The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons

by Thomas F. Torrance

Written by one of the twentieth-century's foremost modern Trinitarian theologians The Christian Doctrine of God remains a classic ground work for scholars and students alike.
In the book Thomas F. Torrance offers a detailed study of the most profound article of the Christian faith - the Holy Trinity. Torrance adopts a holistic approach when examining the inter-relatedness of the three persons - Father, son, and Holy Spirit - and their dynamic Communion with the Being and Nature of God. Combining immense academic range with his characteristically fresh theological perspectives, Torrance builds a significant theological bridge between ancient and modern, as well as between the Roman and Protestant theology; he engages deeply with the Church Fathers and discusses the ontological nature of God. Here Torrance conveys a simple message - the doctrine of the Trinity is the doctrine of God.

This Cornerstones edition includes a new introduction written by Professor Paul D. Molnar, in which Molnar sets Torrance's classic work in its modern context and considers how it continues to influence the way we think about the Trinity today.

Genres: Theology, Christian

296 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

About the author

Thomas Forsyth Torrance, MBE FRSE (30 August 1913 – 2 December 2007), commonly referred to as T. F. Torrance, was a Scottish Protestant theologian. Torrance served for 27 years as Professor of Christian Dogmatics at New College, Edinburgh in the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his pioneering work in the study of science and theology, but he is equally respected for his work in systematic theology. While he wrote many books and articles advancing his own study of theology, he also edited the translation of several hundred theological writings into English from other languages, including the English translation of the thirteen-volume, six-million-word Church Dogmatics of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, as well as John Calvin's New Testament Commentaries. He was also a member of the famed Torrance family of theologians.
Torrance has been acknowledged as one of the most significant English-speaking theologians of the twentieth century, and in 1978, he received the prestigious Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion.[1] Torrance remained a dedicated churchman throughout his life, serving as an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland. He was instrumental in the development of the historic agreement between the Reformed and Eastern Orthodox Churches on the doctrine of the Trinity when a joint statement of agreement on that doctrine was issued between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Church on 13 March 1991.[2] He retired from the University of Edinburgh in 1979, but continued to lecture and to publish extensively. Several influential books on the Trinity were published after his retirement: The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (1988); Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement (1994); and The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (1996).

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Torrance offers an excellent treatment of the Trinity or, rather, per his conviction, an elucidation of the conviction that a truly Christian doctrine of God is a thoroughgoing trinitarian one. Torrance displays a trenchant knowledge of the Fathers and navigates complex issues in Trinitarian theology. Here are a few highlights I found particularly interesting: (1) he eschews the notion that the ontological and economic trinity are equivalent as two sides of the same question (a = a); (2) he argues that the ontological trinity lies behind and is not constituted or exhausted by the economic trinity; (3) he argued that the monarchy of the Trinity rests in the being rather than the person of the Father, thus denying any notion of subordination (though affirming a divine order or taxis); (4) he sees the revelation of God in Christ as the main theological truth informing our understanding of God's creative and providential workings; and (5) he argues that, in one sense, while God is impassible, in another sense, the passion of Christ is shared also by the Father and Holy Spirit thus in an impenetrable way God is both impassible and passible.

One wishes that post-Barthians such as McCormack would have learned more for the star pupil of Karl Barth since Torrance embraces the insights of Barth without falling into the ditches some of created as they thing beyond the same. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in a serious exposition of the doctrine of God from the perspective of the Trinity.

[Reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A guide through the complexities and historical development of the theology of the Trinity.

Not properly an introduction as it assumes a background in the theology of the Trinity. This work goes into the meaning of many of the relevant terms, particularly the Greek terms used by the Cappadocians and other church fathers. It explores the meaning, history, and development of terms such as *ousia, hypostasis, homoousian, homoiousian, perichoresis, filioque, theosis,* as well as others. Includes untranslated Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, and maybe even French. A scholarly work to be sure.

Focusing primarily on the early church fathers but also interacting with Barth, Rahner, Moltmann, Pannenberg, and other modern theologians. For what this book intends to do, which primarily is to clarify the theology of the Trinity in light of the Greek Fathers, I suspect there is no peer. This is the work. It also makes a case for being THE book on the Trinity as a whole. It is rich with insights into the nature of God.

[Taylor Rollo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work is very helpful in some ways: explaining Nicene orthodoxy, explaining how we understand the Trinity on different levels, and basic Trinitarian orthodoxy. However, there is also a lot of Barthian influence, which means Torrance over emphasizes certain perfections of God and makes them the hermeneutical lens, which causes some bad conclusions, like when Torrance claims that God loves His creatures more than Himself or when he argues that God is necessarily (not willfully) a communion-creating God.

So it is helpful for those who can sift out the faulty emphasis, but I would not just give this book to someone wanting to learn about the Trinity from the ground up.

[Phillip R Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book ever on doctrine of God

This book is so well done, that it's hard to put into words my praise for it. It is a book that will either change your mind about God or deepen what you already know. One cannot read this treatise and not be blown away by a greater understanding of Gods love for mankind. Question to ask oneself is does our view of God line up with what is being presented from the historic faith?

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for the faint of heart or novice. While an outstanding book in every regard, Torrance's monumental work on the trinue nature of God presupposes important things for successfully navigating its pages: at least an elementary knowledge of 1) trinitarian controversies of the patistic era, 2) Greek, and to a lesser extent 3) Latin, and finally 4) modern trinitarian debates.



As a postive monograph detailing the three in one and one in three ontic identification of God, Torrance devotes little time to alternate and/or opposing views on the triune God. As such the reader is left to infer such arguments or depend on prior knowledge. Without offering critiques on alternate viewpoints the reader is to his or her own devices on evaluating Torrance's claims. Whether this is a positive or a negative is based entirely on the reader. Personally, I would have preferred greater attention to alternate viewpoints but that is merely my own bias.



However, novices to trinitarian scholarship would be well served by carefully reading the first few chapters where Torrance lays his vision of the trinune nature of God. Deeply influenced by Patristic scholarship of Athanasius and the great Cappedocians and Karl Barth, God is three persons, one being; one being, three persons whose being is in action and whose action derives from His being. "God" is necessarily trinune and theological discussions are more than mere concepts but reflections emerging from and leading to worship.



The book reaches a high note during the final two chapters where Torrance puts his stamp on the trinity to two test cases: creation and providence and the unchangeableness of God. Most noteworthy is the trinitarian nature of divine providence that is propery known and understood through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Being of one essence with God the Father and God the Spirit, Jesus Christ by virtue of His participation in the divine being of God also participated in the creation of all things. And by virtue of his incarnation God through the incarnate Jesus Christ acted definively for the creation it is redemption and reconciliation thereby preserving the world through and for God.



Those seeking to move even deeper into trinitarian scholarship will be delighted by the middle chapters which are endlessly complex and explore such concepts as homoousious, hypostatic union, being, personhood, and perichoresis through Torrance's unique 3-fold strata of human knowledge of the divine

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This covers much of the same ground as his earlier *The Trinitarian Faith,* though with some new material. Such material, however, does not replace The Trinitarian Faith and if money is a factor, then get TTF instead.

Torrance centers his argument around the homoousion. It guarantees how we understand the internal relations in the Trinity. Not only are the persons homoousion, but so are the relations. Only in Christ is God’s self-revelation identical with himself” (Torrance 1). In Christ God has communicated his Word to us and imparted his Spirit. God’s revelation of himself as Father, Son, and HS in the economy of salvation is grounded in and derived from the eternal being of God” (80).

Torrance makes several key, epistemological gains in this work. Knowledge of new realities calls for new ways of thinking--new concepts and new thought patterns (Contra Arianos, 1:23; 4:27; De Synodis 42). We interiorize what we seek to know and rely not just on external evidence (38). The object naturally integrates into us and we let it disclose its depths of meaning to us.

Torrance has an illuminating discussion of the Divine Monarchy. The monarchy means there is a specific order to the divine Persons. It is the order manifested in the history and revealing of God’s saving acts (176). The Son is begotten of the Father, not the other way around. If one presses the cappadocian distinctions too far, then we are left with the claim that the person of the Father causes, deifies, and personalizes the Being of the Son, Spirit, and even Godhead!

We can say, however, that the monarchia of the Father is cause not of their being, but of their mode of enhypostatic differentiation (179). Torrance wants to see the monarchia referring to the Being of the Father, rather than strictly the Person. For him this points back to the intrinsic relations of the Being: The Being of the Father as Father means the Being of the Son of the Father.

Conclusion:

This is a good book, but it repeats a lot of material from his earlier work and the discussions aren't always clearer.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This an amazing book densely packed in every way....including language. I doubt I got even 50% of what is offered here and will need to read this again. I have had the experience before with some writing by C. S. Lewis (The Four Loves, for example).

The point here (and to say this is doing a terrible disservice to this book) is that the study of the bile is "a whole". The Trinity at the heart of the Christian Gospel, God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) reveling himself through Himself. The book ranges in it's discussion from reconciliation and revelation to/through three beings one person/one being three persons. There are discussions of the oneness of God and the unchangeableness of God but through it all the theme of oneness of the scripture is constant. The gospel like God is united and not to be separated.

I plan probably to buy this book as it will call for several more readings.

[Tyson Guthrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Torrance offers many necessary correctives for Western Christian's in their doctrine of God. Still I'm never fully assured that he doesn't view the divine essence as a Person. This can be problematic since he explicitly denies that the Father is the Monarchy of the Godhead. To this end he claims the support of Gregory of Nazianzus, especially Or. 31.14. Not only is this a hotly debated passage (at least as patristic scholars rate hotness), but the best and most recent work on this passage disagrees with Torrance's interpretation. (See Beeley's book "Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God," or better, his article in the 2007 issue of the Harvard Theological Review "Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus." Still, Torrance is a giant in 20th Century trinitarian thought, and fills in Barth's trinitarianism in many and helpful ways.

[Brian Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is mostly about the Trinity. While there is some good information in it, Torrance's style of writing is taxing. He writes very long sentences which are often reformulations of statements he has already made. The argumentation is not very linear, but rather circular in the sense that he repeats information before moving forward a bit, only to repeat previous information.

Oddly, Torrance is aware of his writing style--and apparently does nothing to change it! In the preface, he acknowledges his repetitive writing and his "rather difficult style." I appreciate clarity in writing, and Torrance is often not very clear. There are other books of about the same length on the Trinity (see Fred Sanders and Gerald Bray, for example), so I would hesitate to recommend this book.

Additionally, I should note that the font of this book made reading it a chore.

[G Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the densest books I have ever read... Not just because of the writing style (though that too is difficult)... but because the challenges in addressing such a rich mystery. This is a significant work, very important to any attempt at studying the historical, philosophical and biblical aspects of Trinitarianism - but honestly, I found it more edifying the second time through... While this is a work of Dogmatics, his works on the _Incarnation_ and _Atonement_ are much more accessible and should perhaps be consulted before engaging this work. Torrance is in my estimation one of - if not the - most important Trinitarian theologians from our day.

[David Scarratt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some people love this stuff. I don't. I persevered well beyond the point demanded by charity, and in the end I spent several hours translating a couple of pages into English. I decided not to persist when several hundred words did, after careful perusal, actually appear to boil down to saying that God really is who he is. Life is too short for this.

[Zach Waldis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ended the year right with the Trinity. The only reason this book isn't 5 stars is that it's highly technical and highly repetitive (we are talking about the Triune God's overflowing love for all eternity, after all), but if you want a primer on the Trinity, especially in contrast to the subordinationist heresy which is so prominent in conservative circles these days, this book does the trick.

[Bobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best, actually the best constructive work on Trinitarian theology available.

[Bradley]

Found this very helpful in essays on the Trinity

[Stephen Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible! Many great sections, but I especially enjoyed Torrance's engagement with Jürgen Moltmann in the last chapter. All around fantastic book.