Torrance's Last Book
I'm just beginning to go through T. F. Torrance's newest and last book, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, which is part two of two collections of his lectures on Christology and Soteriology at New College, University of Edinburgh. This is a quote from the introduction written by the editor, Torrance's student and nephew, Robert Walker.For Torrance, faith is what happens when through the Spirit we are brought to see personally that Christ had and has faith for us, that therefore we do not need to have a new and different faith in addition to his faith for us, and when we understand this then we realize that the faith we have is in fact the very faith of Christ himself which is now in our hearts by the Spirit. (lxxix)
I sometimes wonder if, with the faith of Christ to being so aligned with 'our' faith, that we can think of God being so in love with life, that God simply cannot resist living his life , the life of his Son, over and over again, in his son's and daughters lives, ie us! I mean, for example, is Christ so in us, by his Spirit, that he enjoys our joy, experiences our sadnesses and disappointments....Torrance finds the basis for the atonement in our ontological reconnection with the fallen humanity of Christ , but this is difficult to fathom for Christ is God-man, apparently. At our level of human to fellow human interaction, we have abolutely no experience as to what it is like to bear the burden of the 'other', to so act in the place of another, it just does not enter into common experience of our lives. For not knowing what is beating in my heart, most of the time, I feel not so much indispensible as a unique created being, but quite dispensible in the scheme of things, especially if one's life is led in such as way that there appears to be little by way of rhymne, pattern or reason for 'the things that happen' in one's life! Also, why is it that some of the most refreshing people appear to be those who appear to inexhaustibly go from one thing to the next, without a shred of evidence for contemplation or reflection upon what they are doing? Some people might find a vicarious God frightening, in that God then suffers over and over again , every time disaster strikes. In another frame of reference, some people find the idea of immortality frightening too!! In conclusion: I am glad Jesus in embracing our humanity is fit for me/us, for I am definately not fit for Him.
ReplyDeleteI have just read the current post , 8th Jan, on the subject of Time and the Resurrection,(by Torrance) and indeed it is only, i think, by the reappraisal of the dimension of time itself, and what that means for the alreay achieved 'future' coming to meet us in the present - by Christ, that can prevent me from lapsing into pessimism and futility which is all that I really felt I was really being offered.
ReplyDeleteWhat led me astry was having difficulty in holding together the thought that Christ as unique God-man suffered once and for all, (past tense) and continues to do so because, somehow, for God, as in the Torrance resurrection quote later in the blog, time past reaches time present and time past is really time future in the life of God. Really? this is something like how i understand with hope the Torrance resurrection quote ....
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