After reading the first two chapters of Freedom, Necessity and the Knowledge of God you all already know that both Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance reject any sort of traditional natural theology. Such a view not only leads to a misunderstanding of who God is as confessed by all Christians in the Nicene Creed, but it also leads to a misunderstanding of who we are as sinners reconciled to God by Christ’s forgiving grace. In light of revelation, Barth and Torrance claim we know that we are human beings created by God for fellowship with God. But we also know that, in light of the sin of Adam and Eve, we are fallen creatures (sinners) who, even at our best, are at enmity with God because of our self-will. Self-will for both theologians refers to our attempts (whether knowingly or not) to live independently of God by relying on ourselves. This chapter will consider natural theology again by focusing specifically on a Christian theological anthropology (view of humanity) that takes sin and salvation seriously as these are disclosed to us by the revelation of God in the cross and resurrection of Christ himself. So, you will be reading about my analysis of Torrance’s “new” natural theology in relation to Barth’s rejection of all forms of natural theology. You will also encounter Torrance’s own rejection of traditional natural theology.
Here then is the essay question related to chapter three of Freedom, Necessity and the Knowledge of God:
Please write a 4-to-5-page double-spaced essay (or longer if necessary) discussing exactly why I think there is a major problem embedded in Torrance’s attempt to construct his “new” natural theology. Make sure you present an exact understanding of natural theology and of Torrance’s “new” natural theology. Be sure to explain what I think he actually wanted to accomplish with that “new” natural theology. Then explain why I think Alex Irving’s view does not help matters and why I think the views of Alister McGrath and Ray Anderson are problematic as well. It would be helpful if, in your essays, you discuss at least 5 of the 8 questions I will put up in Canvas for you to consider. I would especially recommend that everyone consider answering question 8.
List of Terms that will help in reading Chapter Six
1) Quia non sermoni res sed rei est sermo subiectus” means that realities are not subject to words, but word are subject to realities. In other words our language does not determine the reality of God. Rather, the reality of God determines the truth of our words.
2) When Torrance says that our concepts enable us to grasp something of God’s inner relations, he inadvertently ascribes a power to our concepts that he really does not believe they have because he also claimed that “our concepts must point away from themselves toward God” since “none of our concepts in theology are true in themselves but only as they are grounded in revelation [that is in the Word of God incarnate in Christ and acting by enabling our faith in him and thus giving us knowledge of the “eternal Trinity”] (211).
3) Imageless thinking refers to thinking that allows the reality of God to speak to us through the words and images we use instead of us projecting our images into God based on our experiences whether they be religious or not.
4) Mimetic refers to the attempt to describe God based on our own cultural and religious experiences instead of allowing God alone to define who God is in himself and in history.
5) Perichoresis is a Greek word used to refer to the relations of the three Persons of the Trinity within the one being of God such that Father, Son and Spirit so interpenetrate each other that one never existed and could never be known or understood without the other. Thus if one claimed to know the Holy Spirit but was not thinking of Christ the incarnate Word who is one in being with the Father and the Spirit, then one would not be speaking about the Holy Spirit confessed in the Nicene Creed at all.
6) Mythology: projected ideas from ourselves to grasp reality without allowing reality to shape our ideas.
7) Arianism: a fourth century heresy that is alive and well today which held that there was one ultimate God, and that Jesus Christ his Son was subordinate to that one ultimate God and thus was not eternal and one in being with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This view undermines the deity of Christ, the meaning of sin and of salvation as well as the proper understanding of the Trinity as referring to the one being of God in three Persons.
8) Homoousion: of one substance or one in being. So the Father and Son within the eternal Trinity (the immanent Trinity are one in being—that is why the Nicene Creed says that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father and that the Son is God from God and true God). Those phrases were added to the Creed in 325 to refute Arianism.
9) Homoousial refers to the relations of oneness in being between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
10) Hypostatic Union refers to the fact that the second Person of the Trinity (the Son or Word of the Father) became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man without ceasing to be God in order to overcome sin and reconcile humanity to God. This means that Jesus’s human existence has its reality in his being as the Word or Son. It has no independent existences. Two Greek words have been used to explain this: enhypostasis: Jesus’s humanity is grounded in the Person of the Word or Son and has no existence apart from that his divine personhood. Anhypostasis: refers to the fact that without the Word there would be no human Jesus at all. Jesus is both truly divine and truly human in the one Person of the Son of God incarnate and the two natures cannot be separated or confused (Council of Chalcedon 451).
11) Hypostasis refers to each person of the Trinity. Hypostases is simply the plural referring to the persons of the Trinity.
12) Epistemological inversion: a phrase used by Torrance to stress that when we really know God through God’s own self-revelation in his Word and Spirit then what is primary is his knowing us and choosing us to be his covenant partners and not our knowing of him.
13) In se and ad extra: God in himself (in se) and acting outside himself as creator, reconciler and redeemer (ad extra).
14) Docetic rationalizing means undermining or undercutting the full humanity of Jesus.
15) “intra-trinitarian relations in God” refers to the immanent or eternal Trinity, that is, to who God is in himself apart from us and in relation to us in the economy (acting ad extra).
16) Exitus and reditus means exit and return.
