Eminent Scottish theologian Thomas F. Torrance gave considerable theological attention to the question of the nature of the Christian church and its vocation, in writing and lecturing as chair of Christian dogmatics at New College, Edinburgh. However, assembling a faithful and comprehensive presentation of his ecclesiology is a demanding task. Torrance's writings are prodigious, spread across sermons, academic journals, church periodicals, chapters in books, full-length monographs and two volumes of his lectures on christology. While his writings are dispersed, his thought is comprehensive and profoundly integrated. Mastering any single topic of Torrance is a significant achievement of scholarship, but that is what Kate Tyler has accomplished in this work.
Tyler's book is essentially expositional. There are ample references to a good number of other significant interpreters and some evaluative comments threaded throughout. The last chapter before the conclusion offers careful and thoughtful comparisons with the theologies of Kathyrn Tanner, Jürgen Moltmann and John Zizioulas. But the primary benefit of this work is a clear, comprehensive, integrated and faithful treatment of Torrance's ecclesiology. If you want to know what Torrance thought about the church, are interested in why he did so and how he believed this doctrine is intrinsically related to the other main articles of Christian faith, I know of no other book to recommend before this one.
The key to Tyler's contribution is her well-documented identification of the doctrine of the Trinity as the ontological ground and epistemological root of Torrance's ecclesiology, informing every other aspect of it. After a brief biographical sketch, we are given a crucial overview of Torrance's whole approach to theology. This first chapter demonstrates the depth and breadth of Tyler's gasp of the fundamental assumptions and method that inform and infuse Torrance's entire theological oeuvre – without which misunderstandings always abound.
Seven chapters of well-organised and amply footnoted exposition follow, unfolding Torrance's scripture-normed, historically informed, ecumenically concerned and ministry-aware understanding. Chapter 2 sets forth with laudable precision and detail the foundation of Torrance's doctrine of the Trinity. Chapter 3 traces out the biblical record of the redemptive history of the people of God from its inception in ancient Israel, through its New Testament regeneration and life between Christ's two advents, to its final hope in the new heavens and earth.
The fourth chapter expounds the second thematic element of Tyler's exposition. Grounded in the gracious ad extra act and word of the triune God, the church analogically reflects in its own being and life something of the ad intra perichoretic communion of the eternal Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our ecclesial communion is possible and actualised only by the mediation of the incarnate and atoning Son of God and the perfecting ministry of the Holy Spirit. The church then in all its ways is to be characterised as koinonia, a communion and participation by the Spirit in personal relationship with the triune God and as members of the body of Christ. Tyler gives convincing demonstration that these two biblically grounded touchstones, the Trinity and the koinonia of the Spirit, infuse every element of Torrance's ecclesiology.
The following three chapters demonstrate the fruitfulness of Torrance's trinitarian ecclesiology of koinonia. Chapter 5 takes up the question of church order and structure in this present age. Founded on the apostle's message and informed by the early creeds, Torrance provides insight as to how Christ-centered ministry and mission can be lived out in relation to the wider society and world today.
In chapter 6 Tyler presents Torrance's handling of the four Nicene ‘notes’ of the church (unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity) in conjunction with the classical Reformed ‘marks’ of the church (the Word of God purely preached, the sacraments rightly administered and church discipline). Treated all in the light of the koinonia of the Trinity, Tyler shows how these each radiate for Torrance a distinctive and decisive character that practically informs the dynamic participatory life of the church.
Chapter 7 concerns matters that Torrance not only thought, taught and wrote about, but actively participated in over many years: reconciliation, ecumenism and missions. These three dimensions of church life are in Torrance's view inseparable and unavoidable. The church's being as the creation of the Trinity for the purposes of koinonia make it so. Tyler traces out the persistent but not always successful trajectory of Torrance's endeavours along these lines. Finally (and as noted above), chapter 8 helpfully situates Torrance in dialogue with Tanner, Moltmann and Zizioulas. Tyler then closes with comments on the continuing value of Torrance's biblical and theologically comprehensive approach to ecclesiology.
While some may want more extensive critical engagement with Torrance, Tyler has provided what is not easily achieved – a faithful and comprehensive exposition of what Torrance actually understood the church of Jesus Christ to be. Such a foundation must first be accurately and fully laid out before any honest and constructive critique can follow. And that is what Tyler has accomplished in this valuable volume.
