in his goodness creates life but who in his righteousness can take life away. His holiness leads to the crucifixion of our sinful nature in the incarnate One; his love leads to the resurrection of our flesh through this same One. For Torrance, the “two-fold” meaning of the incarnation instructs us that we cannot understand the incarnation without the atonement; nor can we understand the atonement without the incarnation. This is why he believes a proper doctrine of atonement has to consist not only of Christ’s substitutionary work but of Christ’s “vicarious life of obedience to the Father.”50
The organic connection between incarnation and atonement explains the unity of the “Person and Work of Christ.” This relationship is also the linchpin of Torrance’s Christology and soteriology.
5. The Work of the Cross
Recall that Torrance began his lectures under the claim that it is at the cross that the full meaning of God in Christ has broken on the human mind. The cross is the principal work of Christ. This is good Reformed theology. But Torrance is not a typical Reformed theologian, since for him the cross stands for more than penal substitutionary atonement. More than any other work of Christ, it discloses the mystery of the person of Christ. “It is there [at the cross] in his sacrificial passion that the whole divine-human nature of Jesus’ Person as the incarnate Son of God is revealed to the understanding of saving faith. It is there at the cross that the meaning and the purpose of his incarnation really become revealed to us.”51 The cross may be understood as a “cross-section” of the life and ministry of the incarnate Son.52 It signifies Christ’s vicarious death for our sins, but it stands equally for the Son’s vicarious life of obedience to God the Father. On this score, Jesus’ entire life is a vicarious offering for us. “The Cross is the outworking of a decision that constitutes the Person of the Mediator himself in the incarnation.”53
For Torrance, the problem with the penal-substitutionary model of the atonement is that it gives the impression that God’s redemption is merely a legal transaction, that God’s redemption has no material basis in the person of Christ. In his view, the only way to correct this is by taking into consideration Christ’s whole life, so that his atoning work begins at birth, increases in intensity in correlation with maturation as a real person, until it reaches a climax at Golgotha. To help us conceive the person and work of Christ together, the incarnation and the cross, Torrance—borrowing Mackintosh’s words—would have us think of the work of Christ as his “Person-in-movement” or his “Person-in-saving action.”54 As well, Torrance draws attention to the unity of this action. Christ’s saving actions should be understood, then, as “one supreme comprehensive act of God’s Self-humiliation from the Cradle to the Cross.”55
Yet Torrance does not stop at the cradle. How could he, if he insists that Christ is “very God of very God,” the actual coming of God in flesh and time? Thus the cross discloses not only the “secret” of the person of Christ. It discloses the “secret” of God. The great news revealed is that the cross of Christ is “eternal in the heart of God.”56 As Torrance learned from Barth, our understanding of God can be neither greater nor less than what Christ is for us and does for us. This means the whole work and person of Christ is best understood as a manifestation of the act and being of God. “The Act of God in Christ on the Cross must be thought of in accordance with his Being which is itself God’s reality in action, for it is in the Cross that there was manifested his supreme self-assertion as Holy God and God’s supreme self-bestowal as Holy Love.”57
Eschatology is ultimately about the glory of God. Even the cross of Christ, in Torrance’s view, is a witness to this. The holiness and love of God that comes to us in Christ may be understood as “the Dominion and Communion of God,” which is the essence of the kingdom of God.58 Still, the news of the arrival kingdom of God, the gospel, is really the establishment of the kingdom of God through the act of God the Father in Christ. And nowhere is the holiness and love of God, his dominion and communion, greater that at the cross of Christ. “It is here in fact that God both gives himself in his Holiness to men and asserts himself in his Holy Love to be for mankind.”59
The cross stands for God’s judgment of sin. It is the sure evidence that God in his holiness will not tolerate forever the presence of sin in his creatures. The cross, then, is God’s holiness in action, his self-assertion in the face of man’s rebellion and private self-assertion. And God succeeds. He effectively asserts his holiness by putting to death Christ, man’s representative and substitute before God. At the cross the holiness of God is revealed in all its truth and in all its glory. The judgment of the cross is also paradoxically a revelation of the love of God. For this judgment is the first act in God’s atonement for sins. The cross not only reveals how far we have fallen away from God, but also how close God has come to us. It testifies that God is no longer against us, that he has not abandoned us. It shows that he has made the greatest stride towards the reestablishment of his “Dominion” over us and his “Communion” with us.
6. The Resurrection: fulfillment of the Person and Work
It is understandable that the lecture on the resurrection of Christ is near the end of the series. Its location, though, belies its importance. For Torrance, the resurrection is actually the starting point in Christology. With Barth he believes that it is in the light of the resurrection that the person of Christ is truly comprehended.60 He is not concerned with the “how” of Christ’s resurrection. Like Christ’s virgin birth, he sees it as an absolute miracle. There is no natural cause behind it. Torrance pursues the significance of the resurrection for understanding Christ’s person and work. The significance is that the resurrection illuminates and validates the person and work. In his view, it was the resurrection of the crucified Jesus that convinced the first disciples that this man was not just another prophet of Israel, but the Lord Jesus Christ and Son of God. “It is in the Resurrection that Christ comes out of his Incognito, as it were, and we behold his transcendent glory; it is at the Resurrection that we learn the real secret of Christ’s Person to be not human but divine.”61 When the disciples recognized Jesus as divine, as Lord and Son of God, the events of his life took on a whole new meaning. They became revelatory and redemptive. “The significance of the resurrection . . . lies in the conjunction of Person and Work of Christ . . . Some have preferred to discuss his Person and teaching, some have laid emphasis on his work almost exclusively. The truth is that are rightly seen only together in their proper perspective and significance here: at the Resurrection.”62
They are seen together because they are really brought back together in the resurrection. From an historical perspective, the cross marks the separation of the person and his work, a break in the unity of the incarnation and atonement. By becoming a sacrifice for sins the person is lost to death. The resurrection, however, reunites the person and work of Christ.
The resurrection represents eschatological fulfillment. For it shows Christ to be not only the source of our redemption but also the fulfillment of it. The resurrection means “power . . . triumph . . . victory.”63 Christ is the one who rose from his sacrifice on the cross “triumphant in the Kingdom of God.”64
