This is a companion volume to an earlier superb work on the incarnation published in 2008. Both posthumous publications consisted of T. F. Torrance's University of Edinburgh lectures from 1952–78, skilfully edited with an extended and valuable introduction by Robert T. Walker. This volume will further enhance Torrance's reputation as one of the most significant English-speaking theologians of the twentieth century. It is truly a monumental piece of theology because it offers readers a sensible and accessible explanation of the meaning of atonement within the context of Israel's historical self-understanding, precisely by focusing on Jesus’ own interpretation of his impending death at the Last Supper. Anyone reading this book will get a thorough education not only with respect to the doctrine of atonement but with regard to christology, the doctrine of God, eschatology, theological method, pneumatology and theological anthropology as well.
The book consists of twelve chapters discussing atonement in the New Testament in the context of the covenant; redemption in light of the Old Testament focusing on the priesthood of Christ; a development of themes in the epistle to the Hebrews; a discussion of justification; atonement as reconciliation understood as a completed event in the person of the incarnate Son; atonement as redemption; the resurrection; the nature of the resurrection event; the ascension and Second Coming of Jesus; the foundation of the apostolate; the church; and eschatology. Although the material on the resurrection and ascension was previously published, it helpfully illuminates the meaning of atonement here. Torrance impressively carries through his understanding of atonement by allowing nothing but Jesus himself as the incarnate Word to dictate his understanding; what we discover is that, in Christ's death, God has set our lives on a ‘wholly new basis’.
But ‘we cannot think our way into the death of Christ’, since we may only understand the atonement ‘if we follow the new and living way opened up to us in the crucifixion’ (p. 3). Any abstract theory of atonement ‘does away with the essential mystery’ by requiring rational continuity, which is impossible since what is revealed in and through Christ's death and resurrection is the fact that there is no ‘basic continuity here between man and God’ (p. 4). The very fact that the Son of God became incarnate and experienced our hell and judgement for our benefit discloses that ‘God himself had to descend into our bottomless pit of evil and guilt in order to construct continuity between us and God’ (p. 4). Torrance is not closing the door to positive theology here but insisting that all understanding must be based ‘in the person of the mediator and not in any logical or rational presuppositions which we bring to interpret what he has done’ (p. 4). This insight is powerfully developed so that in the end Torrance concludes that, since it is the human mind that directs our behaviour, ‘it is right there, in the ontological depths of the human mind, that we desperately need to be redeemed and healed’ (p. 439). Without ignoring our free will, Torrance stresses that ‘we are not at all free to escape from our self-will’ (p. 439). While we are prone to create God in our own image instead of living in his image, the Spirit enables us to think in and through Christ who healed our minds in his life of obedience. In this way we think from a centre in God and not from a centre in ourselves; we live as part of the new creation here and now ‘through union with the mind of the Lord Jesus’ (p. 446). But this means there can be no hint of Apollinarianism because that would deny that the flesh that was assumed by the Word was our sinful, alienated flesh which included our ‘twisted mind’ entrenched in evil (p. 439). If one's mind is untouched by the incarnation and atonement, then it is impossible to see that ‘right from the very beginning, our Lord converted it, healed it, and sanctified it in himself’ (p. 440) and so he was in himself sinless even as he lived his life within our fallen human nature. In this way he condemned sin ‘in our carnal mind’ (p. 440).
Fascinating material scattered throughout this book stresses: (1) the importance of our justification and sanctification once and for all in the divine and human history and sacrifice of Christ himself; (2) the utter and consistent rejection of all forms of self-justification so that, for example, any idea that Romans 1:17 refers to a ‘natural revelation’ strikes at the heart of Paul's doctrine of atonement; Paul cannot there be espousing ‘natural knowledge’ but rather that it is by grace and through faith that we are in the right. Paul's argument about the sin of Jew and Gentile is thus the corollary of grace (p. 108); (3) rejection of any idea that in obeying the Father, Jesus was placating God in some pagan sense (p. 140) that would then lead to the Pelagian idea that an angry God must be appeased through human mediation (pp. 53–4). This ignores the fact that ‘even as man in atoning action, Christ is act of God’ and ‘even as God in atoning action, Christ is act of man’ (p. 77); (4) rejection of all forms of universalism and conditional salvation (pp. 183–5, 188); (5) the idea that modern people misunderstand Christ's substitutionary act because, from the point of view of the law, it is impossible, even immoral, for one to die for another (p. 125); (6) the importance of holding together our objective and subjective reconciliation in the man Jesus as well as our subjective reconciliation which is worked out from the human side through the action of the Holy Spirit, who actualises reconciliation and revelation (which are objectively complete in Christ) in us, and who is actually Christ's own Spirit as the risen and glorified Lord who enables the apostles and us through them to know him in truth (pp. 148–53, 159–60, 165–6, 178–9, 190–1, 225–6, 324–8); (7) the necessity to distinguish reconciliation from redemption since redemption refers to the atonement still to be realised in us (pp. 174ff.); (8) rejection of the ‘hyper-Calvinist’ idea that Jesus only suffered humanly (p. 184); and (9) why it is imperative to exercise an ‘eschatological reserve’ when thinking about our participation in the ‘new creation’ here and now in a way which thoroughly eschews the idea that Jesus did not plan for an ‘eschatological pause’ between his first and second coming (pp. 309ff.).
Torrance is at his best analysing and rejecting the concepts of irresistible grace and absolute divine causality because they falsely suggest that ‘all for whom Christ died efficaciously must necessarily be saved’ (p. 186), and that in virtue of a doctrine of ‘absolute predestination’ there is assumed a ‘causal efficacy’ to Christ's death ‘which makes it applicable savingly only to the elect, as otherwise all would be saved’ (another hyper-Calvinist idea) (p. 186). The upshot of this is that, if atonement is associated only with God's will and not his personal nature as one who loves, it becomes arbitrary; if it is thought to arise from God's nature conceived as ‘absolute causality’, it ends with the idea of universal salvation (p. 187). These are rationalistic attempts to explain the mystery of atonement we meet in Christ by divorcing his work from his person. If atonement represents only ‘the possibility of salvation for all’, then ‘each person has to translate that general possibility into actuality’ (p. 187). This would end in Arminianism so that ‘every one is their own saviour, in so far as they have to co-operate with Christ for their salvation’ (p. 187). By contrast Torrance stresses that ‘Christ died for all humanity’ and ‘that is a finished work and not a mere possibility’ which ‘nothing can undo’ (p. 188); in Christ, God gives himself to everyone ‘even if they will not have him’ (p. 189). No one can evade this love of God for us. For people who refuse this, defy it or turn away from it, God's own self-giving ‘is their very judgement’ because ‘It opposes their refusal of God’ (p. 189). Hence, if people do go to hell, Torrance says, it is not because God positively rejected them; it is because they have inexplicably rejected God's positive act of reconciliation (pp. 156–8).
Torrance opposes moral influence theories of atonement because they do not hold Christ's person and work together and undercut the fact that we are saved personally by grace alone (p. 54). ‘We are not saved by the atoning death of Christ, far less by sacramental liturgical action, but by Christ Himself who in his own person made atonement for us. He is the atonement who ever lives and ever intercedes for us. He is, in the identity of his person and work, priest and sacrifice in one. His being mediates his great redeeming work’ (p. 73). Take away or diminish either Jesus’ divinity or his humanity in any sense and instantly the meaning of Christ's resurrection and ascension are undermined and theology is thrown back once more on its own resources leading to a ‘legalist doctrine of atonement’ (p. 74). Without denying the forensic element concerned with law and righteousness in terms of the law, Torrance nonetheless advocates an ‘eschatological suspension of the law in the freedom of the resurrection’ (p. 74) because legalist views miss the fact that Christ and not the law is our atonement.
Throughout this book Torrance's command of both Old and New Testament scriptures is impressive; from this witness we learn that in Christ's death God condemns sin ‘in sheer unmitigated love and at cost only to himself’ (p. 86) so that Christ's action as the eternal high priest is seen as a pivotal emphasis throughout and one of the most impressive parts of the book. A genuine sense of human freedom which exists only in and through Jesus himself who, even in his human actions of obedience, is himself the act of God, pervades Torrance's entire presentation. For that very reason atonement could never be understood as any sort of appeasement of God. ‘It is by combining both acts in himself as true God and true man that Christ works out this atonement, in one indivisible act of the God-man’ (p. 76). Even when he speaks of repentance, as he must, Torrance insists it cannot be equated with an ascetic love of feeling guilty but must be seen as joyful self-denial in which we find truth and righteousness not in ourselves, but in Christ alone (p. 108). All in all, this book is a must for anyone interested in serious theology today.
