Why follow Torrance?

In my previous post I attempted to sketch out T.F. Torrance's approach to theological knowledge.  Here I just want to outline a few reasons why I think this, or something very like it, is a good model for thinking about how to do theology.

1. Christ is central.  It is a sound theological instinct to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ in every aspect of thinking about God, to take every thought captive for obedience to him.  In Torrance's structuring of theological science, Christ is the focus at every level, and indeed he is the link between doxological piety and theological reflection.  He is our assurance that we are dealing with a real, objective truth - he is God in his revelation.  He is the one who ensures that our thoughts do not fly off into ungrounded speculation.  It is all about the Lord Jesus Christ, all the way through.

2. It doesn't leave behind or disparage the pre-conceptual knowledge of God in Christ.  It can be easy for theologians, who have wrestled with 'the Trinitarian grammar', to look down on the 'simple faith' of the average worshipping community, and to regard the piety of the average Christian as something that needs to be supplanted by a refined conceptual apparatus.  There is no supplanting in Torrance; rather, it seems to me, his system rightly puts theological science at the service of doxological piety.  The real knowledge of God, if you like, does not happen only as we progressively ascend the levels of theological purity; it happens on the ground, in praise and worship and preaching and sacrament.  There is no superior knowledge of God open to the theologian; just the same knowledge expressed conceptually.

3. It maintains that we do have real knowledge of God in himself, but that we approach this knowledge through God's revelation.  I think this is key.  In Torrance's stratified model, knowledge of God is not restricted to knowledge of the economy - that is to say, the work of God toward us in creation and redemption.  Rather, through the economy, we are enabled to see and understand something of God's life in himself.  God is not collapsed into his works, but neither is his life separated from his works.  It is the fact that Christ himself is truly God as well as truly man which makes this connection possible.  We see, as we reflect on Christ, the real inner life of God - the processions which stand behind the missions.  But we are not encouraged to speculate about this; we are encouraged to learn about God where God has elected to teach us, in the face of Jesus Christ.

For these three reasons, and probably more, I think Torrance is helpful here, and I'd commend his scheme to anyone.