuine identity in being between Christ and the Father - is central here. It allows a movement from an informal knowledge that God was at work in Christ to a conceptual understanding of the missions of the Son and the Spirit in the Triune work of redemption. That is to say, through the homoousion the believer is able to conceptualise the work of the economic Trinity clearly, and what was implicit in the experiential knowledge of the first stage is made explicit; an experiential knowledge of the Trinity becomes a doctrine of the Trinity.
At the third level, further conceptual clarification takes place. Once again, the homoousion is central and the person of Christ is the focus, but at this level we are driven to understand that it is not simply God in his relations to us that is revealed in Christ, but that if Christ is truly of one being with the Father then we are shown God in himself. The immanent life of God must be the ultimate foundation of God's work towards us; the processions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are revealed as the ontological ground of the missions in the work of redemption. A further clarification of our concepts occurs at this level, and indeed a simplification as we move through the works of God to consider their ultimate ground in the very being of God.
Two things are particularly critical for Torrance in this account. Firstly, Christ is central throughout. For Torrance, the homoousion is the central commitment of Christian metaphysics. It is through the genuine oneness of Christ with God the Father that we can be confident that our experience of Christ leads to true knowledge of the real God. We are not, in the Lord Jesus, having to do with a reality outside of God which may or may not point towards God, but with God himself in his revelation. It is because of the homoousion that we can move from the evangelical experience of God's presence and work in Christ to the conceptual clarity that is provided by the doctrine of the Trinity, both economic and ultimately immanent. The homoousion means that we are not speculatively reaching up toward God in our conceptual analysis, but we are (as genuine theological scientists) following the nature of the object presented to us.
Second, the three levels of theological knowledge strengthen and support one another. They are interrelated through Christ, who is central at every level. In particular, the 'higher' levels do not leave behind the pre-conceptual, doxological knowledge of God in Christ; in fact, this basic experiential Christianity remains the most important level of theological knowledge and the most profound. Whatever conceptual clarifications may take place, they cannot displace or undermine the life of faith and the implicit theology expressed in piety and worship. Perhaps we might say that whilst the third level provides the ultimate conceptual grounding for the other levels, there is a sense in which the first level provides the existential ground for the others. Ontologically, of course, the ground for all three is the Lord Jesus Christ in his reality as the revelation of God.
I want to unfold some of the implications of this approach in another post. If you want to dig into Torrance more in the meantime, this little sketch is heavily reliant on 'The stratification of knowledge in the thought of T.F. Torrance' by Benjamin Myers (Scottish Journal of Theology 61(1): 1-15).
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