“2013 marks the centenary of the birth of one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, Thomas F. Torrance” who believed that “modern western theology . . . has been trapped in an obsolete, dualist mindset that detaches Jesus Christ from God, worship and mission from Christ, and biblical and theological study from fellowship and communion with the living God,” says Todd Speidell in today’s column .
. . . one of his parishioners in Aberdeen, a dying, elderly lady asked him the same question: “Dr. Torrance, is God really like Jesus?” That this doubt arose from among believers within the Church itself troubled Torrance deeply. He wondered how the Church distorted its message and created obstacles for its members that kept them from joyous participation in communion with the living God that was theirs in Christ by the Spirit.
Torrance believed that modern theology remained trapped within dualist habits of thought that have plagued the mind of the Church since ancient times, damaging and disrupting its apprehension of the reality of our union with Christ. Dualism both ancient and modern resulted in an unfortunate conception of the universe as a closed, mechanistic continuum of cause and effect in which we cannot know things in themselves, but only as they appear to us.
Read the full column here .
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