Category: T F Torrance

The ancient church were so awestruck by the incarnation.  When the Word became flesh they realised people were now face-to-face with God.  God in Himself in this Person of Jesus Christ is our Mediator between God in Himself, who is in eternal union with the Father, and humanity.  There is no distance between human beings and God.  They only distance are ones that are mythologically imposed by human beings.  God in Jesus Christ has eradicated any obstacle that stands in the way and has completely united Himself to all human beings.  The apostles have written down this event and has left us first-hand accounts of what happened as they laid eyes on the Lord of glory and held and touched Him with their own hands.  In Jesus Christ is the…

Why is this method so important for us today?  The ancient church can give us a truly Christian frame of mind. This community can show us how they understood the way of seeing and the way of knowing God. It helps us to stay on course as we pursue an understanding of Christ in us. In the Patristic era, they had a clear understanding of God who acts, particularly in His great act of becoming Man and drawing close to us bringing humanity into His presence. It can help us to stand on our own two feet with confidence knowing that what we believe will be faithful to all the Apostle's taught.  The one thing they were certain is this: the nature of God equals the nature of Jesus Christ. …

Therefore to understand the Scriptures is to respect what they testify of Jesus Christ, firstly that He was always God and the Son, being the Word of the Father, secondly, to understand that He took the flesh of Mary, the bearer of God, and was made man. In this way, we remain true and faithful to God Himself and allow our whole mind, body and soul to by transformed by this reality. Any watering down of this account of the Gospel means a betrayal against the Incarnation and all that is spoken through Jesus Christ.  Without Jesus Christ speaking as the true God speaking on His own behalf, what follows is nothing but a figment of our own imagination. We become familiar with nothing.  The unity of being between the…

When we receive His Truth and let His truth reside in us as the ground of all truth, then out of the overflowing of our souls our mouths speak Godliness.  Godliness in this sense is the same as Christliness which is saying the same thing that God, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, has already said. John 8.12 Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” This verse here corresponds with the above verse, Ps. 36.9.  The fountain of Life, Jesus Christ, is the Light that we are able to make our own by abiding in it, allowing it to shine out of us and be personally guided by it. The Light speaks and acts in a…

Athanasius was the key figure in the fourth century who brought about the resounding defeat of Arius and his followers.  The ideas proposed by Arius have had far reaching effects even to this day.  There is enough of Arianism today to have filled the gospel with such confusion and misinformation creating many divisions within the body.  So subtle are these heresies that even the very elect within the denominations are not even aware of the inconsistencies between their doctrines compared with the one doctrine of the ancient church.  Many are not aware of  how enormous the inconsistencies are between their rigidly held doctrines strung tightly by logically strung scriptures compared with the whole scope of Scripture.  The main reason for this is the very Person and work of Jesus Christ…

Prior to James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein, enormous prestige was placed on developing a theory and producing the subsequent mathematics to show the strength of the theory.  It was often very complex and little regard was given to those who could not replicate the ideas through experimentation.  It was not important to have a theory and the subsequent evidence of the theory correspond to empirical facts of objects in the real world. To grasp a theory, one had to turn to the theorist, adopt his axiom and pursue the theorist's premise usually involving complex mathematical equations to understand the object in question. The result was the scientific world was in chaos where little forward progress was made due to the emphasis on the theory rather than the object in…

All truth contained within our universe has its source in its Creator, Jesus Christ.  While James Clerk-Maxwell was a devout Christian, to call Einstein as such is very hard to pin down.  Yet this man played a crucial part in consolidating light, electricity and magnetism into its relational unity that, as far as his work is concerned, there can be no other way. If it was all wrong, then, as silly as it sounds, everything in our high tech modern world would also be all wrong. We see this very same relational unity within the Trinity, what we call perichoresis; ie the relational unity, mutual indwelling and interpenetration of the Persons of the Trinity. Once we see the Trinity in this way, the shining light of Truth is on display where…

The ancient church has much to offer to modern Christianity.  The problem we have today are the numerous differing presuppositions on the true nature of the Christian God.  What we have is a church community that is divided against itself.  T F Torrance could see the root of this problem lies in understanding the gospel in same way the ancient community understood, which they believed to be the very same as was handed to them by the apostles.  In his scientific theology, Torrance tries to show the mind of the ancient church is one in her understanding of God revealed in the Person and work of Jesus Christ.  Sadly, many do not understand the full significance of what he was trying to show here.  His scientific theology is often seen…

When describing the Trinity as One Being (μία οὐσία), Three Persons (τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις), St Basil (Ep. 38; Con Eun. 2.4) provides a very straight forward explanation to help us grasp what this might mean.  Some people are confused as to how we can call God 'One,' when they are in fact, 'Three.' When I was young, we used the term,'man,' to describe collectively the human race. 'Man,' was the same term we use today for, 'humanity.' Both are singular terms that describe the whole of the human race. These humans are of the same created being (ὁμοούσία). We may have different races across the world and a myriad of personalities but we are all human 'beings' ie of the same οὐσία. Anatomically we are the same in being and nature.  Now if we…

What is central to our worship and a grateful response to Jesus Christ is the Eucharist.  The term Eucharist is a term by which we give thanks and gratitude for the grace of God that works so well.  Grace is not some ethereal power of God like pleasant smell from a scented candle.  Grace is personified in the Person and work of Jesus Christ.  When we read the New Testament Scriptures we actually see grace at work.  It is the charitable lovingkindness of God expressed in active love.  Love is not inert and dormant.  When we love, we actually do something.   When God loves, we actually see what God has done towards us in the Person who loves by what we visibly see in the work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the…