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" Suffering servant, wounded word, troubled Trinity: The passion of God in the theology of T. F. Torrance "
Joel Alan Scandrett
J. Pain
Document Type
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Latin Dissertation
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Language of Document
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English
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Record Number
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54456
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Doc. No
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TL24410
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Call number
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3222209
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Main Entry
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Joel Alan Scandrett
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Title & Author
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Suffering servant, wounded word, troubled Trinity: The passion of God in the theology of T. F. Torrance\ Joel Alan Scandrett
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College
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Drew University
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Date
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2006
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Degree
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Ph.D.
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student score
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2006
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Page No
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186
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the theology of Thomas Forsyth Torrance regarding the possibility of God's suffering in three principal respects: First, it delineates those methodological commitments that inform Torrance's understanding of the task of theology. In doing so, it demonstrates the relationship between Torrance's "scientific" theological method and his affirmations regarding God's "passion" (passibility and suffering). A scientific theology will allow the objective features of God's Being revealed preeminently in Jesus Christ to emerge according to their own distinctive nature. Thus, Torrance militates against any metaphysical apriori that would categorically deny or affirm the suffering of God. The question of God's suffering may be answered only by examining God's self-revelation as Jesus Christ and allowing the inherent implications of that revelation to unfold according to its own integrity. Second, Torrance analyses the self-revelation of God as Jesus Christ in its evangelical/doxological, economic/doctrinal, and theological/ontological aspects, all of which are grounded in the Acts of God in human history. Beginning with the Old Testament, Torrance demonstrates Israel's role as God's "social coefficient of knowledge," a matrix of thought- and life-forms by which humanity may apprehend God's self-revelation as Jesus Christ. Central to that matrix is the inherently conflicted relationship between the holy Word and sinful Israel that results in Israel's suffering. That suffering is prefigured in Isaiah's Suffering Servant and recapitulated in the suffering of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus is God and human in one undivided Person, his suffering cannot be attributed solely to his humanity but must also be attributed to the Word. Likewise, because the Trinity is ontically and perichoretically indivisible, the Word's suffering is born by the Father and the Holy Spirit. That suffering is not eternal, but is a revelation of God's compassionate response to human suffering, which will ultimately be overcome by the transcendent freedom of God. Third, Torrance uses these conclusions to evaluate the tradition of divine impassibility and the modern rejection thereof. While sympathetic, he concludes that both approaches are flawed by virtue of their apriori imposition of metaphysical notions of God that are not authentic to God's actual self-revelation as Jesus Christ.
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Subject
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Philosophy, religion and theology; God; Jesus Christ; Passion; Theology; Torrance, Thomas Forsyth; Trinity; 0469:Theology
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Added Entry
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J. Pain
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Added Entry
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Drew University
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