Reality & Evangelical Theology: The Realism of Christian Revelation
Overview
T. F. Torrance is widely recognized as one of our most important twentieth-century theologians. Scholars of Torrance suggest that Reality & Scientific Theology is one of his most accessible works. Torrance’s insights on Christian epistemology are remarkably relevant in light of recent discussions on realism and anti-realism in philosophy and theology. Torrance brilliantly sets forth no naive or even critical realism, but rather an evangelical realism—knowledge grounded in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He not only constructively argues the case for an evangelical realism but compares and contrasts theological knowledge with natural scientific knowledge, and shows how the Bible can function authoritatively in a fragmented church. This edition of Reality and Evangelical Theology includes an in-depth foreword that contextualizes Torrance’s seminal theological work in light of recent debates over postmodern and postcritical hermeneutics to Scripture. It will handsomely repay engagement (or reengagement) by theologians, philosophers, students and thoughtful pastors.
Top Highlights
“Thus the phenomenalist assumption that there is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses, together with a dualist theory of knowledge in which empirical and theoretical factors are externally connected together, has had to be rejected and a realist, unitary theory of knowledge in which empirical and theoretical factors are held to inhere inseparably in one another has taken its place. At the same time the ultimate belief in the reality and intelligibility of the universe independent of our perceiving and conceiving of it, together with a profound recognition of its contingent nature, has been massively reinforced.” (Pages 55–56)
“Christian theology arises within and is bounded by a triadic relation in which God, man, and world are involved together in a movement of God’s personal and creative interaction with man whereby he makes himself known to him within the objectivities and intelligibilities of the empirical world. We have also considered the fact that if we abandon a phenomenalist and observationalist theory of knowledge and its damaging bifurcation between sign and reality signified and between form and content, we return to a more natural and realist view of signification and communication in which language is used and understood through its semantic function in objective reference to realities independent of it.” (Page 84)
“Hence if we are properly to interpret and understand biblical statements, we must learn to trace back their objective reference beyond what is written to their source in the infinite depth of Truth in the Being of God, and if we are to do that we must follow the economic line of divine action that gave rise to them in space and time and continues to govern their meaning.” (Page 109)
- Title: Reality & Evangelical Theology: The Realism of Christian Revelation
- Author: Thomas F. Torrance
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Print Publication Date: 2003
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Revelation › Christianity; Religion and science; Truth › Religious aspects--Christianity
- ISBNs: 9781592441648, 1592441645
- Resource ID: LLS:RLTYVNGLCLTH
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:44:43Z
Thomas F. Torrance (August 30,1913–December 2, 2007) was a Protestant Christian theologian and professor of Christian dogmatics for 27 years at the University of Edinburgh. Torrance was influential in the dialogue between science and theology.
He began studying in Edinburgh in 1931, focusing on classics and philosophy. At that time his own realist views of philosophy, theology, and morality started to develop, and they continued to do so as he moved to the study of theology at the Faculty of Divinity in 1934. From 1939 to 1940 Torrance studied at Oriel College, Oxford. He was ordained as minister on March 20, 1940.
He has authored several works, including Divine and Contingent Order, Ground and Grammar of Theology, and The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons. Besides writing many books and articles, Torrance also translated several hundred theological writings into English from other languages, including the thirteen-volume, six-million-word Church Dogmatics of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (co-edited with G.W. Bromiley).