The problem that we face today is similar to that which the early church faced in fighting against the dichotomization of the God-Man. When who He is becomes separated from what and why He has done it, there is a problem. This is precisely the problem that has led T.F. Torrance to address the person and work of Christ through his book, The Mediation of Christ. All throughout, Torrance presents the atonement from its various perspectives of varying relationship, all of which center and find their concern within the God-man Jesus Christ. Christ mediates to us as God and mediates to God as human. This is the intricacy that Torrance is concerned with, and it is to this intricacy that we are now ourselves concerned with.
The primary theme of Torrances
treatise is that Christ is the one who mediates. This might be somewhat obvious
given the title of the book, but if we are to summarize Torrance's work, the
essence of Torrance's argument, the underlying principle with which he wrestles
is this notion of Christ being the center of everything. God's expression of
His covenant with Israel is consummated in Christ. God's self-revelation to
humanity is Christ. God's reconciling work with humanity is Christ. Our
response to God is Christ. The continuing work of the Spirit directs us towards
Christ. It is all about Christ as He mediates for both God and man as both God
and man. The title of mediator is not a title or office found in Scripture, but
reflects a reality that is to be found when looking at the relationships of
biblical concern. The covenant between Israel and God, Israel and the rest of
humanity, Jesus and Israel, Jesus and the church, the church and the rest of
the world all culminate in the person and work of Christ. These are the
relationships that Torrance is concerned with and spends his time discussing.
Within the confines of these relationships we can begin to understand the
realities of God’s work in Christ for the benefit of man.
The difficulty with attempting to
interact with a writer such as Torrance is that there are no isolated themes
that can be identified and set apart without ultimately restating everything
which has already been said, thus our interaction will require us to expand the
summary as we go about interacting with it. It is important to begin as
Torrance explains by understanding that we who operate within the modern mind
set need to be sure we are using the appropriate tools for our work as
theologians. There can be no objective observations which separate the Christ
we know in history from the Christ who is revealed to us in Scripture.
Torrance's concern here is regarding the way that the scientific mind has been
trained to separate realities from their contexts. We are not able to consider
Christ without considering the time, location, and cultural circumstances in
which Christ came into the world. For it was because God came as Christ to that
people in that time, that He was recognized as God incarnate. That being said,
we also cannot seek to explain Christ by observing only the time, location, and
cultural circumstances in which Christ came into the world. Unfortunately, the
result of such a dichotomization has already been witnessed in some traditions
of the church. By separating Jesus from His time and culture, some have come up
with conceptions of who He is based on our own cultural norms. Only by
understanding the culture that He has revealed Himself in can we truly come to
understand the revelation that is in Christ.
We should seek to understand Christ
both in the ways He came to us, that is, in relationship with people, in a
geographical location etc., but also in light of what we are taught by the
Apostles in the Gospel of word and action, that is, the self proclamation of
who He is and His relation with God. First, Torrance turns his attention to Christ’s
intimate relationship with Israel. The resurrection really established Christ's work and why He came in a
way that would not have been understood by the Apostles before His
resurrection. In the same way, we do not truly understand Israel's relationship
with God until the incarnation, for it is within the incarnation that the
covenant is fulfilled by both God and man. Israel’s intricate
relationship with God throughout the course of its existence is one defined by
conflict between the God who is revealed in the covenant and the people God has
chosen for His covenant. It is a relationship involving the intimate reality of
God being apart, not just of their spiritual reality as is understood through
the priestly role and interaction with the people but also in their
relationship with the other components of God’s creation as well. Our concern
is to provide a theology based on the revelation given to us as the church in
the framework of the Gospel provided for us. We understand Christ and His
mediating work in light of His relationship to Israel, to God the Father, and
to us as the church as those relationships are presented to us.
Torrance does an excellent job of
explicating the notion of reconciliation as is revealed to us in Christ. Just
as the conceptual tool necessary for us to properly understand God's revelation
to Israel is Christ, the conceptual tool necessary for us to understand the
reconciliation of God to man is again the revelation that is Christ.
Reconciliation cannot be separated from revelations. It is a reality that is so
profound that it involves our entire being to comprehend. We are required to be
in relationship with this person in that we are affected by our interactions
with this mediator in ways that are not so in other disciplines. Just as we
cannot come to understand the revelation of God as mediated in Christ without
understanding the context in which it has been mediated, we cannot come to
understand the reason for the revelation without relationship with Him. It is
not something that can be identified outside of the context of relationship, a
relationship defined by the covenant between a holy God and an Israel that will
be holy. Just as this relationship was not with an already Holy people, but a
relationship established with a sinful nation, God establishes relationships
with the church, not as an already Holy community, but a sinful community.
Similarly, just as the relationship was not dependent on Israel's fulfillment
of the Covenant, but was both established and fulfilled by God, God's covenant
with the church does not depend upon the church's ability to uphold the
Covenant, rather God provides for us ways of responding to Him within the
boundaries of the church. As God has deemed that his revelation to humanity be
found within the context of Israel, we can come to understand in some sense the
reality of his relationship with humanity. In this sense, Torrance presents us
again with his concern of possible dichotomization between the revelation of
God found in the people of Israel and the reconciliation that occurs between
God and Israel, a dichotomization that we also must attempt to bridge. God's
relationship with Israel is summarized in Christ's relationship with the
Apostles, or at least it is in the light of His relationship with the Apostles
that we can come to understand God's relationship with Israel. Torrance paints
for us a picture of a covenant established by God with a sinful people one that
comes to actuality in the end, but also intensifies the conflict between God
and Israel, “It was their sin, their betrayal, their shame, their unworthiness,
which became in the inexplicable love of God the material he laid hold of and
turned into the bond that bound them to the crucified Messiah, to the salvation
and love of God forever.”[1]
In the same way that Christ judged our sinful nature from the position of one
who was sinless, Christ also appoints our nature as sanctified in that just as
He has taken on our sin vicariously, we take on Christ’s righteousness
vicariously. We are reconciled in Christ to God, by Christ taking upon Himself
our wickedness, by being adopted into His divine life. In so doing, our sin
becomes His sin and His righteousness becomes our righteousness, and our nature
is now perfectly sanctified through Him.
To understand the person who is the
mediator, we must understand Him within the confines of the relationships in
which he exists. For the reality is that in Christ are both parties of the
covenant relationship, they meet in Him in such a way that the covenant which
was established by God to humanity has been consummated by both God and
humanity in one person. But here again we come dangerously close to
dichotomizing the person and the work of Christ. His person is such that he
mediates for both parties, his work is such that he re-establishes the meaning
of morality and relationship. Just as He is both God and man, Christ is both
the mediation and the mediator. If Jesus is not the Son of God Incarnate, then His work on earth means
nothing for us as humanity. If He is not the Son of God incarnate, then we know both nothing about God, for He
has not been revealed to us, neither do we have salvation, for the work on the
cross is not done by the only one who can judge and therefore forgive us. For
Torrance, Christ becoming incarnate is really an extension of God's creative
act, "The coming of that Word in Jesus Christ must be regarded as a
continuation of God's creation and as the bringing of His creative activity to
bear intensively upon what God has already made..."69. The one by whom all
was created and through whom all was created continues the creative work in
bestowing upon that which was already created; Himself. An interesting
reconception of John 1.
As Torrance develops his thesis, he
brings into the conversation the crucial concept of our response to what
exactly God has done. Just as God provided and established ways for Israel to
respond to God within His grace which is evident in the priestly activities,
Christ has enabled us to respond to God in the form of the church. In this way,
we can continue as a community interacting with God in a form of reciprocity,
this is how Christ mediates humanity to God. Our vicarious response to God
through Christ includes five aspects: faith, conversion, worship, evangelism,
and the sacraments. But here again, Torrance insists that any response on our
part is only possible because it has been provided for us by God. Just as we
see in the priestly office established in Israel.
Finally, our conversation leads us
to discuss the mediation that is Christ regarding His relationship and place in
the Trinity. For Torrance, our comprehension of the Trinity and Christ’s
relationship therein is found in context of everything he has said throughout
the book. Our dichotomization of God and the Trinity is established through our
refusal to understand God within the bounds of the Trinity. Thus the Trinity
becomes something that is merely tacked on at the end of our doctrine of God.
Instead, Torrance appeals that our understanding of God should be found within
the context of the Trinity as expressed first to Israel in the Revelation of
the I Am, then in the expansion of God's reconciling work that is Christ
incarnate spurring into being the body of the church which is established
through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the continuation of
God's revelation that is His reconciling work begun in Israel is the church and
the extension of the Covenant to the Gentiles. For without lending to each
other both Jews and Gentiles will be unable to fully grasp the realities that
have begun and continue to be played out in the world, these realities which
are no less the revelation of God and His reconciling work.
Just as our understanding of God as
revealed to us as Trinity cannot be divorced from His self-revelation to Israel
or from His self revelation in Christ, comprehension of the trinity cannot be
divorced from God's atoning work on the Cross. For in the Son being present on
the cross, so also the Father was personally present as Torrance explicates,
Through the shedding of the blood of
Christ in atoning sacrifice for our sin the innermost nature of God the Father
as holy compassionate love has been revealed to us... This teaching is also
relevant to our understanding of the nature of the Holy Spirit who as the
Spirit of the Father and of the Son intervenes in vicarious intercession on our
behalf and pours out the love of God into our hearts. For the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit upon us belongs to the fulfilment of God’s reconciling of the world
to Himself.[2]
While this is not Torrance’s primary concern
in this aspect of his treatise, I cannot continue without expressing
appreciation for what is said here about the Holy Spirit. Here we finally find
a comprehensible understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. All too often
the failure of theological work on the Spirit is simplified, forgotten, or too
zealously discussed. The error that I have come to understand is how many will
either say not enough so that the Spirit is something not only left mysterious
but almost forgotten, or the writer is so concerned with the inclusion of the
Spirit that the Gospel is truncated into the Gospel of the Holy Spirit.
Torrance has provided us with a way of expressing the vital and pivotal role
that the Spirit plays in our lives as Christians as distinct from it being an
outpouring of the Father and Son but in unison with the rest of God’s revealing
reconciling work.
It becomes rather obvious that
throughout all of Torrance’s treatise there is an underlying trend of suturing the chasms that have been created by modern methods of study.
Whether it be between revelation and reconciliation, Jew and Gentile, Christ’s
humanity and divinity, or God and Trinity, Torrance’s underlying method for
discussing Christ as the mediator is through a method steeped in subversive
language which seeks to re-establish the importance of including what has come
to be understood as two sides of these conversations.
Overall, Torrance’s extensive work
on Christ as mediator is not only helpful but vital to our comprehension of God,
and in that sense humanity. As intricately woven as his thoughts, so too is God
and humanity related. connected together in this Christ. Torrance offers
Christians from all traditions a unifying way of thinking through God. Christ
is the person through whom Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, even
Lutherans and Mennonites are brought together and unified not only with each
other, but also in that we as humanity are united together again with God. I
cannot think of any way that such a thing could not be vital to our lives as
Christians. For me, Torrance has become a vessel of articulation and
clarification. I am so convinced that the total narrative of creation is
brought together in this one Christ.
Thus we conclude, the primary theme
of Torrance’s treatise is that Christ is the one who mediates. The underlying
principle with which he wrestles is this notion of Christ being the center of
everything. It is all about Christ as He mediates for both God and man as both
God and man. The covenant between Israel and God, Israel and the rest of
humanity, Jesus and Israel, Jesus and the church, the church and the rest of
the world all culminate in the person and work of Christ. These are the
relationships that Torrance is concerned with and spends his time discussing.
In reconnecting those aspects that have too often been neglected or have not
seen enough communication with each other, Torrance has helped us to bridge the
chasm separating the vitality of that which is our understanding of Christ. As
such, we are deeply indebted to him as the body of the church.
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