The Ground and Grammar of Theology

193 Pages·2001·8.072 MB·English

by  Thomas F. Torrance

The Ground and Grammar
o F
T H E O L O GY
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The Ground and Grammar
O F
T H E O L O GY
Consonance between Theology and Science
Thomas F. Torrance
T&T CLARK
EDINBURGH & NEW YORK
T&T CLARK LTD
A Continuum imprint
59 George Street 370 Lexington Avenue
Edinburgh EH2 2LQ New York 10017-6503
Scotland USA
www.tandtclark.co.uk www.continuumbooks.com
Copyright © T. F. Torrance, 1980
Preface to the new edition copyright © T. F. Torrance, 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of T&T Clark Ltd.
First published 1980 by University Press of Virginia
and Christian Journals Limited, Belfast
First published in paperback 2001 by T&T Clark Ltd
ISBN o 567 08778 6
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Preface to the New Edition vii
Preface ix
i. Man, the Priest of Creation i
2. Emerging from the Cultural Split 15
3. Creation and Science 44
4. The Transformation of Natural Theology 75
5. Theological Science no
6. The Basic Grammar of Theology 146
Index of Names 179
T O
John Marks Templeton
in high regard and deep admiration
Preface to the
New Edition
T
HIS BOOK WAS FIRST published by the University Pres
of Virginia in 1980 in which I was concerned to bring
to light some of the important connections between
Christian Theology and Natural Science. In it I sought
to clarify the relations of Christian theology to the two
great dualist cosmologies of the past, the Ptolemaic and
Copernican-Newtonian, and to the non-dualist cosmological
outlook arising out of the radical change in the basic
rationality of science which we owe to Einstein, and, as
he claimed, to James Clerk Maxwell. In it I did not point
to the work of Clerk Maxwell, which I have discussed
elsewhere: particularly in the book Transformation and
Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge, published by
Christian Journals Limited of Belfast (which also pub-
lished an edition of this work in 1980), and in my edition
of his epoch-making book A Dynamical Theory of the
Electromagnetic Field, Edinburgh 1982, now published by
Wipf & Stock, Eugene, Oregon. Two of the reasons for
reissuing The Ground and Grammar of Theology now are
my attempt in it to clarify the trinitarian structure of
Christian theology, and the discussion that has been raised
by the transformation of so-called natural theology.
Unfortunately the chapter entitled "The Transformation
of Natural Theology" has been seriously misunderstood by
a[vii]
Preface to the New Edition I
a number of people who use it to support and justify their
own unreconstructed conceptions of "natural theology".
May I direct them to Chapter 5 of my book Karl Earthy
Biblical and Evangelical Theologian* published by T&T
Clark in 1990?
This book, like the original edition, is dedicated to John
Marks Templeton, in high regard and deep admiration.
Adventy 2000 T.F.T.
Edinburgh
viii]
Preface
AFULLER TITLE FOR THESE LECTURES more explicitly re-
lated to what they are intended to be about, would
be "The Ground and Grammar of a Realist Theology in
the ^Perspective of a Unitary Understanding of the Crea-
tion." I believe that human thought is now in the midst of
one of the greatest transitions of history, which we must
take with the utmost seriousness—a transition away from
cosmological and epistemological dualisms that have had,
as we now realize, a damaging effect on human culture, in
science and philosophy, and not least upon religion and the-
ology. Throughout the lectures (or chapters as they now
are), I keep asking what happens when we move from a
dualist outlook to a unitary outlook, and to the realist
modes of thought that arise in such an outlook, in which
we have restored to us the unity of form and being. The
dualist outlook that we have to transcend here affects not
only our intramundane relations but our understanding of
the relation between God and the created universe, for they
are mutually affected by each other. Conversely, a unitary
outlook upon the created universe and the doctrine of God
as the one creative Source of all order in the universe are
profoundly interconnected. Hence, fundamental to all that
follows are the Christian doctrine of God, the Creator and
Redeemer, and the doctrine of the creation itself, within
which God reveals himself to us and within which man, as
man of science and man of faith, is called to be the priest of
[ix]