Covenant and the Triune God of Grace

Perichoresis May 5 2009

Overview….

n Where are the Torrances coming from? n Common themes and correlations n Theological method – Christology n Covenant/Contract n What does all this mean for our life in

Christ?

Background quotes

n  God’s self-revelation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit both creates the framework within which it is to be solely understood, and generates the very forms of thought and speech with which it is to be grasped and articulated.[1]

n  [1] T.F Torrance The Christian Doctrine of God – One Being, Three Persons (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 21.

n Our knowledge of God consists of the Man Jesus Christ.[1]

n  [1] T.F Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 9.

“The heart of the New Testament is the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Spirit” (J.B. Torrance).

– “there is no other God behind the back of Jesus Christ”

(T.F. Torrance).

n  ‘When we look into the face of Jesus Christ and see there the very face of God, we know we have not seen and cannot see God anywhere else or in any other way but in him, for he is God himself become human, and there is no God except the God who has come and meets us in Jesus. Who and what God really is could not be revealed to us or known by us except in and through the Incarnation…it is in Jesus the incarnate Son of the Father that we human beings may really and joyfully know God in his divine nature’.[1]

n  [1] T.F Torrance, ‘The Christ Who Loves Us’ in G Dawson and J Stein (eds) A Passion for Christ: The Vision that Ignites Ministry (Edinburgh/Lenoir: Handsel Press & PLC Publications, 1999), 13.

n “God is not one thing towards us in Jesus and another thing in himself”

5 key areas

n The basis of a covenant vs contract n The motivation n The person & role of Jesus & the

Father, in the Spirit (kind of important) n Our place and role n The place of obligations

Covenant Contract Basis Rel of uncond

love Cond. Rel; promise to act

Motivation Familial Legal

Jesus Mediator, fulfils covenant

Agent of salvation

Father Shows Fatherhood via covenant

Becomes father if we enter contract

Us Participate by the Spirit

Independent; Create rel w God via conversion

Obligations Enabled by rel and met by Jesus

Create and define the rel

n ‘the concept of homoousion…gave expression to the underlying oneness in being and activity between the incarnate Son and God the Father upon which everything in the Gospel depend[s]’ [1] [1] T.F Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 168-169. Italics added.

n  ‘[we need to] conserve evangelical faith in the oneness between what God is toward us in Jesus Christ and what he is in his own Being as God. If that relation in being and agency is cut, then the whole Gospel…collapses’.[1] [1] The Mediation of Christ, 9, italics added.

n  “relations between things have to do with what they actually are” – Mediation, p 2-3.

JB – Defining covenant n  “inner meaning of the Christian Gospel: God

has already bound himself to humanity in Jesus Christ in covenant love, and God has already bound humanity to Himself in Jesus Christ in covenant love - Jesus is the mediator”

n  “a promise binding two people or two parties to love one another unconditionally.’[1] [1] J.B. Torrance, “Covenant or Contract? A Study of the Theological Background of Worship in Seventeenth Century Scotland” (1970) Scottish Journal of Theology 23(1), 54.

n  ‘[d]ivine covenants have their source in the divine initiative, in the loving heart of God. God conceives of the covenant, God announces it. God confirms and establishes it and carries it through to fulfillment, and the motive is love’.[1] [1] J.B Torrance, “Covenant or Contract?” 55.

Covenant

n Content: Relationship of unconditional love

n Motivation: Familial/relational n Jesus: Mediator, fulfils covenant n Father: Declares his Fatherhood of us

via his covenant – one sided n Us: Participate in the covenant

established by F S SP n Obligations: Enabled by relationship

Jesus, in covenant

n Mediator n of ‘a new covenant of universal range

in which he presents us to his Father as those whom he has redeemed, sanctified, and perfected forever in himself’.[1] [1] T.F Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 76-77.

n  [Jesus] offered to God a perfect confidence and trust, a perfect faith and response which we are unable to offer…Through union with him we share in his faith, in his obedience, in his trust and his appropriation of the Father’s blessing; we share in his justification before God…it is the faith of Christ alone that justifies us…we in faith flee from our own acts even of repentance, confession, trust and response and take refuge in the obedience and faithfulness of Christ.[1]

n  [1] T.F Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Michigan: Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1965) 159-160.