Thomas Torrance - Early Years

Early Years

Torrance was born of Scottish missionary parents in Chengdu, Szechuan, West China; named after his great-grandfather, Thomas Forsyth Torrance; 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. 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) 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.