Category: theology

Read Chapter Six (6) “Language for God: Considering the Difference between ‘Disclosure Models’ and ‘Picturing Models’ in Knowing the trinity with T. F. Torrance,” pp. 209-61.

I think you will really like this chapter as it tackles the question of whether we need to change language for God for women to have equality with men in the church and elsewhere. I would ask you to write a 4–5-page essay (typed and double-spaced) discussing the implications of tracing knowledge of God back to the triune God as known through the revelation of God in Christ and the Holy Spirit and tracing knowledge of God back to ourselves. What real difference does it make to “think from a center in God” as Torrance continually insists we must, rather than thinking from a center in ourselves?

Disclosure models of God are those that allow for the fact that God makes himself known to us through our concepts. Picturing models are those that claim our knowledge of God comes from some aspect of human culture which means that ultimately our knowledge of God really comes from us and not from God alone.

In the essay you should consider the following questions. Obviously, you don’t have to treat all of them. These are meant to be helpful to you as your frame your essays. The more material you can discuss the better. But remember, when you make statements, you have to back them up with appropriate quotations from the theologians you are discussing, and you have to support your views with a proper understanding of the issues under consideration. Also, remember that you cannot just copy from the book. That would be a form of plagiarism. You can quote from the book of course to make your points. But then you must indicate the page numbers and use quotation marks where appropriate.

1) What does Torrance mean by “intuitive knowledge”?
2) How does Torrance focus on imageless thinking about God in a way that allows what he calls the “Hebraic” way of thinking to keep us from projecting our cultural images onto Jesus instead of allowing Jesus himself to disclose God to us within his own Jewish context? He says we should not schematize the Old and New Testament picture of Jesus “to our own culture, a western culture, a black culture, an oriental culture” and that we should “enlist the aid of the Jews in helping us to interpret Jesus as he is actually presented to us in the Jewish Scripture” (213-14, n.14). Why does he say these things and with what implications?
3) Why does Torrance claim that we cannot know God as Father and Son “on the analogy of human fatherhood”? (213) How does this view contrast with the views of Elizabeth Johnson and Catherine LaCugna? Pay specific attention to how Johnson understands analogy and to her view of conversion. Also, pay attention to her starting point for understanding God and salvation and to her conclusion that we have no literal knowledge of God. Make sure you explain how and why her view of analogy and conversion might lead Torrance to claim she mistakenly uses a “picturing model” to understand God and thus she completely misunderstands who God is and who we are. Explain the implications of her views for understanding what human freedom in Christ actually means. Then you should do the same with the views of LaCugna. Does LaCugna really allow God to be God? Or does she think we can be defined God according to our own agenda and from ourselves?
4) Make sure you explain exactly how and with what implications LaCugna misunderstands the traditional meaning of the doctrine of perichoresis. Also, make sure you explain the problems with LaCugna’s view that “the life of God does not belong to God alone;” that “divine self-sufficiency” is a “philosophical myth;” and that “to be God is to be Creator” (237, n. 84).
5) Why does Torrance claim that the “sex-content” of our images of God as Father and Son cannot be projected by us back into God so that while the Hebrew language can use dramatic images of “feminine feelings” when referring to God nonetheless “the relation between those images and God is an imageless relation”? Therefore, he insists that gender can never be read back into God.
6) If gender cannot be read back into God and if God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, then the sin of patriarchalism has already been overcome for us by God in Christ. That is where the equality of women and men is re-established by the overcoming of sin for the human race in the life of Jesus himself as he lived a life of perfect obedience to God in our place and for us.
7) Why do I claim that a) it is unnecessary and impossible for us to change the name of God from Father, Son and Holy Spirit to some other name? b) What exactly happens in the thinking of those who believe that we can and must change the name of God for social, political, or religious reasons? Make sure you give specific examples from the text to support what you say about this.
8) What are some of the problems with the views of Paul Fiddes?
9) What are some of the problems with the views of Sallie McFague?
10) What precisely are the problems embedded in the views of Rosemary Radford Ruether?
11) Why does Karl Barth claim that “it is not true that in some hidden depth of his essence God is something other than Father and Son. It is not true that these names are just freely chosen and int the last analysis meaningless symbols, symbols whose original and proper non-symbolical content lies in that creaturely reality”? (235).