What I have already said will form the basis of this post. So please if you find yourself confused, read the previous post and hopefully it will illuminate this one. This post will concern our next step into the world of Evangelical Calvinism, that being the vicarious humanity of Christ. The vicarious humanity, as argued by T.F Torrance, comes with a rather impressive historical pedigree. Torrance argues that the doctrine finds its roots in the patristics, particularly Athanasius, through into Calvin, Barth etc. The doctrine is quite central for understanding the way in which Evangelical Calvinism begins to think theologically aswell as practically. It is this line that I will try and walk here. While I hope to show the underpinnings to the doctrine and how it functions, I will attempt to show the way in which this works itself our practically 
Lets give it a go…
Fundamental to understanding the way in which the vicarious humanity of Christ works is coming to grips with the homoousion. Torrance argues that “The homoousion is the ontological and epistemological linchpin of Christian theology. With it everything hangs together; without it, everything ultimately falls apart.” The homoousion signifies the relationship between Jesus and the Father. That is, Jesus is of the same being/substance as the Father. This is why Jesus can say “if you have seen me you have seen the Father”, “I and the Father are one” etc. Without this ontological unity between Jesus and the Father, and indeed the Spirit, we can have no knowledge of God and Jesus is not suitable to be our representative.
The reason Jesus would not be suitable as our representative is explained by the next key concept, that of the hypostatic union. This is the idea that in Jesus Christ God and man are one, as we see in the Chalcedonian Creed: “to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son”. This happens in such a way, along with the homoousion, that Jesus is the one who stands on both sides of the covenant. Jesus is God, Jesus is man. Jesus is God as man.
Because Jesus stands on both sides of the covenant he is able to act as our representative as well as just a substitute for our sin (as has been argued previously concerning incarnational redemption). Because of this Jesus’ whole life is offered to God as the one perfect human response to the covenant. Jesus then acts before the Father as our representative human. As such, our humanity is tied up with his humanity. This is the vicarious humanity of Christ. All of Christ’s human activity on earth and now before the Father, is ours vicariously.
We shall take the example of Faith to understand this a bit better. Torrance argues for what he considers a more biblically and theologically faithful understanding of the nature of faith. He argues that faith itself is not something which is an “autonomous, independent act which we do from a base in ourselves.” Rather he states,
Jesus steps into the place where we are summoned to have faith in God, to believe and trust in him, and acts in our place and in our stead from within the depths of our unfaithfulness and provides us with a faithfulness which we may share.
Jesus is the one who steps into the gap between God and Man as the God-Man, and fulfills the faithfulness of God but also our faith is tied up with him in his humanity. Colyer notes that, for Torrance, faith does entail a ‘polar relation’ between God and humanity; however instead of the human pole being Man, it is Christ in his vicarious humanity who steps in and has faith. “Therefore when we are justified by faith, this does not mean that it is our faith that justifies us, far from it – it is the faith of Christ alone that justifies us…”
Torrance translates the infamous ‘subjective genitive’ passages in the NT as ‘faithfulness of’ rather than ‘faith in’. This provides something of a direct biblical basis for the doctrine of faith in particular. For example Gal 2:20 is translated “the life I now live is lived by the faithfulness of the Son of God”. There are numerous other examples of this type of construction in the NT. An interesting thing to note historically is that Calvin, in his commentaries, also translated these passages as “faithfulness of” rather than “faith in”.
So the question is then how do we participate/respond to this? Torrance uses the analogy of himself teaching his daughter to walk. She was not dependent upon her own weak grip in his hand in order to stay balanced but rather on his strong grip on her hand. So he argues that “Jesus takes hold of out faltering faith and holds it securely in his own hand.” This is what it means for Jesus to be human on behalf of humanity. He has and continues to respond to God, in faith, for all humanity.
Habets helpfully notes that Torrance’s doctrine of faith never aims at depersonalising the human response but rather attempts to enhance the ‘humanness’ of it. He states, “because the incarnate Son of God is fully human (enhypostasis), his response personalises ours.” Torrance then argues that our faith is implicated in the faith of Christ in such a way that rather than the human response being depersonalised and diminished it is made to “issue freely and spontaneously out of our own human life before God.” So there is a personalising and humanising activity always at work in the vicarious humanity of Christ so as to never diminish the human person but to uphold the dignity of the response of faith.
There is a human response of faith, the call to faith in the New Testament from Jesus and the apostles is not redundant, but this faith is not understood as being independent from the person of Jesus and his vicarious faith. Torrance argues that without this vicarious faith the human response cannot take place: “Regarded merely in itself, however, as Calvin used to say, for in faith it is upon the faithfulness of Christ that we rest and even the way in which we rest on him is sustained and undergirded by his unfailing faithfulness.” This prevents any kind of evangelical faith in faith or belief in the fact that I believe. It relocates faith in the person of Christ so that “Our faith is altogether grounded in him who is ‘author and finisher’, on whom faith depends from start to finish.”
The example of faith is an interesting one, but Torrance equally applies the vicarious humanity of Christ to all areas of human life before God: evangelism, worship, baptism, repentance, etc… The vicarious humanity of Christ is then key to how we understand the way in which we live before God. There is no more guilt and fear that I do not have enough faith, I don’t worship hard enough, pray hard enough etc. My life is now in Christ, and I find my humanity by participating in his. This truly is all of grace. As I have already noted from Myk Habets, this never attempts to depersonalise our response, but rather it upholds our humanity as we now find ourselves in Christ, and his humanity personalises ours. This is absolutely key for understanding the way in which Evangelical Calvinism functions. The emphasis upon the vicarious humanity of Christ distinguishes Evangelical Calvinism from scholastic/classical Calvinism because not only do we see Christ as a penal substitute for sin, but he also acts as a human representative before God, and as such there is no sense in which we are left to ourselves, but we have a high priest who is able to sympathise with us and help us in our every weakness. If I lost anyone, please ask and I will do my best to explain myself
Scott Kirkland
