Book Review: Trinitarian Grace: An Entry into the Theology of T.F. Torrance
Trinitarian Grace and Participation: An Entry into the Theology of T. F. Torrance
By: Geordie W. Ziegler
Foreword by: John Webster
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017) ISBN: 978–1–5064–2339–5 (Hardcover) 331 pp. Price $79.00
To start, let me say thank you to Geordie and Fortress Press for sending me a review copy of Ziegler’s book. This book represents the published form of Ziegler’s PhD in Theology which he earned under the watchful eye of the late John Webster, at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
In this study Ziegler attempts to highlight and develop what Torrance himself understood to be the deepest point, and most regulative factor in regard to his theological offering; that is, the interiority of God’s Grace and how that implicates, according to Torrance, the rest of his theological project. Ziegler believes that prior to his work, and with all the work that has been done on Torrance’s theology, that there has been a lacuna with reference to excavating this depth dimension funding Torrance’s complete theological oeuvre. Ziegler writes in relief of this lacuna:
While these studies have illuminated important aspects of the structure of Torrance’s thought, this project lays claim to what could be considered a deeper strata of Torrance’s theology: his doctrine of Grace, in which all other doctrines find their interior logic. It is the unique assertion of this monograph that Torrance’s doctrine of Grace, heretofore unexplored, is the central and controlling conceptual se which provides the fundamental organizing framework for his entire theological project. (p. xv)
Thusly, it is Ziegler’s task to explicate this ostensible lacuna in Torrance studies in regard to what Torrance himself regarded as the sine qua non of his theological offering.
Ziegler develops his thesis, in regard to establishing Torrance’s Doctrine of Grace as the fulcrum of theological endeavor, by way of six intentional chapters. They are: 1) The Motion of Grace from the Trinity; 2) The Motion of Grace through the Son; 3) The Motion of Grace through the Spirit; 4) Anthropology — Grace Has a Context; 5) The Eschatological Form of Grace; 6) Formation through Participation: Identity and Movement. These six chapters are organized within two broader sections; the first section encompassing the first three chapters entitled: Part I. The Objective Agent in Grace — The Triune Persons, and then the second made up by the latter three chapters entitled: Part II. Human Participation in the Motion of Grace. The organization itself flows from Torrance’s emphasis on the antecedent life of God as the ground and basis for its realization for us in the economy of salvation. In other words, what we see in Ziegler’s organization is organic to Torrance’s own prolegomenon, and how that reflects a very classical mode in regard to the relationship of the so called processions of God (in se), and the missions of God (ad extra).
By framing his thesis this way, Ziegler establishes an organically Torrancean baseline for developing an argument that naturally coheres with Torrance’s own premises in regard to the centrality of grace vis-à-vis God. In other words, by starting with the Trinity, as Torrance does as the ‘ground and grammar’ of all else, Ziegler reflects an attention to Torrance’s theology that allows him to make a sort of seamless argument in regard to God’s Grace as a personal reality. Ziegler summarizes, “Grace for Torrance is the event of God’s self-giving in Christ and through the Spirit for human salvation and participation in the life and love of God” (p. 293). This is what Ziegler has sought to establish throughout his book; viz. “Although finite and fallen, we are included in the Son’s relation with the Father. As a reality inextricably grounded in the trinitarian life, Torrance steadfastly rejects any attempt to treat Grace sub-personally: as a force, energy, spiritual power, supplement aid, or spiritual medicine” (p. 293). What Ziegler ultimately attempted to establish, in regard to Torrance’s theology of grace, was that it is abidingly personal and should not be thought of in abstraction from God’s personal and triune life; but instead, precisely from God’s life as the ground and bases for all that we know of God and ourselves. Ziegler makes this clear when he writes, “In contrast to these more common approaches, Torrance argues that Grace always acts upon men and women in an intensely personal manner — “as personal as Christ Himself” (p. 294).
In conclusive fashion, at the end of Ziegler’s study he writes the following (at length):
Second, this study demonstrates the consistent manner in which Torrance’s own theology is determined by his doctrine of Grace. Torrance both claims and delivers a theology in which the doctrine of Grace provides the interior logic characterizing the whole. This study has shown that the thread which guides the whole and which provides the material dogmatic norms around which all doctrines can cohere and dovetail together, is “how God deals with us in Jesus Christ” or more simply, “the doctrine of grace.” Thus, rather than reducing his doctrine of Grace to a subcategory within a larger doctrine of justification, this study shows that Torrance’s doctrine of Grace informs and determines the shape of the rest of his theology (p. 294).
For the attentive reader what stands out in the summative statement, is what stood out throughout the development of Ziegler’s work in total. That is, what Ziegler attempted to establish was that to think God’s Grace, in Torrance’s theology, is to not think any further than Jesus Christ. What Zigeler attempted to establish was that grace, in Torrance’s theology, is a profoundly relational and personalist reality that should not be thought of under any other pressures than those supplied for by God’s free act of Self-giveness for us in the incarnation of the Son.
For anyone interested in the theology of T. F. Torrance, Ziegler’s work will serve as a well-developed guide into the core of what makes Torrance’s theology tick. Ziegler writes with a clarity and precision of thought that is given coherence and thickness precisely at the point that his work is couched in and funded by careful attention to the corpus of Torrance’s works. Indeed, I would recommend this book to anyone who has heard of Torrance (and for those who haven’t), and wants to gain a greater grasp of the abiding reality that pervades all of Torrance’s theology; Ziegler accomplished that task, the task he set for himself, admirably. The reader will also notice, as they engage with this work, that there has been acute attention to editing and organization. For these reasons the book itself offers a fresh and insightful analysis of what can often be a daunting subject to discern for oneself as they work through the various works that Torrance has offered the church catholic.
