Theological Journal – March 3 (Lent 2020)
Torrance Tuesday – Atonement
We will be shepherded toward the Cross this Lent by various
selections of Torrance’s teaching on Christ’s atoning death in its various
aspects.
“I believe that it is concentration upon the vicarious humanity of
Christ in the incarnation and atonement, in death and resurrection, that is
particularly important for us today. It is curious that evangelicals often link
the substitutionary act of Christ only with his death, and not with his
incarnate person and life . . . The thereby undermine the radical nature of
substitution, what the New Testament calls katallage, Christ in our place and Christ for us in every
respect. Substitution understood in this radical way means that Christ takes
our place in all our human life and activity before God, even in our believing,
praying, and worshipping of God, for he has yoked himself to us in such a
profound way that he stands in for us and upholds us at every point in our
human relations before God” (Preaching Christ Today, 30-31).
Here Torrance reveals his affinity with the Eastern church’s
insight that Christ’s atoning, reconciling work began in the wood of the manger
and was completed on the wood of the cross. The typical Western focus on
atonement as limited to the cross and Good Friday is not only “curious” as
Torrance says, but shortsighted and tragic.
-It shortchanges the meaning of his humanity, though in the
opposite direction of the quasi-Docetic way evangelicalism often does. Here not
enough is made of Christ’s deity in his humanity rather than the reverse.
-It shortchanges our view of the range of the atonement,
principally vesting its significance in the sacrificial metaphor of his death
and the forgiveness of sins and our “vertical” relation to God restored through
his sacrificial death.
-in the same way it shortchanges our ethics tending to
restrict it to our personal behavior and issues. This leaves us vulnerable to
being shaped by the “principalities and powers” ravaging our world. This
distorts not only our dealings in the world but also, though we seldom realize
it, our personal behavior and perception of and range of responses to the
issues we face.
Thus we can learn from Torrance here to reframe our view of
Christ’s person and work in a more biblical fashion this Lenten season.
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