Thomas F. Torrance<\/h3>
Thomas Forsyth Torrance MBE FRSE FBA (30 August 1913 \u2013 2 December 2007), commonly referred to as T.\u00a0F. Torrance, was a Scottish Protestant theologian. 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. 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 a member of the famed Torrance family of theologians.\n<\/p>
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).\n<\/p>
Torrance was the son of the Revd Thomas Torrance (1871\u20131959) and Annie Elizabeth Torrance (1883\u20131980), both Scottish missionaries of China Inland Mission in Chengdu, Sichuan, West China;[3][4] named after his great-grandfather, Thomas Forsyth Torrance;[5] and spent the first thirteen years of his life there. He was educated at the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford and Basel. 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, and as he moved to the study of theology at the Faculty of Divinity (New College) in 1934 this led him to question the theological methodology of Schleiermacher for its lack of any realist scientific objectivity. For Torrance, such objectivity meant that theology needed to allow all its concepts to be shaped by the unique nature of the object of reflection.[6] In this regard, theology did not differ from science; what set science and theology apart of course was the different nature of the objects of their reflection. In the case of science that was the world created by God; in the case of theology it was God the creator, reconciler and redeemer who was no distant God but the God who became incarnate in his Son within time and space in order to reconcile the world to himself. This insight led Torrance to oppose every form of dualism because such thinking always tended to keep God from interacting with us in history in one way or another. He also opposed all forms of \"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 (1870-1936)[7] and by Daniel Lamont (1869-1950), the former stressing the centrality of Christ and the connection between theology and mission, and the latter stressing the relationship between Christianity and scientific culture.[8]<\/p><\/div>\n
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