278 Book Reviews / 8 (2012) 241–280

Paul D. Molnar, Thomas F Torrance: Theologian of the (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) viii + 273 pp. £16.99. ISBN 978-0-7546-5229-8 (pbk).

Tom Torrance was a Professor of at the University of Edinburgh from 1952 to 1979. His doctoral studies had been under Karl Barth, and Barth had wanted Torrance to succeed him at Basle, but Torrance preferred to remain in Scotland. He can lay claim to be the most significant Scottish theologian of the twentieth century. His commitment to the of Scotland later led to his appointment as Moderator of its General Assembly. Torrance made substantial contributions to theology in three respects. First, he jointly edited the translation of Barth’s massive Church Dogmatics and launched the Scottish Journal of Theology. Secondly, he offered a sophis- ticated account of theological methodology, and the relation between sci- ence and theology, in a series of publications, beginning with what is perhaps his magnum opus, Theological Science. Thirdly, he wrote on patris- tics, and the theology of the Trinity, as a doughty champion of Athanasius and Chalcedonian . Paul Molnar’s book offers the first compre- hensive account of these latter areas. He provides a clear and systematic exposition. Torrance was part of a much wider twentieth-century movement to rediscover Trinitarian theology, and to place it at the heart of the overall architecture of . His distinctive approach entailed a pas- sionate reading and defence of St Athanasius, and in particular of the homoousion, that is the creedal claim that , as Son of , was ‘of the same being with the Father’. For Torrance, this was the cornerstone of all theology: the claim that Christians witness to the revelation of God as he truly is in his eternal reality. He regarded the Nicene homoousion as an equivalent in theology to the great scientific constants of nature, such as the speed of light. This interesting comparison has not received much attention from other theologians, mainly, it might be suggested, because not many of them have approached Torrance’s competence in understand- ing modern science. Alongside this emphasis upon the full of Jesus Christ, Torrance gave an equal emphasis to Christ’s humanity being fully shared with wider humanity. He regarded the temptation to view Christ’s humanity as differ- ent in kind from ours as a fatal flaw, with disastrous consequences in both the theology and practice of the Church. Theologically it led to the idea that Christ’s humanity was essentially an instrument which God used in order to reveal himself, and achieve salvation by the legally construed,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/174553112X630606 Book Reviews / Ecclesiology 8 (2012) 241–280 279 objectivised process of ‘penal substitution’. By contrast, Torrance wished to integrate atonement and incarnation, to see redemption won in Christ by God’s personal saving action as a man, and not just in human flesh. Torrance believed that post- penal substitutionary theories led either to limited atonement, or the modern reaction in logically derived universal- ism. Both curtailed the essential vision and impact of a pastoral and mis- sionary ministry. Torrance believed that a false view of Christ’s humanity lay behind the associated mistake in some of the atonement, wherein it is asserted that God is reconciled to the world, rather than the world being reconciled to God. He regarded the belief that in the atonement God is reconciled to be a sub-Christian reversion to pre-Christian ideas of a God who needs to be appeased and placated. The Triune God is always the subject of reconciliation, and not the object – an emphasis he shared with Barth. Like Karl Barth, Torrance was unusual, by today’s standards, in having spent ten years in parish ministry prior to his academic career. He took a particular interest in the theology of worship, and held that a belief that Jesus had an inherently sinless humanity led to Pelagian tendencies in wor- ship, as basically a human response to God’s objectified actions in Christ. By contrast, Torrance presented worship in Trinitarian terms as an anticipa- tory participation through the in the worship which the risen and ascended Christ leads before God in . The Orthodox world wel- comed much in his theology, and he was ecumenically honoured by appointment as a Proto-Presbyter in the Church at Alexandria. Molnar has given us a substantial and systematic account of Torrance’s Trinitarian theology, and Christology. The weakness lies in the rather cur- sory treatment of Torrance’s critics, and a virtual absence of any critical assessment by Molnar himself. In particular, the important work of Metro­ politan John Zizioulas is largely overlooked. Zizioulas sees Torrance as still too limited by a Western approach to the Trinity, through the ‘one being’ of God, and as failing to appreciate the ways in which the built upon Athanasius’ theology. By contrast, Torrance tended to regard the Cappadocian emphasis upon the Father as the source of the divine Being as a reversion to incipient , and the false projection into the Godhead of humanly conceived relationships. The dan- ger with Torrance, Zizioulas suggests, is that the great stress upon the ‘one being’ of the Godhead leads to a subtle de-personalising of God, against Torrance’s own intention.