Joseph H. Sherrard

Summary: An examination of the contribution Thomas Torrance’s theological work makes to the church’s understanding of missiology, particularly centered around his understanding of the Godhead, the person of Christ, and Christ’s threefold offices and the church’s participation in them.

Thomas Torrance lived in the shadow of his mentor Karl Barth as well as collaborators like Leslie Newbigin. Much of his theological work addressed the nature of the Triune God and the person of Christ, as well as the relationship between science and theology. Joseph H. Sherrard asserts, contrary to first appearances, Torrance’s work offers a distinctive basis for the missiology of the church.

He begins with Torrance’s doctrine of God. Torrance’s doctrine of the homoousion leads to the idea that who the Triune God is in essence is who God is to us. There is no room for dualism, sealing God off from the material world God created. He highlights the lack of separation between God and the logos in Athanasius, the Reformation doctrine that saw the gift of grace and the Giver of grace as one, and the way Barth united these two insights in his thought. God’s mission that reconciles the world and creates the world reflects what God is in essence rather than something added or set apart.

Sherrard then turns to Christology, focusing on Torrance’s understanding of the threefold office of Christ as king, priest and prophet, and how the latter two often come together in Torrance’s work. I thought Sherrard’s treatment here was rich in material for theological reflection, including a discussion of three terms for redemption that form Torrance’s thought and how these map onto Christ’s threefold office:

-paddah, referring to a powerful, gracious work redeeming from sin’s power.
-kipper, the wiping out of sin, effecting propitiation between God and man.
-goel, the kinsman redeemer

In his chapter on Christology, Sherrard also elaborates the importance of the ascension as creating the space for the church as Christ’s body to participate in his ministry.

He then turns to this idea of the church as the body of Christ. Torrance saw the church as shaped by “the analogy of Christ” in four ways:

1. As a sent church as the Son was sent
2. As a body constrained by suffering as was Christ as the Suffering Servant
3. In its identity with fallen humanity as Christ so identified himself
4. In its movement toward teleological fullness as Christ is the one who fills all in all.

In the chapter, Sherrard also contrasts Torrance and Newbigin, particularly with regard to the latter’s more robust pneumatology.

Chapters four and five focus on the three offices and how the church in its mission participates in these. Chapter four focuses on the royal office. The church reflects the new creation, the new order under, and exercising royal authority, in the world. Sherrard notes that in the realm of political theology, Torrance left us with some ambiguity of how this authority is to be worked out vis a vis the state, a critical lacuna in our current moment. Chapter five then turns to the prophetic ministry and its relation to preaching and the priestly ministry and the place of sacraments in enacting that ministry. One of the criticisms Sherrard notes is that the prophetic ministry takes a back seat to the priestly in Torrance’s writing and is “underdetermined.”

,He concludes with a summary and assessment of Torrance’s contribution to missiology. First is the grounding of missiology in the Triune God rather than sociology. Second, and occupying much of this work is how mission ought be shaped by Christ’s threefold office. Third, and not something I’ve discussed thus far, is the contribution of the idea of the “deposit of faith” to mission, that is that the gospel has been entrusted to the church, to be kept by its continued propagation. Finally is the idea of how the church participates in Christ’s threefold ministry, patterning its life on his.

As noted in this conclusion, it may be that Torrance’s most distinctive contribution is to ground mission in our theology of the Triune God and this God’s seamless relation with and redemptive movement toward the world. Only our ever-deepening worship of the Triune God can sustain our missional efforts. Only his Son provides the definitive pattern for our mission. Only the gospel of a gracious God is sufficiently worthy to proclaim. Sherrard rightly notes our tendency to turn from theology to sociology, or worse pragmatic methodology. We do well to attend to the caution, and the rich contribution Torrance makes to a robust missiology.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.… (altro)