Transcript
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Behold I stand at the door knocks at the Lord. If you will hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you. And sup with you and you with me. Let us worship God. Let us pray. Cause us, O God to hear thy voice in our hearts and Granted having heard we may not turn dully away but ever will what thou hast willed and Ever hold fast to all
thy promises to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Let me remind you of the organ recital that will be in Miller Chapel this evening at 7:30 When we shall be led in our understanding of music for the liturgical year by our colleague Mr. Whedon the Stone lectures will be given this week by dr. Robert Coles of the faculty of Harvard University This year, they are three in
number. I will doubtless make a mistake in announcing the hours But the last time I checked the first lecture is to be given on Tuesday at 5 PM the second lecture on Wednesday immediately after luncheon at 1:15 and Then the third on Wednesday evening at 7 We have with us today a very distinguished theologian a very great Christian leader and a very dear friend of this institution the very Reverend dr. Thomas F. Torrance who
has been professor of Theologmatics and New College University of Edinburgh Who for his work, especially in theology and science? received in 1978 the Templeton Foundation prize for progress in religion Wherever dr. Torrance writes he opens new vistas and Crosses new frontiers whether it is in the theology of the patristics or in Reformation theology or Whether it is in the relation of theology and science typical of this man is a book a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic
field a new edition of this epoch making book by James Clark Maxwell carrying an essay by Einstein on what this Particular essay meant to him as he formulated his own thought with a long and lucid Introductory chapter by dr. Torrance himself This particular copy is inscribed to the great astrophysicist John Wheeler Who was once a member of the Institute for Advanced Study here in Princeton and is now in Austin, Texas? It is a great joy to
welcome dr. And mrs. Torrance mrs. Torrance. Will you stand so that we can see you? She hasn't visited us as much as her husband a warm welcome dr. Torrance Thank you, sir Hear the word of God from the first epistle of st. Paul to the Corinthians chapter 2 reading from verse 9 What no eye has seen nor ear heard Nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love him God has revealed
to us through the spirit For the spirit searches everything even the depths of God For what person can know a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God Now we have not received the spirit of the world But the spirit which is from God that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God And we impart this in
words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit interpreting spiritual truth to those who possess the spirit The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the spirit of God for they are folly to him And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned The spiritual man judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct
him? but we have the mind of Christ In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen These words For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him but we have the mind of Christ The theme is theological instinct or more precisely Christian theological instinct Once when speaking of the elementary laws of the universe Einstein said, though he repeated it often, there is no logical path to these laws
Only intuition resting on sympathetic understanding of experience can reach them Here we have From the scientist Something upon which Einstein laid the greatest stress of feeling for an intuitive grasp of the truth of things embedded in the universe And the scientists task above all and in all these inquiries is so to steep his mind in the way nature behaves That to empirical theoretical contact with it. He can be tuned into its inner structure and this pervasive
intelligibility until he has Developed and cultivated himself a scientific instinct And it's upon that scientific instinct more than anything else that he relies in all heuristic inquiry and in all judgment as to the tenability of the truth or falsity of scientific concepts What about Christian theology? Do we not have or should we not have a theological instinct? Baruch Spinoza For whom Einstein had a great appreciation Used to claim that once a thing is understood it goes
on Manifesting itself in the power of its own truth without having to provide for further proof Thus once the mind has become tuned into the inner structure of The universe geared into its the truth embedded in it The mind is in a position intuitively to grasp and to judge and to understand but It's a truth that keeps on pressing upon his mind and keep on disclosing itself by its own interior power Now I believe that both
these people the scientist and the philosopher I've been speaking in their own realm of something that is quite fundamental to the theologian and of first-rate importance to theological education Our task above all is to gear our minds into God's self-revelation And once that divine self-revelation has seized our minds our understanding of God is carried forward by the intrinsic power of his truth as it continually presents itself to our minds and presses for fuller
realization within them And so I believe that Christian theological instinct arises from Intense spiritual and intellectual communion with God In which our minds are taken captive by his love and we come to know God more and more as He is in himself Through being geared into the mind of Jesus Christ Herman Bondi says in a number of his books That by the time a child is five years of age. He's already understood More about the structure
of the universe Than the ablest he already knows more about the structure of the universe and the ablest physicists can understand at the end of his life and I believe that That is how we grow into our understanding of God and incidentally the immense importance of The first five years in a child's knowledge of God and worship of God Now in my own experience in teaching theology over a long period I Have kept my ear open
to what students say and watched how they write Because if a student manifests that somehow he has a theological Instinct a profound Christian theological instinct then that man is really a theologian Now that's not something that can be acquired by learning not something to be acquired by by logic Not something to be acquired by inferential or deductive operations. It's something that we can cultivate Through the inner empirical theoretical relation of the creature to the creator of
a child of God To the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ Now in natural sciences Particularly in physics and mathematics as James Clark Maxwell used to say and point that Einstein took up and develop Somehow there is a fundamental kinship between the laws of nature and the laws of the human mind a Structural relation between the way in which Order manifests and develops in the universe and the way in which our minds Work as
we come to understand the universe and it is because there is now to use the Phrase that Einstein took over from likeness because there is that somehow and this is the most incomprehensible thing in the universe a pre-established harmony between the vast intelligibility embedded in nature and the human understanding Because there is that the scientists can cultivate his relationship to it tune into it Until he has this instinctive grasp Of how nature behaves But now
we don't have that in theology in the same way and we owe it to Karl Barth above all That we have discarded the old idea of an analogia entus That there is a natural kinship between the mind of man and the mind of God Karl Barth showed how that idea which came out of the late Middle Ages the neoplatonic philosophy and 19th-century Germany led to Impossible pagan ideas, but what we do have The point to
which he also referred In the writings of Irenaeus who taught us that we only know God through God Made me this that in Jesus Christ The Spirit of God who alone searches the mind of God the depth of God that spirit Has adapted himself to dwell in human nature in Jesus But at the same time in Jesus, he has adapted our human nature to receive The Incomprehensible the infinite spirit of God So that in Jesus we
have that pre-established harmony between the mind of God and the mind of man In Jesus we have a perfect oneness Between the divine truth and the human understanding of that divine truth Therefore it is as we are tuned into Jesus himself Empirically theoretically That we become tuned into the mind of God Almighty and The truth as it is Incarnate in Jesus Christ Now, how are we to be tuned into this truth? Let me simply refer
in the short time available to three points And the first I take from st. Augustine What is needed above all is a constant reading and study of the Holy Scriptures a constant indwelling of the Bible in such a way that the Word of God is Somehow belongs to the belly of the human memory as he put it now that means that What is necessary above all is that we keep on? Meditating upon the Holy Scriptures and
I'm thinking here simply of historical critical scholarly activities but a meditation that reaches beyond that when we allow the Word of God to imprint its truth upon our soul and Just as a child by the age of five years old can know more about nature And Physicists can understand so by dwelling with a child likeness of in Holy Scripture We can become orientated to the scripture in such a way that our minds are shaped accordingly I
owe my parents The injunction from my earliest days to read three chapters of the Bible every day and five chapters on Sunday at least that and Throughout the year. I read the Bible was So I found the Bible was seeded into my very being when I came up to theological college I didn't need to study the scriptures for the Bible examination because it's quite natural to me now. It is that kind of intimate Empirical theoretical relation
through meditation that is fundamentally important We have to put ourselves At the point where God's sub-revelation constantly Imprints itself upon us by his spirit, but along with that and secondly We have to absorb the presence of Jesus To absorb the presence like Mary in the gospel sitting at the feet of Jesus and choosing the better part now That I think is perhaps in some respects the hardest and some is but also the most joyful and
the most fertile of all things that we can do Simply to live in the immediate presence of Jesus until we absorb him and our spirits and our minds I'm molded in him or to you put it the other way around until Christ is formed Within us And then of course in relation to that we have the constant emphasis upon the communion of the spirit Proceeding from the father through the son. It is the spirit alone who
knows the inner mind of God And that spirit who indwells the mind and is the mind of Christ The spirit and Christ are one in their relation to the father It was this indwelling of God through Christ and in the spirit which gave rise to one of the great characteristics of the Greek fathers when they took as a fundamental criterion of What was true and right what they called Eulabaya Reverence Eusebaya pious devout mind Theosabaya a
way of godliness if a theologian was without reverence if he was without that fundamental devotion without godliness, he couldn't be a theologian and So you find all through the early centuries This was one of the main criteria Unless you speak worthily reverently and a godly way about God, you're not speaking about God Because you're not geared into the very nature of God if you like Theological instinct is fundamentally reverent and devout and godly Now when one
reads modern theology And sometimes when I listen to modern music not the kind of having tonight I Find in it all a great deal of grit and noise The music like the theology sandpapers my soul Something is fundamentally wrong here and So Well, it's difficult for a teacher professor to treat his students in this way But he Instinctively test the students see whether he's got reverence Whether he's got a godly mind Well, he's got that kind
of devotion that can only come from communion in the spirit Absorbing the presence of Jesus and being geared into the mind of God Almighty So that he thinks and speaks and acts in a way utterly appropriate and worthy of God Now that's how theological insight theological instinct comes There's another test in which I found myself Unconsciously and yet inevitably Bringing to a student's development when a student leads prayers earlier on in public in the college you
sometimes see that he's gauche and Not very familiar with Speaking to God or listening to God But after the end of the three or four years if he is still like that Then something is fundamentally wrong. He's not really learned yet to know the truth of God as it is in Jesus and when you go in here people preach and Conduct public worship, you know right away Whether that man has been in the habit of saying
his prayer or whether the woman has been meditating and praying on her own You cannot conduct public worship in a way that is reverent and devout and worthy of God Unless in your own private life and devotion you are constantly geared into it and live in communion absorbing the presence of Christ now that test of Whether a person prays in a way that is worthy of God is Another side of the test whether a student has
acquired Christian theological instinct In other words whether he has the mind of Christ And in the last resort, let me say in the last resort This is the most important thing that any of you can get from your training here in a theological institution With all the scholarly apparatus with all the study of the biblical texts with all theological activity and thought with all the writing of essays all that is Of no avail just Noise Unless
in the heart of it you are so geared into the mind of God incarnate in Jesus Christ That your mind and the mind of Christ are tuned together in the truth And then you have What St. John and his epistle Staggeringly speaks about the chrismatism The chrism of truth When you have that you don't need a teacher. That's staggering. What does that mean? Well go back to the word that quoted from Spinoza that once a thing
is understood It goes on manifesting itself in the power of its own truth without having to provide for further proof And once your mind to the spirit and in Christ is geared into the truth of God as it is in Jesus Then you have that fundamental theological instinct Which does not need a teacher it then exercises a controlling regulative force in all further inquiry and in all judgment As to what is true and false what is
true not true in speech and thought about God Now I haven't been expounding and the usual exegetical way this passage from st. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2 But I've tried to show you by relating it to the great activities of modern thinkers particularly in trying to understand nature that It is something basically similar with which we have to do here and that its fruit is an Instinct an instinctive intuition of God Instinctive understanding of Jesus an
Instinct that comes only through the Spirit of God from the Father through the Son and when you have that Then you are downed with the chrism of truth And that is the most important thing upon which you rely in all theological and Exegetical activity Amen, let us pray Oh God our minds are little and feeble and they stray so easily But thou has poured out thy spirit through Jesus As the Spirit of God the Sun May
dwell in our hearts Bearing witness That we are the children of God and leading us into all truth Grant we pray to each of us by the chrism of the Spirit such an instinctive understanding of the mind of God Incarnate in the Lord Jesus That we may serve thee throughout our life in ways that are reverent and Godly and devout And then honor thy name And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and The
love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit Be with us all Amen The topic for dr. Torrance's lecture this afternoon At five in the main lounge of the campus center is the substance of the faith.