Transcript
I know that we're in a present period setting, but I'd still like to invite you to move forward and enjoy a more intimate atmosphere. We're privileged to have Dr. Torrance with us this afternoon speaking to us on Karl Hart and the Gospel of the Incarnate and Risen Lord today. Dr. Torrance. Let me put it this way. A former professor of our seminary, Dr. Elmer Hungerhausen, once said that he did not like to be referred to as
a professor emeritus because he meant out of it and emeritus meant you deserved it. Dr. Torrance is professor at large of Christian dogmatics of New College, the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. And it's the author of many books, including the most recently published Reality and Evangelical Theology. Before we begin, let's have a word of prayer. Most gracious God, we humble ourselves before you and before the teachers which you set in front of us. We ask for your
guidance and your wisdom as we see your word more clearly. Your word risen and incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Thank you for your kind words. Welcome. If one is to assess the immense significance of Karl Barth, one can do that in a number of ways. One can do it in this way by saying that Karl Barth, a single man, has had more influence on the Roman Catholic Church than 400 years
of Protestantism. And that really is the measure of his immense power and depth and grasp of theology. And I'm sure that is the way in which history will finally take account of him. But today I would like to begin by indicating the significance of Karl Barth within the perspective of modern science. And I do this by picking out two major features of his thought. First, Barth made his own the central issue of theology in the early
church and in the Reformation. And he saw that the Reformation and the Nicene theology were concerned with essentially the same issue. Now as he expounded it, he said the central issue was the oneness in revelation and in grace between what God is in himself and what he is toward us. The oneness in revelation and in grace between what God is toward us and what he is in himself. The Fathers of the church emphasized the fact that
God is in himself one with what he reveals toward us. And the Reformers emphasized the fact that in grace God is himself the giver of what he gives. The Fathers said God does not reveal something of himself, it is himself that he reveals. And the Reformers said that in grace God does not give us something about himself, it is himself that he gives. So whether you look at it from the side of the Nicene theology or
you look at it from the side of the Reformation, we see that the central issue, the hinge upon which Christian theology in ancient or modern times depends is just this oneness. The self-communication of God to us through Jesus Christ and in his spirit is one with and grounded with the inner being of God. It's grounded in the intelligibility of God's own eternal being. And that is why the doctrine of the Trinity is so central. Now
you say, how is that like modern science? Well look at it in this way. When Carpard took this position, bringing the Fathers and the Reformers together, here we have on his part a massive rejection of the modern Kantian idea that you do not know things in themselves or in their internal relations, but you only know things as they appear to us. Now I say this deliberately because there are a whole host of people in the United
States, like crazy guys like Cornelius Van Til, who accused Barthes of Kantian rationalism, which shows he doesn't begin to understand the simplest ABC of what Barthes was talking about. Barthes' whole position is a radical rejection of the Kantian idea that you don't know things in themselves, but only know as they appear to us. What Barthes is saying, you do know things in themselves in their internal relations, and that's precisely what we learn in the Gospel, precisely
what we learn from the Fathers and in the Reformers. And so that is the doctrine of the homo usion, or the consubstantial relation between the Son and the Father. What God is toward us in Jesus Christ, he is inherently, eternally, antecedently in his own being. What God is eternally in his own being, he is toward us in Jesus Christ, so that in him the self-communication of God through Christ and in the Spirit reveals an identity,
a oneness. Now, we can see the significance of that if you turn to natural science, because with Einstein and relativity theory we have had to advance precisely in the same way by rejecting the Kantian idea that you don't know things in themselves, but you only know them as they appear to us. The development of modern atomic theory, or relativity theory, or quantum theory, but particularly as it's developed in relativity theory, tells us that we really do
know things in their internal structures and relations, and not simply in their appearances toward us. So we are able to grasp reality in its own inner intelligibility, its own inner structure, and it is that that controls our understanding of it and grounds our objective knowledge of it. And so both Karl Barth and Albert Einstein stand for the fact that in knowledge, whether in physics or in theology, we are concerned with the inheritance of form and being,
the inheritance of matter and structure, the inheritance of empirical and theoretical factors together. At all levels of our knowing, the empirical and the theoretical factors belong together. We don't have any facts that are not intrinsically intelligible. We don't have any theories that are not empirically loaded. The empirical and the theoretical always adhere in one another. And so you can say that the basic epistemology of Karl Barth and the basic epistemology of Albert Einstein are here the
same. They're different because one is concerned with physics and the other is concerned with the knowledge of God, although they are same also because both work with our relations with God or with nature within the structures of space and time. Well, looked at in that way, we can see then that Karl Barth stands shoulder to shoulder with the immense reconstruction of the foundations of scientific knowledge that has come about with modern atomic and relativity theory. Now,
the second point I'd like to emphasize is that with Karl Barth, we have an integration of the dynamic and the empirical factors in nature and in our knowing of them. So far as the fathers were concerned, Karl Barth was concerned to grasp the fact that the fathers were concerned with the knowledge of the being of God in his acts. But unfortunately, owing to the development of Byzantine and Augustinian thought, the acts of God became detached from
his being so that you had a kind of static theology in the late Middle Ages. Now, the reformers came along and in line with the whole shift in outlook from medieval to modern times where we're concerned with energy and force and event and so on, the reformers were concerned with the acts of God in his being. And that's why they emphasized atonement, redemption, salvation, and so on. But unfortunately, owing again to the massive dualism built into
our Western culture through Galileo and Newton, the being of God became detached from his acts. And so a great deal of modern theology runs out into the sand with theology of timeless events, the Ereignisse as the Germans call them. And so what Karl Barth did, however, was to take the patristic emphasis upon the being of God in his acts and the reformation emphasis upon the acts of God in his being and to bring them together so
that we know God in his being and act and act and being. And once you've done that, you have radically changed the whole nature and structure of your understanding of God. Now, in this respect, Karl Barth anticipated by many years the development of particle theory today. As you know, one of the main problems we've had for a long time, going right back to Maxwell, as a matter of fact, is how to bring together the so-called
undulatory theory of light and the so-called corpuscular theory of light. Here you have a dynamic wave view and you have a substance particle view. How do you bring them together? And it's only in our own day when we find that particles are not separated particles, but particles are knots of energy in a field of force. And the relation between particles is more important or as important as the particles themselves that we find the dynamic and
the ontic now becoming integrated and so that the undulatory and the corpuscular views of light are now coming together. Now, that's exactly what Karl Barth did in his theology. So although you have a different field, it guards interaction with us in space and time from that which we have in physics. Nevertheless, Karl Barth had already anticipated by some 30 years the immense advance in knowledge that had taken place in physics. So that both Barth and the
physicists today are concerned with thinking in such a way that the ontic and the dynamic are always found together. And this is a massive recovery of ontology in a dynamic sense. And that's true Karl Barth's theology. Well, I've indicated then the significance as I see it, one can see it from many perspectives I said, but from this perspective, the immense significance of Karl Barth, not only for theology, but in the perspective of the whole advance of
modern scientific knowledge. All right, why then has Karl Barth not appreciated as he should be? Why is he so often misunderstood still? Now, I could ask the same question about Einstein because this is also true of Einstein. I find to this day, masses of people don't begin to understand the fundamental implications of general relativity theory, for example. And even many physicists will say, oh, yes, we take Einstein's equations, but we're not going to have anything to
do with epistemology. Now, that's a fundamental failure to understand even Einstein's equations. Why is it that even Einstein himself is persistently resisted again and again in whole areas of thought? Why is it that Karl Barth's thought is persistently resisted? Now, the reason I think is this. While both Einstein and Barth made enormous advances in a deeper grasp of reality, physical reality and theological reality, the framework, the general framework of knowledge, the social cultural framework remains basically
unchanged. And if you try to understand Einstein within an unchanged framework of knowledge, then you have all kinds of problems. And from my point of view, this is one of the main problems of quantum theory to this day. An attempt to understand quantum theory within the parameters of Newtonian definitions of locality in space and time creates problems. And Einstein said, you can't do that. So we still have to take Einstein dead seriously in quantum theory. And
we will persistently misunderstand quantum theory. It's no good bringing in something like Bell's theorem to try and explain that. The problem is to get rid of the false way of looking at things and to bring relativity right into the understanding of spatial and temporal location in quantum theory. Now, the same thing is true of Barth. If you take, say, a liberal theology, it doesn't begin to understand Barth because it works with a whole framework of dualist
epistemology. It can't begin to understand Barth because Barth's whole position depends upon the homoousion, the oneness between God and his revelation. Whereas the liberal theology works with the exact opposite and therefore cannot begin to understand the deity of Christ. It cannot begin to understand the relation of the humanity to the deity of Christ. But Barth's way of thinking, as certainly as I've shown, fundamentally in line with and integrated with the whole advance in our knowledge, whereas
liberal theology is still tied away back to the 19th, 18th, 17th century, has begun really to break out of an obsolete framework of thought. But now, let me go back to Einstein for a moment. Michael Polanyi found this problem very, very sharp in England in 1940. And he found that the social-cultural framework militated so strongly against the kind of science that he was pursuing in chemistry and the radical re-understanding of nature that came from
Einstein, that he determined to devote a good deal of his life to changing the framework of knowledge. And so later on, when he got the chance, he switched chairs and devoted the last 20 or 30 years of his life to attacking problems in the social coefficient of our knowledge in economics and in social sciences and I think that he has done more than any other to transform the framework of our knowledge within which we can appreciate
the profound depth, the profound implications of post-Ansteinian physics. Now, hardly anybody has done this for theology. I tried to do a bit of it. I'm concerned to show that in order to understand people like Barth, we have to tackle the fundamental mistakes and errors, the anachronisms still built into our received framework of thought. And until we do that, we can't really appreciate Barth. Now, Barth himself, unfortunately, did not work out the implications of what he
told us for the framework of thought. He realized, as I spoke to him about this, it had to be worked out if Barth was to be appreciated. And I believe that it is as we can work out the implications of that for the general framework of thought that we shall find Barth coming much more into appreciation and in a way I think that it would utterly stagger us today. I'm sure that's going on and will happen.
But now, before I go further, let me take another example of the kind of problem I've been working with. Look at the Roman Catholic Church. In the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church has made immense advance in theology. It recovered an understanding of the ancient Catholic Church, it recovered an understanding of the mediation of Christ, an understanding of the homo-ousion, the consubstantiality in relation to the saving work of Christ, and it applied it to
the liturgy and applied it to the mission. And in fact, the Second Vatican Council stresses the mediation of Christ in a stronger way than is found in any Reformation liturgy, except perhaps for several pages in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Certainly as far stronger than a Reformed or Lutheran liturgy. And yet the Roman Catholic Church is faced with an immense problem. Why is it that hosts of people, Roman Catholics in this country, in France, in
Holland, for example, to name three countries where this is so rabid, think that what happened in the Vatican Council was the discovery of the relativism of Catholic doctrine. The relativism of Catholic doctrine. You see, you remember at the beginning of the Vatican Council, Pope John said, one of the fathers, that they must learn to distinguish between the substance of the faith and the formulations of the faith. And the formulations of the faith are subordinate to the
substance. But in the context of social science, in the social cultural context, thousands and tens of thousands of Roman Catholics, thinkers, priests, nuns, have interpreted that to mean the relativism of Christian doctrine. Now, in the social sciences, this is the commonest mistake we find. The social scientists interpret Einstein's theory of relativity in terms of relativism. Now, it's the exact opposite of relativism. I grant that this is difficult because I don't think that Einstein should have used
the word relativity. Because it made for bad communication. But what relativity means is this. Relativity says it uncovers the fact that inherent in nature, inherent in the universe, there is a relatedness, a dynamic relatedness, which is there independent of our knowing of it, independent of our conceiving of it. And when we uncover that, then it confers relativity upon our expressions of it. Now, we have to develop mathematical formulations like invariances as instruments through which we apprehend
the inherent objective invariance in nature. But when we apprehend the inherent objective invariance in nature, that tells us that our expressions of it are inadequate. As Einstein said, if mathematical propositions are certain, they are not true. If they are true, they are not certain. So that relativity theory, precisely by the depth of its truth, by grasping reality in its depth, Einstein says, tells us that all our expressions of it are inadequate and are relative. Now, that
is exactly what the Vatican Council did. It shows that when we really grasp God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ, in his depths, that tells us that our dogmatic formulations, true as they may be, are inadequate, and they point beyond themselves to the truth of God. And so, if the Roman Catholic Church is really to establish an advance, it will have to train its people to think in a profounder way of the very heart of the Gospel.
But the Roman Catholic Church, of course, has other problems, because while in the Vatican Council you've got a tremendous change in Christology, soteriology, and the liturgy, the epistemology is unchanged. And the canon law is unchanged, and both of them are governed by dualist and nominalist structures of thought. And so long as you have your unchanged epistemology and your unchanged canon law, the Roman Catholic Church is going to sew up heretic after heretic far greater than Schilbeck's
or Kuhn, because from this phenomenalism, phenomenological dualism, they cannot begin to appreciate Vatican II, and the present Pope is, of course, also a phenomenologist. So he really doesn't grasp the basic problems. I'd like a few days with him just to show him. He claims to have learned so much from Schuyler and the suspect, but that is precisely the same problem you find in Kuhn and in Schilbeck particularly. Well, what am I saying then? I'm saying that
really to appreciate the Vatican Council, we have to allow the truth that has come to light to transform the general framework of knowledge that we bring to understand it. And you cannot establish it or hold it or develop it. Now, the same thing is true of Calabar. And I believe today one of our greatest allies is precisely the advance in scientific knowledge, which has enabled us to get rid of anachronistic ways of thinking, anachronistic modes of
thought, and to appreciate the Gospel in a much more lively and a much more profound way. Well, let me indicate how I look at this. In the last year, I've been doing a lot of work with James Clark Maxwell, who we had to celebrate his centenary of his birth and centenary of his death, which came fairly well, 150 years after his birth, 100 years after his death, which came fairly close together. So that a lot of
work has been done about Clark Maxwell. And I spent a long time thinking through his thoughts and reading through his thoughts. And one thing in particular impressed me, and I've never seen this brought out before. Clark Maxwell, as Einstein has told us, was the person who showed that you cannot provide a mechanical interpretation of the electromagnetic field. You cannot give a Newtonian mechanical explanation of a field of force. Now, Clark Maxwell realized that, and what impelled
him to this was, interestingly, the way in which he looked at creation from the incarnation. When he saw that in the incarnation we are face to face with God, the Creator, and then he looked at nature around him, he could not believe that nature around him was a mechanism. It wasn't appropriate to that kind of God. He could not believe his faith in God, the incarnate God and the Creator God, would not allow him to believe
that nature could be explained in purely mechanical models. Now, he tried to do this again and again. And so it was his faith in God that prevented him, finally, from offering a mechanical interpretation of the electromagnetic field. Moreover, there were other things, what he called union with Christ, what he called the relation of the person, where the relation between persons is part of what a person is, that's how now we view particles. In the atomic world,
the relation between particles is part of what particles are. These are what in theology we call unto relations. Now, it's because he was concerned with unto relations that Clark Maxwell came up with the concept of the field as a continuous, dynamic, indivisible field. Now, people just couldn't understand this. Here you have, they said, as Einstein said, a field is an independent reality, and quoting here Faraday, you have vibrations without vibrating matter. That is the ultimate reality.
Now, we know that much more clearly today through the matter-energy equation. But you see, here is a radically new and a profounder and a truer way of understanding matter and substance and being, and which you don't divorce the ontic and the dynamic, but you think in this dynamic relational way. Now, come back then to Kalbar. That's exactly what he did. And the point at which he started, he said, my scientific point of starting is the
resurrection. When I go to the resurrection and see that here the incarnate Son of God has risen in body, in space and time, then I have to think of the whole Jesus Christ as one indivisible reality. You cannot divide it up in a Newtonian atomistic fashion. You cannot think of that cut-off there or that cut-off there. You cannot separate the incarnation from the cross or the cross from the incarnation. You cannot separate his exaltation
from his abasement or his abasement from his exaltation. You cannot separate his deity from his humanity, his humanity from his deity. It is one indivisible whole, but a dynamic, continuous whole. Now, that's to say, if you can go to school with Clark Maxwell and Einstein and grasp the meaning of the dynamic field in which matter and energy are interwoven, belong together, and you can learn to think in that way and not in the old Latin or
Newtonian way, dividing up everything into parts and externally relating them, then you'll get a way of thinking that's far more worthy of God. This is Clark Maxwell's point. Far more appropriate to what you have in the incarnation. What's more, far more appropriate to the kind of nature that God has created and in which he has planted us. Now, from Carl Baer's point of view, that's how we have to look at Jesus Christ. Well, let me put
it in still another way. Calvin's way, when he said what we have in the Gospel is Christ clothed with his Gospel. Or in Baer's way, the word and the act and the person are inseparable. There is no Christ apart from his word. There is no Christ apart from his acts. There are no words of Christ apart from his acts. Word and act and person are all one and indivisible. Therefore, from this point of view, it's quite
nonsense to have a historical critical approach to Jesus which tried to get at him behind the back of his words. There isn't any such Christ. Or to get at his words apart from his deeds. There wasn't any such Christ. No, but if you think of them all in a living dynamic integration, then you find that the whole Gospel acquires a dimension and depth and perspective which accounts for far more evidence in the Gospel than you could
otherwise. One of the justifications of Einstein gave for general relativity was that it accounted for a far wider range of events and facts than any other theory. Now, that is a hallmark of a sound and rational theory. If you produce a theory that doesn't account for a wide range, and if you've got to cut away the facts, that of course is about the most appalling scientific mistake you could get. It's not honest. But you see, that
I'm afraid is the kind of way that many of our biblical scholars do. They produce a theory. And they have to cut away lots of the data because it doesn't fit their theory. But if you can produce a way of understanding the Gospel, produce a way of understanding Jesus Christ, which accounts for a far wider range of everything, and so you see it in its rational depth, its intelligible depth, then from a merely formal scientific point
of view, that is the line you have to take. Well, from Barth's point of view, it's when you look at the whole life of Jesus from the perspective of the resurrection and you see the whole life from birth to death is a living integrated whole indivisible whole, then each part of it stands out in profound significance. But the key to it, says Barth, is the resurrection. And by resurrection, you mean taking the resurrection seriously. So my
last talk to Barth, I said to him, we were talking about this, and I said to him, but you know, the students of yours, like Ernst Kaeserman, and they think of the resurrection as something spiritual up in the air, and the whole Tubigin school seems to think it up in the air. I said, that comes when the resurrection is separated from the incarnation, and we have to relate the close together. And he thumped the table at
me like that, and he said, Wohlverstanden, leiblicher Auferstehung, Markwell, physical bodily resurrection. Let's say it's an event in space and time, and because it's an event in space and time, the whole incarnation of God in our contingent existence is caught up indivisibly in the one event. Now that is God's self-communication. And if that is God's self-communication, that is the primary reality we're concerned with in Holy Scripture. Not this or that truth that you can
develop by some kind of logical way, like Gordon Clark or Carl Henry indicate. No. But the living God who is identical with his revelation, even in Holy Scriptures, then the Holy Scriptures assume a depth and a liveliness that they didn't have for you before. Well, that, I believe, is the real significance of Karl Barth for us today. And I think that it's along that line that he will be appreciated in many, many years to come. Thank
you. That's fine. Dr. Torres would welcome questions from you. We've got plenty of time. If you'd like to, if you need to leave now, I'm sure none of you would like to leave now, but if you need to leave now, please feel free to. But can we have some questions? You mentioned that Cornelius van Zyl did not understand the ABCs of Karl Barth. Is there something about his framework of thinking that's indicative of his school
of thought that he's from that makes it impossible for him to understand, as you said, it was true of liberal thinking? Yes, I think that... Cornelius van Zyl, that was from a kind of make-me-eval rationalism. It's a sort of rationalist approach. And I said to him once that he must be a descendant of Solomon. Solomon, I heard, a famous Dutch theologian in the 17th century, who was a capybara. I don't know whether to give
it to him, whether he wanted to present it or not, but that is basically the same point. But also, at this point, which I thought was many, many people, I mean, people like Karl-Hendrik of Meisner-Gronkhoff or the Dancoura who were exactly the same problem, they think that truth is tied up with statements, and truth can be logically demonstrated. But you can't. You can't demonstrate any truth by logic. You can demonstrate validity. Logic has only
to do with the relation of statement to statement, or idea to idea. Logic has nothing to do with the relation of idea to reality or statement to reality. But that is the area of work with knowledge now. Now, if you try to put in a rational form, if you try to put in terms of statements or ideas, the relations between idea and reality, they may lead to a form of rationalism. Now, that, therefore, is the fundamental
point. Now, at this point, they bought the losers to do that. I'm trying to deduce that. And then people start to find it as filial. Then they start to use it to accept the fact that faith can be logically demonstrated. But to say they're part of affiliates, therefore, is itself to reveal that the person is concerned isn't the family talking about. I sometimes say, you take a picture. You have a picture in a picture. How a
picture pictures one picture. Nor could you state in a statement how statements are related to what you state. But when you start to do that, then it becomes rational. And this is, we can see this in history of science, how empirical science, trying to do it, becomes empiricist when it ends up by saying, actions are only fiction, mental architecture. There's no reality to them. And then you say, there is a reality, but somehow you're scared from
the idea of the reality coming down. Did you mention that Kuhn and Sheldon suffer from a lack of faith in this particular art? That seriously? How about Rauner? Does he not connect to the school of thought that you're mentioning? Isn't that basically what it does in the works? Agree with what you have said before? Do you have any misunderstandings? No, I'm very well. I think Rauner is basically the same, I'm afraid. Kuhn is too big. I
mean, he definitely covers it up. Rauner is a very good phenomenologist. In fact, for Rauner in the end, it's just right to tell you this is random architecture. But he's aware of covering it up through his tool of thought. It's very, very subtle. But I must say, I find Kuhn far more evangelical than Rauner. Skilled eggs, I think, is more difficult. We've got so many sides to him. Kuhn will also be re-influenced by two vegan
comedians. Skilled eggs is influenced more by Hohenpartner rather than an ideological approach. But the problem of this whole group of Roman Catholic students derives from that whole line of thought from Maréchal to Blondel down, where they had married Thomas Aquinas and Kahn. So then, inherent dualism in St. Thomas, in some sense, Thomas says that we have no conceptual relation to God. We have a non-evidential relation to God. These are things that could kill us very
much. And therefore, we need extra grace or extra recused light in order to make us ascend to the proposition of the church. If you take that view of St. Thomas and Maréchal, Kahn's non-cognitive approach to God, you don't know anything about internal relations, then you end up with the problem of the runner. I can see, this whole group of people, you can say that Presidio is theologian of our Catholic church, this whole group of people
have immense typical power with the Vatican Council. I mean, there's a change in that. The color of that Christian life is very dark. You mentioned to me the central importance of Trinity to Christian thinking. To what degree can we keep the doctrine of Trinity if we move away from masculine language? Well, first of all, I think you've already covered one or two. First of all, I think you've already covered one Now, as a Jew, you will
have a second commandment. The second commandment says you mustn't think of God in any image. Now, if you think that using the word father, you're using masculine language of God, when you're thinking of images, you're protecting where children put your images of God. I'm very, very worried about people who talk to this kind of thing because it means that the fundamental relationship with God is wrong. And so I would say to them, go to school with
Jesus. Go to school with Jesus. And learn to think of God in any image. Now, this is a point we've had to learn with great interest in modern science. Especially in quantum theory, you cannot project your Christian images into the reality because you're concerned with inherently invisible reality. And therefore, we've had to, at this point, interestingly enough, that the scientists who have been able to carry us beyond really great responses are practically all being Jews. And
I think all of this has to do with our play where it's the fact that the second commandment is fundamentally leaving trained generations to seek without images. Let's say, if you use images in magic, even if it's full of dramatic images, the images refer on the indicated image vastly without the image. It's that type, I don't know if you know who we're talking about. The icon doesn't picture anything about. It refers to the transcendent heavenly worship
image lesson. It's the same concept. The image of the invisible. That's something that you haven't before seen one. Now, if you get that way of thinking, then I think that you've got a way of thinking that means that the terms father, son, or son don't give you any kind of thought. But if you have a problem like John Robinson, I know very well, because this is one of his books, I can't think, except in pictorial images.
Then, bless you, John, you can't think about it. That's a problem. So, let's say there are just a few logical issues. We must be entirely sympathetic to the way in which men are treated with and all that sort of thing. And then the whole tradition, that must certainly go back. But we cannot then start talking about sexist language. We are then mythologizing, and then you've got to demythologize and desex like that. Everything is wrong. Christology is
before the General Assembly here in the United States. I'm sure you're on top of the controversy. There is a movement to, well, when the motion was before the General Assembly, confirming the full deity and humanity of Christ, a minority motion was put forward to add Christ in his sinless life, his atoning death, and his bodily resurrection. That was opposed and was defeated on a procedural point because the General Assembly felt it was not speaking to that
issue at that time and would study the matter. So the Church as a whole is studying the matter. I don't have a problem with each of those adjectives taken individually, but I'm trained by you. I always try to see the relationship to the entire of my Christology. I fear that there is going to be a tendency to atomize each of those adjectives. I know what sinlessness is, therefore Jesus was sinless in the way I understand sinlessness.
I understand what atonement is, therefore Jesus atonement in the way I understand atonement. And if this motion goes forward and is placed before all candidates as an article that must be affirmed in order to be ordained, for example, that we may have created more problems than we've solved. Can you comment at all on that? Well, I think you're right. I would like to have all creeds abolished except the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed should be the
Nicene Comptect of All of the creeds of three of one of the The Nicene Creed should be the only creed we use in interdict relations and ordination. Now, I think that was great unproblems for a lot of people. On the other hand, it was being resolved in less unproblems than in interdict relations. I think that the Nicene Creed is a creed you say before God. It's something that is psychological and very worshipable. But a formal definition
is inevitably leads to tracking truth instinctively. And this is what we've learned from relativity that if you really are concerned with this objective truth, it relativizes your thinking. And I think that we have, as in the Nicene type of creed, a very firm fundamental truth across both. And it might be a catalyzing problem. Actually, everything can be built from the Hamausia. Do you think the Hamausia is seriously a tournament or everything else that can take place?
There's one problem, of course, where we have to reckon with it. And that's the problem that I think has done immense damage in the Church of Rome and also the diocese. When Leo the Great, in his tome of Tarsita, set the tendency against the Greek Church to hold that Jesus Christ did not, in his incarnation, take hold of humanity. He took neutral. Now, that causes Saturday Roman and, therefore, Mecca Conception all comes out of that. The
Romans had to have Mary Mecca in order to have the incarnation, perhaps. And the Protestants had the same. Remember, Mecca Conception is applied to Holy Scripture. So that's what one of them taught in Holy Scripture, is Mecca Conceived. Now, all kinds of problems for here also cuts off the tome of reincarnation. So this Latinware thinking that goes back there, so what do you mean by sinlessness? And this, I think, laid out behind people wanting to put
that thing, but then it is a heresy. Because it says that, you see, you and Mary remember that the very father of the whole, Richard, insisted that the un-assumed is the un-heed. And it's only by the assumed that he healed what he took that he said. So that in terms of really cut that. And that's why, ultimately, there can be no movement between the hotspots and the non-hotspots. Because this con, this fundamental doctrine
comes in the tree. They would have to, they would have to go back to the Nicene Creed and give up that. The Roman Church had to reform itself back then. Yes, so the Roman Church would have to say, you know what, we're happy with it. Only on the basis of the Nicene Creed. It's not something that is terrible. So I see you can go back to that, but not the other term. But I think the political
awkwardness at this point is if you resist, I have found in the Philadelphia Presbyterian to resist sinless life and don't be dead and bodily resurrection as a creedal formula, but almost always bringing the liberal or that you don't believe in any kind of atonement, you don't believe in any kind of incarnation, you don't believe in any kind of resurrection. I feel like I'm trying to compensate for an historianism section which has fallen backwards into the Polynarianism.
I mean, my history is not good, my grammar is not good at all. That's where I sit. You see, Calvin and I were faced with the same problem. There were a group of people who demanded that we sign on the Gothic line on some creed about the temple. Now, what did they do? They refused to do it. Because to submit to that kind of what kind of imposition is against the very lustful, it is to say
that God and his revelation are not identical. God is identical, God's revelation is identical to the set of truths. At this point, Calvin and all people who have done a few propositions they are not baffled at all. No. But of course, I think that we need to say no, I once had an argument with Henry Crimm on the resurrection of the Gothic and he started expanding the resurrection and something happened here and I was begging him.
I had to hear him make a speech and I had to come out on the platform and say, oh, Henry, if you tumbled into bed to begin the Buddhism, how could you do that? And he said, well, how can I think about the resurrection of the world of science? I said, how can you speak about something spiritual that has nothing to do with facing time? That's what we're going to make sure of this time. And the
only resurrection as special temple corollaries can be possibly understood by any rational scientist in the world. And I've talked to a physicist in the back from a California physicist who supported me against Hans Crimm. What's happening? What's happening to the world? And I think it's this dualist amount of framework of thought that eats away the thought, couldn't possibly, I call it, the truth in the mediums. And I think we must assert in the sheer contingency, the
sheer concrete reality of the incarnation and the death of the resurrection. With the clock ticking, the proposal is in the General Assembly Committee to be passed around. As a political recommendation, would you say it's better to make no statement at all than make a statement badly? Oh, no. Obviously, so bad. Probably better than I think it is. We've just celebrated the 60th centenary, I think. And we're back in 1981. That's why you get the whole curtain
to it. Why not go beyond the nice and clean back to the Bible? We've got a popular... Why is the nice and clean better than everything else? Well... Let me put it this way. I think the nice and clean becomes just the one creed of all customs and rites. It's older than the hostage creed, actually. The one that hasn't been creeded here or the creed children. But something happened in the nice and clean, in the nice
and clean countenance, which is quite irreversible. Let me put it this way. Suppose you've got a jigsaw puzzle and a complicated jigsaw puzzle you finally solve it and you get a picture of it. Then you mess it all up again. Now, you cannot put it back again forgetting the picture. Something irreversible has taken place once you've found the picture. Now, this is a nice and clean creed when they try to distill the essence of the gospel
in relation to the religion of God and man or something like that. And they came up with this sense to say, well, this man is of God. Are you the child of God? What does it mean to say of God? Did you say Jesus Christ, the son of God? What does it mean of God? Now, taking all the different texts together they distilled out of it what they called the homo usio that he is the one
and the same being as God. Once they saw that they pushed to the very heart of the gospel and someday the whole gospel came into focus in a profound way that they could never go back. An irreversible step was taken. Now, there are other irreversible steps, of course. In the history of science an irreversible step is Newton. But in Newton we have the correction from a later point of view. But, nevertheless, even when you deduce people
from Einstein there's still something took place that is irreversible. Same thing with relativity. Now, I think that the 19th Creed has that kind of profound irreversibility. And all the other councils all refer back to it. And the group of councils the councils by which they are determined and they would say that was inside of the Holy Ghost. So, I can understand that. And so, I would say that taking the whole critical question and looking at both
from the theological and the irreversibility and from the breadth that's the only thing I'm pretty sure of. We have time for one more question. When you talk about the resurrection as concrete reality what worries me is that what worries me about that statement is that it may be interpreted to mean an ordinary historical event like, you know, Caesar coming to Pima. And then you get back I think what you're talking about that that's the Karl Henry
thing that it ceases to be an event of God put into the lay people in a scatological way that ceases to be that. Now, it does seem to be difficult there is difficulty with this language of concrete, talking about the resurrection as concrete reality that it very quickly slips over into ordinary event. Now, I understand a lot of fundamentalists understood Pannenberg in that way which is, as I understand a misunderstanding of Pannenberg. Yes, again, this is
part of Pannenberg's thought. Most people work with the mechanisms in the closed universe of course then in any concrete it's just and that's why I see Bultmann couldn't handle the resurrection because he operates right away his closed continual course of existence and to check out the resurrection it's impossible. Other people want to hold the resurrection and that's what they bring within the logical cause of connection. You take that puller by Barbaralee and all this he does
actually. In terms of the state of resurrection in terms of logical cause of connection you can't possibly do that. But now, this has been separated from the resurrection from the cross of Christ and from the incarnation. If you look at the incarnation in this way here we have the incarnate of Christ in Jihadic language the one in lock-off through whom all things remain and from whom all order in the universe rely. Now when he became
incarnate the incarnation is not as a disruption of the order of nature but it is a healing of the order of nature it is a deepening of the order of nature. So the miracles of Jesus are tearing from nature where it is disordered. Now the resurrection is a more concrete event than any other event because it repairs death and so that instead of all other events run away in the street with death but this is one
event so concrete it doesn't need to go the other way because it is life happening it goes into confusion. Therefore it is much more real in fact the only one real the one real event that we have in history. So look at it in that kind of a way we can say this but it means that the whole framework of thought has to be shattered. And the resurrection like the incarnation creates the framework within which it
has to be understood. It reorganizes the whole framework of knowledge saving the activity there. It reorganizes the whole framework aside from the business that has to be understood. But we are prepared for that either in the material or in the incarnate. So in a sense or in a modern sense you cannot look at the resurrection from the viewpoint of the old age and indeed many literalists do that as well as the liberals. You can only look
at the resurrection from the new point of the new age, God's age. Is that correct? Yes, the resurrection transformed it and therefore as only in the lack of it you can. By and large this is the main problem of New Testament scholarship. Because there are certain things that I've indicated which are of such immense significance that they change the whole framework of knowledge. The Theotokos and that is true. Now, I didn't say it was modern science
but it is. So you can't begin to understand the New Testament if you go back to Newton. So the whole framework of thought has to be understood. Now, Jesus Christ has so transformed the whole algorithm that he created the New Article within which he returned. But once the biblical was published he pulled that all aside. And then he gave it to Jesus but that was not Jesus. That kind of forming impact. So that is something we
can now understand in quite a new way. But the biblical follow by and large is immensely innocent of all this. And we want Jesus just a little bit. Thank you. Dr. Torrance, thank you for a very stirring presentation of the Gotham. If you have further questions Dr. Torrance would welcome them privately. Thank you.