“Realism” defined

The following is T. F. Torrance’s elucidation of the term, “realism.” It works as a very good definition. Don’t let the “Torrance-speak” throw you off: e.g., “a break in the semantic relation” just means “an untruth” or “telling falsely.”

The contrast between realism and idealism, implied in the use of either term, evidently has its source in the distinction we make between subject and object, idea and reality, or sign and thing signified. This is a natural operation of the human mind, for it belongs to the essence of rational behavior that we can distinguish ourselves as knowing subjects from the objects of our knowledge, and can employ ideas or words to refer to or signify realities independent of them. Normally our attention in knowing, speaking, listening, or reading is not focused upon the ideas or words we use, far less upon ourselves, but upon the realities they signify or indicate beyond themselves. Hence in our regular communication with one another we use and interpret signs in the light of their objective reference. Thus the natural operation of the human mind would appear to be realist.

We use these distinctions, then, between subject and object, idea and reality, or sign and thing signified, naturally and unreflectingly, and only turn a critical eye upon them when something arises to obscure signification, such as a break in the semantic relation. Much now depends upon where the emphasis falls, upon the signifying pole or the objective pole of the semantic relation, that is, upon idea or reality, upon sign or thing signified.

…we shall use the term [realism], not in an attenuated dialectical sense merely in contrast to idealism, nominalism, or conventionalism, but to describe the orientation in thought that obtains in semantics, science, or theology on the basis of a nondualist or unitary relation between the empirical and theoretical ingredients in the structure of the real world and in our knowledge of it. This is an epistemic orientation of the two-way relation between the subject and object poles of thought and speech, in which ontological primacy and control are naturally accorded to reality over all our conceiving and speaking of it. It is worth noting that it was a realist orientation of this kind which Greek patristic theology, especially from the third to the sixth century, struggled hard to acquire and which it built into the foundations of classical theology. [Ditto for relativity theory in 20th century science.]

Thomas F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology, pp. 58-60.

Introducing T. F. Torrance

For those not familiar with Thomas F. Torrance and his unique contribution to dogmatics, here’s a little introduction. I will utilize excerpts from his 1981 lectures delivered at Fuller Theological Seminary, “The Realist Basis of Evangelical Theology,” published as Reality and Evangelical Theology (Wipf & Stock, reprint edition, 2003).

Prelude

Torrance was the son of Scottish missionaries serving in China, where he was born in 1913 († 2007). His academic training included Edinburgh, Oxford, and eventually Basel (Switzerland) where he studied under Karl Barth. Barth’s influence is often noted and debated, but it should in no wise detract from his credentials as a significant theologian in his own right, traversing academic terrain scarcely touched by Barth. In particular, Torrance canvassed the difficult field of advanced theoretical physics with a boldness gained by a steady confidence in the Lordship of Christ over all of our thinking, or, in short, over all of reality. The Christocentrism running throughout Barth’s Church Dogmatics (which T.F.T. edited) is taken, with Torrance, into all of creation. For those, like me, who like to harp on about the sectarian thought patterns in (much of) evangelical thinking, Thomas Torrance is a gift.

Reason and Reality

It is interesting to note how Torrance understands “rationality.” He doesn’t have a formalized understanding of “what is rational” in the sense of laws intrisic to reason, as if “thinking” could be taken by itself and considered purely, apart from its “object,” the world. No, it is more simple than that: “Man acts rationally only under the complusion of reality and its intrinsic order…” (p. 26). In other words, you are being rational to the extent that your mind is impressed by the governance of the world. If you are telling rightly of existence, you are thinking rightly. In science, this is done, and progressively so, by an openness to reality, such that the “out there” is the absolute towards which our thinking is related (=relative). When science forgets its relativity, it no longer allows nature the absolute claim it rightly has. If nature does not have this absolute claim, then our own thinking (subjectivity) substitutes for the absolute; science then becomes a plaything of the postmodern linguists. Thus, it is imperative that science recognize the relativity of its formulas, not in order that science become “relativistic” but that it become ever more “objectivistic.” The “relativism” of common parlance is ruled out (if not entirely) by the fact that the objective referent in science contains a rationality of its own, independent of our own reasoning. But, the independence of the objective referent does not disallow the dependence of the subjective referrer. As dependent, the referrer can never be cut off entirely without at once losing his or her ability to make any claims to rationality at all, given, once again, the defintion of reason as a disclosure of reality. Thus, the move to absolute skepticism must include a claim to absurdity on the part of the skeptic, i.e., a claim to never know that one knows something. However, if our starting principle is that it is the world and not merely our thoughts that we are dealing with, then an authentic relativism can never wholly collapse into subjectivism.

God and Reality

Torrance sees a parallel between this realist requirement for scientific knowledge and the realism required by Christian dogmatics:

“The more we know of the universe today, the more we find that we have to do with states of affairs governed by an inherent rationality which is always and everywhere utterly reliable and which, while commanding our respect and rational assent, retains a mysterious transcendence over all our understanding and knowledge of it. Thus while our science is pursued in passionate commitment to the objective reality of the universe and under the compelling claims of its intrinsic rationality upon our minds and is dedicated to the task of making contact with reality and grasping it in the depth of that rationality, this does not mean that we are ever able by our science to capture that reality within our conceptual structures and theoretical formalizations. The very reality we grasp is possessed of a rationality of such an indefinite range that it outstrips all that we can think or say, conceive or formulate, about it.” (p. 12)

And thus we have a common epistemological principle in theology:

“How much more should a realism of this kind characterize theological inquiry and doctrinal formulation! Here we have to reckon above all with the unique Reality and transcendent Rationality of the Lord God who created the universe out of nothing and gave it a contingent reality in utter differentiation from his own and a contingent rationality in continuous dependence on his own. By its very nature the self-revelation of this God summons us to acknowledge the absolute priority of God’s Word over all the media of its communication and reception, and over all understanding and interpretation of its Truth. The Word and Truth of God reach us and address us on their own free ground and on their own authority, for they cannot be understood, interpreted, far less assessed for what they are, on any other standard besides themselves. Hence in all our response to God’s Word and in all formulation of divine Truth we are summoned to let God retain his own reality, majesty, and authority over against us. In divine revelation we have to do with a Word of God which is what it is as Word of God in its own reality independent of our recognition of it, and we have to do with a Truth of God which is what it is as Truth of God before we come to know it to be true. That means that in all our response to God’s self-revelation as it is mediated to us in space and time through the Holy Scriptures we must seek to understand and interpret it in accordance with its intrinsic requirements and under the constraint of the truth which bears upon our minds in and through it, and not in accordance with requirements of thought which we bring to it or under the constraint of rigid habits of belief which we retain at the back of our minds irrespective of what we may experience beyond ourselves.” (p. 13)

Thus, dogmatics is a science, wherein God is the objective referent (albeit a free Subject) and our theological formulations, whether Chalcedonian or Dordtian, are the subjective referrers. Given the relativity of the latter, it is critical for the Church to never close itself within its particular formulae. The “form” that we give God can never be the true Form that is God himself. The classic example for Torrance of science closing itself, content with its subjectivities, is the dominance of Newtonian science for generations, which was unable to account for the reality of the universe as it forced itself upon a new generation of scientists in the last century, namely with Einstein and Planck. The parallel examples in Christian doctrine include, e.g., the sacramental and ecclesial theology of the medieval Church and the predestinarian schemes of the Reformed churches — all representative, for Torrance, of a theology untethered to its object, Jesus Christ. (Of course, T.F.T. blames Augustine for much of this.) The endurance of Greek patristic thought — Christ as true God and true man — is its utter realist claim, that the God we have (=revealed)  in the man Jesus Christ is the one true God of Israel, whole and entire.

Dénouement

There’s much more to be said about Torrance’s work, but I think the above points are the most fundamental to understanding his mission. Like Barth, Torrance ever retained the immense unity of his thought, following the ramifications as far as he could.

Universal Atonement — what can the Church say?

 

Q. When were you saved?

A. Two thousand years ago on the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Apparently T. F. Torrance would always say something along this line whenever he was asked that question. It’s a crucial point, especially for those in the Evangelical and/or Reformed segment of the Protestant world. I need not detail the adverse effects of the “altar call” in much of Evangelical Christendom, with its focus on the person’s particular coming to faith as decisive for her salvation. While this is well and good, the ”born again” experience is often enough abstracted from the Christian confession that our salvation was once and for all effected by the obedience unto death of Jesus Christ, in his becoming sin on our behalf and offering of himself to the Father so that we might become fellow heirs with the Son.

I must say that this issue has personal bearing on my own dealings with those within or without the church, especially the latter. If I am presenting the gospel to someone, my approach should be that I come bearing good news, to wit, you are saved! Now believe! The opposite, however, is most often the case in the church, i.e., “believe and then you are saved.” Now, of course, both are true. Salvation is not effected in a person’s life until she comes to the obedience of faith, but this faith is not the ground upon which the person is saved — but in what sense? — in the sense of having any claims or rights before God. If the doctrine of Original Sin (however you rework it in light of contemporary science) is to teach us anything, it is that all we have we receive from God as gift. At no point in our existence, even in our coming to faith, do we have a claim on God and his plan for communion with his creation. So, if every person who receives the gospel is to do so in recognition that salvation lay wholly on the side of God and his initiative (the Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, and Pentecost), can the church confess that all will be saved? No. But I say, “No,” because it seems particularly nefarious to say, “Yes,” for the simple reason that we (the church) put ourselves in a position of claim to salvation. So, there’s an obvious tension: I want to say “All are saved” but not “All will be saved.” I really can see no other way around it, and I’m not especially disturbed by it — in fact, it is quite freeing as I stand and kneel before a God who wholly gives himself so that I may give all. You must lose your life in order to gain it. To confess that ”all will be saved” appears to me as an attempt to preserve your life, and thus to lose it.

Kevin

Limbo and Limited Atonement: Two Churches, Semper Reformanda

I’ve been listening (multiple times) to the fascinating lectures by T. F. Torrance, provided by Ben Myers at his blog. In these lectures, Torrance covers a pretty wide gamut of fundamental theological concerns, arguing for his (briefly put) realist correlation between the knowing subject (man) and the God who makes himself known in Jesus Christ, whose homoousian with God, together with the Spirit (likewise homoousian with God) given to man, is the grounding for a realist epistemology, analogous to contemporary scientific theory where the objective pole of the subject-object correlation (the physical universe; or, in theology, Trinitarian revelation) is the ground and corrective to our knowledge and speech of such. Torrance does a breathtaking sweep and renunciation of Schillebeeckx’s Christology as erringly grounded in a Kantian-transcendental Thomist speculative knowing, mediated by the Church, wherein we receive a non-conceptual knowledge of God as mediated through human institutions (church, language, etc.) but not in-himself wherein God alone controls the means by which he is known. Confessional statements of the church are, according to both Schillebeeckx and Torrance, subject to error and revisable, but, according to Torrance, only a Trinitarian realist epistemology can provide a valid grounding for considering the church’s confession, as Schillebeeckx is incapable of properly delimiting the divine from the anthropological. Now, that is just a brief and incomplete (and likely incorrect in parts) presentation of Torrance’s argument, and I have a feeling that he overstates his case (a common Reformed tendency). As well, I don’t pretend to have a good grasp of his argument for conceptual v. non-conceptual knowing (and the auditive nature of God’s revealing). But I did find it fascinating to consider the grounds for which the church’s confession can be revised. In particular, Torrance uses the example of the classical Reformed doctrine of Limited Atonement as an example of a heresy that must be denounced as such among the Calvinist churches. His argument for the heretical nature of Limited Atonement rests with its reading “behind the back of God” (a favorite illustration of Torrance), and apart from Christ, a doctrine of reprobation, which is negated in Torrance’s soteriology by virtue of Christ’s homoousian with man, such that his very person as the God-man is his work of atonement for all men. In other words, all humans are redeemed by virtue of sharing the same humanity that Christ took and redeemed. And, once again, Jesus’ homoousian with God grounds our trust and ability to speak of God and his work for men. Of course, we hear echoes of Barth in his presentation of Election, and what is interesting (and what prompted me to write this post) is how thoroughly this critique of Limited Atonement has been accepted in the mainline Reformed churches where the Synod of Dordt and (for the Church of Scotland and the PCUSA) the Westminster Confession still serve as church confessions (thus questioning the legitimacy of retaining such confessions unreformed on these points, but not on others, e.g. Pope is the Antichrist). Nevertheless, the full-scale acceptance of Barth, Brunner, Berkouwer, and Torrance as legitimately “Reformed” thinkers in their ecclesial bodies while they rejected, in the past, a non-negotiable fundamental of Calvinism is a great good for the wider church and an excellent example of a church reforming itself in light of legitimate dogmatic developments (of course, the PCA, OPC, Free C of S, et al. object at precisely this point among others) . I think we can find an analogous situation in the Roman Catholic Church in relation to the doctrine of Limbo. The 20th century revival in Catholic dogmatics (in both its transcendental Thomist and Ressourcement forms) and exegesis has committed the Catholic Church to a greater engagement with the sources and grounds for Church dogmas. Thanks to the work of Henri de Lubac among others, Limbo has been determined as a theological speculation, allowable within Catholic thinking but believed by most to be based upon faulty theological premises (namely, the range of God’s [extra]sacramental operation and the beatitude of man apart from God). I could go into it in more detail (and perhaps in the future) but I must finish. So, in close, granted that the methods necessarily differ between Reformed and Catholic dogmatics (including the range of reform), I find the cases of Limited Atonement and Limbo to be heartening examples of the two churches re-evaluating their teachings in light of a renewed commitment to thinking within the Trinitarian revealing of God and offering correctives to past speaking about God as determined by that Revelation.