Theological Journal – January 14 Torrance Tuesday When an Iota Makes More than an Iota of Difference – All the Difference, In Fact!

During World War II Thomas Torrance, serving as a chaplain found himself comforting a mortally wounded young soldier. “Padre,” the dying soldier asked him, “Is God really like Jesus?”


How would you answer him if you had been his chaplain?


Torrance’s answer: “He is the only God that there is, the God who has come to us in Jesus, shown his face to us, and poured out his love to us as our Savior.” The young man died having heard that assurance.


Why was Torrance able to give such assurance to that dying soldier? Many today would not be able to because they believe that God (the Father, to use Christian lingo) is fundamentally different than Jesus the Son. The former is, as I like to put it, the “God with a Scowl.” A morally over-scrupulous scorekeeper scrutinizing our every attitude and action ready, eager even, to rain judgment down on us when we misstep. Such is his disposition toward us. Jesus, such folk believe, is for us, loves us, forgives us, keeps us safe by interceding for us and standing in front of us to absorb and block the divine thunderbolts of judgment. No offer of assurance such as Torrance gave the young soldier will be forthcoming from these folk.


While for people like these it is the perceived “moral” difference between God and Jesus that makes such an assurance impossible, for others it is an “ontological” issue that blocks it. They believe that God is so different from humanity at the level of being, that the two are such different kinds of “things,” that the one can never be the other. In the early church it was this latter issue that prevented some from making this assurance that “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn.14:9). And that issue came down to two Greek words where an “iota” makes all the difference in the world!


Some in the early church used the Greek word homoiousios (of like substance) to describe Jesus’ relation to God. They believed he was the very greatest of God’s creatures, even God’s Son, but still a creature created by God at a point in time. Others opposed this view of Jesus believing the scripture required us to say more and they used the Greek word homoousios (of the same or identical substance). There’s only an “iota” (the name of the Greek letter for “i”) of difference between the two words. But in meaning it’s the difference between a creature who is only like God (implying some “unlikeness” as well) or a God who has himself become human and who attitudes and actions as this human are “divine.” What this human, Jesus, does, God does. What Jesus thinks, God thinks. How this human feels, God feels.


Torrance defended this latter word, homoousios as the sum and substance of the gospel his whole life. He was adamant about it. “There is no God behind the back of Jesus,” he was wont to say. What you see with Jesus is what you get with God. There is no “God with a Scowl” from whom Jesus needs to protect us. This is why he could say what he did to that dying soldier. And why we can say the same thing to our dying world and call them to find in Jesus’ arms the very arms of God wrapping them in a loving embrace.    


So, in this case an “iota” really does make a difference. All the difference in the world!