The Stratification of Knowledge: Method Part 2

{ January 25, 2010 @ 9:56 am } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: Epistemology, T.F. Torrance }

This post is the second in a series sort of exploring and outlining what I think. This will deal with the stratification of knowledge in T.F Torrance. Torrance’s epistemological commitments have had a great effect on the way I understand theological method and the function of the function of the Trinity in theology. Parts of this are taken from an essay I worked on last year and other parts have been fiddled with a bit. If nothing else, I hope this makes you curious enough to go and read the man himself. Torrance is a fantastic theologian!

A large portion of Torrance’s theological project has been devoted to the consonance between theology and science. Torrance sees theology and science sharing certain epistemological presuppositions. Obviously the nature of the subject matter is quite different, however he sees there being intersection in the way theological and scientific methodology function, so he speaks of theology as scientia.

Torrance leaves no room in his thinking for any kind of epistemological dualism. “If we operate, not with some kind of epistemological dualism between form and being or structure and substance, then to know God must be in accordance with the form or structure of his own being- that is, in terms of God’s inner divine being.” (1) In order to know God in his inner divine being Torrance has created an epistemological-methodological structure. This structure stratifies theological knowledge into three levels intrinsically linked, yet distinct, finding their ultimate ground in God’s Being in se.

This means that knowledge is not gained in the flat as it were, reading off the surface of things, but in a multi-dimensional way in which we grapple with a range of intelligible structures that spread out far before us. In our theoretic constructions we rise from level after level of organised concepts and statements to their ultimate ontological ground. (2)

We shall use the doctrine of the Trinity as an example of the way Torrance stratifies knowledge, as this is the doctrine which he uses to describe it. However the aim of this section is to lay an epistemological framework for all theological thought. The three levels of theological knowledge are: first, the evangelical-doxological encounter with God through an experiential relation to divine revelation. Second, at the level of the economic action of God toward us we attempt to explain the way in which God’s works ad extra. Third, the level of the immanent relations of the Trinity, which is the way in which God, relates to himself in se. For Torrance this is seen as similar to the levels of scientific enquiry, however he notes that the movement is different in theological knowledge. The ontological movement is from the top to the bottom not the other way around.(3) The epistemological movement cannot help but be from bottom up however, because as humans we find ourselves working our way up through these ontological levels. Therefore, God in se informs his actions ad extra and the evangelical-doxological experience, whereas in science the experience of the object determines the nature of the knowledge.

First, we shall examine the level of evangelical-doxological experience. This is the level of “religious experience in which we have to do with God’s revealing and saving activity in the Gospel” (4). The evangelical level is seen by Torrance as fundamental to all further theological activity as it places the believer in communion with God and gives cues for further theological development. “Our minds apprehend this evangelical Trinity intuitively, as a whole, without engaging in any analytical or rational process of thought… thereby we gain the basic undefined cognition which informally shapes our faith and regulates our Trinitarian understanding of God.” (5)

Without this level all further theological elucidation is impossible as the pursuit of knowledge will not be done in gracious relationship with the object of investigation. Thus, “…it must be stated very emphatically that this ground level of evangelical experience and apprehension remains a necessary basis, the sine qua non, of other levels of doctrinal formulation developed from it.” (6) The other levels “…arise out of and develop the implicit and intrinsic Trinitarian pattern of God’s self-revelation in the Gospel…” (7) Even though this level does not demand analysis; Torrance argues that it is absolutely fundamental. Just as a child learns more about the world in its first five years than a physicist can explain in a lifetime, so we “learn far more about God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit… within the family and fellowship of the living tradition of the Church than we can ever say: It becomes built into the structure of our souls and minds, and we know much more than we can ever tell.” (8) However, knowledge does move beyond this level into analysis and development of theological concepts, so we turn to the second level.

The second level is termed the theological level. This is the point at which we begin to use rational and analytical faculties to understand the way God relates to the world. We understand God’s economic relations with humanity mediated through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

This level gives expression to the experience of reality in the first level. As such these concepts are “epistemically correlated with it [the first level] as refinements and extensions of the basic cognitions bound up with it”. (9) This does not mean that our concepts are constituted by our intuitive theological knowledge; but rather that we progress creatively from this first level constantly under its constraining reality. “They function as ‘freely chosen fluid axioms’ which remain open to revision in light of further disclosures from reality.” (10)

The Nicene theologians are illustrative for Torrance at this point. Torrance sees Nicaea as the development of a conceptual framework for thought from what is already intuitively known. The homoousion is integral to this for Torrance. That is, in Christ we are dealing directly with the Being of God. So there is a progression from the evangelical-doxological level into a deeper conceptual framework for understanding what is already intuitively known. “Face to face with Jesus Christ, their Lord and Saviour they knew they had to do immediately with God, who had communicated himself to them in Jesus Christ so unreservedly that they knew him to be the very incarnation of God.” (11) This is the second level of theological knowledge which Torrance speaks of.

Finally, there is the meta-theological level; the level of the ontological Trinity. At this level we are giving expression to the most fundamental ontological and epistemological structuring of our knowledge of God. This level is described by Torrance as constituting the ‘basic grammar’ of theological discourse. The meta-theological is the level of the most refined theological activity, the top of the pyramid from which all other theological knowledge is constrained by. (12) Thus this level, “govern[s] and control[s] all knowledge from beginning to end”. (13)

The movement from the second to the third level takes place in a process of moving from the economic Trinitarian relations to the ontological Trinitarian communion. While we cannot know the ontological in distinction from the economic, Torrance argues that what God is toward us in his economy he is “antecedently and eternally in his own Being”. (14) There is not a movement away from the grounding of concepts in intuitive reality but rather a deepening and sharpening of these conceptions. This knowledge always remained grounded in the homoousion as the bridge between God in his economic relations and his ontological Being. This level is the level of perichoresis, in that here we see the inner relations of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For Torrance this is the “supreme point in our knowing of God”. (15)

These three levels are, for Torrance, constantly interacting, yet distinct, in all theological work. We are anchored in the fact that at the evangelical-doxological level we encounter God as he is and so we are given understanding of the way God works in the world and we can begin to see how he is in himself. However, we are constantly dependent upon the first level of encounter with God in evangelical experience, which grounds us in relationship, without which we cannot know. Torrance sees this structuring of knowledge as basic to all human knowledge, as he adapts this from Einstein.

I may do one more post on method before we begin to deal with some more specific areas of doctrine. The next post will explore Torrance’s critical realism. Perhaps that post should have come before this one… oh well… I was asked in the last post about the Evangelical Calvinism posts. I think that doing these posts will expose my Evangelical Calvinism, but I will have a think about where to go with those in the near future.

1. T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology, (T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1980), 148.
2. T.F. Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology (Scottish Academic Press: Edinburgh, 1985), 136.
3. T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1996), 87.
4. Ibid., 88.
5. Ibid., 89
6. Ibid., 90
7. Colyer, How to read T.F Torrance, 295.
8. Torrance, Doctrine of God, 89.
9. Ibid., 84.
10.Myers, ‘The Stratification of Knowledge in the Thought of T.F. Torrance’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 2008, 8.
11.Torrance, Doctrine of God, 93.
12.Torrance, Ground and Grammar of Theology, 171-2.
13.Ibid.,158-9.
14.Ibid.,158.
15.Torrance, Doctrine of God, 103.

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