Thomas F. Torrance

Thomas Forsyth Torrance was the son of the Revd Thomas Torrance (1871–1959) and Annie Elizabeth Torrance (1883–1981), both Scottish missionaries of China Inland Mission in Chengdu, Sichuan, West China, where he spent the first 13 years of his life.

He was named after his great-grandfather, also Thomas Forsyth Torrance.

Thomas Forsyth Torrance (30 August 1913 – 2 December 2007), commonly referred to as T. F. Torrance, was a Scottish Protestant theologian and Presbyterian minister.

He was a member of the famed Torrance family of theologians.

Torrance served for 27 years as professor of Christian dogmatics at New College, 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.

In addition to writing many of his own books and articles, he also edited the translation of several hundred theological writings into English, including the thirteen-volume, six-million-word Church Dogmatics of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, as well as John Calvin's New Testament Commentaries.

Torrance has been acknowledged as one of the most significant English-speaking theologians of the 20th century.

He began studying in Edinburgh in 1931, focusing on classics and philosophy.

At that time his own realist views of philosophy, theology and morality started to take shape.

He moved to the study of theology at the Faculty of Divinity (New College) in 1934, and began to question the theological methodology of Schleiermacher for its lack of realist scientific objectivity.

For Torrance, such objectivity meant that theological concepts must be shaped by the unique nature of the object of reflection.

In this regard, theology differed from science only in the object being reflected; while science reflects the world, theology reflects the Creator of the world — who was no distant God, but became incarnate within time and space to reconcile the world to himself.

Therefore Torrance opposed every form of dualism, because it kept God from interacting with people throughout history.

He also opposed subjectivism because he held that it was impossible for people to know God objectively by reflecting upon themselves.

Torrance was strongly influenced by Hugh Ross Mackintosh, who stressed the centrality of Christ and the connection between theology and mission; and by Daniel Lamont, who stressed the relationship between Christianity and scientific culture.

Torrance was awarded the Blackie Fellowship in 1936 to study in the Middle East.

In Basra, he was accused of being a spy and sentenced to death.

However, he was able to convince the authorities that he was a theological student and was allowed to proceed to Baghdad and then Syria.

He eventually returned to Scotland and graduated summa cum laude, specialising in systematic theology.

He taught at Auburn Theological Seminary from 1938 to 1939.

He was offered a position in religion at Princeton University, which he rejected in order to return home to Scotland before the start of World War II.

From 1939 to 1940, Torrance studied at Oriel College, Oxford, and he was ordained as a minister on 20 March 1940.

During the war, he provided pastoral and practical support to Scottish soldiers in North Africa and northern Italy.

On more than one occasion, he escaped with his life after coming under fire.

After the war, he returned to his parish in Alyth and later became minister at Beechgrove Church in Aberdeen, following in the footsteps of his Hugh Ross Mackintosh, his former professor.

He married Margaret Edith Spear on 2 October 1946 at Combe Down Parish Church near Bath.

Also in 1946, he completed his doctorate with Karl Barth in Basel and graduated magna cum laude.

His dissertation was titled "The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers".

His children include Thomas Spear Torrance (3 July 1947, now an economist and philosopher of science at Heroit-Watt), Iain Richard Torrance (13 January 1949) and Alison Meta Elizabeth Torrance (15 April 1951, now a general practitioner in Edinburgh).

In 1948, he was the founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal the Scottish Journal of Theology, which his son Iain continues to edit along with Bryan Spinks of Yale.

As a Reformed churchman and theologian, Torrance worked throughout his career for ecumenical harmony with Anglicans, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

He represented the Church of Scotland in conversations with the Church of England from 1949 to 1951, and fought tirelessly for the visible union of the Church; From 1954 to 1962, he was the Convener of the Church of Scotland Commission on Baptism (with John Heron, the father of Alasdair Heron, acting as secretary), and in 1954 he was present at the World Council of Churches meeting in Evanston, Illinois.

Torrance' ecumenical work with the Eastern Orthodox Church was recognised in 1973 when the Archbishop of Axum made him an honorary protopresbyter in the Patriarchate of Alexandria.

He served on the Reformed–Roman Catholic Study Commission on the Eucharist which met at Woudschoten in the Netherlands in 1974.

At that time, he formed a personal relationship with the Roman Catholic cardinal and renowned ecumenist Yves Congar.

In 1978, he received the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion.

Torrance remained a dedicated churchman throughout his life, serving as an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland.

After retiring from the University of Edinburgh in 1979, he continued to lecture and to publish extensively, including several influential books on the Trinity: 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).

He was instrumental in the development of the historic agreement between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Eastern Orthodox Church churches on the doctrine of the Trinity, who released a joint statement of agreement on 13 March 1991.